Cautious Anthropomorphism

A strategic use of human predicates for non-human things in order to defamiliarise both terms — neither to make stones knowable like us, nor to flatten ontological difference into a uniform plane. The term enters the contemporary new-materialist / new-realist conversation via Shaviro (The Universe of Things 61), Cohen (Stone: An Ecology of the Inhuman 9, 14, 19–25), and Bennett (Vibrant Matter 99). Morin's distinctive move is to apply the term retroactively to Merleau-Ponty's 1948 corpus (L'homme et l'objet, Causeries = The World of Perception), reading MP's anthropomorphic claims about things ("clothed in human characteristics," WP 49) as cautious anthropomorphism avant la lettre.

Key Points

  • Defamiliarisation in both directions: anthropomorphising stones destabilises both the human term (what feelings or freedom are) and the stone term (what mineral existence is). Shaviro: "I attribute feelings to stones precisely in order to get away from the pernicious dualism that would insist that human beings alone . . . have feelings" (Universe of Things 61).
  • Distinct from reckless anthropomorphism (Meillassoux's diagnosis applied to Harman's "sincerity of objects"): "consists in the illusion of seeing in every reality (even inorganic reality) subjective traits the experience of which is in fact entirely human, merely varying their degree" (Meillassoux, "Iteration, Reiteration, Repetition" 2012).
  • Distinct from projection (Sartre's reading of Ponge): Sartre treats Ponge's "Look at the stone, it is alive. Look at life, it is stone" (MT 441) as a mineralisation of human beings; the failure-mode is "he still ends up on the outside, staring at things, all alone" (MT 450).
  • Distinct from animism / panpsychism (Abram's Spell of the Sensuous; McWeeny on MP): cautious anthropomorphism foreclose-s the move to positive interiority in things. The strategic use of "feelings" does not entail the thing has feelings the way we do.
  • Distinct from anthropologisme (MP's polemical target — the negative humanism of Brunschvicg / Sartre / Kant-as-Brunschvicg): cautious anthropomorphism is the positive strategic deployment MP endorses through his 1948 writings; anthropologisme is the negative humanism MP rejects. The two are non-overlapping and both belong on the wiki.
  • The Cohen anchor — trans-ontological affinity: cautious anthropomorphism is closer to MP's flesh-ontology than to Harman's OOO because it dislocates ontological distance without collapsing it (Cohen SEI 19, 20, 83).

MP's 1948 corpus as cautious anthropomorphism

Per morin-2022-mp-nancy-sense-being Ch 5, MP's 1948 writings — the conference L'homme et l'objet and the Causeries (The World of Perception) — respond to Sartre's "Man and Things" by recasting things as "complexes" (Lacanian sense): each property of the thing (the viscosity of honey, the smoothness of the pebble) symbolises "a particular relation between the thing and us, a particular behavior it suggests or imposes upon us" (WP 47). The thing is a "combination of mind and body" (WP 43), "clothed in human characteristics" (WP 49) — but not as projection. Rather, MP's "clothing things with our flesh" is the gift of our flesh — and as Saint Aubert puts it: "Leibhaftigkeit is truly not a one-way donation but the encounter between two resistances, two forces — that of adversity and desire."

The function of MP's anthropomorphic claims is therefore not to reduce things to objects-of-experience but to guarantee their irreducibility to mere intellectual ideas: only because we lend things our flesh can they give themselves "in the flesh" (S 167) — a Husserlian Leibhaftigkeit recast as encounter-of-resistances rather than one-way disclosure. The graininess that interrupts exploration and the depth that arouses desire (the "marvelous precipitate of desire," Breton via MP MO 94 — see Ch 5 fn 10 for the human-face/desire mis-citation) belong to the thing-given-in-the-flesh, not to a projection.

What the Concept Does

Cautious anthropomorphism (Shaviro / Cohen / Bennett) names a strategy of defamiliarisation in both directions: the human predicate destabilises the non-human term and gets destabilised in turn. Morin (Ch 5 §3, esp. pp. 113–28) deploys it as a reading-frame that lets MP's 1948 anthropomorphic claims — "clothed in human characteristics" (WP 49); "the gaze clothes things with its own flesh" (VI 131) — count as positively grounding the thing's irreducibility rather than projecting human predicates onto it. Operatively continuous with empiétement (1948 attestation, WP 69: things "stand 'bleeding' in front of us") and with Saint Aubert's "Leibhaftigkeit is . . . encounter between two resistances" (Saint Aubert, "Au croisement du réel et de l'imaginaire" 253).

What It Rejects

  • Sartre's reading-of-Ponge failure-mode (MT 450): the projector "ends up on the outside, staring at things, all alone." Cautious anthropomorphism refuses the projection register.
  • Meillassoux's misanthropy ("Iteration, Reiteration, Repetition" 2012, via Morin Ch 5): the flight from anthropomorphism by evicting the human from non-human time (Cohen SEI 85).
  • Harman's reckless anthropomorphism ("sincerity of objects"): flat-ontology distribution of subjective traits to every reality "merely varying their degree" (Meillassoux's diagnosis of Harman, via Morin Ch 5).
  • Abram-style animism / McWeeny-style panpsychism: the move to positive interiority in things. Cautious anthropomorphism forecloses this — strategic use of "feelings" does not entail the stone has feelings the way we do.
  • anthropologisme (MP's polemical target — Brunschvicg / Sartre / Kant-as-Brunschvicg): the negative humanism MP rejects. Structurally non-overlapping — see disambiguation on anthropologisme and Connections below.

Stakes

If MP's 1948 corpus reads as cautious anthropomorphism, three things change. First, the wiki can engage contemporary new-materialism / speculative realism (Shaviro, Cohen, Bennett) on MP's own terms — without committing to flat-ontology premises. Second, the 1948 Causeries / L'homme et l'objet corpus, currently under-attested as a source of positive ontological claims, gains an operative reading-frame: "clothing things with our flesh" becomes gift of the flesh (Saint Aubert), not projection. Third, the bridge from 1948 to the late ontology (via VI 131, 136) becomes legible as a continuous defamiliarisation-in-both-directions strategy rather than as a break. The reading is interpretive and depends on Morin's transposition of Shaviro/Cohen vocabulary onto MP-1948 — mark confidence: medium.

Anchoring across contemporary thinkers

  • Shaviro (Universe of Things 61): the foundational articulation; anthropomorphism as defamiliarisation against pernicious dualism.
  • Cohen (Stone — SEI 9–25, 61, 63, 83): trans-ontological affinity + geophilia; "the lithic in the living and the lively in the stone" (SEI 20). Cohen also coins the contrast with Meillassoux's misanthropy (SEI 85, 289–90).
  • Bennett (Vibrant Matter 99): "a touch of anthropomorphism, then, can catalyze a sensibility that finds a world filled not with ontologically distinct categories of beings (subjects and objects) but with variously composed materialities that form confederations."
  • Morin (Ch 5 §3): applies the frame to MP's 1948 corpus, distinguishing carefully from Meillassoux's misanthropy, Harman's reckless anthropomorphism, Abram's animism, McWeeny's panpsychism.

Connections

  • applies to merleau-ponty-1948-sense-and-non-sense (the 1948 corpus broadly) and MP's Causeries (1948).
  • connects to empietement — MP's 1948 attestation of encroachment ("things . . . stand 'bleeding' in front of us," WP 69) is operatively continuous with cautious anthropomorphism: things have an inside that passes into the outside, hence they can attack us, fascinate us, interrogate us.
  • connects to coefficient-of-adversity — adversity (Bachelard → Sartre → MP) is not freely-chosen-project (Sartre's BN) but encounter-of-resistances (MP-via-Saint Aubert).
  • foreshadows flesh-as-element — the "gift of my flesh" is the operative bridge from 1948 to the late ontology.
  • distinct from anthropologisme — MP's rejected negative humanism is structurally separate; both should be on the wiki.
  • contrasts with Harman's reckless anthropomorphism ("sincerity of objects") + flat ontology.
  • contrasts with Meillassoux's misanthropy (separating deep time from human time into "solitary segments," per Cohen SEI 85).
  • requires not collapsing into animism (Abram) or panpsychism (McWeeny) — both extensions are explicitly foreclosed.

Open Questions

  • Is MP's 1948 corpus systematically cautious-anthropomorphic, or are the Bachelardian / Bretonian moments simply available for Morin's retroactive frame? Some of MP's 1948 statements (e.g. WP 49 "clothed in human characteristics") sound straightforwardly projective if read out of context. The strategic reading requires reading against Sartrian projection and for a Bachelardian-Bretonian-Saint-Aubertian alternative.
  • Does cautious anthropomorphism cohere with the late MP's "flesh of the world is not self-sensing" (May 1960 working note on flesh-as-element)? The 1948 strategy grants things a way of self-sensing in dialogue; the late flesh distinguishes flesh-of-body (sentient-sensible) from flesh-of-world (sensible-only). The transition needs more articulation.
  • Is L'intrus (Nancy 2000) an even better candidate for cautious anthropomorphism applied to the body — "I am the cancerous cell and the grafted organ . . . I am the bits of wire holding together my sternum" (Nancy C 170)? The body's own partes extra partes might be read as cautious anthropomorphism turned inward.

Synthetic Claims

The synthetic interpretive layer (wiki/claims.md) articulates one live claim for which this page is a Wiki home. Live claims may be cited from concept pages with provisional framing per CLAUDE.md §Claims Register Format.

  • live claim, see claims#morin-cautious-anthropomorphism-mp-1948-strategy — MP's 1948 anthropomorphic claims are best read as cautious anthropomorphism (Shaviro / Cohen / Bennett): a strategy of defamiliarisation in both directions, distinct from Sartrian projection, Meillassouxian misanthropy, Harmanian flat-ontology, and Abram-McWeeny animism / panpsychism. Anchored in Morin Ch 5 §3 (pp. 113–28); WP 43, 47, 48, 49, 69; VI 131, 136, 139; Saint Aubert "Au croisement du réel et de l'imaginaire" 253.

Sources