From beginning to end, the philosophy of Michel Henry offers an original and profound reflection on life. Henry challenges the conventional understanding of life as a set of natural processes and a general classification of beings. Maintaining that our access to the meaning of life has been blocked by naturalism as well as by traditional philosophical assumptions, Henry carries out an enterprise that can rightfully be called "radical." His phenomenology leads back to the original dimension of life-to a reality that precedes and conditions the natural sciences and even objectivity as such. The Michel Henry Reader is an indispensable resource for those who are approaching Henry for the first time as well as for those who are already familiar with his work. It provides broad coverage of the major themes in his philosophy and new translations of Henry's most important essays. Sixteen chapters are divided into four parts, demonstrating the profound implications of Henry's philosophy of life for phenomenology; for subjectivity; for politics, art, and language; and for ethics and religion.

From beginning to end, the philosophy of Michel Henry offers an original and profound reflection on life. Henry challenges the conventional understanding of life as a set of natural processes and a general classification of beings. Maintaining that our access to the meaning of life has been blocked by naturalism as well as by traditional philosophical assumptions, Henry carries out an enterprise that can rightfully be called "radical." His phenomenology leads back to the original dimension of life-to a reality that precedes and conditions the natural sciences and even objectivity as such. The Michel Henry Reader is an indispensable resource for those who are approaching Henry for the first time as well as for those who are already familiar with his work. It provides broad coverage of the major themes in his philosophy and new translations of Henry's most important essays. Sixteen chapters are divided into four parts, demonstrating the profound implications of Henry's philosophy of life for phenomenology; for subjectivity; for politics, art, and language; and for ethics and religion.

How should one respond, personally or theologically, to genocide committed on one's behalf? After the Allied bombing of Darmstadt, Germany, in 1944, some Lutheran young women perceived their citys destruction as an expression of God's wratha punishment for Hitlers murder of six million Jews, purportedly on behalf of the German people. George Faithful tells the story of a number of these young women, who formed the Ecumenical Sisterhood of Mary in 1947 in order to embrace lives of radical repentance for the sins of the German people against God and against the Jews. Under Mother Basilea Schlink, the sisters embraced an ideology of collective national guilt. According to Schlink, a handful of true Christians were called to lead their nation in repentance, interceding and making spiritual sacrifices as priests on its behalf and saving it from looming destruction. Schlink explained that these ideas were rooted in her reading of the Hebrew Bible; in fact, Faithful discovers, they also bore the influence of German nationalism. Schlinks vision resulted in penitential practices that dominated the life of her community. While the women of the sisterhood were subject to each other, they elevated themselves and their spiritual authority above that of any male leaders. They offered female and gender-neutral paradigms of self-sacrifice as normative for all Christians. Mothering the Fatherland shows how the sisters overturned German Protestant norms for gender roles, communal life, and nationalism in their pursuit of redemption.