Our guiding research hypothesis is as follows: we believe that the significant progress made by the phenomenology of immanence and by the phenomenology of transcendence are not distinguished so much by the positing of new problems as by the reformulation of «the question of the ground of intentionality» that fueled the entire phenomenological tradition. It is striking that, despite the different solutions they offer, these two approaches have the same critical orientation vis-à-vis phenomenology (they characterize intentionality by its failure to ensure his own foundation), and they have the task of testing phenomenology in a confrontation with its various «outsides» by according a central place to the «non-intentional.» For it is only by starting from such an enterprise of showing the limits of intentionality that the possibility is opened of a true surpassing of the Husserlian perspective that the given is the measure of all things. To do this, we want to emphasize the positions of Merleau-Ponty and Patočka on this fundamental issue and show that their approaches bear phenomenology, throughits own means, to the threshold of a domain that is no longer the phenomena in the Husserlian sense.

Merleau-Ponty acknowledges several levels of ‘expression’ running from the most basic forms of sensation to painting, poetry and philosophy. This essay concentrates on his notion of ‘diacritical perception’ as key to this expressive continuum. It shows how Merleau-Ponty makes the radical move of bringing together phenomenological description with structural linguistics to reveal how perception is fundamentally structured like language. It also suggests that this move is part of his overall pursuit of an ‘indirect ontology’. Expression operates by an ‘indirect method’ of gaps, elisions, folds, latencies, absences, hollows, silences, lacunas – or what Merleau-Ponty calls ‘negativities that are not nothing’: nothing but the non-being which reveals being. The radical implications of ‘diacritical perception’ are powerfully explored in Merleau-Ponty’s Collège de France seminar Le monde sensible et le monde de l’expression (1953) and in his late essay ‘Indirect Language and the Voices of Silence’. To perceive diacritically is to read and write the flesh.

The present paper is based on an assumption that M. Merleau-Ponty and J. Patočka penetrate by their proper ways into a specific domain constituted by the mutual relations between the me and all the beings which are given to it where a fundamental ontological reciprocity between the me and the world appears. In our first part, we try to ensure an access to this domain by using the phenomenological method, namely, the analysis of experience. We start from the elementary phenomenological fact that what is given in experience transcends its actual empirical donation, then we proceed to determine the content of this transcendence and propose the concept of the transempirical nature of beings: the being transcends every single actual experience, but not every possible experience. On this ground, we try to reconstruct the general ontological basis that leads us inevitably to the limits of phenomenology. Nevertheless, in our second part, we try to demonstrate – in the form of a hypothesis in progress – that we can probably avoid trespassing on the limits of metaphysics if we agree to trespass on the borders between phenomenology and structuralism, in the sense of a structural ontology of possibilities.

The relation of reciprocal co-implication that Merleau-Ponty formulates—and on which he insists throughout his work—between sense and the sensible, perception and expression, and then visible and invisible, transforms the way in which one conceives of the medium. Merleau-Ponty’s aesthetics reveals an idea of the medium as a support that erases itself in the act of conveying the signification and also shakes the direct correlation between transparency and mimetic simulation.Understood as the sensible thickness of the body opening onto the world, then as depth and écart that catalyzes vision, the medium, then, furnishes one of the definitions of flesh, as the element of auto-mediation: connective tissue or fabric of communication that is at once écart and internal difference. Merleau-Ponty conceives of the medium as both that which renders and that which is rendered visible. It is therefore no longer an intermediary; it ceases to be an invisible mediator and becomes the opaque element that reveals in filigree the movement of gestaltic difference.It is from such a Merleau-Pontian conception of medium that one can begin to elaborate the complex issues posed by mediality in the post-medial age. The idea of a “visible medium” permits us to break with the confl ation of the simulation’s immersive effect and performance, which often informs the rhetoric concerning medias and new technologies, in order rather to think of an “opaque interface” or an “non-mimetic immersivity.” From such a conception of mediality we can equally understand the phenomenon of numerical convergence, not as the accomplishment of the suppression or dematerialization of the medium, as is the case with traditional theories, but as the point of departure for a return to the body as the condition of possibility for every aesthetic experience.

In the 1958-1959 Collège de France course, Merleau-Ponty expounds a detailed commentary on the last paragraphs of the Einleitung from Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit. We examine in what sense this course has developed the notions that he was in the process of defining, notions such as “chiasm,” “reversibility,” “depth,” and “flesh.”What seems crucial in this course is to clearly define good ambiguity as opposed to bad ambiguity, that is, to the simple mixture of finitude and universality, of interiority and exteriority. It is a question then of revealing, even within Hegelian thought, the operation, although unstable, of good ambiguity and of instituting it beyond the distinction between anthropology and logic without a return to naturalism.It should first be noted that consciousness is for Hegel violence against itself, it gives itself its measure, such that the distinction between measuring and measured is internal to it. By insisting on this “reversibility” of the measuring and the measured, Merleau-Ponty comes to emphasize that the self-relation of consciousness is simultaneously its opening onto a transcendent – an opening whereby it learns something. This leads him to define “the new ontological milieu” which is the depth of the life of consciousness. It is within this depth that the interrogative experience winds on itself.Secondly, if there truly must be a moment where the Hegelian Zweideutigkeit becomes good ambiguity, it will not suffice to explore preobjective depth; it would still be necessary to discern “the hinge” which is “solid, unwavering” and which “remains irremediably hidden.” It is this unwavering hinge that supports phenomena and that, in simultaneously decentering and recentering the fields of appearances, opens a place where one can follow the genesis of sense.Finally, we note that this discovery of the new ontological milieu can be considered as the recovery of the notion of institution that Merleau-Ponty had proposed in 1954-1955: on the one hand, the notion of chiasm invites us to reveal the hinge which at once decenters and recenters the fields of appearances. This hinge is free from the alternative of nature and culture, of subjective and objective spirit; it is the rootedness of our interrogative experience in brute being, which is not object but starts an indefinite search of self. But, on the other hand, the notion of institution, which is essentially descriptive and factual, makes us better feel the weight of the instituted that is also irremediably hidden. It makes us feel the inertia of the instituting event, as well as its fecundity and its cumulativity.

Merleau-Ponty’s later philosophy seems devoted to a fundamental task, knowing how to grasp what he calls a “mutation within the relations of man and Being.” Such a mutation concerns, in the first instance, Merleau-Ponty’s time, knowing the era in which he lives and writes: it is a mutation that is given in history, and thus generated by historical events. At the same time, this mutation has to do with the very essence of time, as the ontological counterpart of being itself. It is, in this later instance, a mutation of the temporality of being: of an intimate being, the being of self, of the unconscious; but also of a communal and shared being—assumed universal—the being of history.An oblique reflection on a temporality thus conceived emerges in his course notes, “Institution in Personal and Public History.” Temporality, here considered as the transcendental of institution, the condition of its possibility, reveals itself as antichronological and anti-metaphysical: it escapes the linearity of successive presents, the retrograde movement of the real (which has characterized Western philosophy since Plato), the dialectical movement of history according to Hegel.Indirectly, Merleau-Ponty develops a complex temporal figure—from the structural point of view—where “the past […] takes on the outline of a preparation or premeditation of a present that exceeds it in meaning although it recognizes itself in it.” The past is thus not a former present, but—as mythical past—it is simultaneously in the present itself.This revolution of the temporality of being also affects our time. From the ontological discontinuity emphasized by Merleau-Ponty, the mutation within the relations of man and being happening today seems to be characterized by the loss of all dimensions of time: there is only a present, which, nevertheless, is never present. This is true first of all from a personal point of view: desire no longer pursues its fulfillment—although imaginary and impossible—in the mythical horizon of the past, but rather looks for enjoyment, just as impossible and imaginary, in an elusive present that always exceeds us. This desertification of time also reveals itself in history, where, with and after the postmodern, the present seems to stand out as the only possible temporal dimension, depriving history of its sense and its universality.It seems to us that the philosophy of the later Merleau-Ponty prefigures, or, at least, allows us to think, this subsequent mutation. This is a minor figure, but the subject of significant studies, such as that of “precession,” that can help us not only to understand, but also to re-signify, this mythical present and never present that haunts our time.

In the 1956-1957 course titled “The Concept of Nature”, Merleau-Ponty takes up Schelling’s thought. In reading Merleau-Ponty’s text on Schelling’s philosophy, we arrive at a point of contact between the philosophy of natural productivity and the philosophy of intellectual or artistic intuition. Merleau-Ponty seems to discover the Schellingian idea of the absolute as an abyss against the Cartesian idea of God as creator. The Merleau-Pontian interpretation of Schelling’s philosophy of nature and art from his course gives us one of the keys to his unfinished ontology, which is that nature and art, physis and logos, are tied up in the perception of the dimension of being given in painting or poetry, as the analysis of painting in Eye and Mind will show us an organon of the ontology of the savage being.

The psychoanalyical notion of the unconscious is often considered as being out of reach for phenomenological thinking. When Merleau-Ponty refl ects on it, he takes the unconscious as the realm, in bodily life, that being not yet conscious, is likely to become conscious. He formulates it in his Résumés de cours with the famous sentence “The unconscious is the sensing itself”. Lacan, facing this interpretation, explains that Merleau-Ponty fails to recongnize the essential discontinuity between consciousness and the unconscious. From that criticism, it is possible to follow the reflection of Félix Guattari who develops, both alone and in collaboration with Gilles Deleuze, a conception of the “machinic unconscious”, a notion that can be read as an attempt to articulate the merleau-pontian and the lacanian approaches and to sketch out a theory of the becoming-subject. My aim in this paper, in speaking about “Merleau-Ponty Tomorrow”, consists therefore in appropriating some of his suggestions in this regard and to detect them in an unexpected context (the writing of Guattari), thereby also noting the differences between them. Through this dialogue, I get to a position where it is possible to outline a critique of the contemporary “theory of the self”, which in myview is unaware of the fact that the self is always already caught in power relations. Guattari’s “micropolitics of desire” allows precisely to account for that and thus to develop the phenomenological approach to the self.

This article aims to delineate a phenomenology of cinema centered on the double incorporation that Merleau-Ponty’s thought allows us to see at work in film. This incorporation is, first, of the elements in each other, and, second and primarily, of beings themselves, making of cinema a new way of symbolizing thinking and the relation to the other. To understand this double incorporation, we take up the question of the Gestalt and its evolution in the work of Merleau-Ponty, since it is through the Gestalt that Merleau-Ponty not only evades the impasses of the theories, subjectivist as well as objectivist, of movement and image, but also succeeds in establishing—by way of a long and precise dialogue with the new natural sciences—an a-subjective phenomenology of the body. Intersubjectivity finally gives way to an “intercorporeity” that would itself be the ground of a redefinition of imagination and its relationship to perception. We thus find the source of a new aesthetics, where cinema reclaims what is proper to it.

In light of the political facts of his time and his own experience, Merleau-Ponty tries, in the preface to Signs, to detect a general structure of history and culture. Concerned with establishing a concrete philosophy, the French philosopher never detached his political reflection from the particularity of circumstances. This article proposes to take up both the spirit and method of Merleau-Ponty. With regard to the spirit, this is a matter of seeing whether the analyses in the preface to Signs still make sense for us today. With regard to method, we try to develop an interpretation anchored in the current experience of French politics. This rootedness in current events is fundamental if we do not want to betray the concern for contingency, the sign of a concrete political approach. We will find that the ethics of engagement defined by Merleau-Ponty in the expression, “virtu without resignation” could also be the response to certain contemporary problems.

L’influence réciproque de Merleau-Ponty et Simondon a été mise en lumière depuis plusieurs années, notamment à travers leur critique commune d’une conception « artificialiste » de la technologie. Mais la relation distante, voir critique, de Merleau-Ponty envers la technologie et ses « dispositifs de captation » semble pourtant induire une divergence entre leurs pensées. Sa réserve participe également au privilège qu’il accorde à la peinture par rapport au cinéma. Or celui-ci peut incarner un intermédiaire particulièrement puissant entre les deux auteurs à travers la figure de Jean Epstein, auquel Merleau-Ponty se réfère dans ses notes de cours sur l’expression et le mouvement de 1953. On y découvre l’idée d’un usage à la fois subversif et expressif du dispositif cinématographique par rapport à son rôle automatique de « dispositif de captation » qui semble pouvoir relier la position des trois auteurs concernant les liens de l’esthétique et de la technologie.The mutual influence of Merleau-Ponty and Simondon has come to light in recent years, notably through their common criticism of an “artificialist” conception of technology. But Merleau-Ponty’s distant, even critical, relation towards technology and its “apparatuses of capture” appears to entail a divergence in their thought. His reservation applies equally to the privilege he grants painting in relation to cinema. Yet one could find a particularly powerful intermediary between both authors in Jean Epstein, to whom Merleau-Ponty refers in his 1953 course notes on expression and movement. There we discover a use, simultaneously subversive and expressive, of the cinematographic apparatus with respect to its automatic role as “apparatus of capture” that seems capable of connecting the positions of all three authors concerning the links between aesthetics and technology. L’influenza reciproca di Merleau-Ponty e Simondon è stata messa in luce da molti anni, in particolar modo attraverso la critica, comune ad entrambi, di una concezione “artificialista” della tecnologia. Tuttavia la posizione distante, finanche critica, di Merleau-Ponty verso la tecnologia e i suoi “dispositivi di ricezione”, sembra indurre una divergenza tra le loro riflessioni. Ritroviamo questa riserva merleau-pontiana nel privilegio che egli accorda alla pittura piuttosto che al cinema. Eppure, proprio in virtù di quest’ultimo è possibile individuare un forte legame tra i due autori, in particolare attraverso la figura di Jean Epstein, a cui Merleau-Ponty fa riferimento nelle sue note del corso sull’espressione e sul movimento del 1953. In questo corso, infatti, viene a individuarsi l’idea di un utilizzo sovversivo e insieme espressivo del dispositivo cinematografico, rispetto al suo ruolo automatico di “dispositivo di ricezione”, che sembra poter collegare la posizione dei tre autori circa i legami tra l’estetica e la tecnologia.

Le but de l’article est d’examiner la notion deleuzienne d’image-mouvement et sa viabilité à l’intérieur de la phénoménologie merleau-pontienne. Nous y analysons la question du mouvement dans les Notes de cours Le monde sensible et le monde de l’expression, ce qui permet de montrer la rupture de Merleau-Ponty avec la formule husserlienne « toute conscience est conscience de quelque chose », et d’associer la conscience expressive à l’image-mouvement. De plus, la démarche que nous adoptons établit quelques précisions concernant l’esthétique transcendantale et le rôle du mouvement : la primauté de la simultanéité ainsi que le co-fonctionnement du transcendantal et de l’empirique.The goal of this article is to examine the Deleuzian notion of the movement-image and its possibility within Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenology. We analyze the question of movement in the course notes The Sensible World and the World of Expression, which will show Merleau-Ponty’s rupture with the Husserlian dictum “all consciousness is consciousness of something,” and we will associate expressive consciousness with the movement-image. Moreover, this approach will precisely establish the transcendental aesthetic and the role of movement: the primacy of simultaneity and the co-functioning of the transcendental and the empirical. Lo scopo dell’articolo è di esaminare la nozione deleuziana d’immagine-movimento e la sua possibile operatività all’interno della fenomenologia merleau-pontiana. Analizzando la questione del movimento nelle Note del corso Il mondo sensibile e il mondo dell’espressione, che mostrerà la rottura di Merleau-Ponty con la formula husserliana “ogni coscienza è coscienza di qualche cosa”, assoceremo la coscienza espressiva all’immagine-movimento. Inoltre, tramite questo procedimento, giungeremo a fornire qualche precisazione sull’estetica trascendentale e sul ruolo del movimento: il primato della simultaneità e il co-funzionamento del trascendentale e dell’empirico.

La problématique de l’institution qui fait jour dans la pensée de Merleau-Ponty tout au long du cours au Collège de France (« L’institution dans l’histoire personnelle et publique », 1954-1955) reprend celle de la Stiftung ouverte par Husserl à fin de rendre compte des actes qui donnent lieu à la genèse et à la réactivation de sens idéaux tant dans la sphère personnelle qu’interpersonnelle. Néanmoins, la notion de Stiftung, propre d’une phénoménologie constitutive, ne suffit pas pour comprendre le choix merleau-pontien de traduction: précisément pour faire partie d’une phénoménologie constitutive, la Stiftung semble plutôt s’opposer à une phénoménologie de l’institution. Et pourtant, celle-ci est posée par Merleau-Ponty à la fois comme une version de la Stiftung et comme une phénoménologie de l’institution. Comment est-il possible ? Pour répondre cette question, nous proposons ici de chercher dans une autre tradition qui, moins visible mais non moins fondamentale que la phénoménologique, opère dans l’élaboration merleau-pontienne du phénomène de l’institution : la tradition sociologique et juridique française. Pour le dire avec plus de précision, nous croyons que la notion d›institution sur laquelle travaille Merleau-Ponty dans le séminaire de 1954-1955 ne peut pas être comprise sans la référence à la pensée sociale française du XIXe siècle et débuts du XXe, que nous tenterons de caractériser dans ces pages, une tradition de pensée qui s’inscrit également dans un débat inter-générationnel auquel Merleau-Ponty participe et à travers lequel il s’approprie le concept d’institution pour le reprendre dans une nouvelle version, enrichie par la perspective phénoménologique qui lui est propre. The problem of institution that emerges in Merleau-Ponty’s thought throughout his 1954-55 course at the Collège de France, “Institution in Personal and Public History,” takes up the problem of Stiftung, formulated by Husserl to account for acts that give rise to the genesis and reactivation of ideal senses both in the personal and the interpersonal spheres. However, the notion of Stiftung, characteristic of constitutive phenomenology, is not sufficient to understand Merleau-Ponty’s choice of translation: Stiftung, precisely insofar as it belongs to constitutive phenomenology, seems instead to oppose a phenomenology of institution. Nevertheless, it is presented by Merleau-Ponty both as a form of Stiftung and as a phenomenology of institution. How is this possible? To answer this question, we propose here to look to another tradition that, less visibly but no less fundamentally than phenomenology, is operating in Merleau-Ponty’s elaboration of the phenomenon of institution, namely, the French sociological and juridical tradition. More precisely, we believe that the notion of “institution” that Merleau-Ponty was working on in the course of 1954-1955 cannot be understood without reference to the French social thought of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries that we try to portray in the following pages. This tradition of thought is also set within the context of an intergenerational debate in which Merleau-Ponty participates and through which he encounters the notion of institution that he takes up in a renewed way, enriched by his own phenomenological perspective. La problematica dell’istituzione, che fa la sua comparsa nel pensiero di Merleau-Ponty durante il corso al Collège de France L’istituzione nella storia personale e pubblica (1954-1955), riprende la problematica della Stiftung, inaugurata da Husserl al fine di rendere ragione di quegli atti che danno luogo alla genesi e alla riattivazione di sensi ideali, tanto nella sfera personale, quanto in quella interpersonale. Tuttavia, la nozione di Stiftung, propria di una fenomenologia costitutiva, non basta per comprendere la scelta di traduzione operata da Merleau-Ponty: proprio poiché parte di una fenomenologia costitutiva, la Stiftung sembra piuttosto opporsi ad una fenomenologia dell’istituzione. E tuttavia, Merleau-Ponty pone quest’ultima, al contempo, come una versione della Stiftung e come una fenomenologia dell’istituzione. Com’è dunque possibile? Per rispondere a quest’interrogativo, ci proponiamo quindi di esplorare un’altra tradizione che, meno visibile ma non meno fondamentale della fenomenologia, è all’opera nell’elaborazione merleau-pontiana del fenomeno dell’istituzione: la tradizione sociologica e giuridica francese. Più precisamente, crediamo che la nozione di istituzione su cui Merleau-Ponty lavora nel seminario del 1954-55, non possa essere compresa senza il riferimento al pensiero sociale francese del XIX ed inizio del XX secolo, che cercheremo di caratterizzare in queste pagine; una tradizione di pensiero che parimenti si iscrive in un dibattito inter-generazionale, a cui Merleau-Ponty partecipa e attraverso cui si appropria del concetto di istituzione per recuperarlo in una nuova versione, arricchita dalla prospettiva fenomenologica che gli è propria.

C’était la dernière philosophie de Merleau-Ponty qui inspirait la façon dont Renaud Barbaras a interprété certaines conceptions de Husserl : la variation eidétique dont l’essence ne peut être délivrée en tant qu’entité autonome, l’apparaître qui n’est pas subordonné aux vécus hylétiques et noétiques. La phénoménologie représente même dans son livre de 2013, publié sous le titre Dynamique de la manifestation, le point de départ de sa pensée, mais elle y trouve son complément dans ce qui est désigné comme cosmologie et comme métaphysique. Sous le nom de cosmologie y est présentée une conception de l’être du monde comme mouvement, compris dans le sens qui exclue sa réduction au déplacement. C’est un archi-mouvement par lequel un fond indifférencié se dépasse en se différenciant et en donnant ainsi lieu aux étants déterminés. La phénoménalisation primaire qu’est l’individuation des étants, est achevée par une phénoménalisation secondaire qui est l’oeuvre du sujet: celui-ci se détache de l’archi-mouvement du monde par une scission désignée comme archi-événement. Cet archi-événement qui n’a aucune place dans le temps et ne peut pas être situé selon le partage du singulier et du pluriel ; ne désigne que la contingence radicale d’un fait originaire et ultime: ainsi il représente l’envers métaphysique de la phénoménologie au sein de la cosmologie. Le temps ne naît qu’avec ce mouvement du sujet scissionné qu’est le désir dont l’objet n’est rien d’autre que le monde dont le sujet a été séparé.La position philosophique présentée dans la Dynamique de la manifestation amène un changement par rapport à la notion merleau-pontyenne de chair du monde : si dans son livre de 1999, Le désir et la distance, Barbaras soulignait surtout que le sujet et le monde ne peuvent être compris comme deux moments du même élément, car cela nous ferait glisser dans un certain hylozoïsme, il voit maintenant l’échec de la philosophie de la chair dans le fait que la dualité de la chair l’emporte sur l’unité qu’elle est censée exprimer. Ainsi c’est une certaine forme du monisme qui est caractéristique de l’attitude philosophique actuelle de Renaud Barbaras. Ce besoin d’unité se faisait d’ailleurs sentir dès le début dans sa position par rapport à la pensée de Merleau-Ponty : si c’était d’abord la double critique de l’empirisme et de l’idéalisme qui pour lui restait chez ce dernier sans conclusion satisfaisante, c’est maintenant le manque de ce qui fait le sol commun du sujet et du monde que Barbaras serait enclin à lui reprocher. Et si en 1991, c’était encore la notion de différence ontologique qui lui servait à analyser l’ontologie de Merleau-Ponty, le partage de l’être et de l’étant qu’elle exprime, lui paraît maintenant dérivé au regard du partage de la « puissance mondifiante » et du « monde mondifié ». Merleau-Ponty’s late philosophy has inspired Renaud Barbaras’ interpretation of certain Husserlian ideas: eidetic variation, the essence of which cannot be given as an autonomous entity; and appearing, which is not subordinated to hyletic and noetic lived experience. In his 2013 book Dynamique de la manifestation [Dynamic of Manifestation], phenomenology even represents the starting point for Barbaras’ thought, but is complemented by what he identifies as cosmology and metaphysics. Under the name cosmology he offers a conception of the being of the world as movement, but excluding any reduction of movement to displacement. It is an archi-movement by which an undifferentiated ground surpasses itself through differentiating itself and thereby giving place to determined beings. This individuation of beings is the primary phenomenalization, and it is completed by the work of the subject in a second phenomenalization: the subject detaches itself from the archi-movement of the world through a split called “archi-event”. This archi-event does not belong in time and is neither singular nor plural: it simply designates the radical contingency of an original and ultimate fact. Thus it represents the metaphysical backside of phenomenology, to be found in the heart of cosmology. Time is born only with this movement of the split subject, the desire whose object is nothing else than the world from which the subject has been separated. The philosophical position introduced in Dynamique de la manifestation offers a new understanding of the Merleau-Pontian notion of the flesh of the world. In his 1999 book Desire and Distance, Barbaras emphasized above all how the subject and the world cannot be understood as two moments of the same element, because that would lead us into some kind of hylozoism. Now, on the other hand, he holds that the philosophy of the flesh fails insofar as the dualism of the flesh trumps the unity that it is supposed to express. The philosophical attitude that Renaud Barbaras displays today is therefore a form of monism. This need for unity could in fact be sensed from the very beginning in his position vis-a-vis Merleau-Ponty’s thought: Barbaras first claimed that Merleau-Ponty’s double criticism of empiricism and idealism remained without any satisfying conclusion, whereas now he blames him for missing out on what constitutes the common ground of the subject and the world. And if, in 1991, Barbaras still used the notion of ontological difference to analyze Merleau-Ponty’s ontology, the sharing of being and of the being that it expresses, now he considers this derivative from the sharing of “worldifying power” and “worldified world”.La filosofia dell’ultimo Merleau-Ponty ha ispirato il modo in cui Renaud Barbaras ha interpretato alcuni concetti husserliani: la variazione eidetica, la cui l’essenza non può darsi come entità autonoma, l’apparire che non è subordinato ai vissuti iletici e noetici. Anche nell’opera del 2013, Dynamique de la manifestation, la fenomenologia rappresenta il punto di partenza del pensiero di Barbaras, ma qui essa trova un suo complemento in ciò che viene designato come cosmologia e metafisica. Sotto il nome di cosmologia, viene presentata una concezione dell’essere al mondo come movimento, da concepire non come ridotto al mero spostamento. Si tratta di un archi-movimento tramite cui un fondo indifferenziato si supera differenziandosi e dando così luogo agli enti determinati. La fenomenalizzazione primaria che è l’individuazione degli enti è compiuta tramite una fenomenalizzazione secondaria che è l’opera del soggetto: costui si distacca dall’archi-movimento del mondo tramite una scissione designata come archi-evento. Questo archi-evento non risiede nel tempo e non può essere classificato come singolare o plurale; designa piuttosto la contingenza radicale di un fatto originario e ultimo: rappresenta, cioè, il rovescio metafisico della fenomenologia all’interno della cosmologia. Il tempo non nasce se non attraverso questo movimento del soggetto una volta operata la scissione, che è il desiderio, di cui l’oggetto non è altro che il mondo da cui il soggetto si è separato. La posizione filosofica presentata nella Dynamique de la manifestation offre una nuova comprensione circa la nozione merleau-pontiana di carne del mondo: se nel suo libro del 1999, Le désir et la distance, Barbaras insisteva sul fatto che il soggetto e il mondo non potessero essere concepiti come due momenti dello stesso elemento, perché questo ci farebbe scivolare in un certo ilozoismo, ora vede piuttosto il fallimento della filosofia della carne nel fatto che la dualità della carne stessa possa avere la meglio sull’unità che questa dovrebbe esprimere. Così, c’è una certa forma di monismo che è caratteristica dell’attitudine filosofica più recente di Renaud Barbaras. Questo bisogno di unità si faceva sentire, d’altronde, fin dal principio, nel suo modo di porsi rispetto al pensiero di Merleau-Ponty: se all’inizio era la doppia critica all’empirismo e all’idealismo, che per lui restava, nel pensiero merleau-pontiano, senza conclusioni soddisfacenti, ora la critica che Barbaras rivolge a Merleay-Ponty riguarda piuttosto la mancanza di un terreno comune al soggetto e al mondo. E se, nel 1991, l’ontologia di Merleau-Ponty era ancora analizzata a partire dalla nozione di differenza ontologica, la divisione dell’essere e dell’ente che questa esprime gli sembrerebbe ora derivare dalla divisione tra la “potenza mondificante” e il “mondo mondificato”.

Nous présentons la notion d’« être au monde » de Merleau-Ponty, en prenant comme point de départ l’étude de l’auteur sur le rapport mère-enfant dans la première étape de l’enfance (de 0 à 3 mois). Dans cet article nous nous appuyons, spécifiquement, sur le cours tenu à la Sorbonne entre 1949 et 1952, influencé par les travaux de la psychologie de la Gestalt et de la psychanalyse, pour montrer comment, à partir de la relation et de l’unité mère-bébé, on peut expliciter ce que Merleau-Ponty pense de l’intersubjectivité et l’idée qu’il se fait du corps comme projet orienté vers le monde. Nous voulons montrer comment Merleau-Ponty rapproche la philosophie de la réalité concrète et comment il analyse le développement de l’enfant en tant que processus d’individualisation.We explore Merleau-Ponty’s notion of “being-toward-the-world,” taking his study on the mother-child relation during the first stage of infancy (0-3 months) as our point of departure. In this article we consider, more specifically, the Sorbonne lectures of 1949-1952, which were influenced by works in Gestalt psychology and psychoanalysis, in order to show how, starting from the relation of the mother-baby unity, we can clarify what Merleau-Ponty thinks of intersubjectivity, and his idea of the body as project oriented toward the world. We wish to show how Merleau-Ponty brings philosophy closer to concrete reality and how he analyzes child development as a process of individualization. Presentiamo la nozione di “essere al mondo” in Merleau-Ponty prendendo come punto di partenza i suoi studi sul rapporto madre-bambino nella prima fase dell’infanzia (dagli 0 ai 3 mesi di età). In quest’articolo consideriamo, in particolar modo, il corso tenuto alla Sorbona tra il 1949 e il 1952, influenzato dai lavori di psicologia della Gestalt e dalla psicoanalisi, per mostrare come, a partire dalla relazione dell’unità madre-bambino, possiamo esplicitare ciò che Merleau-Ponty pensa dell’intersoggettività e l’idea che si è fatto del corpo come progetto orientato al mondo. Vogliamo quindi mostrare come Merleau-Ponty avvicini la filosofia alla realtà concreta e come analizzi lo sviluppo del bambino in quanto processo d’individualizzazione.

L’objectif de ce travail n’est pas de nier l’originalité de la phénoménologie de Merleau-Ponty face à la phénoménologie husserlienne, ni d’affirmer sa filiation avec Eugen Fink, comme l’écrit Bryan Smith dans son article controversé dans lequel il accuse Ronald Bruzina de l’avoir fait. Soutenir une telle affirmation reviendrai à porter un jugement hâtif et non moins abusif à l’image de ce que Smith écrit sur la philosophie de Fink ! Cette analyse va donc s’intéresser au dialogue qui s’est effectivement déroulé entre Merleau-Ponty et Eugen Fink lors de leur rencontre aux archives de Husserl à Louvain en 1939, après la mort du fondateur de la phénoménologie. Notre intention ici n’est que de suivre ce dialogue, dont Merleau-Ponty donne témoignage déjà à la première page de sa Phénoménologie de la perception, en nous réservant le droit de regarder au-delà des références explicites à la VIe Méditation et à Fink et d’observer plus attentivement le rôle que Fink lui-même a joué dans le cadre de la phénoménologie husserlienne et de sa réception en France. Après avoir présenté les différences essentielles entre les conceptions méthodologiques de Fink et de Husserl, on essaie de montrer comment Fink peut-il être compris comme une figure intermédiaire entre Husserl et Merleau-Ponty.The intention of this essay is not to deny the originality of Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenology compared to Husserlian phenomenology, nor to affirm its affiliation with Eugen Fink, as Bryan Smith, in his controversial article, accused Ronald Bruzina of having done. Such a claim would rush to judgment no less unfairly than Smith has done with Fink! This analysis will thus be interested in the dialogue that effectively took place between Merleau-Ponty and Eugen Fink during their meeting at the Husserl archives in Louvain in 1939, after the death of the founder of phenomenology. Our intention here is only to follow this dialogue—which Merleau-Ponty acknowledges already on the first page of his Phenomenology of Perception—looking beyond the explicit references to the Sixth Meditation and to Fink and instead closely tracking the role Fink played with regard to Husserlian phenomenology and its reception in France. After having presented the essential differences between the methodological conceptions of Fink and Husserl, we attempt to show how Fink could be understood as an intermediary figure between Husserl and Merleau-Ponty. L’obiettivo di questo lavoro non è di negare l’originalità della fenomenologia di Merleau-Ponty rispetto alla fenomenologia husserliana, né di affermare un suo rapporto di filiazione rispetto ad Eugen Fink, come scrive Bryan Smith nel controverso articolo in cui accusa proprio di questo Ronald Bruzina. Sostenere una tale affermazione porterebbe ad un giudizio affrettato ed altrettanto lesivo dell’immagine di ciò che Smith scrive sulla filosofia di Fink. Questa analisi si interesserà dunque al dialogo che ha effettivamente avuto luogo tra Merleau-Ponty e Eugen Fink durante il loro incontro agli archivi Husserl, a Lovanio, nel 1939, dopo la morte del fondatore della fenomenologia. La nostra intenzione è quindi di seguire questo dialogo, di cui Merleau-Ponty ci offre testimonianza già nella prima pagina di Fenomenologia della percezione, riservandoci però il diritto di guardare al di là dei riferimenti espliciti alla VI Meditazione e a Fink, e di osservare più attentamente il ruolo che Fink stesso ha giocato nel contesto della fenomenologia husserliana e della sua ricezione in Francia. Dopo aver presentato le differenze essenziali tra le concezioni metodologiche di Fink e di Husserl, cercheremo di mostrare come Fink possa essere considerato come una figura intermediaria tra Husserl e Merleau-Ponty.

Dans cet article nous voudrions proposer une étude sur le statut du corps vivant dans le moment de la formation intellectuelle qui précède La phénoménologie de la Perception de Maurice Merleau-Ponty et dans ses conséquences dans la suite de l’oeuvre : – d’une part les historiens de la philosophie comme Emmanuel de Saint-Aubert, à partir des archives inédites, ont établi combien la phénoménologie n’était pas le projet initial ni terminal de la philosophie de Merleau-Ponty. – d’autre part, avant la phénoménologie de la conscience du corps vécu, l’activité du corps vivant fut au centre de la structure du comportement ce qui est aujourd’hui confirmée par la découverte in vivo de l’activation et de l’activité du cerveau et de la sensibilité .La phénoménologie de Merleau-Ponty ne réduit pas biologiquement le corps vivant au corps vécu : dès le primat de la perception, le vivant est sur-éminent à la physiologie et l’anatomie des réflexes. Par une écologie corporelle, le corps vivant est immergé dans le monde et laisse émerger, de manière involontaire, une activité tacite.Ainsi en restituant le chemin qui conduit du schéma corporel à l’activation du vivant, nous démontrons comment l’émersiologie poursuit l’analyse physio-psychologique en renouvelant la phénoménologie par l’éveil du corps.In this article we consider the status of the living body in the intellectual development prior to Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s Phenomenology of Perception and its consequences in this work’s wake. On the one hand, historians of philosophy like Emmanuel de Saint-Aubert, based on unpublished writings, have determined to what extent phenomenology was neither the beginning nor end of Merleau-Ponty’s philosophy. On the other hand, before the phenomenology of the consciousness of the lived body, the activity of the living body was at the heart of the structure of behavior, as is today confirmed through the in vivo discovery of the activation and activity of the brain and sensibility. Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenology does not biologically reduce the living body to the lived body: from the primacy of perception, the living body is supereminent to physiology and the anatomy of reflexes. Through a bodily ecology, the living body is immersed in the world and involuntarily allows a tacit activity to emerge.By thus re-establishing the path from the corporeal scheme to the activation of the living, we demonstrate how emersiology follows from physio-psychological analysis, renewing phenomenology by awakening the body.In quest’articolo vorremo proporre uno studio sullo statuto del corpo vivo nel periodo di formazione intellettuale che precede La fenomenologia della percezione di Maurice Merleau-Ponty, così come nel prosieguo della sua opera:– da un lato, storici della filosofia come Emmanuel de Stain-Abuert, partendo dagli archivi inediti, hanno stabilito come la fenomenologia non fosse né il progetto iniziale né quello finale della filosofia di Merleau-Ponty.– dall’altro lato, prima della fenomenologia della coscienza del corpo vissuto, l’attività del corpo vivo fu al centro della struttura del comportamento, come oggi è peraltro confermato dalla scoperta in vivo dell’attivazione e dell’attività del cervello e della sensibilità. La fenomenologia di Merleau-Ponty non riduce biologicamente il corpo vivo al corpo vissuto: fin dal primato della percezione, l’essere vivente è sovreminente alla fisiologia e all’anatomia dei riflessi. Per un’ecologia corporea, il corpo vivo è immerso nel mondo e lascia emergere, involontariamente, una tacita attività. Così, ricostruendo il cammino che conduce dallo schema corporeo all’attivazione del vivente, dimostriamo come l’emersiologia persegua l’analisi fisio-psicologica rinnovando la fenomenologia tramite il risveglio del corpo.