The Patience of Life

Birth, Affectivity, and Openness in Human Existence

Authors

  • Patricio Mena Malet Universidade de La Frontera - Temuco, Chile

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.23925/2236-9937.2025.71477

Keywords:

Patience, Birth, Affectivity, Life

Abstract

This essay proposes a phenomenology of patience understood not as a virtue or occasional disposition, but as a constitutive structure of human existence. Starting from an inquiry into life as an elusive and ungraspable phenomenon, it shows that patience arises as an original openness to the non-objective and invisible donation of life. The analysis unfolds in three main moments: birth, considered as a discreet event that founds an expanded temporal experience; affectivity, conceived as the lived experience of self-affection and of resenting; and life itself, which, by giving and resenting itself, exposes the subject to a continuous spacing of itself. From this perspective, life is not merely lived but suffered, received, and transforms the subject into the patient of its own constitution. The inmemorial birth, affectivity as radical immanence, and the essential passibility of the living being reveal that human existence is inseparable from an unending waiting, in which meaning and the self never fully accomplish themselves.

Author Biography

Patricio Mena Malet, Universidade de La Frontera - Temuco, Chile

* Doutor em Filosofia pela Pontifícia Universidade Católica de Valparaíso. Professor e diretor do Núcleo Científico e Tecnológico em Ciências Sociais e Humanas da Universidade de La Frontera - Temuco, Chile. Contato: nucleo.sociales@ufrontera.cl

References

BARBARAS, Renaud. “Phénoménologie de la vie”. En Recherches phénoménologiques. Paris: Beauchesne, 2019, pp. 54-68.

COLLOT, Michel. La poésie moderne et la structure d’horizon. Paris: PUF, 1989.

HENRY, Michel. L’essence de la manifestation. Paris: PUF, 2011.

HENRY, Michel. Phénoménologie de la vie. I. Paris: PUF, 2003.

JACQUET, Frédéric. Métaphysique de la naissance. Louvain-la-neuve: Peeters, 2028.

LLORENTE, Jaime. Filosofía y fenomenología del nacimiento. Hermenéutica de una presencia inmemorial, Granada, Editorial Comares, 2023.

MALDINEY, Henri. Pensar al hombre y la locura. Salamanca: Sígueme, 2025.

MARION, Jean-Luc. Certitudes négatives. Paris: Grasset, 2010.

MARION, Jean-Luc. De surcroît. Paris: PUF, 2001.

MARION, Jean-Luc. “La vida, aquello que nunca se posee”. En: Roggero, J. (editor), El rigor del corazón. La afectividad en la obra de Jean-Luc Marion, Buenos Aires, SB, 2022.

ROMANO, Claude. El acontecimiento y el mundo. Buenos Aires: Biblos, 2016.

Downloads

Published

2025-07-12

How to Cite

Malet, P. M. (2025). The Patience of Life: Birth, Affectivity, and Openness in Human Existence. TEOLITERARIA - Revista De Literaturas E Teologias, 15(33), 79–94. https://doi.org/10.23925/2236-9937.2025.71477

Issue

Vol. 15 No. 33 (2025): Metáforas da Vida, força para a resistência e alimento para a esperança

Section

Artigos Temáticos

License

Copyright (c) 2025 TEOLITERARIA - Revista de Literaturas e Teologias

Creative Commons License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

TeoLiteraria – Journal of Literatures and Theologies owns the copyright of all published material. The whole reproduction of the articles of this Journal in other publications or for any other purpose, by any means, requires a written permission of the editor of this journal. Partial reproductions of articles (abstracts, more than 500 words text, tables, figures and other illustrations) must have a permission written by the publisher and the authors.