Chiasmi International

This article examines Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s ontological investigation of language in his recently published course notes Sur le problème de la parole of 1954. In the course notes, Merleau-Ponty approaches the relation between being and language: if our ontological thinking is thoroughly conditioned by the means of expression provided by our proper language, how are we then to understand its claims of universality? The article argues that the course notes elucidate the linguistic turn in Merleau-Ponty’s later ontology. In particular, this article stresses that the course notes show that Merleau-Ponty undertakes an ontological inquiry into language before his investment into Heidegger’s philosophy. Furthermore, the course notes elucidate the continuity between Merleau-Ponty’s earlier investigations into expression and the ontological inquiry into language in his later texts.

Much work has been done, recently, on the harms and benefits of shaming. One may argue, for example, that feeling shamed inherently alienates and forecloses, and thus quite harmful to a compulsorily social and futurally oriented creature. This does not, however, preclude the argument that shame is ethically useful, providing, at a very basic, felt level, the absolute prohibitions such a social, futural, creature requires. This paper does not claim to finally evaluate shame itself. Instead I look to Merleau-Ponty, seeking the fleshly and felt structures of the social world – of our innate proximity and intimacy, as well as our isolation and alienation – within the embodied phenomenon of being ashamed. From the contours of this spontaneous, yet admittedly dangerous, corporeo-social phenomenon, there is comes an intimation of an ethics of the flesh: one which compels us to at least attempt to heed the often opaque, even mysterious powers of our bodies, not only for the good of our intimate others, but for the good of entire peoples.

According to Merleau-Ponty, psychologism, sociologism, and historicism, all of which describe human consciousness as “conditioned”, would be incompatible with any claim to knowledge. However, the reason why knowledge would require a postulate of the autonomy of consciousness remains little explored in the specialized literature. Therefore, in our work we try to separate different aspects of the skeptical problem analyzed by Merleau-Ponty and show that the conditioning of thought is associated, successively, with the possible opaque character of the foundations of our own grasp of the position; the possible ephemeral character of the objects of knowledge; and, finally, of the possible relativity of knowledge to our historical period. In other words, we see that Merleau-Ponty’s argumentation, far from being monolithic, calls for three different solutions concerning the “crisis” of knowledge and that, in turn, the very problem that these are trying to solve is described by the phenomenologist in three different ways. We will also see that Merleau-Ponty’s own position during this period can be described as an internalist and universalist position.

Beginning with the relation between the question of Nature and the status of philosophy, this essay interprets the theme of the mirror through the chiasm between multiplicity and thought. This relation is not substantial dualism’s relation of the subject with the object, but rather, following the image used by Merleau-Ponty, it is like the relation between two mirrors facing each other, thus suggesting that the “subject” herself is a multiplicity. From thence, drawing inspiration from this quote in Eye and Mind, “the Cartesian does not see himself in the mirror”, I formulate both the problem of the body and the question of intersubjectivity as a field of individuation for all possible forms of subjectivity. Following this theme, the essay retraces the use of the mirror in the Note on Machiavelli. Finally, given that the theme of subjectivity as a multiplicity is related to the theme of corporeality (granting the principle of reversibility characteristic of a Merleau-Pontian ontology), the essay ends with an analysis of the idea of the body-mirror (and not simply the “body in the mirror”) which, from an intersubjective point of view, becomes an expressive relation in which each body is mirror and expression of the whole universe, thus unlocking an existential monadology.

In the “Temporality” chapter of Phenomenology of Perception, Merleau-Ponty refers to the Kantian notion of “self-affection.” The subject has an affective self-relation through time because the subject is of time. Merleau-Ponty shows that it is crucial that self-affection is not understood as an immediate self-coincidence. According to him, the idea of an immediate self-possession renders self-relation impossible. Instead, temporal self-relation should be understood as a paradox of connection and difference: the contact of the self to itself always also implies distance. The temporal subject is not transparent to itself but has a connection to its past and its future through the temporal thickness of the present.

The interpretive approach adopted in this paper is influenced by Merleau-Ponty’s philosophy and in particular by his understanding of Nature, which in turn takes into consideration Whitehead’s work. Whitehead’s philosophy of organism is seen by its author as the metaphysical generalization of problems found in his investigation of natural knowledge. Whitehead admits that a speculative approach is necessitated by the very questions arising from the mathematical concepts of the material world and the revolutions undergone in logic, mathematics and physics at the turn of the century.Whitehead’s understanding of nature is framed from the beginning in terms of a processual approach. However, this notion of process is not fully worked out in the epistemological works and requires a metaphysical deepening. This is due to the fact that the notion of duration adopted in the epistemological works is not sufficient to convey the notion of process. This lack of adequacy is coupled by Whitehead with the need to interpret process in terms of experience. In turn, this notion of experience is wider than the usual one, for it implies that there is experience from the lowest levels onwards. Matter itself experiences. Seen in this perspective, reality is thus conceived in terms of a whole in constant change, whose parts are in mutual connection. This conception derives from Whitehead’s criticism of Aristotle’s substantialism and from his preference for a relationist ontology. The outcome of this approach is a speculative conception of reality in terms of a twofold notion of process: concrescence and transition, which Whitehead sees as the two faces of the creative advance of nature. This dual notion of process is interpreted in this essay in a merleau-pontyan perspective.

Taking its point of departure from Husserl’s recognition that consciousness is intentional, and Sartre’s concomitant non-reificatory notion of consciousness, understood therefore as not a thing, or as nothingness, definitive of human identity, the article proceeds by asking how, if this is so, is it possible to become conscious of consciousness, which is to say reflectively self-conscious. Explicating the relationship between the reflective mirroring of the Self to the Self, as reflected in “the look of the Other,” and the self’s unmediated or immediate self-recognition, the article proceeds to evaluate each, before providing reasons for the perhaps somewhat startling conclusion that it is our view of the world that is apt to reflect our most authentic image of ourselves to us. While exploring the implications of this, the article concludes by investigating the role of intellectual or rational reflection in ensuring our freedom of choice, and consequent responsibility, for who we choose to be.