Nonphilosophy

The organizing concept of Merleau-Ponty's 1959 course "The Possibility of Philosophy Today." Nonphilosophy designates not the absence or negation of philosophy but a dual condition: the destruction of classical philosophy (substance, subject-object, causality) and simultaneously the emergence of genuine philosophical insight — fundamental-thought-in-art — in domains outside philosophy proper. "There is nonphilosophy before and nonphilosophy after: that is philosophy" (line 357).

Key Points

Merleau-Ponty's thesis: "this decadence of philosophy is inessential" — what is dying is a particular mode of philosophizing, not philosophy itself (line 215)
Nonphilosophy operates on two registers: (1) destruction — the collapse of political rationality, the crisis in our relation to nature ("true being is explosive"), the threat of annihilation; (2) renewal — art, literature, music, and psychoanalysis carry genuine ontological insight that philosophy must learn from
In his last course, Merleau-Ponty radicalizes the concept: "true philosophy mocks philosophy, is a-philosophy" (line 1507) — philosophy gains access to the absolute not as a "beyond" but through what is beneath it
The concept bridges Husserl's idea of philosophy as "the Phoenix" reborn from crisis and Heidegger's suggestion that philosophy must become Denken (thinking) — possibly even "the proper silence" (das rechte Schweigen, line 813)

Details

The Three Crises

Merleau-Ponty identifies three simultaneous destabilizations of Western rationality (lines 211-244):

The compossibility of human beings: Marxism's promise of a universal class collapsed — from Bolshevik voluntarism into fascist counter-revolution. The question of whether human beings can live together is no longer answered by any available political rationality.
Our relation to nature: Atomic energy reveals that "true being is explosive" (line 227) — technology is not mere application of science but its condition, and the resulting power includes the capacity for self-annihilation.
The status of truth: Space travel deposes Earth's metaphysical privilege. Science "cannot claim" a divine foundation; "it is manifestly human and yet the circle man-nature is obvious."

Nonphilosophy as Disclosure

What the signs of nonphilosophy reveal is the "contingency of the soil" — the recognition that what seemed natural, self-evident ground (scientific rationality, the subject-object distinction, tonality in music, perspective in painting) is sedimented culture. This can lead either to "irrationalism or artificialism" (the negative face) or to a deeper contact with "brute being" (the positive face). The task becomes: "to confront culture with brute being."

The Shifting-Soil Motif

Lefort's foreword (new-raw line 221) explicitly names "a 'shifting soil' (ébranlement du sol) upon which the writer or the artist once believed themselves to be established" as the recurring image across Course 1's literature, painting, music, and psychoanalysis sections. The motif is MP's organizing figure for nonphilosophy's cultural symptoms: Mallarmé and Rimbaud contest language's soil (535); painting's soil is the trompe-l'oeil and the institution-of-nature framework inherited from Descartes (587, 589, 591); music's soil is tonality, now recognized as "a historical formation or cultural contingency" (663); psychoanalysis reveals the soil of our "archaeology as not being made by decisions of the ego" (1602). Whitmoyer (preface line 175) keeps sol as "soil" distinct from "ground" for Grund — the difference matters: the shifting soil (sol) of nonphilosophy is not the same as Heidegger's groundless ground (Grund, Abgrund, Ungrund) that emerges in the Silesius/rose passages (1101-1126), though the two are structurally related via the "rose without why." Recovery — if it comes — is recovery of a Nature-for-us as the soil [sol] of all our culture, not a return to a metaphysical ground (503). The shifting-soil motif is, alongside the ineinander cluster, the most load-bearing figure of the 1959 course; it provides the image for what nonphilosophy discloses (the contingency of cultural ground) without which the concept remains a label.

The Danger Within Art

Merleau-Ponty also perceives the misery within nonphilosophy's promise. He warns against pure experimentation in music — "narcissistic musical signification, oneiric" — and against non-figurative painting that "falls back onto itself precisely as a thing" and merely "resembles things, bacteria, awkward biological forms" (Lefort's foreword, line 99). Freedom without ontological grounding becomes combinatorial arbitrariness.

In MP's own voice (line 322): "narcissistic musical signification, oneiric (possible illusion: does folk music make its true sense legible in eight minutes?) ('Illusion of a crossing from being to being')." And line 285 on non-figurative painting: "wouldn't the picture be even freer to give the essence if all links were cut?... In reality, it can happen that it then falls back into itself precisely as a thing." The bivalence is structural, not a nuance: the same phenomena (Mallarmé, Klee, music, atomic energy, psychoanalysis) appear under both "destruction" and "fundamental thought," and MP refuses to romanticize. Art is fundamental thought only when it does not become direct ontology — when it makes visible without imitating the visible.

The Structural Bracket: Neither Separate Nor Confuse

Course 3 ("Philosophy and Nonphilosophy since Hegel," 1960-61) gives the most precise formulation: philosophy and nonphilosophy cannot be separated AND cannot be confused. Both errors are equally fatal. Lefort's foreword (line 161): "From one course to another, Merleau-Ponty persuades us of the impossibility of separating philosophy and nonphilosophy and of confusing them." The dogmatist move (philosophy is autonomous; nonphilosophy is just material for it) and the abolitionist move (philosophy is just nonphilosophy; the philosopher's work has no specificity) are symmetric failures. The right relation is the ineinander of philosophy and its outside.

This bracket is what makes nonphilosophy a substantive concept rather than a slogan. It also explains why MP is wary of art-as-philosophy: art that is confused with philosophy is just as bad as art that is separated from philosophy. The discipline is the bracket, not either pole.

Good Ambiguity / Bad Ambiguity

The reading of Hegel in Course 3 supplies the structural form: there is "good ambiguity" (the Ineinander as lived in experience) and "bad ambiguity" (the Ineinander formulated as logical category). "The very formulation of this living Zweideutigkeit makes it disappear" (line 1705). Nonphilosophy lives only as good ambiguity — the moment it is systematized into a doctrine of "philosophy as a-philosophy," it dies and becomes either skepticism (the empty Nichts) or dogmatism (the conserved Bestehende). This is the structural reason MP refuses to write a treatise on nonphilosophy. The lecture form, with its ellipses and unfinished gestures, is the right vehicle. (See good-ambiguity.)

Proper Silence and Indirect Expression

At line 813 MP quotes Heidegger's das rechte Schweigen — "the proper silence" — from the Letter on Humanism (1947). The surrounding passage is sympathetic but pointedly not endorsing: Heidegger "has more to express than 'philosophy,'" cannot bring his thought to "direct expression," and therefore "it would be necessary to attempt an indirect expression, i.e., show Being through the Winke of life, of science, etc. So philosophy is perhaps possible as 'das rechte Schweigen'." The perhaps is MP's hedge. Nonphilosophy inhabits the register Heidegger names — philosophy reaches its own limit and must hint through Winke rather than state directly — but MP prefers contact with the world over silence proper, expressing the Winke through art, literature, psychoanalysis, and politics rather than through the pure Schweigen of Being. This is why Lefort's foreword (see martin-heidegger) can register both MP's defense of Heidegger against misreadings and his critique of Heideggerian "direct ontology" for risking "lead[ing] the philosopher into silence." See silence for the full family of registers this Heideggerian one belongs to.

Connections

motivates fundamental-thought-in-art — nonphilosophy is the condition under which art becomes a philosophical resource
extends lebenswelt — the collapse of official philosophy reveals the Lebenswelt as the authentic ground
is developed through edmund-husserl and martin-heidegger — both "come to define philosophy by questioning its very sense and possibility"
contrasts with Hegel's systematization — the Hegel course shows that formulating the living ambiguity (Zweideutigkeit) of philosophy/nonphilosophy destroys it
directly parallels barbarian-principle — both name what resists phenomenology from within; "what resists phenomenology within us — natural being, the 'barbarian' source Schelling spoke of — cannot remain outside phenomenology" (VI, cited in knight-2024-merleau-ponty-essence-of-nature Ch. 5)
is resolved by hyper-dialectic — nonphilosophy names the crisis; hyper-dialectic names its resolution. Philosophy recuperates itself by finding room for itself within the structure of being, making the philosophy/non-philosophy relation "the theory of the relation" itself (chouraqui-2016-order-of-the-earth, §4)
is structured by good-ambiguity — nonphilosophy is the live form of "good ambiguity"; it dies the moment it is formulated as a logical category or a doctrine
inhabits silence — specifically the Heideggerian register: das rechte Schweigen from the Letter on Humanism (cited at line 813), philosophy as possible only through indirect expression; MP endorses the gesture but prefers contact with the world over silence proper

The 1947-48 First Attestation (Saint Aubert 2006)

Per Saint Aubert (2006 Ch II §1), the first attestation of non-philosophie in MP's corpus is the 1947-48 ENS course on Maine de Biran. Brunschvicg, in L'expérience humaine et la causalité physique, charges that Biran "ramenant le regard du philosophe vers le corps, il quitte la tradition philosophique et lui oppose une non-philosophie."

MP's reply (1947-48 ENS lecture):

"Mais y a-t-il bien, comme Brunschvicg le pense, d'un côté la philosophie et de l'autre sa négation? La question se pose-t-elle comme il le croit, et la 'non-philosophie' de Biran ne serait-elle pas plutôt l'expression d'un effort vers une conscience accrue, annexant à la philosophie de nouveaux territoires?"

This first occurrence "initie à elle seule l'essentiel de la charge qui affectera jusqu'au bout la notion de non-philosophie: son indexation du monde rejeté par l'ontologie de l'objet, son lien étroit avec la chair, et son rôle majeur dans un scénario critique où Brunschvicg sert de premier bouc émissaire" (Saint Aubert 2006 Ch II §1).

The polemic runs continuous from this 1947-48 occurrence through May 1961 (the Philosophie et non-philosophie depuis Hegel course given the day before MP's death) — the longest continuous polemic in MP's corpus. The wiki's framing of nonphilosophy in the 1959 Possibility of Philosophy course is one moment in this 14-year polemic, not its starting point.

Empiétement-de-la-non-philosophie (Saint Aubert 2006)

Saint Aubert's distinctive contribution: non-philosophie is not primarily disciplinary (sciences, art, literature, sociology, psychology, theology). It is ontological: it indexes the "monde des causes perdues" (Marcellian existence: perception, body, imaginary, desire, religious acts, art) that Brunschvicg's immanence philosophique refused. Per Saint Aubert (2006 Ch II §1):

"Ces espaces dessinent le contour de ce qui intéresse sa propre pensée, donc de ce que la 'nouvelle ontologie' reçoit pour tâche de penser. Merleau-Ponty ne conçoit donc pas seulement, ni même d'abord, la non-philosophie selon une acception disciplinaire (sciences, littérature, art, sociologie, psychologie, théologie, etc.). Et l'ambiguïté de cette notion — à la fois au dedans et au dehors, en situation d'empiétement — s'enracine dans l'intention même de sa pensée."

The structural relation to empietement: non-philosophy is not a territory outside philosophy but an empiétement — what philosophy must accept and live in. The five MP formulae from 1958-61 (cited Saint Aubert 2006 Ch II §1):

"La philosophie est non-philosophie." "La philosophie est redécouverte de la non-philosophie." "Notre non-philosophie qui est peut-être plus profonde philosophie." "Le chiasme philosophie-non philosophie." "[La] philosophie vraie est non-philosophie."

This empiétement framing is what motivates indirect-ontology (per Saint Aubert 2006 Ch III §2a). The chain: ontologie de l'objet refuses the body/perception/desire as "non-philosophical" → MP recovers them under non-philosophy → attending to them requires accepting empiétement → empiétement makes pure ontological language impossible → ontology must be indirect.

Three modalities of non-philosophy as language-of-flesh (Saint Aubert 2006 Ch IV §2b)

Per Saint Aubert, MP's non-philosophy operates at the language register through three modalities:

Échange du passé et du présent: against the Heideggerian reading that finds truth only "in archaic origin" — non-philosophy refuses the supralapsaire fantasme.
Échange du latent et du manifeste: against the analytical-philosophical reduction of meaning to manifest signification — non-philosophy reads the latent in the manifest.
Échange de moi et d'autrui: against the isolated subject — non-philosophy is between subjects, in the carnal communication that grounds language.

The "deux positivismes du langage" (analytical philosophy + Heideggerian ésotérisme) both fail along all three modalities by treating language sans la chair (per Saint Aubert 2006 Ch IV §2b). This is the structural reason MP positions his late ontology between the two positivisms.

Distinction from interdisciplinary structuralism

Per Saint Aubert (2006 Ch II §2), MP's non-philosophie is distinct from and opposed to the interdisciplinary structuralism of Lévi-Strauss, Lacan, Benveniste, and Guilbaud, who from 1951 onwards work cross-disciplinary structures. MP: "L'interdisciplinarité, en tant que telle, n'est pas philosophique." MP's non-philosophy is not the search for common structures across disciplines but the philosophical work on each non-philosophical field — psychology as philosophical, biology as philosophical, art as philosophical, anthropology as philosophical.

Foi interrogative and cogito charnel — the indirect-method genealogy (Saint Aubert)

Saint Aubert's reading of MP's late non-philosophie extends the indirect-method genealogy through two coordinate concepts that the wiki's Chouraqui-built intra-ontology reading does not develop: foi interrogative and cogito charnel. Both are anchored in Saint Aubert E&C II Épilogue, and are invoked in passing in Saint Aubert 2006 Conclusion as the philosophical attitude required for "demander à voir."

Foi interrogative names the structural form of perceptual faith when it interrogates itself: not a propositional belief that could be doubted, but a relational interrogation that is the relation. Three formulae from MP's NPVIf [162–163] (March 1959, "Définitif"), per Saint Aubert E&C II Épilogue § 2:

"Percevoir est interroger : définition d'adaequatio réaliste ou idéaliste rejetée, écart qui est rapport. Cette interrogation est derrière toutes nos questions : où suis-je et quelle heure est-il ?" (NPVIf [162], March 1959)

The three coordinate equations cut from this passage by Saint Aubert: (a) "percevoir est interroger"; (b) "la foi est interrogation"; (c) "interrogation qui est la foi." These equations make explicit what non-philosophie names at the methodological register: the philosophical attitude that does not subordinate interrogation to a prior cogito-of-the-question (which would already be a philosophie in the rejected sense). Foi interrogative is the operative form of the empiétement-of-non-philosophy: it is what the chair does when philosophical questioning takes the carnal-perceptual seriously.

Cogito charnel is the structural correlate. Drawing on Claudel's Art poétique — recurring 13 times in MP's preparation of V&I, per Saint Aubert's count — the formula "où suis-je et quelle heure est-il?" replaces the reflective cogito with a question that the chair asks of being without already presupposing the survey-position. The formula is "étranger aux illusions solitaires de la conscience réflexive"; it works through "je suis à moi en étant au monde" (PhP 466). The cogito charnel is non-philosophical in the precise Saint Aubert sense: it lives in the empiétement register where carnal-perceptual interrogation precedes any propositional-philosophical articulation.

The indirect-method genealogy. Foi interrogative and cogito charnel extend the genealogy of MP's indirect method that the supported claim tracks (Blondel-not-Heidegger, 1955–56 derivation) by supplying the late-period operative form of what indirect ontology does methodologically. The chain: Blondel's diplopie ontologique (1935) → MP's 1956 cours sur la dialectique inaugural appeal to indirect ontology → 1958 hyperdialectique → spring 1959 NPVIf "percevoir est interroger" → V&I Épilogue carnal cogito. The methodological form is continuous: indirect method as binocular attention to the chair-being relation, where the late period names this attention foi interrogative and the question-form of cogito charnel.

Distinct from Chouraqui's intra-ontology reading. Chouraqui (per intra-ontology) develops the indirect-method via the circulus vitiosus deus structure and the formal logic of an ontology that includes its own existence in the Being it describes. Saint Aubert's foi interrogative / cogito charnel reading is structurally cognate but operational rather than structural: where Chouraqui describes the form of indirect ontology (the double-circle), Saint Aubert describes what indirect ontology does in MP's late practice (the carnal interrogation that animates non-philosophie). The two readings are coordinate complements, not rivals — Chouraqui supplies the formal architecture, Saint Aubert the practical attitude. Both are required to articulate why non-philosophie in MP's late corpus is neither interdisciplinarity (Lévi-Strauss / Lacan) nor mere anti-philosophy (Marx-Kierkegaard-Nietzsche destruction): it is the operational form of indirect ontology in the chair-and-being register.

The interrogation page (per the 2026-04-25 audit gap fill) already houses the foi interrogative anchor for the perceptual-faith register; the present subsection extends that finding to the non-philosophie genealogy.

A-Philosophy as Positive Formulation

The a-philosophy framing is the positive formulation of what the 1959 course called "nonphilosophy": cinema, painting, and literature as "fundamental thought" that official philosophy, in its "backwardness" and "crisis," cannot reach. The a- prefix (like Pascal's "the true philosophy mocks philosophy," NC 275/9) avoids the dualism of philosophy vs. non-philosophy: a- is deprivation-without-negation (as in a-rhythmic, a-tonal), not simple opposition.

The foundational anchor for the a-philosophy framing on the wiki is Carbone 2004, The Thinking of the Sensible: Merleau-Ponty's A-Philosophy. The 2004 book — whose subtitle puts a-philosophy in the title — synthesizes MP's late project as four interrupted dialogues (Husserl-Proust on time, Hegel on the idea of philosophy, Uexküll-Proust-Rimbaud on nature and ideas, Heidegger and Kant on letting-be), all of which converge on the master thesis that philosophy must transform itself into a-philosophy to formulate the "mutation of the relationship between humanity and Being" (OE 63/139). Ch 2 ("Ad Limina Philosophiae") is the cardinal sustained reading of MP's commentary on Hegel as MP's own idea of philosophy via the petite phrase "to retire into oneself is also to leave oneself" (VI 74/49). Ch 4 (the title chapter, originally published in Evans-Lawlor Chiasms SUNY 2000) closes with the conceptus-as-hollow philological argument (the Latin conceptus / concavity vs the German Begriff / grasping) — the etymological key to the entire "open the concept without destroying it" project (S 174/138).

Carbone 2015 (Flesh of Images ch. 6 "The Sensible Ideas Between Life and Philosophy") and Carbone 2019 (in alloa-chouraqui-kaushik-2019-contemporary-philosophy) develop and re-state this framing, but the foundational anchor predates both by 7+ and 15 years respectively.

Motif Weight & Corpus Recurrence

Nonphilosophy is a wiki home for three HUB-weight corpus motifs in motifs:

§"shadow / philosophy of shadow / unthought / behind philosophy" (HUB, 4 source attestations)
§"direct vs indirect ontology" (HUB, 6+ source attestations)
§"non-philosophie / philosophy as nonphilosophy" (HUB, 5+ source attestations)

For the live attestation lists, source-level weights, and genealogy/cross-tradition links per motif, see motifs.md. Refresh whenever motifs.md weight changes.

Open Questions

How does nonphilosophy differ from anti-philosophy (Lacan, Badiou)?
Does the concept apply to contemporary conditions (AI, digital culture, ecological crisis)?
What would a systematic account of nonphilosophy's relationship to specific art forms look like?

Synthetic Claims

The synthetic interpretive layer (wiki/claims.md) articulates three claims for which this page is a Wiki home — one at supported and two at live. Supported claims may be cited as stable synthetic claims without provisional framing; live claims are cited with provisional framing per CLAUDE.md §Claims Register Format.

supported claim, see claims#indirect-ontology-blondel-not-heidegger — MP's ontologie indirecte derives from Blondel's L'Être et les êtres (1935) read in 1955–56, not from Heidegger; the famous V&I February 1959 working note is structurally Blondelian, not Heideggerian. Promoted to supported 2026-05-05 under R8 user pre-authorization. The claim re-grounds the genealogy of indirect ontology, which non-philosophy's empiétement logic motivates per Saint Aubert 2006 Ch III §2a.
live claim, see claims#non-philosophie-as-empietement-of-refused-world — non-philosophie indexes the empiétement of the carnal-empirical world (perception, body, imaginary, desire, religious acts, art) that Brunschvicg's immanence philosophique refused — not interdisciplinarity in the structuralist sense. The claim makes explicit the structural relation between non-philosophy and empietement / indirect-ontology that the page's Saint Aubert sections develop.
live claim, see claims#anthropologisme-vs-anthropologie-distinction — the "anti-anthropological turn" reading of late MP is a category error: anthropologisme (Brunschvicg-Sartre's idealist humanism) is not the same as anthropologie (the empirical discipline MP praises in October 1959 "De Mauss à Claude Lévi-Strauss"). MP's "ce que je fais n'est pas une anthropologie mais une ontologie" formula scopes to the former, not the latter.
live claim, see claims#hyper-dialectic-as-philosophy-non-philosophy-theory — Chouraqui (Order of the Earth, 2016, §4) argues hyper-dialectic is the theory of the relation between philosophy and non-philosophy — the late lecture course "Philosophy and Non-Philosophy" (1960–61) gives hyper-dialectic its proper home. Counterpressure: the cross-text coherence is reconstructive, not stated by MP himself.

Sources

merleau-ponty-1964-signs — Introduction (pp. 3–35) gives the political-philosophical form of nonphilosophy: Marxism as "classic" rather than operative truth (pp. 9–14), the "refuge of uncertainty" into which ex-Marxists retreat (p. 13), and the Sartrean "rebellion" that MP reads as a failed instance of nonphilosophy done wrong (pp. 22–35). action-at-a-distance (p. 15) is MP's positive formulation of what nonphilosophy looks like when it is not allowed to collapse into either engagement or despair
merleau-ponty-1970-in-praise-of-philosophy — Course 10 ("Philosophy as Interrogation", 1958-59), pp. 174-176: the proto-formulation of nonphilosophy. MP opens: "With Hegel something comes to an end. After Hegel, there is a philosophical void. This is not to say that there has been a lack of thinkers or of geniuses, but that Marx, Kierkegaard, and Nietzsche start from a denial of philosophy. We might say that with the latter we enter an age of non-philosophy. But perhaps such a destruction of philosophy constitutes its very realization" (p. 174). Course 10 is thus the first in-print formulation of the core nonphilosophy thesis — that the post-Hegelian denial of philosophy may preserve its essence — which the 1959 course notes will develop more systematically
merleau-ponty-2022-possibility-of-philosophy — the primary source; nonphilosophy is the organizing concept of the 1959 course (Part I) and is radicalized in "Philosophy and Nonphilosophy since Hegel" (Course 3, line 1507)
knight-2024-merleau-ponty-essence-of-nature — develops the connection between nonphilosophy and the barbarian-principle (Ch. 5)
chouraqui-2016-order-of-the-earth — places nonphilosophy as the second term of hyper-dialectic (§4, pp. 67-69)
carbone-2015-flesh-of-images — ch. 6 "The Sensible Ideas Between Life and Philosophy," pp. 75–83. Develops the Hegel → Marx → Kierkegaard → Nietzsche → Husserl → Heidegger lineage as "philosophy wanting to be philosophy while remaining non-philosophy." Cites NC 275: "real philosophy makes fun of philosophy, it is a-philosophy." Links to sensible-ideas and co-naissance as the content of what a-philosophy thinks. A development of, not the foundational anchor for, the a-philosophy framing on the wiki — see Carbone 2004 entry below.
carbone-2004-thinking-of-the-sensible — The Thinking of the Sensible: Merleau-Ponty's A-Philosophy. The foundational anchor for the a-philosophy framing on the wiki, predating Carbone 2015 by 7 years and Carbone 2019 by 15 years. The book's subtitle puts a-philosophy in the title; the four chapters reconstruct MP's late project as four interrupted dialogues converging on the a-philosophy thesis. Ch 2 ("Ad Limina Philosophiae") is the cardinal reading of MP's Hegel commentary as MP's self-interpretation of his own idea of philosophy. Ch 4 (the title chapter, originally in Evans-Lawlor Chiasms SUNY 2000) closes with the conceptus-as-hollow philological argument that grounds the "open the concept without destroying it" project.
saintaubert-2021-etre-et-chair-ii — Épilogue §§ 1–3 supplies the foi interrogative / cogito charnel anchors that extend the indirect-method genealogy in MP's late corpus. The cardinal NPVIf [162–163] (March 1959, "Définitif") texts: "Percevoir est interroger : définition d'adaequatio réaliste ou idéaliste rejetée, écart qui est rapport. Cette interrogation est derrière toutes nos questions : où suis-je et quelle heure est-il ?" — three coordinate equations: (a) "percevoir est interroger"; (b) "la foi est interrogation"; (c) "interrogation qui est la foi." The Claudelian carnal cogito "où suis-je et quelle heure est-il?" recurs 13 times in MP's V&I preparation per Saint Aubert's count. These supply the late-period operative form of what indirect ontology does methodologically — the practical-attitude complement to Chouraqui's structural-formal reading on intra-ontology. Pairs with saintaubert-2006-vers-une-ontologie-indirecte Ch III §2a-b (the 1956 indirect-ontology genesis in Blondelian context).