Does MP replace consciousness with the unconscious, or only radicalize non-representational consciousness?

Saint Aubert (E&C II Ch VI) defends a replacement thesis: the late MP — across Notes sur le corps (1960), Notes de travail (1959–61), and the Visible and Invisible working notes — systematically substitutes "unconscious" for "consciousness" as the term naming our primordial openness to being. The substitution is not terminological drift but a deliberate restructuring: "body, unconscious, being" replaces "mind, consciousness, object" as MP's anthropological-ontological triad. The cardinal text: EM3 [247]v(32): "la perception est le véritable inconscient"; PbPassiv p. 247/259: "l'inconscient = excès du perceptif sur le notionnel".

The contested status of this question reflects a real disagreement among MP readers about what the late MP is doing — not a disagreement about evidence (the late MP's increasing use of "unconscious" is undisputed), but about what the use means. The question matters because the answer determines whether the late MP is closer to Freud (replacement reading) or to Husserl (radicalization reading).

Saint Aubert's Replacement Reading

Saint Aubert's argument has four pillars:

  1. MSME 1953 already oscillates. MP's 1953 Le monde sensible et le monde de l'expression (extraction note Arg 14, lines 870–899) already shows the oscillation between refonte (rework, MSME p. 143) and abandon (MSME p. 51) of "consciousness." The late MP's substitution is the working-out of a tension already present in 1953.

  2. The Gurwitsch protest forces a decision. As argued in the Gurwitsch question page, Gurwitsch's 1957 protest "une conscience anté-prédicative... est une conscience tout de même" makes the refonte path unsustainable. MP must either keep consciousness (and reintroduce a second consciousness every time he tries to make it non-thematic) or abandon the term. The late notes show abandonment.

  3. The cardinal substitution texts. Three key texts make the replacement explicit:

    • EM3 [247]v(32): "la perception est le véritable inconscient" — perception is no longer a mode of consciousness but identified with the unconscious.
    • PbPassiv p. 247/259: "l'inconscient = excès du perceptif sur le notionnel" — the unconscious is the carnal-perceptual excess over the conceptual.
    • NTi [317] ("Cours 1959"): "Les rapports d'un individu avec son inconscient sont rapports avec l'indestructible, i.e. non un ennemi de la liberté, mais le champ de la liberté" — the unconscious is the field of freedom (replacing the consciousness that was its organ).

  4. The "inconscient d'ek-stase / inconscient d'état" pair. N-Corps 86: "l'inconscient d'état, tenant à notre incarnation". Saint Aubert reads this as the late MP's positive account of what the unconscious is: not the Freudian repressed, not the Lacanian language-structure, but the body's own indestructible memory — the libidinal schema corporel that underwrites both memory and freedom.

The triad replacement: mind → body, consciousness → unconscious, object → being. Each side is the radical alternative to the side it replaces.

The Radicalization Reading

The opposing reading (more common in pre-Saint Aubert MP scholarship, defended explicitly by some of Barbaras's texts and implicit in Dastur's reading) treats the same texts differently:

  1. MP keeps "consciousness" alongside "unconscious" in the late notes. The vocabulary is layered, not substituted. MP uses unconscious to name the non-thematic depth of consciousness, not to replace consciousness.

  2. The "perception est le véritable inconscient" formula is provocative, not programmatic. It names what is structurally identical between perception and the Freudian unconscious (a non-thematic depth) without claiming that perception is the unconscious in the Freudian sense.

  3. MP's lifelong commitment to phenomenology requires consciousness as a methodological concept. To abandon consciousness would be to abandon phenomenology — and the late MP, despite his anti-Husserl notes, never abandons the phenomenological method. The unconscious is therefore an internal radicalization of consciousness, not its replacement.

  4. The triad replacement reads MP through Saint Aubert's own psychoanalytic lens. Saint Aubert is a Catholic psychoanalytic reader of MP; the replacement thesis fits his project. A more neutral reader might find the same texts compatible with a radicalized phenomenology of non-representational consciousness.

What's at Stake

The two readings have different consequences for how the late MP is positioned:

  • Replacement reading: late MP is closer to Freud than to Husserl. The unconscious is a positive ontological category, and the late MP is a post-phenomenological thinker.
  • Radicalization reading: late MP is the culmination of the phenomenological tradition. The unconscious is a limit-concept for non-thematic consciousness, and the late MP is the deepest Husserlian.

The same texts support both readings — which is why the question is contested. The text enables either reading because MP's terminology in 1959–61 is in flux. Saint Aubert's archival reconstruction tilts the evidence toward replacement (especially through the NMS [136], EM3 [247]v(32), and N-Corps 86 formulations); the radicalization reading rests more on continuity with MP's earlier work and on the methodological argument that phenomenology needs consciousness.

A Mediating Position

A possible mediation: the late MP replaces the term "consciousness" but keeps the function. What he names "unconscious" is doing what phenomenologists called "consciousness" in its non-thematic mode. The substitution is then philological (a change of vocabulary) rather than substantive (a change of doctrine). On this reading, the disagreement between Saint Aubert and the radicalization readers is partly verbal: they are looking at the same operation under different names.

But this mediation has costs of its own. If the change is only philological, why does MP make it? Saint Aubert's answer: the term "consciousness" carries with it the folie de la conscience (see idole) — the historical baggage of Cartesian survol. Changing the term is therefore part of the practice of refusing the ontologie de l'objet. On this view, the change of vocabulary is substantive after all because philosophical vocabulary is sedimented practice, not neutral labeling.

Open

  • A test of Saint Aubert's reading: do the late MP's manuscripts ever use both "consciousness" and "unconscious" in the same technical role? If yes, the replacement reading weakens. If no, the replacement reading is strengthened.
  • Lacanian critique: Lacan's "inconscient structuré comme un langage" postdates MP's death (the Écrits of 1966 are the systematic statement). MP's "unconscious" cannot be simply Lacanian. Is it pre-Lacanian Freud (drives, libido, Trieb)? Or is it sui generis?
  • Does the replacement thesis make the late MP a psychoanalytic thinker in a strong sense? Saint Aubert's other work (L'incarnation change tout, the 2008 article on théologie explicative) suggests he reads MP through a specifically Christian-psychoanalytic framework. The radicalization reading would resist this framing.

Connections

  • anchors inconscient-primordial — Saint Aubert's central reconstruction of the unconscious as MP's positive concept.
  • related to did-gurwitsch-cause-mp-anti-husserl-turn — the Gurwitsch causation question is the external trigger for what this question describes as the internal substitution.
  • contests the standard radicalization reading — Barbaras, Dastur, much of the Anglophone MP scholarship.
  • operates within the broader rejection of the ontologie de l'objet — the consciousness-unconscious substitution is part of MP's larger refusal of the en face posture.
  • contrasts with good-ambiguity's "philosophy of consciousness" diagnosis — both Saint Aubert and the late MP himself converge on the diagnosis; the question is what replaces the philosophy of consciousness.

Sources

  • saintaubert-2021-etre-et-chair-ii — Ch VI §§ 1–5 is the systematic locus. Especially § 1c (genealogy from MSME 1953); § 3 L'inconscient excessif; § 4 Le corps et l'inconscient; § 5 Un inconscient d'ek-stase with subsections c) De la dépossession au oui initial and d) Inconscient et foi perceptive.
  • merleau-ponty-1968-visible-and-invisible — the published working notes are the most accessible site for the late MP's oscillation. See pp. 240–270 (the working notes, 1959–60).
  • merleau-ponty-2010-institution-and-passivity — Le problème de la passivité (1955) already contains the cardinal formula "l'inconscient = excès du perceptif sur le notionnel" (PbPassiv p. 247/259).
  • Primary archival refs (via Saint Aubert): EM3 [247]v(32), N-Corps 85, 86, 87, 88, [102]; NTi [317]; MSME p. 51, p. 143; PbPassiv p. 247/259, 133/NP, [235]/NP.