Quand peut un corps ? Corporéité, affectivité et temporalité chez Michel Henry

One of Michel Henry's major contributions to the phenomenology of the body consists in his proposal, based on his reading of Maine de Biran, to understand the subjective corporeity from the angle of the ability of action. Subjective corporeity acquires its ontological autonomy and its reality only through its own temporality. In reference to several unpublished texts, this article tries to clarify the nexus between ability and time, and thus to emphasize the crucial importance of the past for a "phenomenology of life", in his paradoxical connection with the necessity to think a "coming in presence" of the world.