Ultra-chose

MP's ontological-phenomenological term for the modality of every perceived thing: irrécusable et inaccessible, given in flesh yet always held at a lointain. Borrowed from Wallon's 1945 developmental psychology (against Piaget's ideal of the objet permanent) and radicalised by MP from the 1949-52 Sorbonne course through the 1959-60 Être et Monde manuscripts, until the formula stabilises: il faut que la chose soit ultra-chose pour être perçue.

Key Points

  • Not a class of things, but the status of every thing. Wallon meant particular inaccessibles (the dead, one's parents, one's self, astronomical scale); MP universalises: toute chose est ultra-chose (PhiDial 1956).
  • Not defined by limitation but by positivity. For Wallon the ultra-chose marks the child's cognitive incapacity; for MP, its inaccessibility is the condition of perceptual success, not a deficit. The thing crystallises the inexhaustible.
  • Against the ontology of the object. The ultra-chose refuses observability as the criterion of the real. The thing "est là tout en étant au-delà, pleine mais inépuisable". See donation-en-chair.
  • Structurally paired with prégnance. The ultra- chose gives the object side of what prégnance gives on the body side: inexhaustibility in the perceived, reaching toward inexhaustibility in the perceiver.
  • Five-stage genealogy (Saint Aubert Ch III): (a) 1949-50 Sorbonne negative characterisation — what is not à la portée; (b) 1951-52 positive opening — "des horizons de réalité dont l'enfant ne doute pas" (Sorb(MPE) 512); (c) 1952-56 generalisation — vision in depth encounters l'ordre des ultra-choses (S(LIVS) 61-62); (d) 1959 universal thesis — toute chose est ultra-chose (PhiDial 16); (e) 1960 culminating inversion — il faut que nous soyons nous-mêmes ultra-choses (EM2 186) for perception to succeed.

Details

Against Piaget

Piaget's objet permanent is conquered by the construction of representation and the motor-sensory apprenticeship of reversibility; the object is the terminus of a progressive détermination de l'indétermination, the idéal of observation and maîtrise. MP rejects the very trajectory: not every thing can become object, and even the apparently-object is internally structured by un-observability.

"La différence entre adulte et enfant n'est pas celle d'une mentalité logique à une mentalité prélogique. C'est seulement celle d'un monde perçu qui comporte peu d'ultra-choses (...) à un monde enfantin qui en comporte un grand nombre" (Sorb(SCCE), p. 243).

The dispute is sharpened by MP's concurrent reading of Wallon and appropriation of the 1949-52 Sorbonne chair of child psychology (which Piaget will assume after MP). MP sees in Piaget a "psychologie de la conscience" whose adult-centred method distorts its object: the child's world is interrogated from the objectivisme of the adult, blocking recognition of the positive pre-objective structure.

Against Sartre and the ontology of the object

Saint Aubert reads ultra-chose as the concept by which MP breaks with the ontology of observable being that he attributes to Sartre, Descartes, and (surprisingly) Piaget — the "hypercartésiens" (Saint Aubert's term). If being is plenitude-without-lacunes, then everything must in principle be observable; an ultra-chose would be an obstruction to ontology. MP's move is the inverse: ultra-chose is not an obstruction but the modality of what is, and the stimulus of perceptual-faith and desire.

The "ontologie de l'objet" is critiqued in MP's late manuscripts as "soutenue par des conduites de fuite (de l'indétermination) et de sauvegarde (de la détermination)", as the refusal of the condition humaine, aux prises avec l'adversité et l'indétermination" (Saint Aubert Ch III § 2a, reading NMS 50, EM3 [232]v(2), NL-Arnh2 4).

The positive content: crystallisation of the inexhaustible

The ultra-chose is "cristallisation de l'inépuisable". The thing is present only to the extent that it is not totally given:

"Paradoxe : la chose est là, je la vois, ramassée en elle-même, leibhaft, et par principe cette plénitude n'est visible que de loin : de près il n'y a jamais que des aspects. Toutes les choses sont «ultra-choses», hors de nos prises, dans le «lointain» et c'est de cette absence que je suis rendu certain par leur présence" (PhiDial 13).

This paradox is structural: the thing's irrécusabilité requires a certain absence / lointain. Approach collapses the gestalt into aspects; distance is what permits the thing to be a thing. Inseparable from MP's reading of depth, where the third dimension is what permits the figure to be a figure.

The ultimate turn: we ourselves are ultra-choses

The 1960 sequence of Être et Monde (EM2 186) closes the chain: for us to perceive an ultra-chose, we must ourselves become ultra-choses. Our own profondeur must answer the thing's. The perceiving flesh is internally structured by the same unobservability as the perceived thing. This is the site where ultra-chose converges with the inconscient: our own indétermination is the organ of the other's.

Connection to the imaginary

Ch III is continuous with Ch II (La texture imaginaire du réel): the ultra-chose is perceived "dans l'eau-mère silencieuse de la profondeur et de l'horizon, portée par l'indétermination du fond", and this requires imaginary investment. "Voir, c'est imaginer; imaginer, c'est voir" (EM2, 1959). The real is not thinned out by imagination but constituted through it. See sensible-ideas.

Positions

  • Saint Aubert's reading (novel): ultra-chose is MP's ontological-modal category, developed in five progressive stages 1949-1960, structurally paired with prégnance and donation-en-chair as the tripartite infrastructure of MP's late ontology.
  • Wallon's original (1945): ultra-choses are a class of realities ("la mort, nos parents, nous-mêmes") that resist the child's objectivation — an anthropological-developmental, not ontological, category.
  • Dufourcq / Kristensen (2016, cited by Saint Aubert in Ch III fn 1 p. 119): earlier treatment of the ultra-chose in the context of "phénoménologies de l'imaginaire"; Saint Aubert's E&C II is the "largement remaniée et complétée" version.

Connections

  • extends Wallon's Les origines de la pensée chez l'enfant (1945) — from anthropology to ontology.
  • critiques Piaget's objet permanent and the conversion of ultra-choses into objects.
  • contrasts with Sartre's criterion of observability in L'Imaginaire; see donation-en-chair.
  • is paired with prégnance — the body-side correlate; together they form MP's answer to Husserlian Erfüllung.
  • applies visible-invisible at the object-pole.
  • converges with perceptual-faith — the foi interrogative is oriented toward ultra-choses: "il ne suffit pas, et ne se suffit pas à lui-même" (Saint Aubert Épilogue § 1c).
  • develops the non-être ingrédient de l'être at the thing-pole.
  • is a case of the épreuve mutuelle.

Open Questions

  • How does MP's "il faut que nous soyons nous-mêmes ultra-choses" interact with his late concept of perceptual unconscious and with the inconscient primordial? Is being an ultra-chose the anthropological correlate of being an inconscient d'ek-stase?
  • Does ultra-chose survive a non-Sartrean Husserl reading? Saint Aubert shows MP's rejection of Husserl's Erfüllung is filtered through the Sartre polemic; a direct Husserl-reading (e.g., via Gurwitsch's objections in Ch IV § 2) might restore a legitimate place for Husserlian leibhaft that ultra-chose does not need to displace.
  • How strictly does the 5-stage chronology hold? The stages are chronological but also conceptual; some 1960 texts echo 1949-52 formulations, suggesting accumulation rather than replacement.

Being itself as ultra-chose par excellence (Saint Aubert 2023)

The 2023 paper extends the ultra-chose argument: being itself is the 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" (Saint Aubert 2023, III.2, p. 21). This formulation places ultra-chose at the centre of being's ouvrant gesture (cf. portance §"The four gestures of being's portance"): being acts as de-determination, "inobjectivable et désobjectivant", protecting things from objectification not by removing them from accessibility but by holding them within an inexhaustible indetermination. The ouvrant gesture is the systematized version of the ultra-chose argument applied to being itself.

"Pour accéder aux choses, nous sommes invités à nous laisser dilater et transporter par les ultra-choses. L'être ouvre notre chair au-delà de nos projections, de nos représentations et affects — au-delà de nos états psychologiques. Exposés aux ultra-choses, nous sommes poussés à déposer nos tendances objectivantes et fétichisantes, à renoncer à l'impossible détermination exhaustive de l'indétermination, à l'impossible possession de la présence : à nous libérer de ce qui nous fait en réalité manquer la présentation de ce qui est." (Saint Aubert 2023, p. 21)

Sources