 As this passage indicates, the underlying principle of “barbarism” is that of a flight from subjectivity into anonymous processes mastered by techno-science, which are then used gradually to replace living praxis. Henry’s concept of “barbarism” can thereby be related to Kierkegaardian despair as “sickness unto death” (EM 680–1, B 64–66). More precisely, “barbarism” is seen as the ultimate form of despair in which the desire to escape oneself as living subjectivity takes the form of a negation of life pure and simple. It is important to note that for Henry such a desire is itself rooted in life, i.e., in immanent affectivity, as a desire to escape the tonalities of suffering that life necessarily undergoes. Consequently, “barbarism” is a project impossible to accomplish, because life remains itself even through forms of flight and negation that Henry does not hesitate to characterize as “madness” (B 52). And it is this movement of fleeing that Henry recognizes as constituting the characteristic trait of modernity.