Empiètement (Encroachment)

MP's figure for the overlap between terms that a Cartesian ontology would require to be distinct — self/other, inside/outside, flesh/being, soul/body, perception/motricity. Saint Aubert elevates the figure to method-defining status on the basis of a marginal DESC note MP wrote and re-read, marking it repeatedly with red lines: "L'empiétement, qui est pour moi la philosophie, n'est pour Descartes que confusion, c'est-à-dire néant" (DESC 84, last papers). The contrast is exact and load-bearing: what Cartesian ontology rejects as confusion is what MP makes philosophy.

Key Points

  • MP's one-line self-definition of philosophy. The DESC 84 passage is preserved from MP's last papers (those left on his desk the evening he died). Its red underlining shows MP re-read it insistently.
  • Against the ontology of distinction. Cartesian philosophy prizes "pensée distincte" and treats confusion as the enemy. MP inverts: confusion/empiètement is the site of ontological truth, "non-univocité de ce que nous sommes, sentons, pensons".
  • The three-level Cartesian scenario (from Saint Aubert's earlier Le scénario cartésien): (a) anthropological confusion — the "mélange" of soul and body that Descartes can't avoid in the 6th Meditation; (b) phenomenological confusion — the ambiguity of perceptive and affective life; (c) epistemological confusion — a thought that knows its own empiètement on its objects. MP's philosophy "assumes" all three.
  • Philosophy = empiètement. Not a property that philosophy has, but what philosophy is, for MP. Every cardinal figure of the late ontology — chiasm, ineinander, promiscuité, reversibility, entrelacs — are specifications of empiètement.
  • "Empiètement" is drawn from the mother tongue, not technical philosophy. The choice of a French noun with gestural (not technical- Greek) resonance is itself an instance of MP's métaphoricité principle: concepts must preserve the dynamic sensori- motor, erotic, moral-political, psychological echoes of their use.

Details

The DESC 84 fragment

The full passage (reproduced by Saint Aubert in Ch I fn, with gloss):

"L'empiétement, qui est pour moi la philosophie, n'est pour Descartes que confusion, c'est-à-dire néant. La philosophie de la pensée distincte (...) philosophie adossée à Dieu, c'est-à-dire le supposant sans vouloir le regarder, cherchant en lui des raisons de ne pas le regarder (...) est une philosophie de l'être objectif, horizontal, le contraire de notre philosophie de l'être vertical. Et c'est la même philosophie qui rend autrui inaccessible (...) parce qu'elle le cherche derrière un être objectif qui est infranchissable." (DESC 84)

Saint Aubert: the passage was "retrouvé parmi les documents laissés sur son bureau le soir de sa mort", read and re-read, "soulignées et marquées dans la marge par plusieurs traits rouges confirmant leur importance".

Three-term theology-cosmology-ethics

Empiètement is what a philosophy adossée à Dieu cannot think. The Cartesian hiding-in-God produces three symmetric exclusions: (a) an objective horizontal being that excludes verticality; (b) an inaccessible autrui held behind an impassable objective being; (c) a self that cannot recognise its own empiètements. MP's vertical being, by contrast, is empiètement-structured: "se rassembler en s'engageant dans une conduite" (PhP 415).

Saint Aubert's five-volume method

Across his five volumes, Saint Aubert uses DESC 84 as the master key: it grounds the anti-Cartesian scenario (Le scénario cartésien, 2005), the anti-Heideggerian scenario ([[saintaubert-2006-vers-une-ontologie-indirecte|Vers une ontologie indirecte]], 2006), the flesh scenario (Être et chair I, 2013), and the portance scenario (E&C II, 2021). In each case, empiètement names what the position MP critiques cannot think, and what the carnal ontology can.

The 2006 volume specifically extends empiètement to the empiétement de la non-philosophie (Ch II §1) — the ontological-philosophical empiétement that grounds MP's non-philosophie and, through it, MP's indirect ontology. The 1947-48 ENS first attestation of non-philosophie in MP's defense of Maine de Biran is also the first explicit MP- attestation of empiétement-with-non-philosophy: "l'expression d'un effort vers une conscience accrue, annexant à la philosophie de nouveaux territoires."

Empiètement and metaphor

The figure of empiètement also exercises itself in MP's writing. Saint Aubert Ch VII (Métaphoricité) argues that MP's choice of figures drawn from French mother tongue — "chair", "empiétement", "promiscuité" — is itself a performance of empiètement. These words "préservent et cultivent en connaissance de cause leur dynamique sensori-motrice, leur dimension érotique, leur traîne de sens moral ou politique, leurs échos psychologiques et spirituels" (Ch VII intro). They encroach on the philosophical-conceptual from the lived-sensible.

Empiètement at every level

Saint Aubert threads the figure through every chapter: (a) in Ch I, against Sartre, empiètement names what Sartrean freedom excludes ("engagement" as dénégation of empiètement); (b) in Ch III, empiètement is the positive structure of the ultra-chose; (c) in Ch IV, empiètement is the structure of Leibhaftigkeit ("entremêlés", "Einfühlung"); (d) in Ch VI, the inconscient is "la promiscuité" — empiètement of self with self and other; (e) in Ch VII, metaphor itself is empiètement of sense on sense. The figure is a structural hub of the volume.

Positions

  • Saint Aubert: empiètement is MP's one-line self-definition of philosophy; the DESC 84 passage, preserved from the last papers and red-marked, is the textual warrant for reading MP's entire ontology as an ontology of empiètement rather than of flesh (the flesh is only one of empiètement's privileged sites).
  • Standard reading: empiètement is one of many late-ontology figures, alongside chiasm, ineinander, entrelacs. Saint Aubert argues it is prior to them — the genus of which chiasm etc. are species.

Connections

  • is the genus of chiasm, ineinander, reversibility, and related late-ontology figures.
  • critiques Descartes's oscillation — the Cartesian treats empiètement as confusion; MP treats it as the Philosophie elle-même.
  • critiques Sartre's engagement-as-dénégation.
  • develops via MP's own writing style (figures drawn from mother tongue) — see metaphoricity.
  • applies to every pair of terms classical ontology keeps apart: self/other (intercorporeity), inside/outside (visible-invisible), flesh/being (epreuve-mutuelle-de-la-chair-et-de-letre), active/passive (volant).
  • is a case of MP's "pensée confuse" — the three-level Cartesian scenario inverted.
  • contrasts with the "ambivalence" MP attributes to Sartre — empiètement is an accepted overlap, ambivalence is an evasion of overlap.

Open Questions

  • Does MP's use of empiètement survive the late shift to chiasm? Saint Aubert argues yes (the chiasm is an empiètement of sensing and sensed). But V&I 1960-61 tends to prefer chiasme and the cognate entrelacs. Is there a conceptual difference, or is the terminological shift cosmetic?
  • How does the DESC 84 red-marking rule out alternative readings? The marginal philological fact is not self-interpreting; Saint Aubert elevates it to doctrine, but a conservative reading might treat it as a working note rather than a programmatic statement.
  • Latent-parallel caution (weave Pass 3, 2026-05-08): Partial structural parallel with ineinander. Rejection (against Cartesian pensée distincte / ontologies of distinction that treat overlap as deficiency) and substitute (positive overlap / mutual implication) align (axes i + ii). The empiètement page's existing typed connection "is the genus of ineinander, chiasm, reversibility" plus Whitmoyer's PoP preface explicitly cluster empiètement / emboîtement / en gigogne / mélange as MP's French rendering of the single German Ineinander (1953 Husserl course → 1958–61 late ontology). A structural-parallel claim would duplicate [[claims#ineinander-universalizes-institution]] (live) and [[claims#non-philosophie-as-empietement-of-refused-world]] (live), and lint item 16 already covers the cross-language register (Saint Aubert + Whitmoyer name the parallel). Not a candidate. See .audit/weave-pass3-run2-2026-05-08.md.

Emergence with chair in 1945–49 manuscripts (Saint Aubert 2023)

The 2023 paper anchors the chronological emergence of empiètement together with chair: "Entre 1945 et 1949, les manuscrits de Merleau-Ponty montrent une phase de transition qui voit naître deux éléments capitaux de sa pensée : la chair et l'empiétement" (Saint Aubert 2023, I.3.a, p. 9). The two notions emerge together in a context of "lectures de Beauvoir et de Sartre" — the 1940s confrontation with Sartrean existentialism — under near-total absence of Husserl and Heidegger references. Chair and empiétement are co-constituted in the same anti-Sartrean moment; understanding either requires understanding both.

This dating refines the Saint Aubert reconstruction of the chair-as- empiètement structural identity: it is not that empiètement is later added to chair (or vice versa); both emerge as paired figures of MP's 1940s reformulation of corporeity against Sartrean reduction. The DESC 84 self-definition (decade later) consolidates a structural relation already present in the 1945–49 manuscripts.

Synthetic Claims

The synthetic interpretive layer (wiki/claims.md) articulates two live claims for which this page is a Wiki home. Live status means the 3-test gate has been passed; live claims may be cited from concept pages with provisional framing per CLAUDE.md §Claims Register Format.

  • live claim, see claims#vie-du-lien-prior-to-being-toward-death — MP's "principe des principes" (the carnal vie du lien) refuses Heidegger's death-priority and reframes the Heideggerian être-pour-la-mort as flight from carnal facticity. From the existentialist period on (1945–49 manuscripts on empiétement, Mexico Conferences 1949), MP frames la chair as constituted by the vie du lien, by intercorporéité, by accouplement and prégnance — figures absent from Heidegger's analytic. The 1945–49 emergence of chair and empiétement together (per Saint Aubert 2023, I.3.a) is the paired-emergence context for the vie du lien register the claim articulates.
  • live claim, see claims#non-philosophie-as-empietement-of-refused-world — MP's non-philosophie indexes the empiétement of the carnal-empirical world (perception, body, imaginary, desire, religious acts, art) that Brunschvicg's immanence philosophique refused, not interdisciplinarity in the structuralist sense. This is the structural claim that connects empiétement to nonphilosophy and through it to indirect-ontology: empiétement is what non-philosophie operates within, and indirect ontology lives from this empiétement of non-philosophie. Per Saint Aubert 2006 Ch II §1.

Sources

  • saintaubert-2021-etre-et-chair-ii — programmatic citations at intro fn 3 p. 28-29; Ch I passim; Ch IV; Ch VI; Ch VII intro.
  • saintaubert-2006-vers-une-ontologie-indirecte — Ch II §1 ("L'empiétement de la non-philosophie"). Anchors the empiétement de la non-philosophie extension and the 1947-48 ENS first attestation of non-philosophie in MP's defense of Maine de Biran against Brunschvicg.
  • Saint Aubert's earlier Le scénario cartésien (Vrin 2005) — treats the DESC 84 passage at length (Ch I).
  • saintaubert-2023-etre-et-chair — I.3.a (p. 9) on the 1945–49 emergence of chair and empiétement together. Public anchor for the paired-emergence chronology.
  • MP primary: DESC 84 unpublished; cf. published occurrences PhP 415; PM; S(PhiOmb) 211; VI 194-195.