Expressive Will (poussée, drive to speak)

The affective and volitional substrate of lateral universality in Merleau-Ponty's account of language. Linguistic universality is not first a structural-conceptual feature shared by languages; it is a drive (poussée) of speaking subjects who want to understand one another, animated by the infant's "general attraction to speech" (Merleau-Ponty's 2010a phrase, qtd. Kee 2025 p. 81). MP develops this register across the 1949–50 Sorbonne lectures on language acquisition and the *Prose of the World* draft, and it is reaffirmed in The Problem of Speech 1953–54 lectures. Kee 2025 argues that this affective–volitional register is prior to any cognitive-formal reading of linguistic universality: the unity of human languages is not (first) what languages share structurally but what speakers will and feel toward one another across them.

Key Points

  • Universality of existence, not of essence: PbP 58 and the 1949–50 lectures (qtd. Kee p. 81) characterise the unity of languages as a concrete universal of existence. The unity is realised — temporally, intersubjectively, situationally — not given as a formal structure. The affective–volitional register is what realises the unity in each act of speech.
  • Three registers of the substrate (per Kee p. 81): will ("expressive will" / volonté d'expression), drive (poussée), and attraction / receptivity ("general attraction to speech"; the infant "bathes in language"). The three are not the same: will is the active polar; drive is the underlying motivational pressure; attraction is the receptive condition that the infant is in before being able to speak. The full triad — active will, underlying drive, receptive attraction — gives the affective–volitional substrate its layered structure.
  • Located in 1949–52 lectures, PoW draft, 2010a: the textual base is the Sorbonne courses on child psychology and language acquisition (2010a "Child Psychology and Pedagogy: The Sorbonne Lectures 1949–1952," published 2010), the Prose of the World draft (1950–52, published 1973), and PbP 58–59. Kee's anchor passages: 2010a p. 60 ("expressive will animates languages more than the transitory forms"); PoW p. 50f. ("a drive [poussée] of speaking subjects who want to understand one another"); 2010a p. 9 (the infant "bathes in language").
  • The poussée is intersubjective at root: the drive is not "to express oneself" but "to understand one another" — speaking subjects in the plural, oriented to each other. This rules out a Romantic / monological reading of expressive will, in which a solitary speaker drives toward expression for self-completion. MP's poussée is mutual; it is the affective ground of the intersubjectivity of speech.
  • Continuity with passivity / receptivity: the infant's "general attraction to speech" is a receptive condition, not a willed act. The poussée is built upon — and continues — a deeper passive condition. This integrates the affective–volitional register with MP's broader doctrine of passive synthesis and the generative-passivity register that Beith 2018 elaborates.
  • The affective–volitional reading is prior to the cognitive-structural (Kee's claim): on the cognitive-structural reading, lateral universality is the formal feature shared by languages or the diacritical structure they exhibit. On the affective–volitional reading, that formal feature is the expression of an underlying motivational drive — what is shared is the will to be understood, of which structural features are downstream consequences. Kee uses the affective–volitional reading to refigure lateral-universal (see "Connections" below).

What the Concept Does

The expressive will / poussée doctrine performs three pieces of philosophical work simultaneously.

It dissolves the cognitive-structural reading of linguistic universality. Without the affective–volitional substrate, the unity of languages can only be an abstract universal — a set of formal features common to all human languages (universal grammar, diacritical structure, phonological universals). MP's claim that the unity is of existence not essence becomes intelligible only when the existential-volitional dimension is given primacy. The affective register is what makes the universal concrete.

It grounds intersubjectivity in something prior to mutual recognition. Hegelian and Sartrean intersubjectivity tend to begin from the encounter of two consciousnesses (master / slave; the look). MP's poussée is pre-recognitional: it is the drive that brings speakers into the encounter, not what follows from the encounter. This is consistent with MP's broader anti-Sartrean tendency — see conditioned-freedom for the analogous move regarding freedom.

It explains language acquisition without intellectualism. The infant does not learn a language as an external system; the infant is attracted to speech before being able to speak, and the attraction is what makes acquisition possible. Kee fn 16 cites 2010a p. 9 for this; it is the affective foundation of MP's anti-intellectualist account of acquisition. (Compare Kaushik 2019 / Beith 2018 on the generative-passivity of organic life: the infant's attraction-to-speech is one form of the more general generative-passive structure.)

What It Rejects

  • Cognitive-structural readings of lateral universality: Chomskyan minimalism (a "redoubled extreme cognitivism" — Kee p. 81), Husserl's Fourth-LI universal grammar, and any account that locates the universal in form rather than in desire. Kee fn 15 details the Chomskyan version: performance / competence parallels Saussure's parole / langue, with the same intellectualist bias.
  • Sedimented-only readings of language: language as the inheritance of fixed signifiers (the dictionary). Without the poussée, language is a spoken-speech (parlée) without speaking-speech (parlante). The poussée is what keeps language alive as the active power to mean newly.
  • The Romantic / monological reading of expression: the artist or poet driven toward solitary self-expression. MP's poussée is plural and mutual from the start; the drive is to understand one another.
  • Sartrean nihilation as the structure of intentionality: Sartrean néantisation is a negative structure — consciousness is what it is not. The poussée is positively oriented — speakers are drawn toward one another. This is part of the broader MP / Sartre divergence on negation.

Stakes

If the affective–volitional reading of lateral universality is right, several pieces of MP's philosophy realign:

  • The lateral-universal doctrine becomes a desiring-striving doctrine, not just a structural-relational one. This sharpens the contrast with formal universals and underwrites the existential reading of cross-cultural understanding.
  • MP's account of language acquisition becomes part of his theory of passive synthesis / generative-passivity — the infant's "attraction to speech" is on a continuum with the organism's broader passive conditions.
  • MP's anti-Sartrean intersubjectivity gets a deeper grounding: the poussée is what makes possible the encounter of consciousnesses, rather than what arises in it.
  • The "indirect method" of the propaedeutic dialectic is consistent with this: the propaedeutic integrates what was true in objectivism because the speaking subject's will to be understood survives the dialectic. The integrative recovery is motivated, not just logical.

Problem-Space

The expressive will addresses the problem of motivation in linguistic universality: why do speakers bother to learn other languages, to translate, to interpret? If language were purely a system of arbitrary signs, there would be no internal answer — translation would be a contingent practical task. The poussée gives the internal answer: speaking subjects want to understand one another, and the plurality of languages does not extinguish but rather sharpens the drive (because foreign languages call forth a richer expressive will, dilating one's own language in the encounter). This is one form of MP's broader problem-space: how to account for the concrete form of universality without recourse to formal abstraction. The medical example Lau (2016) gives for lateral-universal addresses the same problem in medicine; the linguistic case via poussée is the affective-foundational version.

Genealogical Trajectory

(Drawing on Kee §2, with cross-reference to existing wiki pages.)

  • 1949–50 Sorbonne ("Consciousness and the Acquisition of Language" — also: 2010a "Child Psychology and Pedagogy"): MP introduces "expressive will" as the animating force of languages. He sets aside "the dream of a universal grammar." 2010a p. 60: "concrete universality… realized little by little and is found in the expressive will that animates languages more than in the transitory forms which it reaches."
  • 1950–52 PoW draft (merleau-ponty-1973-prose-of-the-world): the poussée gets its name. PoW p. 50f.: "a drive [poussée] of speaking subjects who want to understand one another." This is Kee's central terminological anchor.
  • 1953 SW&WE course (merleau-ponty-2020-sensible-world-expression): per Kee fn 18, the first explicit use of "lateral universal" (2020b pp. 45, 50). The 1953 course works within the affective–volitional framing already developed in PoW.
  • 1953–54 PbP: PbP 58–59 ties the universal of langage to the volitional / affective dimension. Kee p. 81: "this is not primarily a cognitive universal, but rather an affective, or even a volitional one."
  • 1954–55 Institution and Passivity: the Passivity course extends the receptivity register; MP's "concrete universal" returns at I&P p. 108 (per Kee fn 18, "in a context strikingly similar to the one in which Merleau-Ponty will later most explicitly develop the notion of the lateral universal").
  • 1959 *Signs*: "From Mauss to Lévi-Strauss" gives the canonical "lateral universal" passage (1964a p. 120). The affective–volitional substrate is implicit but not foregrounded; Kee's reading retrojects it from the earlier 1949–53 textual base.

Connections

  • is the affective–volitional substrate of lateral-universal — the universal is not first a structural feature shared by languages but a drive of speaking subjects to understand one another
  • grounds speaking-speech (*parole parlante*) — what animates the parlante pole is the poussée
  • is the receptive form of generative-passivity in the linguistic case — the infant's "general attraction to speech" is one form of the broader generative-passive structure of organic life
  • is the condition of intelligibility of horizons-of-language — open horizons are open because they are solicited by the poussée to dilate
  • is integrated with passivity / generative-passivity — the "attraction to speech" is a passive-receptive condition, not a willed act
  • contrasts with Hegelian / Sartrean recognition-based intersubjectivity — the poussée is pre-recognitional
  • underwrites MP's anti-intellectualist account of language acquisition

Open Questions

  • Is "expressive will" a good translation of volonté d'expression? "Will" carries Cartesian-Schopenhauerian baggage that volonté in MP's French does not necessarily share. Some translators prefer "drive" or "tendency" or simply "expressive intent."
  • Relation to Saint Aubert's épreuve mutuelle de la chair et de l'être? The poussée and the épreuve mutuelle are both intersubjective-mutual structures. Are they the early-MP and late-MP versions of the same figure, or two different figures? See epreuve-mutuelle-de-la-chair-et-de-letre for Saint Aubert's late formulation. The cross-author bridge is worth investigation.
  • Is the poussée biological or existential? The infant's "attraction to speech" sounds biological (an innate disposition); the "drive of speaking subjects who want to understand one another" sounds existential (an interpersonal orientation). Whether MP holds these as one figure or two is unclear. Kee treats them as continuous; a closer reading of 2010a may complicate.
  • Does the poussée extend beyond language? MP develops it specifically for language, but if it grounds all expressive activity (cf. primordial-expression, coherent-deformation), it would be a more general doctrine of expressive desire. This is a candidate cross-source motif for future audit attention.

Synthetic Claims

  • live claim, see claims#language-as-missing-case-of-lateral-universal — the affective–volitional grounding (expressive will, poussée, infant's attraction to speech) reframes lateral universality from primarily cognitive/structural to primarily affective. The expressive will is the substrate that makes language the missing case Kee identifies.

Sources