 As for the Essence of Manifestation itself, it finds a precursor concerning the structure of immanence in the works of Meister Eckhart and, though to a lesser extent, in the concept of love in Fichte’s Die Anweisung zum seligen Leben oder auch die Religionslehre (The Way Towards the Blessed Life or The Doctrine of Religion) of 1806. Other authors will be interpreted in a similar way by Henry: Marx (1976), but also Schopenhauer, Nietzsche and Freud in the 1985 Genealogy of Psychoanalysis. In the same book, Henry develops an interpretation of Descartes’ Cogito that cannot be overestimated in its importance for Henry’s project insofar as it is repeatedly used to introduce Henry’s own concept of the phenomenological reduction as “counter-reduction”, most notably in Section 18 of Incarnation. As for Spinoza, J.-M. Longneaux (2004) has defended the thesis of a Spinozism in Henry, who devoted his Master thesis to the concept of happiness in Spinoza. However, because Henry almost never again refers to Spinoza after this early work (the subject of which was imposed by his thesis-advisor) and will even explicitly distance himself from Spinoza’s rationalism, it seems unlikely that Spinoza constitutes an important source for Henry’s phenomenology, despite Longneaux’ arguments. The writings of Husserl and Heidegger have played a decisive role in the elaboration of what Henry termed the “phenomenology of life”. but as can be seen from the critique of intentionality and the emphasis on immanence against the Heideggerian theme of being-in-the-world, their influence operates “by contrast”, which means that Henry will develop his phenomenology through a series of oppositions to the thought of Husserl and Heidegger rather than in accordance with them.