時間性通常被認為是審美體驗顯現自身的先驗條件。亨利通過嚴格區分事物的兩種顯現方式,對此提出了挑戰。亨利認為,時間性的本質是虛無,無法給予事物任何實在。如果強行把時間性結構置于審美體驗之中,只會使之失去活生生的實在。審美體驗就是生命的一種形態,它構成了生命自我轉化和自我生長的一個重要環節。只有在生命的自我感受中,審美體驗才能如其所是地顯現自身。

Temporality is often considered as a transcendental condition of the manifestation of aesthetic experience, which, however, is challenged by Michel Henry, who distinguishes two ways of appearing. Henry believes that the essence of temporality is nihility, which cannot bestow on things any reality. The imposition of the structure of temporality on aesthetic experience would only deprive the experience of its living reality. As a mode of life, aesthetic experience constitutes an important moment of life’s self-transformation and self-growth, and therefore only in life’s feeling of itself can aesthetic experience be manifested as what it is.