Homme en porte-à-faux

Merleau-Ponty's 1946 figure for the structural cantilevering of human existence — being-and-rien, being-here-and-nowhere, voué-à-l'être-and-défaut-dans-l'être, néant-et-être all at once and not in turn. Articulated in the Brussels conference L'existentialisme et la politique (Ghent, 18 March 1946) and re-deployed in Les Aspects politiques et sociaux de l'existentialisme (Paris, 23 March 1946), the figure compresses MP's political-register version of what will become his late-ontology problem of the structural non-coincidence of being and self. The cantilever names a specifically human mode of being-overhung: anchored on one side, unsupported on the other, simultaneously committed and outdistanced.

Key Points

  • The 1946 articulation: "Donc l'homme en porte-à-faux: il est ceci et rien, il est où il est et nulle part, voué à l'être et défaut dans l'être (c'est par l'être que le néant vient au monde) — Contradiction — Être intentionnel: situation dialectique" (Inédits I p. 205).
  • Re-articulation: "Donc situation dialectique qui vient de ce que l'homme est engagé dans une histoire: il est liberté et situation, rien et quelque chose, non-être et voué à l'être, néant et être. Et cela non tour à tour mais en même temps" (Inédits I p. 213). The phrase "non tour à tour mais en même temps" is decisive: porte-à-faux is simultaneous contradiction, not sequential ambivalence.
  • The cantilever-figure compresses several register-shifts simultaneously: spatial (here / nowhere), ontological (being / nothing), modal (committed / undetermined), historical (situated / overflowing-the-situation), interpersonal (particular / universal).
  • The figure performs the political-philosophical work that the late MP will perform with chiasm, dehiscence, and dimensional-this. The 1946 language is political — assumed-as-situated, the dialectical situation of an engaged being — but the structural profile is the same as the late-ontology figures.
  • Porte-à-faux is the point of impossibility for both subjectivism and objectivism: subjectivism cannot accept the défaut dans l'être; objectivism cannot accept the voué à l'être. The cantilever holds both ends and refuses the choice.

What the Concept Does

The homme en porte-à-faux figure does in 1946 what MP's later ontological figures do: it names the structural double-aspect of human existence without collapsing it to one side. Three argumentative functions:

  1. It blocks the Kantian / Comtean dichotomy. Subjectivist morality (Kant: "fais ce que dois") cannot integrate the défaut; objectivist sociology (Comte: positive politics) cannot integrate the voué à l'être. The cantilever is the third possibility: both at once, not in turn.

  2. It grounds the marxist incarnation solution. The Belgian conferences end with "la solution par l'incarnation" (p. 207) — a violence that is also realization, a destruction that is also creation. This is intelligible only if the agent is en porte-à-faux: anchored enough to act, free enough to choose, committed enough to be wronged.

  3. It anticipates the late MP problem of the dimensional self. The 1960 V&I working note "my body is to the greatest extent what every thing is: a dimensional this" (cf dimensional-this) is the ontological version of the 1946 political porte-à-faux. The 1946 formula "il est ceci et rien" is in 1960 "the body is this and a bearer of dimensions."

What It Rejects

  • Sequential dialectic (now-this-now-that): the porte-à-faux is "non tour à tour mais en même temps" (p. 213). Rejecting Hegelian Aufhebung read as serial overcoming.
  • Sartrean en-soi-pour-soi opposition: the 1946 figure is more compressed than Sartre's negativity-confronting-positivity. Porte-à-faux holds both registers in one being, not in two confronting registers.
  • Heideggerian existential-of-Dasein read as anonymous: the 1946 figure is engaged — the défaut is the agent's defect, not the structure of Mitsein in general.
  • Stoic indifference to situation: the cantilever is anchored; the agent is somewhere. Stoicism dissolves the anchor in favour of the universality of reason.

Stakes

If the human is en porte-à-faux, then (i) political action is structurally contradictory — the agent commits without being able to coincide with what he commits to; (ii) "incarnation" is the only adequate political category — neither pure morality nor pure efficacy; (iii) the fiction grammaticale (Koestler) is the failure of porte-à-faux — the agent treated as if he were only anchored (a thing, a function); (iv) the 1946 critique of pacifism, of heroism, and of objectivism are all critiques of attempts to resolve the porte-à-faux into one side.

If the human is not en porte-à-faux, then either subjectivism (anchored only by his judgment) or objectivism (anchored only by his function) becomes adequate — both rejected by MP.

Connections

  • is the political-register ancestor of chiasm — the 1946 "non tour à tour mais en même temps" has the formal profile of the late chiasm-figure (imminent and never realized).
  • is the political-register ancestor of dimensional-this — the 1946 "il est ceci et rien" anticipates the 1960 "dimensional this."
  • is the political-register ancestor of dehiscence — the body's "splitting in two" is the late ontological correlate of the 1946 cantilevering.
  • is the condition of intelligibility of reprise — only an agent en porte-à-faux can take up the past without being behind it or outside it.
  • is paired with pente-de-l-histoire — the slope of history is what anchors the porte-à-faux on the historical side.
  • contrasts with Sartrean en-soi/pour-soi confrontation — same problem, different topology.
  • contrasts with Heideggerian Sein-zum-Tode — porte-à-faux is engaged cantilevering, not anonymous existential.
  • enacts the MP "double front" — against subjectivism (the agent as pure interior) and against objectivism (the agent as pure function).

Open Questions

  • Does the cantilever-figure recur explicitly under that name in MP's later writings? The 1946 Belgian use is the most explicit attestation; whether porte-à-faux survives into HT, AD, V&I is open.
  • The architectural metaphor (cantilever / overhanging) is rare in MP's vocabulary. Its source is unclear: ENS engineering culture? French architectural debates of the 1930s? An informal coinage?
  • How does porte-à-faux relate to the V&I figure of the béance / gap? Are they the same figure or distinct ones?

Sources

  • merleau-ponty-2022-inedits-i-1946-1947 — primary; L'existentialisme et la politique p. 205 (first articulation); Les Aspects politiques et sociaux de l'existentialisme p. 213 (re-articulation with "non tour à tour mais en même temps" emphasis).