Épreuve mutuelle de la chair et de l'être

Saint Aubert's organizing concept for MP's late ontology: perception is not a one-way relation (observer → observed) nor a bilateral relation (subject ↔ object) but a reciprocal testing (épreuve mutuelle) in which flesh and being evaluate each other. Each puts the other to the test. Each emerges further through the encounter. The volume's subtitle — L'épreuve perceptive de l'être — names the structure.

Key Points

  • Perception as the nodal site. Not a privileged topic among others; perception is where flesh and being meet and test each other. All of MP's late ontology radiates from this site.
  • Mutual, not mutual-in-the-sense-of-Aufhebung. The épreuve does not resolve into a higher synthesis. Flesh and being remain differentiated; the testing is continuous, not teleological.
  • The three-term structure: ma chair / chair du monde / être — none reducible to another. Flesh is not the model of being; being is what flesh opens to in order to open to the monde.
  • Testing both positive and negative. The chair tests the consistance of being (tenir-bon, tenir ensemble); being tests the chair's endurance of negativity, indétermination, and its own finitude. Both tests are simultaneous.
  • The answer to idealism AND realism. Neither constitutes the real (idealism) nor merely observes it (realism); the chair participates in réalisation, a process of co-birth at the heart of perception.

Details

The three-term dramaturgy (Saint Aubert 2023 public formulation)

The 2023 paper gives the public-facing summary statement of the three-term structure: "L'ontologie de Merleau-Ponty n'est pas un monisme de la chair, mais une dramaturgie à trois termes : notre chair, le monde, et l'être" (2023, p. 6). The 2021 book had structured the distinction as ma chair / chair du monde / être; the 2023 paper preserves the same substance with a more pedagogical formulation, notre chair / monde / être, and adds an important corrective:

"Merleau-Ponty ne fait pas une 'ontologie de la chair' — expression maladroite, qu'il n'emploie jamais, et pour cause. Il a pu contribuer à nous induire en erreur par une belle métaphore tardive empruntée à Claude Simon, la 'chair du monde'. La chair du monde est en relation avec notre chair mais ne se confond pas avec elle. Et elle est la chair du monde sans être pour autant le monde." (2023, p. 6)

Two attribution points the 2023 paper foregrounds:

  • The "chair du monde" is a Claude Simon metaphor MP borrows, not a metaphysical position MP holds. Readers who project a chair-monde monism from this single metaphor have generalized a literary borrowing into a thesis MP rejects.
  • MP NEVER uses "ontologie de la chair" — and for good reason. Using the phrase commits the user to a flesh-monism MP rejects. The correct formulation is philosophie de la chair + nouvelle ontologie, with chair and être as distinct concepts within a single project.

The four misreadings of MP's chair (Saint Aubert 2023 typology)

The 2023 paper catalogues four misreadings the wiki should disarm at the outset. Three are contresens (true misreadings); the fourth is a reductive sense. Each is rebutted with cardinal MP attestations:

  1. Chair without body — flesh as a late, abstract, Heideggerian- influenced concept that breaks with anthropology. Refuted: chair appears 1949 (Mexico Conferences), enthroned 1951 (L'homme et l'adversité) — both pre-Heideggerian; MP is in dialogue with human sciences "from first to last writings"; flesh is an "autre manière d'être corps" (Natu 269), not a flight from corporeality.
  2. Chair as être — confusing chair with being under Heideggerian influence. Refuted: MP read Heidegger seriously only summer 1958; was long hostile to "les heideggériens" (esp. Beaufret); even after 1958, his conception of being differs essentially from Heidegger's. Being is NOT chair; being is what flesh opens to.
  3. Anonymous chair — essentializing the prepersonal adhesion as effacement of the person. Refuted: PhP 514 — prepersonal and personal lives are "deux moments d'une structure unique qui est le sujet concret"; flesh is precisely style (recognizable singularity), "manière d'être singulière que l'on reconnaît entre mille comme on reconnaît une silhouette en mouvement" (PM 83-84).
  4. Chair as merely animated body (corps animé) — the retrospective scheme of incarnation (a soul descending into body). Refuted: MP's movement is symmetric — animation progressive, body becoming animate, simultaneously animated and animating, "toujours en train d'advenir, dans une naissance continuée". Cf. co-naissance, nascent-state.

The misreadings typology is the negative articulation of the three- term dramaturgy: each error is a way of failing to keep the three terms distinct.

The guiding question of the volume

If E&C I treated the ontological habilitation of flesh, E&C II asks: "how does the chair, in its encounter with being, evaluate that being carnally?" — une évaluation charnelle de l'être. The answer requires describing the structure Saint Aubert names épreuve mutuelle.

The Introduction § 1 states:

"Ses derniers écrits frayent pour cela deux directions complémentaires : une habilitation ontologique de la chair, et la tentative symétrique d'une évaluation charnelle de l'être." (E&C II intro)

The "évaluation charnelle" is the reverse side of MP's project.

Structural constraints

The épreuve mutuelle must satisfy several structural constraints:

  • (a) It must preserve the différence between ma chair, chair du monde, and être — against any monisme de la chair.
  • (b) It must preserve the réciprocité of the relation — against the one-way donation of Husserlian Leibhaftigkeit or the one-way néantisation of Sartrean conscience.
  • (c) It must track the double dynamic of passivity and activity — s'abandonner et surgir — by which the chair enters the test.
  • (d) It must register the negativity that is "ingrédient de l'être" (DESC 208) — being tests by its indétermination, not by its positivity.
  • (e) It must be compatible with perception at every moment — not an esoteric or rare experience.

Three convergences (Épilogue § 1)

Saint Aubert reads E&C I and E&C II together as articulating three transversal convergences:

1. Perception ↔ intelligence. E&C I traced how perception grounds intelligence in the sensori-motor and analogical; E&C II traces the onto-logical side, showing how intelligence opens onto indétermination and the inépuisable. The convergence: intelligence "ne quitte pas la chair"; chair is analogicity, system of equivalences; all sense grows from it. See metaphoricity.

2. Désir ↔ foi. E&C I developed the désir thread; E&C II adds foi perceptive. Each is a transreprésentationnelle et transaffective dynamic mobilising the chair. Both are engagements with indétermination polymorphe. But they are not identical: desire surges, faith consents and abandons. The épreuve mutuelle combines both — "autonomie du désir et abandon de la foi".

3. Réversibilité ↔ negativité. E&C I foregrounded topological reversibility in the body-schema; E&C II adds génétique (temporal) reversibility — enveloppant-enveloppé becomes engendré-engendrant. This temporal doublure requires the negativity internal to being that makes birth and differentiation possible: "négativité constitutive", not "simple absence d'être".

The carnal cogito

The Épilogue § 2 identifies the anthropological-ontological expression of the épreuve mutuelle: Claudel's Où suis-je et quelle heure est-il? (from Art poétique), cited 13 times in the VI preparation files. This is the carnal Cogito:

"Inépuisable parce que l'heure et le lieu changent, mais surtout parce que la question n'est pas au fond de savoir en quel lieu, à quelle heure nous sommes, mais d'abord comment, par quelle attache indestructible nous sommes ancrés dans l'espace et le temps" (Brouil [97]v(104)-98 /NP, oct. 1960).

The interrogation is not a ground-clearing doubt (Descartes) or a demand for total certainty (essentialism); it is the pesée of our attaches, the experience of being-borne that épreuve mutuelle names.

Perception-interrogation-faith triangle

From NPVIf [162-163] (unpublished, March 1959, marked "Définitif"):

  • Percevoir est interroger.
  • La foi est interrogation.
  • Interrogation qui est la foi.

These three equations are structurally equivalent and specify the épreuve mutuelle: perception interrogates being, because it believes in being enough to ask. Faith is not passive; it is interrogative faith (foi interrogative). See perceptual-faith.

The double dynamic (Épilogue § 3a)

The chair engages the épreuve mutuelle through the paired postures of s'abandonner et surgir. Neither alone suffices: pure abandonment is fusion (à la Sartre's conception of chair as pure passivité); pure surrection is idealism (à la Sartre's conception of liberté as absolu). The chair alternates these postures in a single act — "comme les deux faces d'un même acte, puisant leur solidarité dans la complexion même, statique et dynamique, de l'appui".

Endurance of the night (Épilogue § 3b)

Being is not Midi (Sartrean absolute positivity) nor Minuit (pure negation) but the lumière du soir ou du matin of the clair-obscur. The épreuve mutuelle requires enduring la nuit — the indétermination from which déterminations emerge. This is the counter-ontology: "il n'y a pourtant pas de clarté sans ombre, même en plein zénith".

Co-naître et réaliser (Épilogue § 3c)

The final register of the épreuve mutuelle: co-naître (Claudel) as the realise-together of chair and être. Not passive observation, not active construction, but réalisation: a work (travail) that produces real and perceiver together.

"Le sujet percevant est ainsi une chair qui réalise, au double sens de ce verbe — transitif et immanent, productif et cognitif —, jusqu'à contribuer à rendre réel, dans un accomplissement qui rejaillit sur elle-même, participant à la réalisation de soi."

Positions

  • Saint Aubert (épreuve mutuelle): this is MP's central structural relation, not made fully explicit in MP but reconstructible from the 1953-1961 manuscripts. It organises perception, ontology, and anthropology.
  • Alternative readings:
    • Chiasmatic reading (Barbaras, Carbone): the late ontology is organised around chiasm, of which mutual testing is one expression. Saint Aubert accepts this but argues épreuve mutuelle is more fundamental (chiasm is a structural result of the testing).
    • Symbolic-matrix reading (Kaushik): the late ontology is organised around a symbolic matrix, not a testing. Saint Aubert's reading could be seen as testing at the level where Kaushik sees matrix.

Connections

Open Questions

  • Is the "mutual" strictly symmetric? Saint Aubert occasionally wavers: at some points the chair tests being (Ch III: ultra-chose); at other points being tests the chair (Ch V-VI: prégnance, inconscient). Are these the same act in two aspects, or two distinct moments?
  • What makes the testing possible? The Épilogue answers: portance. But portance is announced as the subject of Saint Aubert's next book. The épreuve mutuelle thus presupposes a concept not yet fully articulated.
  • Is "testing" the right translation? Épreuve in French ranges from proof to trial, ordeal, printing proof, photographic proof. Saint Aubert exploits the range. English "testing" preserves the trial sense but loses the evidence sense. A closer rendering might be mutual trial or mutual proof-taking.

Sources

  • saintaubert-2021-etre-et-chair-ii — the volume's organizing concept; explicitly named in the subtitle, deployed across all chapters, with systematic elaboration in the Épilogue (pp. 307-336).
  • saintaubert-2023-etre-et-chair — the public-facing condensation of the three-term dramaturgy (I.2.b, p. 6) and the four misreadings typology (I.2.a–d, pp. 5–9). The 2023 paper does not use the phrase "épreuve mutuelle" but its structural relation is recognizable in the three-term dramaturgy + portance treatment.