Pente de l'histoire

Merleau-Ponty's term — first explicitly named at his Brussels conference "L'individu et l'histoire" (14 March 1946); first published in compressed form in Sense and Non-Sense's "Battle over Existentialism" (Les Temps modernes No. 2, November 1945, p. 78): "the date of the revolution is written on no wall and in no metaphysical heaven" — for the structure history presents as our orientation when we read it. The slope of history is neither a Hegelian necessity nor an Aronian arbitrariness; it is the rationality history offers to those who take a position within it, on the basis of which a reprise du passé et projet de l'avenir becomes possible. The 1946 formula joins three other terms (reprise, logique de fait, "natural selection of attitudes") into the matrix that organizes MP's philosophy of history from 1946 through Adventures of the Dialectic (1955). The 1946 articulation is the first sustained one in MP's vocabulary; the term remains in active use in HT (1947) and AD (1955) and is the political-register prefiguration of the late-MP institution concept.

Key Points

  • "Il y a une pente de l'histoire, nous lui donnons nécessairement un sens et nous le lui donnons à partir des structures qu'elle nous présente. Reprise du passé et projet de l'avenir" — L'individu et l'histoire, p. 195. Three claims at once: (i) history has a slope; (ii) we give it a sense necessarily; (iii) but we give the sense from the structures it presents — not arbitrarily, not from a position outside history.
  • The slope is the positive content of MP's anti-Aronian and anti-Hegelian double-front. Against Aron: there is no neutral non-perspective on history; the philosopher cannot retreat into mosaic-of-decisions scepticism without producing a covertly objective conservative politics. Against late Hegel: there is no completed history Sub specie aeternitatis; the Weltgeist is not a vantage available to us — "ne pas regarder du point de vue de Sirius" (p. 195).
  • The slope is contestable: "Possibilité constante de changement ou déraillement, mais il y a à chaque moment des problèmes efficaces par rapport auxquels on peut dire que ce qui vient après offre ou non vérité de l'histoire, que l'histoire devient ou non ce qu'elle était" (p. 195). History's slope is not a guarantee but a test bed — a position-taking can succeed or fail by reference to the slope's structure.
  • The slope grounds "natural selection" of historical positions (Trotsky-derived, but reworked): "les attitudes fortuites, fausses et menteuses sont éliminées comme par une sorte de sélection naturelle" (p. 195). The slope is what eliminates, not what prescribes.
  • The slope makes possible "l'individu se fait dans l'histoire et l'histoire se fait par l'individu" (p. 195) — a reciprocity that is "inseparable parts of the historical field" rather than two distinct vantage points joined externally. This is the 1946 political prefiguration of what will become MP's late chiasm formula.
  • The slope is explicitly developed against Sartre as well: "Sartre: passé social toujours en sursis. Faux si négation de pente" (L'existentialisme et la politique, p. 211). MP's 1946 disagreement with Sartre on history is older than the 1953 political rupture.
  • The first published occurrence of the doctrine is the November 1945 *Battle over Existentialism* sentence: "the date of the revolution is written on no wall and in no metaphysical heaven... Marxism is unique in that it invites us to make the logic of history triumph over its contingency without offering any metaphysical guarantees" (p. 78). The phrase pente de l'histoire itself first appears at Brussels in March 1946, but the doctrine — slope-without-guarantee, contingency-as-logical — is in print four months earlier. Sense and Non-Sense's Concerning Marxism (Feb 1946) develops it further: "history is both logical and contingent... nothing is absolutely fortuitous but also that nothing is absolutely necessary" (p. 114). The S&NS attestation is therefore the doctrine's public origin; the unpublished Brussels conference is its first named form.

What the Concept Does

The slope-of-history names the rationality history offers without reifying it as a guarantee. It performs three argumentative functions in MP's 1946–55 political philosophy:

  1. It refuses the Sirius-position-vs-arbitrary-decision dilemma. Both Aron's "no philosophy of history" and Hegel's "history-from-the-end" pretend to a position outside history. The slope is the third position: history-from-within, offering structures we read but do not impose.

  2. It conditions the marxist case-test. In Humanism and Terror (1947), the slope is what makes the Roubachof case (candidate) tractable: Roubachof confesses "because he is of the October generation" — i.e., because the slope of marxist history requires this fidelity. When the slope changes (revolution-in-one-country, stratification, centralism), the same fidelity becomes self-betrayal. The slope is the standard against which the opposition de gauche (third attitude) measures both stalinism and conservatism.

  3. It opens onto the problem-space the late MP names institution. The 1946 vocabulary — pente + reprise + projet + logique de fait — is structurally identical to the matrix MP will redeploy in ontological register as institution in the 1954–55 course. The slope is therefore not merely an early-MP figure but the political-register origin of MP's mid-1950s hub-concept.

What It Rejects

  • Aron's denial of historical sense (Introduction à la philosophie de l'histoire, 1938, esp. "De l'individu à l'histoire"). Aron's mosaic-of-decisions / multiple-perspectives reading is itself a philosophy of history that hides its objectivity in scepticism. MP inverts the title's directionality: not "from individual to history" but "individual and history" together, jointly conditioned by the slope.
  • The Hegel of the Encyclopédie / late-systematic Hegel. The doctrine that "tout ce qui est réel est rationnel" + the Weltgeist + the doctrine of the State as classe substantielle/réfléchissante/universelle substitutes the "chouette de Minerve" for the slope — turns history's offered structures into a completed essence visible only at dusk.
  • Sartre's "passé social toujours en sursis" (1947). MP rejects the suspended-past reading: it negates the slope. Sartre's later (1955) ultrabolshevism (per AD Ch 5) is, in retrospect, the political-philosophical correlate of this 1946 disagreement.
  • Bossuet-style providential history. The plan-of-God reading is the slope-extruded-and-frozen.

Stakes

If the slope is real, then (i) marxism is the philosophy of history (no rival philosophy of history can establish itself without destroying the marxist explanation, and the latter still holds in 1946); (ii) refusing the slope is itself political effect — there is no exit from history; (iii) the opposition de gauche (third attitude beyond stalinism/conservatism) is required by fidelity to the slope, since both extremes betray it; (iv) the marxist promise can be kept by being criticized — "Ce n'est pas indécision en moi mais dans les choses" ([Complément] HT, p. 220).

If the slope is not real (Aron's position), then political position-taking is arbitrary — "voting communist or not" becomes a matter of mood or social reflex, and historical judgment is impossible. MP rejects this consequence.

Problem-Space

The slope addresses the philosophical-political problem of how a position-taking inside history can be more than arbitrary without claiming a position outside history. This problem recurs across MP's career under different vocabularies — engagement (1945), reprise (1946 onward), institution (1954), true and false revolutions (AD 1955), truth-to-be-made (V&I 1959–61). The slope is the 1946 articulation; the problem-space outlives the term.

Connections

  • is the condition of intelligibility of reprise — without a slope to be picked up, reprise has nothing to take up. The two terms are introduced together in the 1946 Brussels formula.
  • is the synchronic register of which logique-de-fait is the diachronic register — the slope is what facts assume; logique de fait is the assuming.
  • is the political-register ancestor of institution — the 1946 matrix (pente + reprise + projet + logique de fait) is structurally identical to the 1954–55 institution concept. See pente-de-l-histoire-as-proto-institution (candidate).
  • contrasts with high-altitude thinking / survol — the Sirius point of view MP rejects. The slope is read from inside, not surveyed from above.
  • enacts the post-Hegelian double-front — with the Hegel of the Phänomenologie against the late Hegel; against historicism and against abstract spiritualism.
  • is a middle term between PhP's "engaged freedom" and the 1954–55 institution concept — the political articulation that links them.
  • contrasts with Sartre's "passé social en sursis" — MP's 1946 critique pre-dates the 1953 rupture.
  • enables the Roubachof case (candidate) reading in HT — Roubachof confesses because the slope of marxist history requires it; the slope is the conceptual machinery without which the [Complément] HT analysis collapses.

Open Questions

  • Does the slope appear in V&I under a different vocabulary? Working notes 1959–61 use "the unique task of the philosophy of history" idiom; whether the slope is preserved or transformed is open.
  • How does the slope relate to the late-MP Ineinander-figure? The 1946 formula "individu se fait dans l'histoire et l'histoire se fait par l'individu" has the formal profile of Ineinander; whether this is genealogical continuity or coincidental structural parallel is open. See pente-de-l-histoire-as-proto-institution (live).
  • Trotsky's own sélection naturelle — what work is the slope-vocabulary doing in Trotsky's Terrorisme et communisme, beyond the cheval-image MP cites in the Glossary (p. 466)?

Sources

  • merleau-ponty-2022-inedits-i-1946-1947 — primary; L'individu et l'histoire p. 195 is the formula's birthplace; L'existentialisme et la politique p. 211 is the explicit anti-Sartre extension; the [Complément] HT sequence pp. 218–222 is the Roubachof-test that the slope authorizes. Glossary entry "Logique de l'histoire" p. 474 (Dalissier-defined).
  • merleau-ponty-2022-inedits-ii-1947-1949 — extends the slope vocabulary into the PPH course's individu de classe matrix: "il y a logique de l'histoire non qu'elle aille toujours à conclusions mais parce qu'elle élimine d'elle-même les fausses solutions" (PPH p. 188); the [Aron] segment culminates in "Logique au sens d'élimination de l'impossible. Structures en histoire, non fatum logique" (PPH p. 192). The 1949 NY Pensée politique tests the slope against the bipolar conjuncture (the 1949 No man's land suspends the slope's positive function).
  • merleau-ponty-1955-adventures-of-the-dialectic — the slope vocabulary is consolidated; the 1946 formula descends to AD's "revolutions are true as movements and false as regimes" (AD p. 207).
  • chouraqui-2025-healing-schneider — uses the slope (under the sens du réel vs respect du réel distinction) as the diagnostic for MP's "higher seriousness" of engaged play; cites the Inédits at relevant points. See mp-play-as-higher-seriousness-not-cynicism (live).