Man, the Hero (the Contemporary Hero)

Merleau-Ponty's existential-ethical figure of the post-1940 hero — the figure "condemned to follow out fragile meanings without either the triumph of an absolute or the relief of despair." The concept is given its concentrated statement in "Man, the Hero," the closing essay of Sense and Non-Sense (written expressly for the 1948 collection per the Bibliographic Note). The figure is via negativa — defined first by what it rejects: not the Hegelian world-historical individual (no World Spirit), not the Nietzschean superman (no pure power), not the Pascalian wagerer (no absolute commitment), not the Greek hero (no shared communal values). What positively defines him is "loyalty to the natural movement which flings us toward things and toward others" (p. 216).

Key Points

  • The contemporary hero is post-1940 in a precise sense: he "has experienced chance, disorder, and failure — in 1936, during the Spanish Civil War, and in June of 1940"; he has "a sharper sense of human liberty and of the contingency of the future than anyone has ever had before" (p. 216).
  • The figure is exemplified by Hemingway's Robert Jordan (For Whom the Bell Tolls) — who, asked to die for a future Marxist society, says "Don't ever kid yourself with too much dialectics" (quoted at p. 213); and by Saint-Exupéry over Arras (Pilote de guerre) — "he would be nothing if he were to back out" (p. 215).
  • The hero recovers his being only by exposing it to chance. Saint-Exupéry "feels invulnerable because he is in things at last." Jordan, dying alone, must "keep on acting like a living man"; "we live with other people; we are the image which they have of us; where they are, we are too" (p. 216).
  • The hero's reward, when there is one, is the gloria-mp — the moment of harmony when "events respond to their will," real but not guaranteed.
  • The closing line of the volume: "He is not Lucifer; he is not even Prometheus; he is man" (p. 217). The figure's irreducible humanity is the volume's last word.

What the Concept Does

  1. It completes the Sense and Non-Sense programme. The volume's three Parts (Arts / Ideas / Politics) demonstrate how sense arises against non-sense in painting, philosophy, and political action. "Man, the Hero" answers: who, ethically, lives this condition? The contemporary hero is the figure who acts under the title-thesis "we are condemned to meaning" without seeking metaphysical refuge.

  2. It blocks four classical hero-types simultaneously. Hegel's hero (the steward of World Spirit), the Nietzschean superman (interested only in power), the Greek hero (sacrificing himself for shared values), and the Pascalian wagerer (committing absolutely to win the absolute) are each rejected — not because their courage is wrong but because the metaphysical guarantees they presuppose are no longer available.

  3. It re-grounds heroism without theology. The concept refuses Catholic providentialism (the saint), Christian-pagan eschatology (the martyr), and Sartrean existential heroics (the absurd-but-defiant). What remains, "stripped of its illusions," is "that very movement which unites us with others, our present with our past, and by means of which we make everything have meaning" (p. 217).

  4. It generalizes perceptual faith to political-existential ethics. Just as perception is "an act of faith" that "affirms more than we strictly know," the hero's commitment goes beyond what he can prove without running counter to reason. The same structure that lets Cézanne paint without certainty of completion lets the hero act without certainty of vindication.

What It Rejects

  • Hegelian historicism: no World Spirit, no "cunning of reason" guaranteeing the hero's effectiveness.
  • Nietzschean power-mysticism: the superman's task is impossible because once power is overcome it ceases to be power; "interested only in power itself" leaves nothing concrete to fight for.
  • Pascalian Wager: no absolute to wager for; no eschaton to redeem the sacrifice.
  • Greek heroism: no shared communal values that vindicate the death.
  • Catholic providentialism: the Church absolves finished revolutions but cannot start one (cf. Faith and Good Faith's diagnosis of Catholicism as "a poor conservative and an unsafe bet as a revolutionary").
  • Mastery-of-death heroism (Barrès, Montherlant): the "useless service" doctrine that locates heroism in confronting death is a Nietzscheanism in another register.
  • "Artistic" withdrawal from history (the N.R.F. tradition the War Has Taken Place essay rejects).

Stakes

If accepted:

  • Political ethics under contingency becomes a coherent program rather than a half-position. The hero's commitment is provisional but not insincere; revisable but not opportunistic.
  • The Christian-providential and the Hegelian-Marxist moral frameworks both lose their privileged grip; what remains is "faith stripped of its illusions" — perceptual-faith generalized.
  • "We are the image which they have of us" — the inside-out structure of the body (behavior-as-form) is generalized to the moral self: I am partly constituted by how others see me, and the hero acts knowing this.

Problem-Space

The concept addresses the problem of moral-political agency without metaphysical guarantee. Can one act decisively, even sacrificially, when one knows there is no guarantee that the action will be vindicated? Christian and Hegelian-Marxist traditions answer by supplying the guarantee (eschaton, Spirit, dialectical necessity); existential nihilism answers by denying that decisive action is possible. MP's contemporary hero answers: yes, but only by accepting the provisionality of the act and the gloria — the moment of harmony — as its own (revisable) reward.

Connections

  • exemplified by Hemingway's Robert Jordan (For Whom the Bell Tolls) and Saint-Exupéry's narrator (Pilote de guerre); Malraux's Kyo (La Condition humaine) is the partial Marxist case.
  • contains gloria-mp — the moment of harmony "events respond to their will."
  • applies condemned-to-meaning — the contemporary hero is the political-ethical figure of the title-thesis.
  • applies perceptual-faith — the hero's commitment generalizes the perceptual-faith structure to political action.
  • is the existential-ethical correlate of pente-de-l-histoire — the slope of history is the historical condition; the contemporary hero is the moral figure who acts within it.
  • contrasts with the Hegelian hero (steward of Spirit) and the Nietzschean superman (pure power).
  • contrasts with Catholic providentialism — see interior-exterior-god-mp.

Open Questions

  • The relation between MP's 1948 contemporary hero and the more sober Adventures of the Dialectic (1955) figure of the political actor under the "non-philosophy" condition is not yet traced. AdV's hero is more diagnostic-cautious; the 1948 hero is more gloria-touched.
  • The wiki's existing politics-mp page treats MP's politics through HT, AdV, and Signs; the Sense and Non-Sense contemporary-hero figure is its prefiguration but in a more existential-ethical register.

Sources