Two Ways of Being Young

Merleau-Ponty's typology of philosophical disposition, articulated in the addendum to the Preface of Signs (1960, pp. 34–35) and used by Sartre in his 1961 manuscript-draft eulogy (sartre-1984-merleau-ponty-vivant) as the structural heuristic for the entire MP/Sartre relationship. The typology distinguishes two ways of being young — childhood-fascinated and childhood-cast-out — and treats philosophical disposition as the mature articulation of one or the other orientation.

Key Points

  • The cardinal passage (Signs, pp. 34–35, quoted in full at sartre-1984-merleau-ponty-vivant p. 130): "There are two ways of being young and which do not understand one another easily: certain people are fascinated by their childhood, it possesses them, it holds them enchanted in an order of privileged possibilities. Other people are cast out from it toward adult life, they believe themselves without a past, as close as can be to all possibilities. Sartre was of the second kind…. In himself and in others he had to learn that no one is without roots and that the bias of not having any is a way of avowing them. … But the others, those who continued their childhood, or who wanted to keep it while going beyond it … they had to learn that one does not go beyond what one keeps, that nothing could return to them the totality for which they were nostalgic."
  • MP's purpose in the original passage: a public reading of Sartre's 1960 Aden Arabie preface (which prefaces the reissue of Nizan's 1931 Aden Arabie). The typology distinguishes Sartre (cast out from his childhood) from Nizan (fascinated by it but hating it) and from MP himself (fascinated and bound).
  • Sartre's 1961 use: the typology becomes Sartre's heuristic for the entire essay. MP is the child-fascinated thinker (whose mature philosophy is envelopment); Sartre is the cast-out child (whose mature philosophy is liberty). Per Sartre's structuring claim, the differential reception of Husserl's intentionality in 1934 is the philosophical surface of this deeper biographical orientation. See spontaneity-vs-liberty.
  • The methodological stake: that childhood disposition explains philosophical disposition. The assumption is asserted both by MP (in the original passage) and by Sartre (in the 1961 reading) but is not argued. The same assumption structures Sartre's Les Mots (1964, mostly written 1953 per JBSP footnote 15) and parallels MP's general account of institution (in the 1954–55 course): the subject is shaped by an instituting past whose structure conditions without determining mature articulation.
  • Anti-essentialist reading: the typology is not an essentialist claim that there are exactly two types of philosopher. It is a phenomenological typology of orientations toward childhood — and MP himself notes that Nizan does not fit cleanly into either type (Nizan is fascinated but hates Eden, hurls himself against the earth). The typology gives a frame for reading; it does not exhaustively classify.

Details

Origin and Context (1960)

The passage is in an addendum to the Signs Preface that MP wrote after reading Sartre's Aden Arabie preface. Per sartre-1984-merleau-ponty-vivant p. 130: "Not long ago, when he had just finished the preface of Signes, he happened to read an introduction that I had written for Aden Arabie: I spoke there of Nizan, of his childhood, of our youth. Merleau was struck: not by the text, but by the return to sources. He took up his pen again and added some pages to the preface."

The passage is therefore the product of a specific moment in the Sartre/MP/Nizan triangulation: Sartre 1960 reads Nizan and recants his own youth; MP 1960 reads Sartre's recantation and produces the typology to read all three. The 1961 Sartre manuscript reads MP's 1960 typology and uses it on the MP/Sartre relationship itself.

Sartre's 1961 Reading

Sartre 1961 takes MP's typology as accurately describing the MP/Sartre relationship: "Of whom was he speaking? Of me. At first" (sartre-1984-merleau-ponty-vivant p. 130). Sartre confirms MP's reading: he was the cast-out child, "fled" his own childhood, took up phenomenology with the kind of zeal that the cast-out child has for systematic alternatives to a present that has no roots in his past.

Sartre's structural claim is that MP's typology predicts their philosophical divergence. The cast-out child reads Husserl's intentionality as liberty (consciousness as nothingness escaping being); the child-fascinated thinker reads it as spontaneity (the invasion of consciousness by being and the transcendence of being by instituted meaning). The structural philosophical difference traces to the differential childhood orientation. See spontaneity-vs-liberty for the full structure.

The Methodological Assumption

Both MP and Sartre treat childhood orientation as explaining philosophical disposition without offering an argument that it does. The assumption can be questioned: a reader skeptical of the explanation can grant the typology as descriptive (some philosophers have one orientation, some another) without granting that the orientation causes the philosophy.

The wiki tracks the assumption as Sartrean and MP-onian methodology rather than as established fact. The depth-preserving observation is that both philosophers thought the assumption mattered: MP added the addendum to the Signs preface because the typology seemed to him philosophically significant; Sartre wrote the 1961 manuscript using the typology as structural heuristic. Whether they were right that childhood explains philosophical disposition is unsettled — but they were not casual about the claim.

Connections

  • is articulated by MP in the addendum to the *Signs* Preface (pp. 34–35)
  • is used as structural heuristic by Sartre in sartre-1984-merleau-ponty-vivant (p. 130 — full quotation; thereafter as frame for the entire essay)
  • grounds spontaneity-vs-liberty — Sartre's 1961 claim that the differential reception of Husserl's intentionality in 1934 is the philosophical surface of differential childhood orientation
  • parallels the methodological structure of Sartre's Les Mots (1964, mostly written 1953) — childhood-explains-disposition autobiography
  • is one register of institution — the subject's instituting past as conditioning mature articulation; the typology is the autobiographical face of the institution-of-the-self
  • contrasts with the standard MP/Sartre reception that dates the divergence to 1947–55 political drift — the typology relocates the divergence to childhood orientation expressing itself through a 1934 differential reception

Open Questions

  • Is the childhood-explains-disposition assumption defensible? Both MP and Sartre treat it nearly as axiomatic but offer no argument. A reader can grant the typology as descriptive without granting the explanatory claim.
  • Does the typology exhaust the field of philosophical disposition? MP himself notes that Nizan is neither cleanly fascinated nor cleanly cast-out — the typology gives a frame for reading rather than a classification.
  • Does the typology apply outside the MP/Sartre/Nizan triangle? MP's passage is constructed in the context of a specific 1960 occasion. Whether the typology generalizes (to other philosophers, to other periods) is unsettled by both MP and Sartre.

Sources

  • merleau-ponty-1964-signs — Preface addendum, pp. 34–35; the cardinal passage and its 1960 occasion (the Sartre/Nizan/MP triangulation).
  • sartre-1984-merleau-ponty-vivant — manuscript p. 130; the full quotation of MP's passage and Sartre's 1961 use of it as structural heuristic for the entire essay. The published Situations IV version preserves the quotation.