Imaginary (Merleau-Ponty)

MP's late account of the imaginary — distinct from any regional psychology of imagination — names a structural-ontological register in which the mode of being characteristic of imagination (ubiquity, hovering, inexhaustibility, presence-absence, polymorphism) is treated as the mode of being of every being. The strongest attestation is the November 1960 working note (V&I 262): "Understand the dream starting from the body: as being in the world (l'être au monde) without a body, without 'observation,' or rather with an imaginary body without weight. ... the imaginary sphere of the Body ... [is] the true Stiftung of Being of which the observation and the articulated body are special variants." Per Annabelle Dufourcq's reading (M-C 2026 Ch 8), the imaginary is not only ratio cognoscendi (heuristic dimension through which Being is approached) but ratio essendi (in an "ironic" version) of Being for late MP, with the body itself read as a "superficial crystallization" of an anterior imaginary. This reading is contested by the dominant flesh-as-load-bearing tradition (Carbone, Fóti, Johnson, Saint Aubert).

Key Points

The November 1960 working note as cardinal attestation. V&I 262: "the imaginary sphere of the Body ... [is] the true Stiftung of Being of which the observation and the articulated body are special variants." This is the strongest single textual support for the imaginary-as-structural-ontology reading.
Polymorphism, latency, presence-absence, oneiric being. Dufourcq Ch 8 §1 (M-C 2026, p. 189) compiles MP's late formulations: "Polymorphous Being," "being of latency," "presentation of a certain absence," "oneiric being," "mythical time" (from Notes 1959–1961, V&I, La Nature, Parcours deux). MP, La Nature 371: "Appearances are the canon of what we can understand by 'being'" — the methodological-ontological warrant for the imaginary's structural promotion.
Vortex / tourbillon as the figure of Being. Per Dufourcq, "an ontogenetic vortex that distributes times and spaces" is the figure of Being; the imaginary body is the true Stiftung of Being; "my body is a 'superficial crystallization' of an anterior imaginary" (M-C 2026 Ch 8 §1–§4). See vortex-tourbillon for the figure-side analysis.
Distinct from imagination as faculty. MP's "imaginary" in this register is not a regional psychological category (faculty of forming images) but an ontological dimension in which all being participates. The Sartrean L'Imaginaire (1940) treatment is sublated rather than directly continued.
Contested foundational status. Dufourcq concedes (M-C 2026 Ch 8) the chapter's central thesis is that MP "never made this ontology of the imaginary the explicit core of his last philosophy" — the reading is consistently flagged as Dufourcq's interpretive synthesis. The flesh-as-load-bearing tradition (Carbone, Fóti, Johnson, Saint Aubert) takes flesh as primary and the imaginary as regional. Dufourcq's "ironic foundational status" qualifier (the imaginary is the "most ultimate foundation" but also "the subversion of the very concept of ultimate foundation") is methodologically slippery.

Connections

figured by vortex / tourbillon — Dufourcq's reading takes the vortex as the principal figure of the imaginary as ratio essendi.
grounds painting's primary-witness role — if the imaginary is the ratio essendi of Being, painting's primary-witness role is even more emphatically positioned, since painting operates explicitly within the imaginary register.
contrasts with flesh as primary — the dominant alternative reading (Carbone, Fóti, Johnson, Saint Aubert) takes flesh as load-bearing; Dufourcq's claim inverts this. Whether flesh and imaginary cohere or compete is the open question.
connects to texture imaginaire du réel — the imaginary register at the textual surface of late MP, where the "texture" of the real is articulated through imaginary structure.
connects to onirisme / dreamlike register — the dream as MP's "third order between real and imaginary" is part of the same late-MP register.

Open Questions

Dufourcq's earlier monographs not in raw/. La dimension imaginaire du réel (2011) and The Imaginary of Animals (2021) are Dufourcq's prior elaborations of the imaginary-as-ratio-essendi reading. Neither is in raw/. Promotion of claims#vortex-as-ratio-essendi-of-being above candidate / speculative is gated on these.
MP's Notes 1959–1961 not in raw/. The published V&I working notes are in raw/ but the broader Notes 1959–1961 corpus that Dufourcq cites is not. Cross-checking MP's late attestations of the imaginary register against Dufourcq's compilation requires this material.
Resolution of the imaginary / flesh tension. Whether the late MP corpus authorizes Dufourcq's inversion (imaginary as primary, body as superficial crystallization) or only authorizes a strong-but-not-load-bearing reading (imaginary as one register coordinate with flesh) is unsettled.
The "ironic foundational status" qualifier. Whether Dufourcq's irony does the work the thesis cannot do on its own — whether "most ultimate foundation that subverts the concept of foundation" is a substantive metaphilosophical position or a face-saving qualifier — is itself an open question.

Synthetic Claims

candidate claim, see claims#vortex-as-ratio-essendi-of-being — Per Dufourcq, the imaginary is ratio essendi (in "ironic" version) of Being for late MP — every being has the mode of being characteristic of imagination. The November 1960 working note (V&I 262), the La Nature 371 "appearances as canon of being," and the late-MP polymorphism / latency / presence-absence formulations together anchor the reading. This page is named wiki home. Held at candidate / speculative because Dufourcq concedes "extrapolation," the flesh-as-load-bearing alternative is the dominant tradition, and the chapter is single-source within M-C 2026.
candidate, see claims#mp-style-as-bachelardian-provocation — per Dufourcq (M-C 2026 Ch 8), MP's late argumentative style is a performative version of his ontology, structurally akin to Bachelard's du contre / world-as-provocation: argumentative gestures are not stylistic adornment but the enactment of late-ontology's commitment to non-foreclosure of being. Bears on this page because if the imaginary is the ratio essendi of late MP being (per vortex-as-ratio-essendi-of-being candidate), then operating imaginatively (i.e., performatively, by provocation) is the only methodologically coherent way to think being. The two candidate claims cohere: the imaginary-as-ratio-essendi and MP-style-as-Bachelardian-provocation are content and form sides of one structural commitment. Candidate because Bachelard not in raw/ and the performative-content reading risks circularity.
candidate, see claims#dialectical-imagination-as-ideology-critique — per Popa (M-C 2026 Ch 1), MP's late phenomenology distinguishes a dialectical function of imagination (alongside eidetic-variational and hyletic-modal) that operates by immanent critique without sublation. Bears on this page because the dialectical function adds a critical-political register to the imaginary-as-ratio-essendi reading: the imaginary is not only the structural register of late-MP being but also the philosophical seat of MP's ideology-critical capacity — the resource that contests given configurations without imposing counter-regimes. Candidate because Adorno and Marcuse not in raw/ and the three-fold imagination distinction is Popa's interpretive reconstruction.

Sources

mendoza-canales-2026-institution-ontology-politics — Dufourcq, Ch 8 §1–§4 (pp. 187–197). The imaginary-as-ratio-essendi reading. Compilation of MP's late polymorphism / latency / presence-absence / oneiric-being formulations.
merleau-ponty-1968-visible-and-invisible — V&I 262 (November 1960 working note), the cardinal attestation. Also V&I 19, 211, 244, 139 — the vortex / Stiftung / dream / imaginary cluster.
merleau-ponty-2003-nature — La Nature 371: "Appearances are the canon of what we can understand by 'being'." The methodological-ontological warrant for the imaginary's structural promotion.