Addressing Merleau-Ponty's work Phenomenology of Perception, in dialogue with The Visible and the Invisible, his lectures at the Collège de France, and his reading of Proust, this book argues that at play in his thought is a philosophy of “ontological lateness”. This describes the manner in which philosophical reflection is fated to lag behind its objects; therefore an absolute grasp on being remains beyond its reach. Merleau-Ponty articulates this philosophy against the backdrop of what he calls “cruel thought”, a style (...) of reflecting that seeks resolution by limiting, circumscribing, and arresting its object. By contrast, the philosophy of ontological lateness seeks no such finality-no apocalypsis or unveiling-but is characterized by its ability to accept the veiling of being and its own constitutive lack of punctuality. To this extent, his thinking inaugurates a new relation to the becoming of sense that overcomes cruel thought. Merleau-Ponty's work gives voice to a wisdom of dispossession that allows for the withdrawal of being. Never before has anyone engaged with the theme of Merleau-Ponty's own understanding of philosophy in such a sustained way as Whitmoyer does in this volume. (shrink)

ABSTRACTThis essay provides a sketch of Merleau-Ponty’s understanding of love in relation to human experience and to the conceptualization of φιλία and σοφία outlined in his later works. In response to what he calls a “cruel thought … that is more fear of error than it is a love of truth”, Merleau-Ponty’s reflections on love and jealousy in Proust offer a concept of “fugitive love”. Opposed to the Cartesian desire for apodicticity that seeks to seize and arrest, fugitive love means (...) withholding one’s touch and letting the beloved die. In its offer of dispossession rather than possession, love requires faith. This faith, the opposite of faith in an absolute λόγος, invites and accepts being’s occultation as the very means of its openness. Merleau-Ponty’s thought offers a mode of philosophizing that no longer aims to make being its captive but a philosophy of weakness that allows for its withdraw. (shrink)

This paper explores the significance of Heraclitus’s fragment B45 for Husserl and Merleau-Ponty as it appears in the Crisis of the European Sciences and Merleau-Ponty’s lectures on this text in the late 1950s. I claim that at stake is a revision or mutation of the sense of transcendentality: by naming it psyche, the transcendental is no longer understood as a static set of a priori conditions but what I call, following Jean-Luc Nancy, “outsidedness.” I elaborate this idea in dialogue with (...) Nancy and Derrida in their texts “De l’âme” and On Touching: Jean-Luc Nancy. By identifying the sense of transcendentality with the psyche of Heraclitus, we see a transcendentality in the process of departing, and hence transcendentality is an event for which we always arrive late.Cet article explore la signification du fragment B45 de Héraclite pour Husserl et Merleau-Ponty telle qu’elle apparaît dans la Crise des Sciences Européennes et dans la lecture de ce texte par Merleau-Ponty à la fin des années 1950. Je postule qu’il en va de la révision ou de la mutation du sens de la « transcendantalité » : en l’appelant psyche, le transcendantal n’est plus compris comme un ensemble statique de conditions a priori mais comme ce que je nomme, suivant Jean-Luc Nancy, un « au-delà ». J’élabore cette idée en dialogue avec les textes de Nancy et de Derrida : « De l’âme » et Le Toucher, Jean-Luc Nancy. En identifiant le sens de la « transcendantalité » avec la psyche de Héraclite, nous remarquons une « transcendantalité » sur le départ, et donc la « transcendantalité » est un événement pour lequel nous arrivons toujours en retard. Questo saggio esplora il significato del frammento di Eraclito B45 per Husserl e Merleau-Ponty, per come appare nella Crisi delle scienze europee e nella lettura merleau-pontiana di questo testo verso la fine degli anni Cinquanta. Ci sembra di poter affermare che in gioco vi sia una rivisitazione, una mutazione, del senso del trascendentale: definendolo come psyche, il trascendentale non è più concepito come una serie statica di condizioni a priori, ma come ciò che, con Jean-Luc Nancy, chiamiamo “esteriorità”. Abbiamo elaborato questa idea in dialogo con Nancy e Derrida e i loro testi rispettivi Dell’anima e Toccare, Jean-Luc Nancy. Identificando il senso della trascendentalità con la psyche di Eraclito, possiamo vedere della trascendentalità nel processo del dipartirsi (partance), e quindi, proprio in questo senso, comprendere la trascendentalità come un evento rispetto al quale siamo sempre in ritardo. (shrink)

In light of more contemporary interest in the concept of an immemorial past, this essay takes up the manner in which this idea figures in Merleau-Ponty’s works by turning to the famous reference to “a past that has never been present” in Phenomenology of Perception. In order to contextualize and think through what Merleau-Ponty means, I turn to a reference in the same text to “primary silence.” Merleau-Ponty’s concern is to disclose the differential between the concatenation of sensibility and expression (...) and what remains beyond the bounds of the sensible. The task of phenomenology, accordingly, is the disclosure of this primary silence, this primary non-sense. Finally, articulating that this differential never ceased to be a concern for Merleau-Ponty, and, turning to texts from the 1950s as well as to The Visible and the Invisible, we see the development of Merleau-Ponty’s thought as the consistent effort to think through this question. (shrink)

La dissonance permanente de l’être.L’extension du champ transcendental dans Phénoménologie de la perceptionRépondant aux reproches d’idéalisme subjectif qui hantent la Phénoménologie de la perception depuis sa publication, le présent essai affirme que l’intention deMerleau-Ponty dans ce texte n’est pas de soutenir la primauté ontologique de la conscience constituante transcendantale, mais de restaurer une certaine« épaisseur temporelle » (Merleau-Ponty 1945, 459) à la théorie de la genèse du sens. Dans Le champ phénoménal, Le cogito, et finalement dans certaines des réflexions de (...) Merleau-Ponty sur la peinture, l’enjeu dans sa conception du champ transcendantal n’est pas une nouvelle théorie de la consciencetranscendantale, mais la possibilité de penser les conditions du sens d’une manière qui reconnaît leur extension temporelle. Le résultat est que la réductionphénoménologique ne se résout pas à une série de conditions éternitaires, mais dévoile le champ transcendantal comme la dissonance permanente, temporelle de l’être dans son éclatement expressif : le champ transcendantal n’est donc pas, par conséquent, un λόγος, accordingly, mais un cri.La permanente dissonanza dell’essere.L’estensione del campo trascendentale in Fenomenologia della percezioneRispondendo alle osservazioni critiche riguardo il residuo di idealismo soggettivistico che hanno perseguitato Fenomenologia della percezione fin dalla sua pubblicazione, questo saggio afferma che l’intenzione di Merleau-Ponty in quest’opera non è sostenere il primato ontologico del trascendentale, della coscienza costituente, bensì restituire un certo “spessore temporale” (Merleau-Ponty, Phénoménologie de la perception, 456) alla comprensione della genesi del senso. A partire da Le champ phenomenal, Le cogito, ed infine da alcune riflessioni merleau-pontiane sulla pittura, quello che è in gioco nella presa in conto del campo trascendentale non è una nuova teoria della coscienza trascendentale, ma la possibilità di pensare le condizioni del senso in un modo che ne riconosca l’estensione temporale. Il risultato è che la riduzione fenomenologica non si risolve in una serie di condizioni eternitarie, ma dischiude invece il campo trascendentale come la permanente dissonanza temporale dell’essere nel suo éclatement espressivo: il campo trascendentale, dunque, non è un λόγος, ma un grido. (shrink)

La dissonance permanente de l’être.L’extension du champ transcendental dans Phénoménologie de la perceptionRépondant aux reproches d’idéalisme subjectif qui hantent la Phénoménologie de la perception depuis sa publication, le présent essai affirme que l’intention deMerleau-Ponty dans ce texte n’est pas de soutenir la primauté ontologique de la conscience constituante transcendantale, mais de restaurer une certaine« épaisseur temporelle » (Merleau-Ponty 1945, 459) à la théorie de la genèse du sens. Dans Le champ phénoménal, Le cogito, et finalement dans certaines des réflexions de (...) Merleau-Ponty sur la peinture, l’enjeu dans sa conception du champ transcendantal n’est pas une nouvelle théorie de la consciencetranscendantale, mais la possibilité de penser les conditions du sens d’une manière qui reconnaît leur extension temporelle. Le résultat est que la réductionphénoménologique ne se résout pas à une série de conditions éternitaires, mais dévoile le champ transcendantal comme la dissonance permanente, temporelle de l’être dans son éclatement expressif : le champ transcendantal n’est donc pas, par conséquent, un λόγος, accordingly, mais un cri.La permanente dissonanza dell’essere.L’estensione del campo trascendentale in Fenomenologia della percezioneRispondendo alle osservazioni critiche riguardo il residuo di idealismo soggettivistico che hanno perseguitato Fenomenologia della percezione fin dalla sua pubblicazione, questo saggio afferma che l’intenzione di Merleau-Ponty in quest’opera non è sostenere il primato ontologico del trascendentale, della coscienza costituente, bensì restituire un certo “spessore temporale” (Merleau-Ponty, Phénoménologie de la perception, 456) alla comprensione della genesi del senso. A partire da Le champ phenomenal, Le cogito, ed infine da alcune riflessioni merleau-pontiane sulla pittura, quello che è in gioco nella presa in conto del campo trascendentale non è una nuova teoria della coscienza trascendentale, ma la possibilità di pensare le condizioni del senso in un modo che ne riconosca l’estensione temporale. Il risultato è che la riduzione fenomenologica non si risolve in una serie di condizioni eternitarie, ma dischiude invece il campo trascendentale come la permanente dissonanza temporale dell’essere nel suo éclatement espressivo: il campo trascendentale, dunque, non è un λόγος, ma un grido. (shrink)

Le retard ontologique: la méta-philosophie de Merleau-PontyEn réponse à certains commentaires récents qui interprètent le développement de la philosophie de Merleau-Ponty en termes de révision des résultats de la Phénoménologie de la perception, cet essai montre que ce premier travail se caractérise par sa continuité thématique forte avec ce qui sera développé et étendu dans les écrits ultérieurs. En opposition à la plupart des interprétations standard, pour lesquelles le thème essentiel de la Phénoménologie de la perception est l’élaboration d’une philosophie (...) de la corporéité et de la perception, le présent essai établit que l’objectif central de ce travail de jeunesse est d’articuler les deux pôles de ce que l’auteur nomme une philosophie du « retard ontologique ».L’auteur procède en prenant en quelque sorte ce livre “par les deux bouts”. Il commence par rendre compte de la critique merleau-pontienne de l’idéalismetranscendantal et de l’analyse de la réduction phénoménologique, dans l’Avant-propos de la Phénoménologie de la perception. Il construit ensuite la notion de « retard ontologique » et montre comment elle est opérante, aussi bien dans le thème d’ouverture du livre que dans le chapitre final sur la liberté. L’étude se termine par l’analyse de la signification méta-philosophique du « retard ontologique » ; elle fait alors de cette notion le point de continuité essentielle entre ce texte de jeunesse et des écrits ultérieurs tels que « Le philosophe et son ombre » et Le visible et l’invisible.Il ritardo ontologico: la meta-filosofia di Merleau-PontyIn risposta ad alcuni commenti recenti che interpretano lo sviluppo filosofico di Merleau-Ponty come caratterizzato da una revisione dei risultati della Fenomenologia della percezione, questo saggio sostiene che quest’opera precedente presenta un’importante continuità tematica con quanto verrà sviluppato e ampliato negli scritti successivi. Rispetto a molte interpretazioni standard che ritengono che il tema principale della Fenomenologia della percezione sia l’articolazione di una filosofia dell’incarnazione o della percezione, questo saggio sostiene che la tesi di questo primo lavoro sia l’articolazione dei poli di ciò che l’autore indica come una filosofia del “ritardo ontologico”. Offrendo una lettura complessiva della Fenomenologia, che inizia con un resoconto della critica di Merleau-Ponty dell’idealismo trascendentale e il suo resoconto della riduzione fenomenologica nel seguito, l’autore elabora il tema del ritardo ontologico e mostra com’esso sia operativo all’inizio del testo così come nel capitolo finale sulla libertà. Il saggio si conclude con un resoconto del significato meta-filosofico del “ritardo ontologico” e individua questo tema come il luogo di una significativa continuità tra questa opera giovanile e Il filosofo e la sua ombra e Il visibilee l’invisibile. (shrink)

Le retard ontologique: la méta-philosophie de Merleau-PontyEn réponse à certains commentaires récents qui interprètent le développement de la philosophie de Merleau-Ponty en termes de révision des résultats de la Phénoménologie de la perception, cet essai montre que ce premier travail se caractérise par sa continuité thématique forte avec ce qui sera développé et étendu dans les écrits ultérieurs. En opposition à la plupart des interprétations standard, pour lesquelles le thème essentiel de la Phénoménologie de la perception est l’élaboration d’une philosophie (...) de la corporéité et de la perception, le présent essai établit que l’objectif central de ce travail de jeunesse est d’articuler les deux pôles de ce que l’auteur nomme une philosophie du « retard ontologique ».L’auteur procède en prenant en quelque sorte ce livre “par les deux bouts”. Il commence par rendre compte de la critique merleau-pontienne de l’idéalismetranscendantal et de l’analyse de la réduction phénoménologique, dans l’Avant-propos de la Phénoménologie de la perception. Il construit ensuite la notion de « retard ontologique » et montre comment elle est opérante, aussi bien dans le thème d’ouverture du livre que dans le chapitre final sur la liberté. L’étude se termine par l’analyse de la signification méta-philosophique du « retard ontologique » ; elle fait alors de cette notion le point de continuité essentielle entre ce texte de jeunesse et des écrits ultérieurs tels que « Le philosophe et son ombre » et Le visible et l’invisible.Il ritardo ontologico: la meta-filosofia di Merleau-PontyIn risposta ad alcuni commenti recenti che interpretano lo sviluppo filosofico di Merleau-Ponty come caratterizzato da una revisione dei risultati della Fenomenologia della percezione, questo saggio sostiene che quest’opera precedente presenta un’importante continuità tematica con quanto verrà sviluppato e ampliato negli scritti successivi. Rispetto a molte interpretazioni standard che ritengono che il tema principale della Fenomenologia della percezione sia l’articolazione di una filosofia dell’incarnazione o della percezione, questo saggio sostiene che la tesi di questo primo lavoro sia l’articolazione dei poli di ciò che l’autore indica come una filosofia del “ritardo ontologico”. Offrendo una lettura complessiva della Fenomenologia, che inizia con un resoconto della critica di Merleau-Ponty dell’idealismo trascendentale e il suo resoconto della riduzione fenomenologica nel seguito, l’autore elabora il tema del ritardo ontologico e mostra com’esso sia operativo all’inizio del testo così come nel capitolo finale sulla libertà. Il saggio si conclude con un resoconto del significato meta-filosofico del “ritardo ontologico” e individua questo tema come il luogo di una significativa continuità tra questa opera giovanile e Il filosofo e la sua ombra e Il visibilee l’invisibile. (shrink)

As he was drafting the manuscript for his unfinished work The Visible and the Invisible, Merleau-Ponty was concerned with the modern crisis of rationality expressed in our relationship to nature, a crisis that requires a revision and radicalization of our ontology, a radicalization that, as he says, entails the "rediscovery of φύσις, then of λόγος."1 In light of the incompleteness of this project, there has been some fruitful discussion of Merleau-Ponty's philosophy of nature at the end of his career and (...) the light this sheds on his proposed ontology.2 However, little of this commentary has attended to what appears to have been his intention to destabilize and thus rehabilitate how we have come to understand nature... (shrink)

There has been a wealth of literature on the relationship between phenomenology and psychoanalysis as well as a persistent interest in the exchange between these two forces of twentieth century philosophy.1 Even so, the relationship between the notable figures of the phenomenological tradition and psychoanalysis has been fraught: in spite of Freud being a contemporary of Husserl, having also studied with Brentano at the University of Vienna, references to Freud in Husserl's work are notably absent.2 For his part, Heidegger seems (...) to have been actively hostile to psychoanalysis, calling the conscious and the unconscious a "fatal distinction" and referring to Lacan's Écrits as an "obviously baroque text." He also... (shrink)

In an effort to reassess the status of Phenomenology of Perception and its relation to The Visible and the Invisible, this essay argues that Merleau-Ponty's engagement with Husserl's text and his discussion of the “field of presence” in La temporalité are intended to think through the field in which time makes its appearance as one of passage. Time does not show itself as presence or in the present but manifests itself as Ablauf, as lapse or flow, an écoulement that is (...) simultaneously an explosion, an éclatement. Merleau-Ponty's account of temporality in these pages is thus legible as recovering the primordial experience of time as a self-differentiating déhiscence in its dual power of articulation and erosion. Time is thus simultaneously the vehicle of the world's appearance and of its “disarticulation”, the passage of a rhythm of affirmation and disintegration. Merleau-Ponty's account of temporality in Phenomenology of Perception is oblique, somewhat fragmentary and circuitous.11 References to Merleau-Ponty's works cite the French followed by the English translation. I will use the abbreviation PhP for Phenomenology of Perception and VI for The Visible and the Invisible. Other texts by Merleau-Ponty will be referenced by the title. References to Husserl and Heidegger use the German followed by the translation. I will use the abbreviations ZB for the Zeitbewußtsein lectures; FT for Formale und transzendentale Logik; EU for Erfahrung und Urteil; and SZ for Sein und Zeit. View all notes While of course this phenomenon comes under close scrutiny in La temporalité, a brief inspection of this text as a whole finds it to be virtually everywhere.22 The theme of temporality is introduced as early as the Preface to Part I, “Experience and Objective Thought” and appears again in almost every subsequent chapter: the first chapter of Part I ; in his discussion on number blindness and Goldstein's patient known as Schneider in La spatialité du corps et la motricité ; in the sexuality chapter ; in the discussion of memory in La corps comme expression et la parole ; in Le sentir ; in the discussion of depth in L'espace ; in La chose et le monde naturel ; in Autrui et le monde humain and in Le cogito. Rather than providing the perhaps much called for synopsis of these scattered accounts of time or trying to locate a unified account in Phenomenology of Perception through such a synopsis, this essay will focus only on La temporalité, particularly the discussion of Husserl's diagram from the Zeitbewußtsein and the “champ de présence”. View all notes It is this apparent ubiquity that will motivate scholars such as Renaud Barbaras to claim that “… the entire structure of Phenomenology of Perception rests on a chapter devoted to temporality”.33 Barbaras The Being of the Phenomenon, 218. View all notes In spite of this ubiquity and apparent centrality, however, the treatment of temporality seems to neglect a systematic and thoroughgoing approach, and whether this work manages to address this theme with a sufficient degree of rigor remains open to debate. Furthermore, beyond the scattered and fragmented appearance of temporality in the text, the chapter devoted to its exploration contains numerous, well-recognized problems.44 Merleau-Ponty's misinterpretation of Bergson in this chapter has received much warranted attention. Alia Al-Saji, for example, has criticized Merleau-Ponty's account of temporality in this chapter of Phenomenology of Perception for this misreading as well as its perhaps too uncritical infatuation with Husserl and his emphasis on presence. See Lawlor Thinking Through French Philosophy, Al-Saji “The Temporality of Life” and “A Past Which Has Never Been Present” and Barbaras “The Turn of Experience”. View all notes Among these difficulties, Merleau-Ponty's engagement with Husserl's lectures on time-consciousness, the Vorlesungen zur Phänomenologie des inneren Zeitbewußtseins,55 The 1928 publication of the Zeitbewußtsein, edited by Heidegger, is what appears in the bibliography of Phenomenology of Perception. This version, from the Jahrbuch für Philosophie und phänomenologishe Forschung, as Brough notes, appears as “Part A” of Husserliana X. The notes that constitute this version of the text, furthermore, as Heidegger mentions in his preface to the Jahrbuch version and which Brough repeats were heavily edited by Husserl's assistant at the time, Edith Stein. Merleau-Ponty's references to the Zeitbewußtsein cut across various moments of the text and do not focus on one section in particular, and in fact, he actually references section 11, “Urimpression und retentionale Modifikation”/“Primal impression and retentional modification” in his discussion of the field of presence. As Al-Saji has noted, the extent to which Merleau-Ponty's account of time in La temporalité centres the account of time on “the living present” can be shown to be at play behind the misreading of Bergson. While I do not wish to dispute the specifics of her compelling reading, it is nonetheless worth noting that Al-Saji's reading of the Zeitbewußtsein only focuses on Appendix V, “Gleichzeitigkeit von Wahrnehmung und Wahrgenommenem”/“Simultaneity of Perception and the Perceived”. View all notes looms large, as it seems that his discussion of what he designates as le champ de présence or “field of presence” commits him to the ontological primacy of the present in his account of time. As a result, this earlier work appears to confine itself to a metaphysics organized around the privilege and authority of the present in establishing the structure of time.66 Leonard Lawlor has convincingly argued against this interpretation. Following the famous remark at the end of Le Sentir about “a past which has never been present”, Lawlor argues that precisely because Merleau-Ponty's critique of Bergson is a straw man – that is, because his critique of Bergson is based on a misreading – a closer inspection of Le Sentir and La temporalité shows Merleau-Ponty to be committed to the ontological primacy of an “originary” past. See Lawlor Thinking Through French Philosophy, 89. Marratto, following Lawlor, takes up the charge of a metaphysics of presence in Phenomenology of Perception in dialogue with Derrida. Marratto argues that Derrida's reading selectively overlooks “the very imporant dimensions of difference, discontinuity, and delay and non-self-presence in Merleau-Ponty's descriptions”, located particularly in the latter's theory of subjectivity. I agree with Marratto's assessment, and my aim here is to deepen it by turning in more detail to La temporalité. View all notes This apparent commitment to the ontological primacy of the present, for some readers, has also functioned as an index for tracking the revision of Phenomenology of Perception that is said to figure in The Visible and the Invisible, where a metaphysics of the present is replaced with a commitment to the primacy of an original past, signalling a significant break in the development of Merleau-Ponty's thought.77 This has bearing on the debate mentioned above as the question of temporality and Merleau-Ponty's evolving relationship with Bergson are also cited as part of the index for tracking the differences between Phenomenology of Perception and The Visible and the Invisible. What we see, according to this reading, is Merleau-Ponty move away from a more strictly phenomenological orientation of Phenomenology of Perception, an orientation that is said to adversely mediate his early, critical stance with respect to Bergson, toward a progressively less Husserlian and more Bergsonian stance in The Visible and the Invisible. While he does not specifically address Merleau-Ponty's engagement with Bergson, Marratto's reading also places a special emphasis on the significance of the past, specifically Merleau-Ponty's reference to a “past which has never been present”. It is also not my intention to enter into the question of Merleau-Ponty's relationship with Bergson. Rather, I will restrict my remarks specifically to Merleau-Ponty's engagement with Husserl and the Zeitbewußtsein in La temporalité in order to show that there are grounds for at least questioning one of the premises of the interpretation mentioned above, namely that Phenomenology of Perception is unequivocally legible as committed to the ontological primacy of the present. As will become clear later in the essay, I also dispute interpretations that would place the emphasis on the ontological primacy of an original past. For my own views on the significance of a “past which has never been present”, see Whitmoyer “The Primary Silence of the Past”. View all notes In considering the manner in which the Zeitbewußtsein figures in La temporalité and Merleau-Ponty's discussion of the field of presence, it will do to think about the parameters in which his engagement with Husserl is staged more generally. It seems that Merleau-Ponty never considered his task in terms of the perhaps false alternative of fidelity and heresy, because “any commemoration is also a betrayal”, and because the task of the interpreter is, as he famously notes, thinking through that “unthought-of element … which is wholly his [Husserl's] and yet opens out on something else”.88 Merleau-Ponty, Signes, 203/160. This methodological dictum is developed in more detail in the notes to the course offered on Husserl's Origin of Geometry in 1959–1960. “We are saying not that Husserl was that, but that Husserl was not only what they say, was also another, bearer of an unthought”. View all notes Following Merleau-Ponty's own indications, we could suggest that Husserl's text, rather than a source of orthodoxy, functions as a point of orientation through which Merleau-Ponty marks out his own theory of temporality.99 I will not, therefore, address the question of the “accuracy” of his interpretation of Husserl because, according to Merleau-Ponty himself, this question presupposes that the author, in this case Husserl, has a privileged access to his thought, as if there is some kernel or essence of what a philosopher thought that interpreters can either get right or wrong. As the remarks in “The Philosopher and His Shadow” make clear, interpretation can never really avail itself of this presupposition and in this manner the question of accuracy is precisely the wrong question. View all notes This essay argues that his discussion of the Zeitbewußtsein in Phenomenology of Perception does not offer an account of time that “centers around the living present”, as some have argued,1010 Al-Saji “A Past Which Has Never Been Present”, 42–44. View all notes but that the discussion of the field of presence and what follows are rather intended to account for the field of temporal phenomenalization – not as a presence – but as écoulement, passage and flux. Time, therefore, does not appear in the present or as presence, but manifests itself as a flow and movement that is simultaneously an éclatement, an eruption, and a self-differentiating “dehiscence”.1111 A favorite word of Merleau-Ponty, borrowed from botany, where it designates the splitting open of a seed-pod or flower as well as medicine, where it refers to the splitting open of a healed or partially healed wound. The idea here is that, in its flow and passage, time splits open in a process of differentiation – which is simultaneously a process of degeneration, decay, and what Merleau-Ponty will term in The Visible and the Invisible, “disarticulation”. View all notes Time's passage is not determined, organized and oriented in advance in accordance with a transcendental synthesis that would give it shape and form, privileging one temporal dimension over another, so much as it is understood in terms of a splitting open, or to use another favoured locution of Merleau-Ponty, a “deflagration”.1212 In Eye and Mind, Merleau-Ponty speaks of the “deflagration of being”. Metaphors of explosiveness and dissonance populate his attempt to think being otherwise than as structure, form, and stability. Here I will focus particularly on écoulement, flux and éclatement, eruption, because these are the terms he uses in his discussion of time in La temporalité. See Merleau-Ponty L’Œil et l'esprit, 64/369. View all notes To this extent, Merleau-Ponty's account of temporality in Phenomenology of Perception cannot be said to orient itself in terms of the ontological primacy of any one temporal dimension – past, present, or future – but is more accurately understood as an attempt to recover the primordial experience of time as the simultaneity of écoulement and éclatement – an account that thinks time in its dual power of phenomenalization and erosion, the “pulse [pulsation] of my existence, its systole and diastole”.1313 Merleau-Ponty PhP, 337/332. View all notes Time is the vehicle of the world's appearance, and at the same time of its “disarticulation” [désarticulation],1414 This is a term Merleau-Ponty uses in The Visible and the Invisible in a well-known working note entitled “ Transcendence – forgetting – time”. See Merleau-Ponty VI, 247/197. View all notes the vehicle through which “becoming” – rather than being – shows itself. This process of phenomenalization, precisely because it is temporal, never achieves the density of fully realized being – the sense of this becoming is never fully articulate – but is perpetually subject to a temporal erasure that necessitates its repetition and reiteration. Time, in other words, is the principle of the world's eloquence – it is that thanks to which things have and make sense and simultaneously the principle of the world's murmuring stutter, the principle through which the sense of things remains incomplete and even erodes, decays, and degenerates. To begin, I will turn to Merleau-Ponty's reading of Husserl's diagram from the Zeitbewußtsein, which opens his attempt to “arrive at authentic time”.1515 Merleau-Ponty PhP, 477/483. View all notes Rather than simply rehearsing Husserl's discussion of primal impression, retention and protention, Merleau-Ponty's analysis of the diagram provides an opportunity for raising two problems: the problem of time's representability and the problem of its synthesis. Rather than through an “act intentionality” carried out by a transcendental subjectivity, time appears in accordance with an “operative intentionality” always already under way. Turning to the section of La temporalité aptly entitled “Passive Synthesis”, we see that Merleau-Ponty's analysis of the diagram leads him to the paradox of passive synthesis and what he calls, following Husserl, “transition synthesis”. Time does not show itself punctually – time appears neither as presence nor in the present – but only in the dual movement of its flux, its écoulement, and its éclatement, its explosive, self-differentiating unfurling. These reflections, finally, bring Merleau-Ponty into dialogue with Heidegger on what the latter called the Zusammenhang des Lebens. The “unity of a life”, accordingly, is not a question of any “resolution”, but is a function of our immersion in this temporal dehiscence. The important lesson to be learned from Merleau-Ponty's engagement with Husserl's Zeitbewußtsein is not something about the ontological primacy of one temporal dimension over another but what Merleau-Ponty famously calls in The Visible and the Invisible the “passivity of our activity”1616 Merleau-Ponty VI, 270/221. View all notes and our immersion in time's power of disarticulation. (shrink)

In this text, my aim is to provide a reading of Mauro Carbone’s Philosophy Screens: From Cinema to the Digital Revolution in the context of his other writings. My claim is that in this most recent work, Carbone makes a decisive step from being an original interpreter of the work of Merleau-Ponty and Proust to making an original contribution to what I describe, following Merleau-Ponty and Carbone, the history of “a-philosophy”: an historical attempt to reverse the “official philosophy” that has (...) been with us since at least Plato. This reversal is staged through a series of concepts, created by Carbone, that I take up here viz à viz Plato’s allegory of the cave: the archescreen, the sensible idea, the screen, and philosophy-cinema. Together, these concepts illustrate what I call, borrowing a phrase from Jean-Luc Nancy, a philosophical partance: for Carbone, the work of “philosophizing” should no longer be conceptualized in accordance with Platonic imagery of ascent, illumination, conversion, and importantly, grasping and seizing upon the είδη but as “departure”: allowing the objects of thought their transcendence, a liquidity by which they slip through our grasp. (shrink)