CHAPTER 1
Nature: Variations on the Theme
âWhy are there several samples of each thing?â
I. NATURE AND ONTOLOGY
The last courses that Merleau-Ponty held at the CollĂšge de France focus on the âconcept of Natureâ on the one hand, and the âpossibility of philosophy todayâ on the other. Merleau-Ponty brings together under the first heading both the courses of 1956â57 and the courses of 1957â58âof these courses, the latter, centered on âAnimality, the Human Body, Transition to Culture,â purport to be the âcontinuationâ of the former. In 1959â60, Merleau-Ponty uses his last complete course to discuss the further issue of âNature and Logos: the Human Body.â As for Merleau-Ponty's reflections on âthe possibility of philosophy today,â one can trace these not only to the 1958â59 course, where that expression actually appears,1 but also to other courses: two courses which Merleau-Ponty's unexpected death left unfinishedââPhilosophy and Non-Philosophy Since Hegelâ and âCartesian Ontology and the Ontology of Todayââand the remaining course of 1959â60, entitled âHusserl at the Limits of Phenomenology.â
What is the connection between these two foci of attention toward which Merleau-Ponty's last reflections converge? Undoubtedly, the connection lies within the problem of what he called ânew ontologyâ: the problem of its configuration and of its philosophical formulation.2 Indeed, the preparatory notes for the last course dedicated to the âconcept of Natureââthe goal of which is to define the âplace of these studies in philosophyâ (N, 263/203)âspeak of âthe ontology of Nature as a way toward ontologyâa way that we prefer because the evolution of the concept of Nature is a more convincing propaedeutic, since it more clearly shows the necessity of the ontological mutationâ (N, 265/204). Evidently, by retracing the path of what Merleau-Ponty had previously defined as the âphilosophical history of the idea of Natureâ (N, 117/83), as well as by exploring, with the help of contemporary science, the âproblems positedâ (ibid.) by this very history, these courses are an effort to show that a particular relationship operates between humanity and Being. This relationship eludes the modern formula that counterposes subject and object. According to Merleau-Ponty, our epoch has made this relationship more evident, but has not been able to give an explicit philosophical formulation for it, an onto-logy. This is most specifically the theme of the lectures on âCartesian Ontology and the Ontology of Today.â3
I have already mentioned this, but it is still worth emphasizing: Merleau-Ponty's enquiry concerning Nature is not the kind of enquiry that, because of its ontological orientation, confronts the scientific standpoint with an attitude of denial. Just the opposite: it holds that such a confrontation with the scientific perspective cannot be avoided, and advocates an attitude of critical listening.
Clearly, one should not expect to find in science a fully elaborated ontology capable of taking the place of the modern ontology, according to which Nature is the absolute Object and in which the Subject is KosmotheorĂłs (an equally absolute spectator). As Merleau-Ponty contends, science as such âdoes not provide an ontology, not even under a negative form. It has only the power to divest pseudo-evidence of its pretension to be evidenceâ (N, 145/106). Still, the formulation of ontological hypotheses, which is the task of philosophy, ought to be based on the outcomes of scientific inquiries too. In fact, Merleau-Ponty consistently emphasizes the way in which currents of twentieth-century scientific inquiry decisively converge. According to him, they converge in âemptying of evidenceâ the opposing causalistic and finalistic conceptions of Natureâwhich he considers âconcepts of artificialismââ(RC 117/151) along with the idea of the separability of existence and essence4 (which he holds to be equally artificial).
II. MELODY AND SPECIES
Merleau-Ponty sees a contribution to this kind of âemptying of evidenceâ in Jakob von UexkĂŒll's theories. These theories see biology as an autonomous science inspired by Goethe's conception of the knowledge of Nature, and consequently as essentially anti-Darwinistic5; on this basis, they see the study of the reciprocal action between the organism and its environment as the specific task of biology. Onto his examination of UexkĂŒll's theories, Merleau-Ponty grafts the ontological hypothesis that he attempts to elaborate. In so doing, he presents his own hypothesis in an especially enlightening way.
Merleau-Ponty emphasizes that the notion of animal environment (Umwelt) put forth by UexkĂŒllâand which Merleau-Ponty explicates as âthe milieu that the animal gets for itself â (N, 226/172; trans. modified)âis a novel one, and is independent from Kant's or Schelling's philosophical framework (despite the fact that, for Merleau-Ponty, UexkĂŒll's thought sometimes seems to place such a notion there).6 According to Merleau-Ponty, the novelty of this notion consists precisely in the way it avoids both causalism and finalism, as well as a Platonistic formulation that would conceive it as an âessence outside of time.â7 Merleau-Ponty connects this conception to Marcel Proust's characterization of melody, drawing on a metaphor according to which UexkĂŒll (with an explicit reference to the nineteenth-century embryologist Karl Ernst von Baer) states that âthe deployment of an Umwelt is a melody, a melody which sings itself.â8
On the basis of some pages from the first volume of the Recherche to which we shall later refer,9 Merleau-Ponty explains that Marcel Proust characterizes melody as a âPlatonic idea which cannot be seen separatelyâ since âit is impossible to distinguish the means and the end, the essence and the existence in itâ (N, 228/174). He alludes to the fact that, for the main character of those pages of the Recherche, a peculiar idea of love is incarnated in the sound of a melodyâthe melody of the petite phrase of Vinteuil's sonataâto such an extent that that idea of love becomes inseparable from Vinteuil's listening.
Merleau-Ponty builds on UexkĂŒll's and Proust's conceptions, and sees in the different manifestations of zoological behaviour the variations in which âthe theme of the animal melodyâ (N, 233/178)10 finds its expression. More generally, he comes to interpret the crucial question of the relation between parts and whole11âbe it the relation between the organs and the organism or between the organism and its territory, or for that matter the links between sexes, or those of individuals with one another and with their speciesâin terms of âa variable thematism that the animal does not seek to realize by the copy of a model, but that haunts its particular realizationsâ (ibid.; trans. modified), prior therefore to both causalism and finalism.12 Actually, as UexkĂŒll nicely said by mentioning âa melody which sings itself,â it is even prior to the distinction between activity and passivity, a distinction in which, if we look thoroughly enough, even the preceding opposition between causalism and finalism finds its roots.
Echoing the concluding sentence of the essay âThe Philosopher and His Shadowâ (a true manifesto for the elaboration of the ânew ontologyâ), we might say, therefore, that in the thĂ©matisme mentioned above, Merleau-Ponty finds a sui generis teleology, âwhich is written and thought about in parenthesesâ (S, 228/181).13 In the summary of his first course on Nature, Merleau-Ponty underscores how this teleology, unlike the âproperâ one, contributes to the characterization of Nature as âoriented and blind productivity.â14 The aspect of orientation hereâas explained in the notes on UexkĂŒll's frameworkâshould be understood âas something similar to the orientation of our oneiric consciousness toward certain poles that are never seen for themselves, but which are, however, directly the cause for all the elements of a dreamâ (N, 233/178).
Merleau-Ponty emphasizes that, on this basis, âwe shouldn't see, in the very numerous individualities that life constitutes, corresponding separated absolutes, in relation to which every generality would only represent beings of reason [ĂȘtres de raison]â (N, 247/189, trans. modified). He explains that, rather, they return âan ontological value back to the notion of speciesâ (ibid.).15 Yet what does he mean by the âontological valueâ of the notion of species? And why does he deem this point so important that he returns to it again and again?16 Finally, in what sense does returning an ontological value to the notion of species help to delineate the ânew ontologyâ which Merleau-Ponty wants to work out?
III. VOYANCE
We might look for an answer to these questions in the preparatory notes of one of the two courses interrupted by Merleau-Ponty's death. This course bears the title âCartesian Ontology and the Ontology of Today.â The notes for this course discuss how the experiences of contemporary art and literature converge toward delineating a ânew ontology,â and how they serve to specify the features of this new ontology. From these notes emerge the developing lines that Merleau-Ponty wanted to follow in reconsidering, according to this new ontological perspective, the relation between the sensible and the intelligible, i.e., the relation between existence and essence. (To reiterate, Merleau-Ponty considered these lines of development to be operatingâeven if they are not made philosophically explicitâin contemporary ontology.) The notes are particularly clear in this regard.
At the very centre of these lines of development there appears a notionâthematized at lastâwhich had often, but only implicitly, been present in the later texts of Merleau-Ponty (it is formulated only once in Eye and Mind).17 This notion is central in reconsidering the relation between the sensible and the intelligible. It is the notion designated by the term voyance.18
Voyance literally indicates âclairvoyance,â the âgift of double sight,â but, in view of the misunderstandings that might occur if such a notion is given a Platonistic interpretation, we shall continue to use the original French term. In an effort to understand fully the import of this notion, we shall turn to it after briefly reviewing the overall project for the course in which the notion finds its place.
As I have already suggested, the task of this course is to try (in part through a direct contrast with Cartesian ontology) to give a philosophical formulation to contemporary ontology, whichâaccording to Merleau-Pontyâhas until now found its expression particularly in art and in literature. The first stop that he envisions for his journey is thus a survey of the landscape of âcontemporary ontology,â as it is spontaneously and implicitly delineated in art and in literature: âespecially in literatureâ (NC, 391), he emphasizes at a certain point. This remark is worth noting for those who claim that the last phase of Merleau-Ponty's thought refers exclusively to painting. Merleau-Ponty's discussion of the artistic domain does indeed concentrate on painting, following the path already traced out in Eye and Mind. But when it comes to the recognition of the literary domain, here Merleau-Ponty intends to examine the work of Proust as well as the investigations of ValĂ©ry, Claudel, and other authors of the ârecent literatureâ (NC, 191) individuated in Saint-John Perse and in Claude Simon.19
Although unmentioned in this program, there is another literary reference that assumes a theoretically central position in the definition of the contemporary ontological landscape in Merleau-Ponty's view. This reference is to Arthur Rimbaud's Lettre du voyant. Merleau-Ponty arrives at this reference via a statement by Max Ernst that assimilates the present task of the painter to precisely the task that Rimbaud's manifesto assigns to the poet: âJust as the role of the poet since [Rimbaud's] famous Lettre du voyant consists in writing under the dictation of what is being thought, of what articulates itself in him, the painter's role is to circumscribe and project what is making itself seen within himself.â20 Both have to bring to expression, as it were,âin terms that inevitably recall UexkĂŒll's notion of âa melody which sings itself ââwhat following Merleau-Ponty we might call âthe passivity of our activityâ (VI 274/221), that is the reflexivity of Being itself.
From this perspective, voyance ends up baptizing that ânew bond between the writer and the visibleâ (NC, 190), which Merleau-Ponty sees as enforced by the research he calls âmodernâ (though we were saying that it should be understood as contemporary) and which according to Merleau-Ponty can rediscover the âRenaissance beyond Descartesâ (NC, 175). As he explains, â[t]he moderns rediscover the Renaissance through the magical idea of visibility: it is the thing that makes itself seen (outside and inside), over there and hereâ (NC, 390). While on the one hand Merleau-Ponty contends that âda Vinci vindicates voyance against poetryâ (NC, 183)âwhich, unlike painting, da Vinci considers to be âincapable of âsimultaneityââ (NC, 175)âat the same time Merleau-Ponty notes that âmoderns make of poetry also a voyanceâ (NC, 183). Therefore, they show that poetry is indeed âcapable of simultaneity.â The frequent effort to bring simultaneity to expression is thus, according to Merleau-Ponty, one of the characteristic traits of contemporary ontology.21
At this point Merleau-Ponty departs from Descartes' view of vision. Descartes reduces vision to a kind of thoughtâa kind of thought that is stimulated by images, in just the way that thought is stimulated by signs and words. By contrast, Merleau-Ponty conjectures that the âunveiling of the âvoyanceâ in modern artâa voyance which is not Cartesian thoughtâmight have [an] analogue in the arts of speechâ (NC, 182â183; my emphasis). He suggests that â[p]erhaps, we should, instead of reducing vision to a reading of signs by thought, rediscover in speech, conversely, a transcendence of the same type that occurs in visionâ (ibid). Indeed, it is precisely to this that he thinks Rimbaud has contributed in a decisive way.
Voyanceâwhich in the mutual referring of perception and the imaginary, ârenders present to us what is absentâ (OE, 41/132)âhence characterizes Merleau-Ponty's conception of seeing. As Heidegger reminds us, seeing is not vorstellen, i.e., âto represent by frontal positioningâ and, by doing so, âto subject.â22 Seeing should instead be regarded as âcomplying withââa verb which expresses the indistinguishability of activity and passivity. With voyance, we discover that seeing is a complying with the showing of the sensible universe itself, within which we find ourselves and through which runs the power of an...