Ontological Diplopia

A term Merleau-Ponty borrows from Maurice Blondel to name the structural co-presence of two ontological perspectives — a "positivist" one (being exists; nothingness has no properties; the world is positively real) and a "negativist" one (doubt is first; liberty is the model of infinity; the world is a pure fact) — throughout the history of Western ontology. They are not reconcilable and they are not in synthesis; neither can eliminate the other; each is the inverted image of the other, and philosophy must "wholly embrace" their co-presence "just as our gaze takes over monocular images to make a single vision out of them" (Course 9, p. 164). The task of philosophy is not to adjudicate between the two ontologies but to "elaborate a concept of being such that its contradictions, neither accepted nor 'transcended,' still have their place" (Course 9, p. 164).

Key Points

  • Coined by Maurice Blondel and adopted by MP in the 1957-58 Collège de France course "The Concept of Nature II: Animality, the Human Body, Transition to Culture"
  • The diplopia is not a mistake to be corrected by better argument; it is a structural feature of being itself as it shows up in philosophy
  • It is not the same as good-ambiguity. Good ambiguity is the lived mode of philosophical life — "the taste for evidence and the feeling for ambiguity" held together. Ontological diplopia is a specific thesis about the structure of ontological positions in the history of philosophy — a diagnosis of how positivist and negativist ontology mirror each other without synthesizing
  • It does not demand a dialectical resolution (Hegelian Aufhebung). MP's suggestion is to describe the diplopia — to "wholly embrace" it as our binocular view of Being. The analogy is visual: our two eyes give us monocular images that fuse into a single vision, not by one image eliminating the other but by the brain accepting the difference
  • The positivist ontology: "being exists, God exists by definition, if there has to be some thing, it could only be this world and this nature here, nothingness has no properties" (Course 9, p. 163)
  • The negativist ontology: "the first truth is that of a doubt, what is certain first of all is a locus between being and nothingness, the model of infinity is my liberty, this world here is a pure fact" (Course 9, p. 163)
  • The diplopia operates throughout Western philosophy and Western theology — in Descartes, in Kant, in Hegel, even within Bergson: "a cycle or reverberation of a thought which could be called 'positivist'... and a 'negativist' thought... which inverts the signs and perspectives of the former, without either eliminating or coinciding with it" (Course 9, p. 163)
  • Related to Leibniz's figure of the "labyrinth of first philosophy": the continual shifting of philosophies between positive and negative ontology is not decadence but the shape of ontology itself

Details

The Definition (Course 9, pp. 163-164)

In MP's 1957-58 course summary, the passage that introduces the term runs:

Can we not find throughout our philosophy (and very likely in our theology) a cycle or reverberation of a thought which could be called "positivist" (being exists, God exists by definition, if there has to be some thing, it could only be this world and this nature here, nothingness has no properties) and a "negativist" thought (the first truth is that of a doubt, what is certain first of all is a locus between being and nothingness, the model of infinity is my liberty, this world here is a pure fact) which inverts the signs and perspectives of the former, without either eliminating or coinciding with it? Do we not find everywhere the double certitude that being exists, that appearances are only a manifestation and a restriction of being — and that these appearances are the canon of everything that we can understand by "being," that in this respect it is being in-itself which appears as an ungraspable phantom, an Un-ding? Could we not find what has been called an "ontological diplopia" (Blondel), which after so much philosophical effort we cannot expect to bring to a rational reduction and which leaves us with the sole alternative of wholly embracing it, just as our gaze takes over monocular images to make a single vision out of them.

Several things are packed in:

  • Cycle or reverberation: the two ontologies do not succeed each other historically and do not cancel each other; they cycle. Each positivist claim has a negativist counter, and vice versa.
  • Inversion: the negativist ontology inverts "the signs and perspectives" of the positivist one — not just contradicts it, but reads the same phenomena with the signs flipped. "Being exists" becomes "the first truth is doubt"; "nothingness has no properties" becomes "the model of infinity is my liberty".
  • No rational reduction: "we cannot expect to bring [the diplopia] to a rational reduction" — a direct refusal of the Hegelian move to synthesize the two through dialectic.
  • Wholly embracing: the only alternative is to embrace both, "just as our gaze takes over monocular images to make a single vision out of them". Philosophy becomes binocular.

The Labyrinth of First Philosophy

Immediately after introducing the diplopia, MP invokes Leibniz:

Perhaps then we would not regard the extraordinary confusion in modern ideas of nature, man, and God — the equivocations in "naturalism," "humanism," and "theism" (there is not one of these attitudes nowadays which does not slide into the other) — as nothing but decadence. If nowadays it happens that all the frontiers between these ideologies have broken down, this is because there is really, to borrow a phrase from Leibniz but in its strict sense, a "labyrinth of first philosophy." The task of philosophy should be to describe this labyrinth, to elaborate a concept of being such that its contradictions, neither accepted nor "transcended," still have their place. (Course 9, p. 164)

The labyrinth figure deserves attention. The "confusion in modern ideas" is not decadence — it is the surface effect of the deep structure of the diplopia. Modern confusion is the way the diplopia shows up under conditions of disciplinary breakdown. The task of philosophy is not to rebuild the walls between naturalism, humanism, and theism, but to describe the labyrinth's shape — to acknowledge that "there is really... a labyrinth of first philosophy" and to work within it.

Against Rationalist Resolution

The diplopia is introduced as a diagnosis of what cannot be done:

What was impossible for modern dialectical philosophies, because the dialectic which they contained remained bound by a predialectical ontology, would become possible in an ontology which reveals in being itself an overlap or movement. (Course 9, pp. 164-165)

Modern dialectic failed because its dialectical moves were launched from within a pre-dialectical ontology — either pre-dialectically positivist (Engels, vulgar Marxism) or pre-dialectically negativist (Sartre, existentialism). What would succeed is an ontology in which being itself overlaps — an ontology that takes the diplopia as its subject matter rather than trying to overcome it. This is one of MP's most compressed programmatic statements of what he is trying to do.

Contemporary Science and the Diplopia

The same course uses contemporary physics and biology to illustrate why mechanism and idealism are both broken. Wave mechanics and relativity physics show that "field" is no longer a thing but "a system of effects"; the classical object-concept is in crisis. Cassirer's response — to fall back on critical idealism — is exactly the move the diplopia forbids, because critical idealism is "entirely an analysis of the conditions and means of the positing of an object" and loses its meaning once "science has no power over the object" (Course 9, p. 166).

Biology is similar: neo-Darwinism's "ultra-mechanism or ultra-finalism" rests on "the ontological principle of all or nothing", which is a positivist-negativist alternation: either the organism is absolutely what it is or it would have been eliminated. The correct description, MP argues, is "invariance through fluctuation" (Course 9, p. 170) — a lateral, not frontal, rhythm. This is the binocular gaze of the diplopia applied to life.

Connections

  • is distinct from good-ambiguity — good ambiguity is the lived mode of philosophical life; ontological diplopia is a thesis about the structure of ontological positions in Western philosophy. Good ambiguity is Hegel-derived (via the 2022 course notes); ontological diplopia is Blondel-derived (via the 1957-58 course summary)
  • is distinct from hyper-dialectic — hyper-dialectic is the dialectical operation that refuses synthesis; ontological diplopia is the structural condition that makes such refusal necessary. Hyper-dialectic is a method; diplopia is a diagnosis
  • motivates interrogation — the proper response to a diplopia that cannot be "rationally reduced" is interrogation, not synthesis
  • is one of the motivations for wild-being — wild being is the positive name for what lies beneath both the positivist and negativist ontologies; it is what both perspectives attempt and fail to capture
  • critiques Cartesian mechanism and Kantian idealism alike — both are one-eyed views of Being. See philosophy-of-reflection
  • critiques neo-Darwinian "all or nothing" — the biological version of the diplopia's pathology
  • is analogous to the chiasm in perception — the chiasm is the way two perspectives (touching/touched) interlock without fusing; the diplopia is the way two ontological perspectives interlock without synthesizing
  • anticipates the ineinander — MP will later use Ineinander as the name for the structure the diplopia names. The "universe of living paradoxes" (Course 10, p. 182) is what binocular ontology describes

Open Questions

  • The term "ontological diplopia" is Blondel's. How faithful is MP's use of it to Blondel's own intention in L'Action (1893)? MP does not cite a specific Blondel text — resolved (Saint Aubert 2006 Ch III §2b): the term comes verbatim from a chapter title in Blondel's L'Être et les êtres (1935), Essai d'ontologie concrète et intégrale, not from L'Action (1893). MP read L'Être et les êtres in 1955-56; the 1957 La Nature ou le monde du silence manuscript is the first MP attestation of "diplopie ontologique." The 1957-58 Course 9 In Praise of Philosophy introduction of the term is anchored in this 1955-56 Blondel reading.
  • Is the diplopia a temporary feature of Western philosophy (a phase that will be overcome) or a permanent feature of philosophical discourse as such? MP's language suggests the latter but does not make the case explicitly
  • How does the diplopia relate to real historical developments in philosophy (e.g., Descartes' own shifts, Kant's third Critique)? MP asserts a general structure but does not work through specific cases
  • If the diplopia cannot be "rationally reduced", what is the difference between describing the diplopia and producing another ontology? MP's answer via "ontology of overlap" is programmatic but not yet developed in 1957-58

Sources

  • merleau-ponty-1970-in-praise-of-philosophy — Course 9 ("The Concept of Nature II: Animality, the Human Body, Transition to Culture"), 1957-58, pp. 163-164: the introduction of the term (citing Blondel), the "labyrinth of first philosophy" figure (Leibniz); pp. 164-165: the programmatic statement about an ontology of overlap; p. 166: the critique of Cassirer's critical idealism; p. 170: the biological application of the diplopia diagnosis to neo-Darwinian "all or nothing"
  • saintaubert-2006-vers-une-ontologie-indirecte — Ch III §2b ("Une lecture de Blondel"). The cardinal archival-philological source for: (i) the L'Être et les êtres (1935, not L'Action 1893) chapter-title provenance of "diplopie ontologique"; (ii) the 1955-56 dating of MP's Blondel reading; (iii) the 1957 La Nature ou le monde du silence manuscript as the first MP attestation; (iv) the November-December 1957 Le complexe ontologique cartésien feuillets where MP works the diplopie into his anti-Cartesian polemic; (v) the 1958 Nature course preparation as the second site of Blondel-MP convergence. Anchors the indirect ontology genealogy via Blondel.
  • maurice-blondel — entity page; the cardinal source.