Être humain est un parti / To Be Human Is Also to Take a Side

Stendhal's phrase from the Lucien Leuwen marginalia, picked up by Merleau-Ponty as the closing political-philosophical thesis of *Investigations into the Literary Use of Language* (1953). The thesis: the writer's engagement is intrinsic to the writing-and-living dialectic, not external to it. The closing line of the entire notes (L15 [145]v): "Unaffiliated [with a party] because he is engaged not in the sense of being this or that, but in the sense of knowing what he's doing." Anticipates the 1955 action-of-unveiling vs action-of-governing distinction of Adventures of the Dialectic; supplies MP's most articulated 1953 position on the writer's political vocation.

Key Points

  • The phrase (Stendhal Lucien Leuwen marginalia): "être humain est un parti" — literally "to be human is a party" (in the political sense: faction, side, allegiance). MP's translation/paraphrase varies: "to be human is also to take a side" (Course Summary [14]; L15 [132]); "since to be human is to take a side" (L14 [130] marginal at the Mme Grandet scene). Translator's Note 26 verifies the Stendhal anchor.
  • Course Summary [14] formulation: "Stendhal basically said that to be human is also to take a side [être humain est un parti]. Perhaps the function of critique is the writer's form of political engagement. [. . .] Perhaps humanity [in general] as well as the man of letters can ultimately be present to the world and to others only through language; perhaps in everyone language is the central function that constructs a life as a work."
  • L14 [130] Mme Grandet scene: at the climax of an erotic scene in Lucien Leuwen, Lucien recalls Grandet's indifference to the prisoners who would die in the carts and "felt himself a party man." MP's marginal: "since to be human is to take a side." The writer's mode of being-human is non-completion, never being "penetrated," yet absolutely engaged through the work.
  • L15 [132] formalization: "Writing and living. 1) Stendhal's solution. 2) Problem. 3) [Countervailing consideration]. [. . . Since to be human is to take a side.] Politics."
  • L15 [134] thesis: "the work of art [. . .] must be political, because to be a man is to be in relations with reality, [with] other men." Politics is valuable as the relation of man to man, not as positive program.
  • L15 [134]v reverse-objections: Politics' "mode is dangerous, harsh — the horse that throws you." (Edgar in Lucien Leuwen: "Make sure not to fall back into stupidity, that horse." Political engagement is the test of whether one is a man.) But MP balances: this is "not the only test of [a man]"; political curiosity prevented Stendhal from "ending it all" (Souvenirs d'Égotisme).
  • L15 [134] universal-future criterion: "the party man will be very cold in fifty years' time, all that matters is what will remain interesting when the case has been tried" (Lucien Leuwen marginal). The writer's criterion is the universal-future, not the immediate audience.
  • L15 [134]v–[135] great-politics thesis: misery is "death without a mask, pure absurdity" (Mérimée on Stendhal). The political principle is the recognition of misery; the political method must reckon with "great politics" (Danton, Mirabeau, Richelieu, Sully, Colbert). The politician is the "scoundrel" who has the courage to act ("Compromise the people by committing crimes" — Le Rouge 498).
  • L15 [135]v anti-Lukács: Stendhal's equivocation is not bourgeois class-position. MP rejects Lukács's reduction: the equivocation is "the very equivocation of the writer who can't not preserve what he wants at the same time as going beyond" — structural to writing, not symptom of class.
  • The closing line of the notes (L15 [145]v): "Unaffiliated [with a party] because he is engaged not in the sense of being this or that, but in the sense of knowing what he's doing." The reversal: party-affiliation looks like engagement but is, in the writer's mode, a flight from engagement; the writer's genuine engagement is the knowing-what-he's-doing of the work itself.
  • Tout pouvoir ment (Lucien Leuwen p. 1102): "every government lies" (working note [145]v). The writer's truth-vocation is structurally opposed to government's lying-vocation; the writer's critique is political precisely because politics-as-it-actually-is lies. Hence the writer's unveiling function (see action of unveiling).

What the Concept Does

  • Closes the writing-and-living thesis politically. L8's writing-is-neither-end-nor-means is general; L15's être humain est un parti applies it to politics. The writer is engaged-as-writer because writing and living are dialectically co-constitutive (L8 [89]); the writer's politics is engagement-through-disengagement (L6 [80]).
  • Provides MP's 1953 anti-Sartrean political principle. Against Sartre's engagement continué — taking-of-position as the writer's political duty — MP holds: the writer takes a side as writer, through the work, not through external political stance-taking. The closing line "Unaffiliated because he is engaged" is the exact inversion of Sartrean engagement.
  • Anticipates the 1955 action of unveiling vs action of governing distinction. Adventures of the Dialectic's contrast between the writer's rhythm (unveiling) and the politician's rhythm (governing) is structurally implicit at L15 [133]: "the man who is not a literary professional [. . .] needs to reveal and see himself in images. And who will talk to him about himself if not the writer?" The writer's task is unveiling; the politician's is acting-on-the-people. See claims#mp-1953-anticipates-1955-action-of-unveiling-vs-governing (live claim).
  • Provides a philosophical defense of the writer's political vocation against both aestheticism and instrumentalism. Aestheticism makes literature politically irrelevant; instrumentalism makes literature politically subordinate. Être humain est un parti makes literature politically necessary because being human is already political; the writer's particular relation to language gives the writer's mode of taking-a-side its specific form.
  • Defends Stendhal against psychoanalytic and class reductions. Bergler-style reduction (Stendhal's politics as symptom of unconscious conflict) and Lukács-style reduction (Stendhal as bourgeois apologist) both miss that Stendhal's politics is the politics of the writer-as-such.

What It Rejects

  • Apolitical aestheticism (L15 [134]: "politics in a novel is a pistol shot in the middle of a concert") — Stendhal's quoted-and-overcome maxim. MP: the work-of-art must be political because being human is being-in-relations.
  • Liberal constitutionalism (propter vitam vivendi perdere causas — "to lose for the sake of life what makes life worth living") — the "millionaire grocers" of L15 [134]v.
  • Republican abstraction ("crazy about the future" — L15 [134]v).
  • Sartrean engagement continué — taking-of-position-outside-the-work as the writer's political duty.
  • Lukács's class-determinist reduction (L15 [135]v) — see Key Points.
  • Party-affiliation as the test of political seriousness — L15 [145]v closing line: unaffiliation is the condition of writer's engagement, not its negation.
  • The "scoundrel" / propter-vitam test as the only test of a man — L15 [134]v reverse-objection.

Stakes

  • For the 1953 MP-Sartre rupture: the famous July 1953 Sartre/MP correspondence is structurally already addressed in the L15 closing line. MP's editorial silence at Les Temps Modernes on the Korea question is the practical form of "Unaffiliated because he is engaged."
  • For Adventures of the Dialectic (1955): the L14 [131] "the will to manifest, to unveil" + L15 [133] "needs to reveal and see himself in images" + L15 [145]v "unaffiliated because he is engaged" constitute the embryonic form of action of unveiling vs action of governing.
  • For *Humanism and Terror* (1947) → Adventures of the Dialectic (1955) genealogy: être humain est un parti sits between the 1947 position (Marxist attentisme + pente de l'histoire) and the 1955 position (break with revolutionary politics + writer-as-unveiler). The 1953 thesis is the philosophical hinge.
  • For the writer's politics in MP's late corpus: *AdV*, *Signs* introduction, *V&I* working notes all reprise the writer-as-engaged-through-the-work thesis.

Problem-Space

The problem-space the thesis addresses: how is the writer politically engaged without either betraying the work (instrumentalism) or evading politics (aestheticism)? The Sartrean answer (instrumentalism) and the late-Mallarméan answer (aestheticism) both fail. Être humain est un parti names the third way: the writer takes a side as writer — through the writing-and-living dialectic — and is therefore engaged precisely because not affiliated.

Connections

Open Questions

  • Does the thesis apply outside the writer? Course Summary [14]: "Perhaps humanity [in general] as well as the man of letters can ultimately be present to the world and to others only through language; perhaps in everyone language is the central function that constructs a life as a work." This generalizes the writer's mode to everyone-via-language — but the generalization is hedged with "perhaps."
  • What is the relation to Humanism and Terror's attentisme? Humanism and Terror (1947) defended Marxist wait-and-see; this thesis seems to defend not-affiliating-because-engaged. Are these the same position differently stated, or a development?
  • Is "every government lies" (tout pouvoir ment) a substantive philosophical thesis or a polemical reading of Stendhal? MP cites it positively at L15 [145]v. The thesis is doing real work — it grounds the writer's truth-vocation as political. But it is uncomfortably absolute.
  • Relation to MP's later writings on Machiavelli (e.g., the [1949] Mexico lectures)? The "great politics" / "scoundrel" thesis at L15 [134]v–[135] has Machiavellian roots that MP develops elsewhere.

Sources

  • merleau-ponty-2026-literary-use-language — the source. Principal loci: Course Summary [14] (first formulation); L14 [130] marginal at the Mme Grandet scene; L15 [132] formalization; L15 [133] needs-to-reveal-and-see-himself-in-images; L15 [134]–[134]v Stendhal politics formal section; L15 [135]v anti-Lukács; L15 working note [145]–[145]v ("Possibility of going in circles – 'every government lies'"; "Unaffiliated because he is engaged").
  • Stendhal — Lucien Leuwen marginalia (the cited source of the phrase per Translator's Note 26); Souvenirs d'Égotisme ("I think it was political curiosity that prevented me from ending it all"); Le Rouge et le Noir ("Compromise the people by committing crimes," p. 498).
  • merleau-ponty-1955-adventures-of-the-dialectic — the 1955 action of unveiling vs action of governing thesis is the proximate descent of this 1953 position.
  • merleau-ponty-1947-humanism-and-terror — the proximate antecedent (pente de l'histoire + attentisme).