Portance

Saint Aubert's philosophical concept — effleurée but not thématisée in MP's late manuscripts — for the modality of being that bears and supports flesh while flesh surges from it. Announced as the subject of Saint Aubert's future post-exegetical volume; first sketch in E&C II Épilogue § 3 ("Perception et portance"). Not a substance, not a teleology; the being- supported side of the épreuve mutuelle de la chair et de l'être.

Key Points

  • Portance is MP's implicit answer to Sartre's "plénitude absolue et entière positivité". Being is not plenitude opposed to nothingness; being is what bears perceivers and things together in their différenciation, through the negativity that is "ingrédient de l'être".
  • Portance is pre-relational, not a founded relation. The chair does not decide to lean on being; being is already bearing chair and monde before any deliberate posture. This pre-predicative structure is what the "oui initial" of the inconscient primordial registers.
  • Paired with surrection. Portance is what makes surrection possible; the chair's se relever is grounded in the being that is always already tenir-bon. "S'abandonner et surgir" (Épilogue § 3a) are "les deux faces d'un même acte, puisant leur solidarité dans la complexion même, statique et dynamique, de l'appui".
  • Distinct from Heidegger's Gelassenheit. Saint Aubert notes that MP possessed Heidegger's Gelassenheit (1959) but it is unmarked in his library — contrary to MP's usual annotation habits (Saint Aubert fn 273). Portance is not a Seinlassen but a structural carnal-ontological bearing more proximate to MP's reading of perception, embryology, and prégnance.
  • The three figural registers (Épilogue § 3): (a) S'abandonner et surgir — the double dynamic of the perceiving flesh; (b) Endurer la nuit — the night as the posture of perceptive faith that sustains itself in the absence of determinations; (c) Co-naître et réaliser — knowing as co-birth in portance commune.

Details

The four gestures of being's portance (Saint Aubert 2023)

Saint Aubert 2023 introduces a typology not present in this exact form in [[saintaubert-2021-etre-et-chair-ii|E&C II]]: the portance has FOUR COMPLEMENTARY GESTURES that together constitute being's bearing-action on flesh. Where the 2021 Épilogue gave three figural registers describing flesh's POSTURE TOWARD portance (s'abandonner et surgir / endurer la nuit / co-naître et réaliser), the 2023 paper gives a complementary four-gesture decomposition describing BEING'S IMPACT ON FLESH. The two typologies are coordinate, not redundant: one for each pole of the épreuve mutuelle.

The methodological frame: Saint Aubert insists this is "*une approche métaphorique de l'être en tant que correspondant de notre chair: de l'être quoad nos et non per se" (2023, p. 20) — being-for-us, not being-in- itself. The four gestures specify being's plural functional roles in the flesh's life; without them, MP's metaphors of "sauvage", "profondeur", "fond", "horizon" remain isolated figures rather than naming a common structural function.

(1) Résistant (resistant). Being holds, contains, retains; contains us in the sense that holds-and-restrains. Resists intelligence (provokes wonder), resists liberty (allowing it to butt-against and grow). Cf. *être sauvage* — the wild Nature that "nous résiste et nous invite à l'habiter comme pour mieux nous humaniser" (2023, p. 21). "Vertical" being: a soil "suffisamment stable et résistant pour que nous puissions nous poser et nous relever". Resistance is also already opening: "La contenance de l'être est le levier d'une surrection, son enveloppement est le ressort d'un développement, sa prégnance est en vue d'une naissance" (2023, p. 21).

(2) Ouvrant (opening). Being acts as de-determination: "inobjectivable et désobjectivant". This is the [[ontology-of-the-object| ontologie de l'objet]]'s direct opponent. Cf. ultra-chose — Saint Aubert reads being itself as ultra-chose par excellence: "ce qui peut protéger toute chose de l'objectivation, jusqu'à faire d'elle (et de nous-mêmes) une ultra-chose" (2023, p. 21). Being opens flesh beyond projections, representations, and psychological states; we are "invités à nous laisser dilater et transporter par les ultra-choses". The ouvrant gesture is generalized-and-radicalized [[henri-wallon| Wallon]]'s ultra-choses against Piaget's object-construction.

(3) Écartant (separating, spacing, distancing). Being keeps beings apart, prevents fusion, enables contour and relief. "L'être donc nous espace, nous met au large, nous développe. Au passage, il nous distance: il nous dépasse (nous sommes distancés), mais aussi nous distance les uns des autres" (2023, p. 22). Like depth or shadow, both enveloping and discriminating. Being "se tient entre les êtres et les écarte, en aiguise les contours et les met en relief" — supports differentiation and thereby relation, "ménageant la distance qui les protège de la fusion". This gesture is what makes écart ontological rather than merely linguistic-structural.

(4) Reliant (binding, linking). Being holds us together in the same space, time, soil, horizon. "Nous sommes tenus ensemble dans un même espace et un même temps, limités et illimités par un même sol, bordés et débordés par un même horizon, enveloppés et écartés par une même profondeur" (2023, p. 22). The cardinal Saint Aubert formula: "*Omnitenens plutôt qu'omnipotens, l'être nous porte ensemble, et cette portance commune institue notre situation commune, permet notre accès commun au monde". The reliant gesture grounds the move from ambivalence to ambiguity: being holds us together so we can hold-together-ourselves (com-prendre with two eyes, two ears, two hands), and thereby perceive others in their irreducible unicity, in their style propre.

The four gestures cohere as plural complementary modalities of one portance. Saint Aubert presents them as a typology of MP's implicit structure, not as MP's explicit four-fold articulation; the cardinality (four) is Saint Aubert's constructive choice, not derived from MP. (See Critique below.)

Omnitenens, not omnipotens

A Saint Aubert neologism with theological force, articulated only in the 2023 paper. Omnipotens is the classical divine attribute (all-powerful), the centerpiece of *théologie explicative*. Omnitenens — "all-holding-together" — names MP's being. The shift from potens to tenens is not a softening of the divine but a structural re-orientation: power gives way to bearing, imposition to support, command to reliance. The phrase crystallizes the four-gestures typology's argumentative aim: from the survol-being that "s'impose, important sans portance" (2023, p. 23) to the bearing-being that "nous porte ensemble".

Important sans portance: the failure mode of survol-being

Saint Aubert's diagnostic single-attestation phrase (2023, p. 23) for the failure mode of survol-being: "un être de surplomb qui s'impose, important sans portance". The wordplay (important meaning "imposing/lording over," contrasted with portance as structural bearing) names the theological-metaphysical being that "s'impose" but cannot bear flesh — Sartre's En-soi, Leibniz's perfectissimum, the Dieu de survol. Such a being "nous ne pouvons ni l'éprouver ni le mettre à l'épreuve". The phrase functions as the negative characterization of portance: portance is not what survol-being lacks, it is the structural alternative.

Portance commune (the silent key)

The single attestation of "cette portance commune" (2023, p. 22) extends the reliant gesture from structural to anthropological load-bearing. Portance commune is what institutes our common situation and grants common access to the world — it is the bridge between being's binding function and the strong claim that "l'être aussi nous fait humains, et pas seulement autrui" (2023, p. 25). Common portance is the load-bearing connector that makes Saint Aubert's anti-Hegelian humanism (being humanizes, not only the other does) intelligible.

The hidden question of Ch V

The bifid prégnance of Ch V — gestaltist and ontological — opens onto portance because prégnance cannot be self-grounding. The force of form presupposes a bearing by which figures and perceivers are held together in differentiation. Being "tient debout devant nous" (S(Berg) 240) and nous met debout by the same movement. Without portance, prégnance would collapse into geometry; without prégnance, portance would collapse into substrate.

The perceptual faith interpreted as interrogative bearing

Saint Aubert's Épilogue § 2 connects portance to perceptual-faith via the foi interrogative equation: the carnal Cogito Où suis-je et quelle heure est-il? (Claudel, recurring 13 times in VI preparation) interrogates our attaches. But the attaches are not equal fibers in a relational net: they are bearings sustained by the profondeur and horizon that "nous précèdent, nous circonviennent, nous portent" (NMS 51). The interrogation interrogates the portance it already stands within.

Against "monism of flesh"

The Épilogue § 3a explicitly demarcates:

"La dramaturgie merleau-pontienne de la vie perceptive est ainsi celle d'une chair s'appuyant sur l'être qui porte le monde et nous porte ensemble avec lui. Interpréter l'ontologie de Merleau-Ponty exige de différencier ces trois concepts, à l'écart de certaines lectures tendant à confondre être et monde, ou encore chair et être, voire les trois dans un monisme latent de la chair du monde, sautant à pieds joints sur tout l'effort de l'auteur pour différencier ma chair et l'être, l'être et le monde lui-même."

Portance is the name for what binds and separates ma chair, chair du monde, monde, and être without resolving them into identity. It is MP's "autre logique de la lumière" — the clair-obscur in which l'invisible rend visible — applied to the support register.

Textual warrant: NMS and OE

Saint Aubert draws primary textual support from La Nature ou le monde du silence (NMS 51/27-[27]v(6)): being "est déjà là avant elles [les choses], les précède, les fonde, fait la jointure de l'une à l'autre et à l'intérieur de chacune"; being "nous précède, nous circonvient, nous porte, et porte pêle-mêle avec nous d'autres hommes". And from L'Œil et l'Esprit: the "aménagement d'un creux" of the eye is the berceau de la vision — a portance-of-the-organ-by-the-body that reduplicates the larger portance-of-the-body-by-being.

Announced for a future book

Saint Aubert repeatedly signals that the full philosophical treatment of portance is reserved for a next book operating beyond MP exegesis, with cliniques as new methodological base. The Épilogue § 3 passages are therefore a transition — exegesis of MP tilts toward Saint Aubert's own speculative proposal.

Positions

  • Saint Aubert's reading (novel): portance is MP's implicit organising concept, retrievable across NMS, OE, OntoCart, and the Notes sur le corps, but never thematised; Saint Aubert's task is to perform the thematisation MP did not. The 2023 paper articulates the four-gestures decomposition (résistant / ouvrant / écartant / reliant) as the systematic typology — present in dispersed form across E&C II Chs. III–V, brought together for the first time in this public-facing article.
  • Counter-reading: If portance is constructed by Saint Aubert rather than found in MP, then the Épilogue is already post-exegetical. On this reading, E&C II ends with a philosophical proposal made after the exegesis, not an exegetical conclusion. The 2023 paper sharpens this question: the four-gestures cardinality (FOUR, not three or five) is Saint Aubert's choice; a different reader could collapse écartant and reliant (since both name being's between-position) or add a fifth (e.g., nourrissant or exposant). Saint Aubert does not argue for exhaustiveness or non-redundancy.

Connections

  • extends perceptual-faith — the foi interrogative is faith-in- portance.
  • is paired with surrection — s'abandonner et surgir as the two faces of one act.
  • grounds épreuve mutuelle — what allows flesh and being to test each other without either collapsing.
  • develops the unpublished La Nature ou le monde du silence (NMS) as MP's primary source on being-as-support.
  • contrasts with Heidegger's Gelassenheit — portance is carnal, not linguistic-historical.
  • is a case of redoubled-negation — the negativity "ingrédient de l'être" is what makes portance efficient, not inert.
  • applies visible-invisible to the support register: the invisible bears the visible.
  • should not be assimilated to a "flesh-monism" — see claims#ontologie-de-la-chair-misnomer (live claim); MP's late ontology is a three-term dramaturgie (notre chair / le monde / l'être), and portance is being's bearing-action between the three terms, not within a single chair-monism.
  • may be articulated as four gestures (résistant / ouvrant / écartant / reliant) per Saint Aubert 2023 III.2 — see claims#portance-four-gestures-typology (candidate, see status — cardinality is constructive); the typology gives portance a possible internal architecture.
  • connects to a strict-anti-monism reading where être ≠ chair and être ≠ monde — see claims#etre-not-monde-but-rends-sensible-monde (candidate); l'être makes the world sensible without coinciding with the world or with chair.

Open Questions

  • Is portance a concept of MP or of Saint Aubert? The Épilogue oscillates. The reader should hold both interpretations until the future volume arrives: (i) portance is implicit in the MP manuscripts Saint Aubert surveys; (ii) portance is Saint Aubert's constructive proposal beginning where MP's exegesis ends. Very likely both are true in varying degrees.
  • How does portance relate to institution? Both are non-constituting sources-of-coherence. Beith's institution-passivity-institution loop and Saint Aubert's abandon-surrection-portance triad may be compatible or even translatable.
  • Does portance have a temporal index? The "endurer la nuit" sub-section suggests yes — portance sustains itself through determinative void, which is a temporal structure. Does this align with generative-passivity?

Sources

  • saintaubert-2021-etre-et-chair-ii — Épilogue § 3 (pp. 322-336); also Ch III fin (portance et anti-portance des ultra-choses, pp. 140 sq., not surveyed here), and passing mentions across Ch V and VI. The three figural registers of flesh's posture toward portance.
  • saintaubert-2023-etre-et-chair — III.2 (pp. 20–22) the four-gestures typology (résistant / ouvrant / écartant / reliant); III.3 (pp. 23–25) the important sans portance diagnostic, the omnitenens-omnipotens distinction, and the portance commune extension. The single public- facing anchor for the four-gestures decomposition.
  • MP primary: NMS, OE, OntoCart, N-Corps, NPVIf, Brouil — all unpublished or posthumously edited.