RENAUD BARBARAS AND THE MULTIPLE MEANING OF “LIFE”

The recent philosophy of Renaud Barbaras counts among the most original contributions to the phenomenology of life. My article examines it in the light of some conceptual observations based on the works of Husserl, Heidegger, and Merleau-Ponty. The early phenomenological texts illustrate the complexity of the phenomenological approach to the living inasmuch as “life” can be said in different ways, it is plural in meaning; further, life is also plural in that it can be attributed to a plurality of beings (consciousness, organisms, certain forms of existence, etc.). When developing his own account, Barbaras starts from a profound analysis of the phenomenological idea of correlation and comes to a new notion of life which is no longer attributed to organisms but to the world. The article critically follows this move from the life of organisms to the life of the world and articulates certain questions that this move can raise. The background of these questions is the double plurality of the notion of life. Even though saying that “life” has multiple meanings and attributions is purely formal and general, this multiplicity can serve as a ground for the phenomenological analysis of the way life is indeed experienced in its different meanings.