Surrection

A metaphorical figure developed in Merleau-Ponty's late work and analyzed extensively by Emmanuel de Saint Aubert (*Poetic of the World*, Ch 2). Surrection names the vertical emergence through which desire's insurrections and resurrections deliver us upright into being — "a light at the top of this incredible arrangement that is the human body." De Saint Aubert argues it replaces Ineinander as the privileged ontological schema in the unpublished late manuscripts, breaking the circularity of the enveloping-enveloped with a vertical, birth-oriented dynamic.

Key Points

• Combines insurrection and resurrection: "Surrection or insurrection or resurrection . . . this fertility or productivity" (1955 Passivity course). Desire's capacity for uprising through adversity — not despite frustration but through it.
• Connects unconscious, corporeity, and desire: "The unconscious = modality of embodiment, i.e., of repressed desire—Upheaval [Surrection] of the unconscious and erection of the body" (unpublished notes).
• The ontological formula: "Ontology is the attempt to formulate this nascence and co-naissance, to find that which is beyond naturalism and idealism, to portray man as he really is: not the sketch of an absolute subjectivity, but a surrection, a light at the top of this incredible arrangement that is the human body" (EM1, Being and World, 1958).
• Against Sartre's divine freedom: Where Sartre transposes divine freedom onto human consciousness, MP emphasizes perpetual birth and surrection. "Man appears as an awake being, we cannot talk about him as though he were not born, as though he were never asleep."
• Breaks the circularity of Ineinander: De Saint Aubert argues surrection names a vertical emergence that the horizontal Ineinander (mutual enveloping) cannot capture. The flesh arises in the depths of the world — it does not merely circulate within them.

Details

From Ineinander to Surrection

De Saint Aubert's argument (Ch 2, §"Desire and Flesh of the World" and §"Epilogue: Being and Desire") is that the Ineinander — mutual inherence, the enveloping-enveloped — describes the topology of flesh but not its dynamics. The Ineinander risks a "molluscan ontology" if taken as the final word: an indefinite circulation without genuine birth or separation. Surrection names the moment when the circularity breaks open into emergence: coupling leads to pregnancy, pregnancy to birth, birth to standing-upright-in-being.

The textual evidence comes from unpublished manuscripts (1955 Passivity course, Being and World 1958, Notes on the Body 1960). The published V&I does not use the term "surrection," relying instead on Ineinander and chiasm vocabulary. This makes the claim contested: it depends on reading the unpublished corpus as representing a development beyond the published late work.

The three cognate terms (E&C II Ch I § 1b)

Saint Aubert's 2021 volume expands the textual base. MP's Le problème de la passivité (1955) deploys surrection alongside three cognate terms that register its distinct dimensions:

• érection — the corporal-libidinal register
• insurrection — the social-political register
• résurrection — the spiritual-theological register

All four verbs se relever in distinct but related ways; MP uses them together to insist that the carnal "rising" engages multiple dimensions simultaneously. "La liberté de l'homme épouse la logique d'une vie 'dont toute la substance a toujours été surrection continuée prescrite par la naissance'" (PhiDial 40, preparation of 23 Feb 1956 lecture).

Paired with volant

Saint Aubert argues surrection is structurally paired with *volant*: surrection is the active moment of the same passive-active nexus whose passive moment is the flywheel's inertia. "Le cours sur 'Le problème de la passivité' complète la figure inertielle du volant par celle, au plus haut point dynamique, de la surrection" (E&C II Ch I § 1b, p. 50). The two figures must be read together: surrection without volant is Sartrean fiat magique; volant without surrection is mere mechanical inertia.

EM1 [128] — the ontological definition

The opening of MP's Introduction à l'ontologie (autumn 1958, the first feuillet of EM1 per the initial classement):

"peindre l'homme comme il est vraiment, surgissant, dans sa situation de 'naissance et co-naissance' — non pas comme l'ébauche d'une subjectivité absolue, mais comme surrection, lumière au sommet de cet incroyable arrangement qu'est un corps humain" (EM1 [128]).

This sentence is MP's definition of ontology in 1958 — not a marginal note but a programmatic opening. Saint Aubert reads it as the condensation of MP's anti-Sartrean, anti-Cartesian turn.

The Leibniz-dormir problematic

MP's 1955 Passivity course thematizes le réveil (awakening) as the test case for surrection. Leibniz, MP notes, could not explain how one awakens to the right identity among all possible identities (PbPassiv 276/242 quoting G. I, p. 79). Sartre radicalizes this difficulty into a refus du sommeil — a refusal of the passivity of sleep. MP treats sleep as surrection's other side: one sleeps in order to rise again (renaître). The chair's endurance de la nuit (see Épilogue § 3b of E&C II) is the condition of its surrection.

Connections

• breaks open the circularity of ineinander — vertical emergence vs. horizontal mutual enveloping
• is the culminating figure of co-naissance — the co-birth that carries flesh beyond the enveloping-enveloped into genuine birth
• contrasts with Sartre's divine freedom — perpetual birth vs. absolute spontaneity
• is anticipated by the "hinge" (charnière) in institution — the hinge already implies articulated movement, not mere circulation
• is paired with volant — the active/passive axis of the same carnal nexus
• is performed through portance — the bearing of being that enables rising
• converges with inconscient-primordial — the oui initial is the unconscious's surrection toward being

Open Questions

• Does the published V&I support or resist the surrection reading? The published text relies heavily on Ineinander, chiasm, and reversibility — all horizontal figures. Is surrection a development beyond these or a complementary register?
• How does surrection relate to dehiscence? Both name a breaking-open — but dehiscence is splitting while surrection is uprising. Are they the same movement described from different angles?
• Is de Saint Aubert's emphasis on surrection over Ineinander a correction of MP or a reading back of de Saint Aubert's own concerns (especially the psychoanalytic emphasis on separation and birth)?

Common transcendence: surrection commune (Saint Aubert 2023)

The 2023 paper sharpens the commonality of surrection in the cardinal PM 118 anchor: "La transcendance, alors, ne surplombe pas l'homme, il en est étrangement le porteur privilégié" (PM 118, cited in Saint Aubert 2023, III.3, p. 24). The transcendence at stake is not something flesh ascends into from below; flesh is its porteur privilégié — the carrier-bearer-of-transcendence within the immanence of being. The 2023 formulation: immanence of being bears the transcendence of flesh — "L'immanence de l'être porte la transcendance de la chair, la rencontre de leur négativité respective produit une surrection commune".

The phrase surrection commune (common surrection) extends the individual-flesh's se relever to a shared rising — flesh and being together: "la rencontre de leur négativité respective produit une surrection commune" (Saint Aubert 2023, III.3). This is the structural counterpart to the portance commune on the supporting side (cf. portance §"Portance commune"). The two together — portance commune on the supporting side, surrection commune on the rising side — constitute the bidirectional transcendence-and-immanence of chair and être in Saint Aubert's reading.

Sources

• saintaubert-2021-etre-et-chair-ii — Ch I § 1b (pp. 47-52), the fullest treatment with the three-cognate-terms analysis and pairing with volant. Also Épilogue § 3 on "s'abandonner et surgir".
• johnson-carbone-saintaubert-2020-poetic-of-the-world — Ch 2 (de Saint Aubert): the primary treatment. Develops surrection from the 1955 Passivity course through Being and World (1958). The "Flesh of the World: Impasses" and "Epilogue: Being and Desire" sections are the key passages.
• saintaubert-2023-etre-et-chair — III.3 (p. 24) the surrection commune formulation; PM 118 anchor for common transcendence with flesh as the porteur privilégié of the immanent transcendence.