The Thinking of the Sensible: Merleau-Ponty's A-Philosophy

Author(s): Mauro Carbone Year: 2004 Type: book (commentary; collection of reworked essays)

Mauro Carbone's first English-language synthesis of Merleau-Ponty's late ontology under the heading of a-philosophy — the book that introduces the framing the wiki has been previously attributing to Carbone's Flesh of Images (2011/2015) and Philosophy-Screens (2016/2019). The four chapters reconstruct MP's late project as four interrupted dialogues: with Husserl-Proust on time (Ch 1), with Hegel on the idea of philosophy (Ch 2), with Uexküll-Proust-Rimbaud on the concept of nature and the new theory of ideas (Ch 3), and with Heidegger and (indirectly) Kant on letting-be (Ch 4). The book closes with an etymological-philological argument that traces MP's recurrent term creux (hollow) back to the Latin conceptus (concavity, basin) against the German Begriff (grasping) — the philological key to the programmatic "open the concept without destroying it" (S 174/138).

Core Arguments

  1. Claim: The "mutation of the relationship between humanity and Being" (OE 63/139) is the master frame that unifies MP's late writings; the chiasm is the formula of this mutation. Because: The single working-note definition — "every relation with being is simultaneously a taking and a being taken, the hold is held, it is inscribed and inscribed in the same being that it takes hold of" (VI 319/266) — unifies four distinct registers of MP's late thought: psychoanalysis (conscious-unconscious), quantum physics (measurer-measured), painting and literature ("new bond" with the visible, NC 190), and the new theory of ideas (sensible ideas drawn from Proust). Each register is a different symptom of one structural pattern. Against: Reading MP's late writings as discrete contributions to separate domains. The unity-of-late-MP thesis is what allows the book to read the four chapters as parts of one project rather than four separate essays.

  2. Claim: PhP's account of subjectivity-as-temporality is broken — not merely deepened — by the V&I "Indestructible Past" working note (April 1960, VI 296/243). The break replaces Husserl's continuity-line model of time with a gestaltist field of presence whose figure-ground structure makes forgetting-as-discontinuity a positive structural feature, not an exception. Because: The April 1960 note speaks of "architectonic past… mythical time, time before time, the prior life, 'farther than India and China'" — naming an intemporal past the retention-protention diagram cannot represent. Husserl's diagram still presupposes "a place of absolute contemplation" (VI 297/243). MP's gestaltist model surpasses the continuity-discontinuity opposition through transcendence-as-divergence (écart). Against: Reading the V&I-era position on time as continuous with PhP's. The continuity claim is broken by the April 1960 note; PhP's "I function by construction" (S 21/14) gets re-grounded outside the philosophy of Erlebnisse.

  3. Claim: Subjectivity, on the new ontology, is a hollow (creux) hollowed out by the woof of sensible differentiations — neither Cartesian substance nor Sartrean nothingness. The "passivity of our activity" (VI 274/221) names this hollow's structural form. Because: The Uexküll-Proust convergence on the melody that sings itself (N 228/173–74) gives the figural-ontological form: "the body is suspended in what it sings, the melody incarnates itself and finds in the body a type of servant." The hollow is not a receptacle of the idea but is one and the same as the idea's advent: "activity and passivity coupled" (VI 314/261). Subjectivity is therefore a resonance chamber for our encounter with the flesh of the world, not a position in front of the world. Against: Both (i) the modern subject as constituting consciousness placed before the object, and (ii) Sartrean nothingness ("hole") as filled by the plenitude of being. Carbone's hollow is neither substance nor void.

  4. Claim: MP's commentary on Hegel's "Einleitung" (preserved in the 1960–61 preparatory notes, NC 272–342) is a self-interpretation — MP's own indirect formulation of his "idea of philosophy" via reading Hegel's argument. The convergence of Hegel and Husserl on the Urdoxa / Urglaube — "from the beginning, the absolute was already in and for itself close to us of its own accord" (NC 296/30) — is the structural form of MP's "ascent at the spot" (VI 231/177). Because: Lefort's reading: MP's commentary "s'inscrit dans un travail d'auto-interprétation" — Hegel becomes MP's mirror. The positive idea of hyper-reflection (surréflexion) is articulated negatively against Hegel's §15 betrayal: where Hegel's philosopher introduces a Zutat (addendum, NC 308 n. 63) — a "violent dogmatism" that knows experience better than experience knows itself — MP's hyper-reflection deepens by layering, not by stepping outside. Against: Both the continuous-Hegel reading (Hegel's project breaks at §15, but §§13–14 survive as the model) and the regional-historical reading of MP's Hegel commentary (it is a philosophical event, not historical exegesis).

  5. Claim: The convergence of Uexküll's Umwelt-as-melody-singing-itself and Proust's musical idea (the petite phrase of Vinteuil's sonata) yields the new theory of ideas: the sensible idea is a "transtemporal and transspatial element" (N 230/176) that shines through its samples — neither Platonic essence nor empiricist generalization. Because: A melody is prior to causalism and finalism — "the first note is possible only because of the last, and vice versa" (N 228/174) names a retroactive temporal interdependence that no pre-established teleology can specify in advance. The melody is therefore the structural form of a generality that "is not contained in any one of [the notes] and which binds them together internally" (SC 96/87). Each thing as generality is a sensible idea (p. 36). Against: Both Plato's intelligible-sun model and Hume's habit-association generalization. The sensible idea is prior to the abstractness-empiricism opposition, and to the activity-passivity opposition that grounds both causalism and finalism.

  6. Claim: Voyance — clairvoyance, "double sight" — is MP's technical term for the gnoseological register of the new ontology. It "renders present to us what is absent" (OE 41/132) and "sees the invisible in the visible." It is not second sight directed at the intelligible. Because: The term, single-attestation in Eye and Mind but recurrent in NC 1960–61, draws on Rimbaud's Lettre du voyant via Max Ernst's transference of the formula to painting: "the painter's role is to circumscribe and project what is making itself seen within himself" (Charbonnier, Le Monologue du peintre I, 34). The structure is seeing as complying-with the self-showing of the sensible, not as representing-by-frontal-positioning (Heidegger's Vor-stellung). MP extends voyance from painting to speech via Rimbaud, Claudel, Valéry, Saint-John Perse, and Claude Simon: "moderns make of poetry also a voyance" (NC 183). Against: (a) Cartesian "vision as a kind of thought stimulated by images"; (b) Heideggerian Vor-stellung and its assujettissement; (c) reductions of voyance to a regional aesthetic device. Voyance is the structure of vision as such, not a special faculty of artists or seers.

  7. Claim: MP's letting-be (laisser-être) is beneath the activity-passivity distinction (the "initial yes, the undividedness of feeling," RC 179/198–99) — not "beyond" it as Arendt reads Heidegger's Gelassenheit. Because: Heidegger's Conversation on a Country Path about Thinking (1944–45) treats Gelassenheit as the purpose of disinterested thinking — purposiveness-toward-Gelassenheit (rather than the revocation of purposiveness). This still trades on a residual activity-passivity oscillation ("this restless to and fro between yes and no," Discourse on Thinking 75/57). MP's letting-be, by contrast, is initiated by what Henri Maldiney calls the événement-avènement of appearing — the "event-advent" that functions as an aesthetic shock, suspending our habits and dispossessing us of the ability to distinguish reciprocally between active and passive. Against: Arendt's "beyond" reading of Gelassenheit in The Life of the Mind (LM 2:178). The "beyond" reading misses the residual will-structure in Heidegger's text. This is the cardinal corrective claim of Ch 4 — the move that allows Carbone to read MP's letting-be as more radical than Heidegger's, not as a Heideggerian inheritance.

  8. Claim: The "showing by words" (VI 319/266) characteristic of MP's late philosophical language is the resignification of the concept along the lines of the baroque configuration of the sensible — "in which every taking is simultaneously a being taken and feeling is in reality a letting-be." Because: MP's "philosophical problem" (S 174/138) is "to open the concept without destroying it." The Begriff carries grasping (greifen) in its etymology; what MP needs is a concept-form that does not pretend to "intellectual possession of the world" while still doing rigorous work. The baroque world (vs Renaissance perspective) is the form of the sensible against representational frontality (S 228/181). Buci-Glucksmann's La Folie du voir: De l'esthétique baroque (1986) systematized this for MP scholarship. Against: Both abandoning the concept (Bergsonian intuitionism, mysticism, anti-rationalism) and keeping the concept as Begriff (Cartesian-Kantian-Husserlian conceptuality). MP's a-philosophical thinking is between, beneath, or across these two failures.

  9. Claim: The Latin conceptus (concavity, hollow that can function as a basin) is etymologically opposed to the German Begriff (grasping, greifen). MP's recurrent use of creux for the relationship between thinking and Being recovers — explicitly via Mario Perniola's reading of Baltasar Graciàn's baroque theory of the concept — the conceptus-meaning of "concept" against the Begriff-meaning. This is the philological key to the entire open-the-concept-without-destroying-it project. Because: Perniola (Presentazione to Graciàn's L'acutezza e l'arte dell'ingegno 1986, p. 19): "Twentieth-century philosophy usually considers the term 'concept' as the translation of the German word 'Begriff'… we say 'concept,' but we think Begriff: what escapes us is that the word of Latin origin has an opposite semantic orientation." Conceptus underlies (a) the Latin verb concipio meaning "to be pregnant," and (b) the use indicating "receiving something into one's spirit, one's thought, one's sense." Concavity is therefore "a crucial feature of the basic meaning of conceptus." MP's creux recovers this meaning. "To conceive does not mean to take possession of anything, but rather to create space for something" (Perniola 19; Carbone p. 47). Against: The unexamined assumption that concept = Begriff. Carbone-via-Perniola argues this elision is the very erasure that the modern Begriff performs: Begriff-as-grasping has eaten conceptus-as-hollow in twentieth-century philosophy. This is the closing argument of the book and the philological key to the entire a-philosophy project.

Argumentative Movement

The book moves through four interrupted dialogues (Carbone's own term, Preface xvii), each chapter taking up one axis of MP's late project:

  • Ch 1 — Husserl-Proust on time: From PhP's continuity-of-time framework (still consciousness-of-temporality) to V&I's architectonic past (an intemporal past mythical-time-of-brute-being). The April 1960 "Indestructible Past" working note is the break-point. Proust's "embodied time" (R 3:1046) and MP's spatializing-temporalizing vortex (VI 298/244) replace Husserl's retention-protention diagram.

  • Ch 2 — Hegel on a-philosophy: From Pascal's "true philosophy scoffs at philosophy" (a-philosophy as philosophical mode) through MP's commentary on Hegel's "Einleitung" (the convergence of Hegel-Husserl on Urdoxa) to hyper-reflection as the operation philosophy needs to keep contact with the unreflected. The §15 critique of Hegel's Zutat is the negative formulation; the §§13–14 "ascent at the spot" model is the positive formulation. The chapter closes on the question of philosophical language — operative language vs denotative-conceptual language.

  • Ch 3 — Uexküll-Proust on nature: From the "ontology of nature as propaedeutic to ontology" (N 265/204) through Uexküll's Umwelt-as-melody-singing-itself to Proust's musical idea. The Vinteuil sonata and the Uexküll metaphor converge on the sensible idea — generality that shines through its samples. Voyance (the gnoseological register) extends from painting to speech (Rimbaud, Claudel, Valéry, Saint-John Perse, Simon). The chapter closes on the carnal Wesensschau as a synesthetic operation: Claudel's L'Œil écoute (the listening eye).

  • Ch 4 — Heidegger and Kant on letting-be: From the V&I working note "elaborate an idea of philosophy" through Heidegger's Gelassenheit (read via Nietzsche lectures and Conversation on a Country Path) to MP's letting-be beneath the activity-passivity distinction. Maldiney's événement-avènement is the inflection. The chapter closes on the baroque (Buci-Glucksmann) and the conceptus-as-hollow (Graciàn-Perniola) — the philological key.

The four dialogues converge on the master thesis: MP's a-philosophy is a thinking that recognizes itself as encompassed by the sensible world it tries to think — not as the sovereign view from above (pensée de survol) of the constituting subject. The book is a demonstration of this thesis through four readings, each of which shows how MP appropriates, deepens, or corrects a tradition that almost-but-not-quite reaches the same insight.

Key Findings

  • MP's late ontology is one project, not four (or more) regional contributions. The four interrupted dialogues converge on one thesis: the chiasm-as-formula of the ontological mutation.
  • The April 1960 V&I "Indestructible Past" working note is the philological-philosophical break-point between PhP's continuity-of-time framework and V&I's gestaltist field of presence with its discontinuous structure of forgetting.
  • The Uexküll-Proust convergence on melody-singing-itself is the cardinal anti-Platonic resource for MP's new theory of sensible ideas.
  • Voyance is the gnoseological register of the new ontology — not a regional aesthetic device but the general structure of vision once philosophy takes seriously that "the invisible is the outline and the depth of the visible."
  • MP's letting-be is beneath the activity-passivity distinction, not "beyond" it as Arendt reads Heidegger's Gelassenheit. This is the cardinal Heidegger-MP corrective claim of the book.
  • The conceptus-as-hollow philological argument — Latin conceptus (concavity) against German Begriff (grasping) — is the etymological key to MP's "open the concept without destroying it" (S 174/138). This is the closing argument of the book.
  • Carbone 2004 is the foundational anchor on the wiki for the a-philosophy and voyance readings the wiki has previously attributed to Carbone 2015 and Carbone 2019.

Methodology

The book's method is commentary by interrupted dialogue: each chapter reads MP through one tradition partner (Husserl-Proust / Hegel / Uexküll-Proust / Heidegger), tracking the appropriation, deepening, or correction. The expository style is compressed (87 pp. main text + 24 pp. dense notes), demanding fluency in MP's full corpus. Carbone often quotes MP at length without paraphrase, then articulates a structural reading. The most distinctive methodological move: reading MP's commentary on Hegel as MP's self-interpretation (Ch 2 via Lefort) — using MP's reading of another thinker as the indirect statement of MP's own idea of philosophy. This method recurs implicitly in Ch 3 (the Uexküll-Proust convergence as MP's indirect statement of the new theory of ideas) and Ch 4 (the Heidegger-letting-be contrast as MP's indirect statement of letting-be-beneath).

Concepts Developed

The book is primary on these concepts — meaning it is the foundational anchor on the wiki, even if other Carbone sources extend or systematize them later:

  • nonphilosophy (specifically the a-philosophy register; this 2004 source is the original anchor for the framing the wiki currently attributes to Carbone 2019; see "A-Philosophy as Positive Formulation" §)
  • voyance (the first sustained anchor for the gnoseological register on the wiki; Carbone 2015 Flesh of Images develops this further)
  • carnal Wesensschau / synesthetic Wesensschau (the listening-eye operation through which sensible ideas are seized; not yet a wiki concept page)
  • letting-be / laisser-être (NEW concept page candidate; Carbone's distinctive beneath-the-activity-passivity-distinction reading against Arendt's "beyond" reading of Heidegger)
  • conceptus-as-hollow philological argument (the closing etymological move; not yet captured on the wiki)
  • creux / hollow as resonance chamber (sustained figural-ontological treatment across all four chapters)

Concepts Referenced

The book references these concepts (already developed on the wiki via other sources):

Terminology

For this MP-secondary work translated into English, key Italian / French / English terms:

Italian / French (orig.) English translation Attestation locations Translation notes
a-philosophie a-philosophy Carbone 2004 throughout (subtitle and Preface, Ch 2 closing); MP NC 275/9 ("vraie philosophie se moque de la philosophie") Carbone introduces "a-philosophy" positively against MP's "non-philosophy" negatively. The hyphen is constitutive — the a- prefix (as in a-rhythmic, a-tonal) signals deprivation-without-negation, not simple opposition. Translators retain the hyphen across editions.
voyance voyance (Carbone 2004); "visualization" (Dallery's 1964 Eye and Mind) Carbone 2004 Ch 3 and notes; OE 30–31 (single MP attestation); NC 175, 182–83, 186–87, 190 et passim The Dallery translation of Eye and Mind misleadingly renders voyance as "visualization." Carbone 2004 retains the French. The Nijhuis translation in Carbone 2015 also retains the French and explains the choice (FoI Intro n11).
creux hollow Preface xv–xvi; Ch 1 p. 11; Ch 4 p. 47 closing English "hollow" preserves the figural-ontological connotation of concavity. Sometimes "fissure" in MP context (PhP), but Carbone reserves fissure for the Sartrean register and creux for the positive register.
laisser-être letting-be Ch 4 throughout, esp. pp. 42–45; RC 179/198–99 Carbone uses both French and English; the English preserves the connection to Heidegger's Gelassenheit (which is also rendered "letting-be" in Anderson-Freund's 1966 translation of Discourse on Thinking). The Carbone-Heidegger contrast turns on whether "letting-be" is beyond (Heidegger via Arendt) or beneath (MP via Maldiney) the activity-passivity distinction.
seconder complying with / seconding Ch 3 p. 33; Ch 4 p. 41 The English "complying with" loses the French seconder's connotation of being a second to, backing up — the verb expresses indistinguishability of activity and passivity.
Begriff / concetto / conceptus concept Ch 4 closing, p. 47 The Carbone-Perniola argument turns on this terminological cluster: Begriff (German, grasping) vs conceptus (Latin, concavity). English "concept" inherits the Latin etymology but functions in 20th-century philosophy as a translation of Begriff — exactly the elision Carbone-Perniola flag.
Zweideutigkeit ambiguity Ch 2 throughout, esp. p. 19 (consciousness as zweideutige); p. 25 (philosophical formulation makes Zweideutigkeit disappear) Translation preserves Hegel's term (rendered "ambiguity" in the Miller and Royce translations). MP's own ambiguïté tracks the same family with different inflections — see ambiguity-vs-ambivalence.
Stiftung / Urstiftung institution / primal institution Ch 1 pp. 6–7, 10 Husserl's term retained in original. MP uses institution / Stiftung interchangeably; Carbone follows.
Ineinander mutual intertwining / each-in-the-other Ch 1 p. 7; Ch 2 pp. 19, 22, 25 Husserl's term retained in original. MP uses both Ineinander and empiètement / enjambement; Carbone here uses Ineinander.
Wesensschau / Wesenerschauung essence-seeing Ch 3 closing pp. 37–38 Husserl's term retained in original. Carbone's carnal qualifier transforms the Husserlian abstraction.
événement-avènement event-advent Ch 4 p. 44 (Maldiney) Maldiney's neologism; the French avènement connotes coming-into-presence / advent. English "event-advent" is Carbone's translation.
Sinngebung sense-giving Ch 2 pp. 20–21 Husserl's term retained in original. The §15 Zutat in Hegel is read by MP as a Sinngebung the philosopher imposes — a structural failure in MP's Hegel critique.

Key Passages

"The idea of chiasm, that is: every relation with being is simultaneously a taking and a being taken, the hold is held, it is inscribed and inscribed in the same being that it takes hold of." (VI 319/266; cited Carbone Preface xiv) — the chiasm-as-formula.

"When we invent a melody, the melody sings itself within us much more than we sing it; it goes down the throat of the singer, as Proust says…. [T]he body is suspended in what it sings, the melody incarnates itself and finds in the body a type of servant." (N 228/173–74; Carbone Preface xv) — the Uexküll-Proust convergence.

"[I]t is not I who makes myself think any more than it is I who make my heart beat… in its form of a hollow, subjectivity reveals its own passivity as the creator of ideas." (VI 274/221; Carbone Preface xv) — the hollow-as-resonance-chamber.

"Philosophy has never spoken… of the passivity of our activity." (VI 274/221; Carbone Preface xvi) — the programmatic statement of a-philosophy as the language of the passivity of our activity.

"From the calling into question of the frontal positioning of subject versus object, there can only follow the calling into question of the grasping of the object by the subject. The direct result is therefore the calling into question of the modern notion of 'concept,' the Germanic root of which expresses precisely the intention of grasping." (Carbone Preface xvi–xvii) — anticipates the Ch 4 closing argument.

"The Freudian idea of the unconscious and the past as 'indestructible,' as 'intemporal' = elimination of the common idea of time as a 'series of Erlebnisse' — There is an architectonic past. cf. Proust: the true hawthorns are the hawthorns of the past — Restore this life without Erlebnisse, without interiority… which is, in reality, the 'monumental' life, Stiftung, initiation. This 'past' belongs to a mythical time, to the time before time, to the prior life, 'farther than India and China.'" (VI 296/243; cited Carbone p. 5) — the cardinal V&I working note for Ch 1.

"It is necessary to take as primary, not the consciousness and its Ablaufsphänomen with its distinct intentional threads, but the spatializing-temporalizing vortex (which is flesh and not consciousness facing a noema)." (VI 298/244; cited Carbone p. 7) — the vortex against the line of retentions.

"Self-presence... is an absence from oneself, a contact with the Self through the divergence (écart) with regard to Self — The figure on a ground." (VI 246/192, trans. modified; cited Carbone p. 11) — the gestaltist re-grounding of subjectivity.

"True philosophy scoffs at philosophy, since it is a-philosophical." (NC 275/9, paraphrasing Pascal; cited Carbone Ch 2 opening) — the literary frame of a-philosophy.

"From the beginning, the absolute was already in and for itself close to us of its own accord." (Hegel, NC 296/30; cited Carbone p. 16) — the convergence with Husserl's Urdoxa.

"The very formulation of this living 'ambiguity' (Zweideutigkeit) makes experience disappear." (NC 319–20/53; cited Carbone p. 25) — the dilemma of philosophical formulation that motivates operative language.

"[A language] of which he [i.e., the philosopher] would not be the organizer, words he would not assemble, that would combine through him by virtue of a natural intertwining of their meaning, through the occult trading of the metaphor — where what counts is no longer the manifest meaning of each word and of each image, but the lateral relations, the kinships that are implicated in their transfers and their exchanges." (VI 167/125; cited Carbone p. 26) — operative language.

"We must admit in the very fabric of the physical elements a transtemporal and transspatial element of which we do not take account by supposing an essence outside of time." (N 230/176; cited Carbone p. 36) — the sensible idea as transtemporal/transspatial.

"[I]n a melody, a reciprocal influence between the first and the last note takes place, and we have to say that the first note is possible only because of the last, and vice versa." (Uexküll, N 228/174; cited Carbone p. 36) — the structural form of melodic generality.

"With the first vision, the first contact, the first pleasure, there is initiation, that is, not the positing of a content, but the opening of a dimension that can never again be closed, the establishment of a level in terms of which every other experience will henceforth be situated. The idea is this level, this dimension. It is therefore… the invisible of this world,… the Being of this being." (VI 198/151; cited Carbone p. 36) — the cardinal V&I passage on sensible-idea-as-dimension.

"It is necessary to comprehend perception as this interrogative thought which lets the perceived world be rather than posits it, before which the things form and undo themselves in a sort of gliding, beneath the yes and the no." (VI 138/102; cited Carbone p. 42) — interrogative thought as letting-be in philosophical mode.

"The unconscious is feeling itself, since feeling is not the intellectual possession of 'what' is felt, but a dispossession of ourselves in favor of it, an opening toward that which we do not have to think in order that we may recognize it…. the primordial unconsciousness would be the letting-be (le laisser-être), the initial yes, the undividedness of feeling." (RC 179/198–99, trans. modified; cited Carbone p. 45) — the cardinal MP passage on letting-be beneath activity-passivity.

"Twentieth-century philosophy usually considers the term 'concept' as the translation of the German word 'Begriff'… It happens, then, that we say 'concept,' but we think Begriff: what escapes us is that the word of Latin origin has an opposite semantic orientation to that of the German word." (Perniola, Presentazione to Graciàn's L'acutezza e l'arte dell'ingegno 19; cited Carbone p. 47) — the cardinal philological passage of the closing argument.

"To conceive does not mean to take possession of anything, but rather to create space for something." (Perniola, op. cit. 19; cited Carbone p. 47) — the closing line of the book.

What's Not Obvious

Three observations that would not appear in a conventional summary of Carbone's Thinking of the Sensible:

  1. The book's chapter on Hegel (Ch 2) is not a Hegel commentary but an indirect MP self-interpretation. Lefort observed that MP's commentary "s'inscrit dans un travail d'auto-interprétation"; Carbone's reading depends on this. Reading Ch 2 as a historical-philosophical contribution to Hegel scholarship would miss its function. The phrase "to retire into oneself is also to leave oneself" (VI 74/49) is MP's petite phrase via Hegel — its repeated invocation across MP's late writings (in V&I, in NC) makes it a rhetorical hinge for the entire MP a-philosophy project. This connects directly to hyper-reflection §"Genealogy" (a station the wiki page should add via this 2004 source).

  2. The closing conceptus-as-hollow philological argument depends on a reader who knows Italian aesthetic theory. Carbone's argument depends on Mario Perniola's 1986 Presentazione to the Italian translation of Graciàn's Agudeza y arte de ingenio — a text most Anglophone MP scholars would not consult. Without Perniola, the conceptus / Begriff opposition reads as a one-line etymological aside; with Perniola, it is the philological key to the entire a-philosophy thesis. This is why the wiki's existing hyper-reflection / chiasm / grain-du-sensible pages all carry passing references to creux but no page captures the etymological argument: the secondary literature in English (with the partial exception of Carbone himself) does not foreground it. This is the cardinal philological Carbone-2004 contribution that has no current wiki home.

  3. Carbone's contrast between Heidegger's Gelassenheit (beyond the activity-passivity distinction) and MP's letting-be (beneath the distinction) is a sharper reading of Heidegger than the Levin-Carbone convergence the book elsewhere admits. Carbone cites David Michael Levin's The Philosopher's Gaze (1999, fn 29) approvingly for parallel comparison-of-Heidegger-and-MP work, but Carbone's reading positions MP more radically than Levin does. The Heidegger Carbone reads via Conversation on a Country Path about Thinking (1944–45) — where Gelassenheit is purposiveness toward Gelassenheit — would, on a fairer reading via Letter on Humanism (1947) and Was heisst Denken? (1951–52), bring Heidegger closer to MP's beneath register. The sharpness of Carbone's Heidegger-MP contrast is what allows the book's a-philosophy thesis its specific shape: if Heidegger were fairly read in his late mode, the contrast collapses and a-philosophy becomes one Heideggerian-phenomenological inheritance among others, rather than a more radical alternative to Heidegger. The wiki should preserve this sharpness as Carbone's interpretive choice, not as a settled reading. (See letting-be candidate page Open Questions.)

Critique / Limitations

  • Heidegger reading depends on the 1944–45 Conversation on a Country Path. A fairer Heidegger-MP comparison would weight the later Heidegger (post-Letter on Humanism 1947, Was heisst Denken? 1951–52). Carbone's sharp Heidegger-MP contrast (Ch 4) is one of the book's distinctive contributions but is also its most contestable reading.
  • The Uexküll reading does not engage Darwinian biology. Uexküll was explicitly anti-Darwinian (Ch 3 fn 5); Carbone follows MP in adopting Uexküll's framework without independent argument against the Darwinist alternative. Subsequent biological scholarship (e.g., on niche construction theory, Lewontin) might place the Umwelt concept within a Darwinian frame in ways Carbone does not engage.
  • Proust is privileged as MP's literary mirror without comparative argument. Why Proust rather than (e.g.) Mallarmé, Beckett, or Joyce? The book treats this as given; a comparative argument would strengthen the case.
  • The book is short (87 pp. main text). Several arguments — especially the conceptus-as-hollow philological key in Ch 4 closing — receive only a few pages of treatment. Future Carbone work develops these (the creux register in Carbone 2015 ch. 6 "The Sensible Ideas Between Life and Philosophy"), but the foundational anchor for the philological argument lives only in this 2004 closing.
  • Italian-original variants not consulted. Most chapters are translations; a comparison of the Italian originals (notably Carbone's Il sensibile e l'eccedente 1996 and Ai confini dell'esprimibile 1995, listed in Selected Bibliography) might reveal terminological choices the English translations smooth over. Recommended for a future audit-Phase-6 spot-check if an MP-secondary spot-check is prioritized.

Connections

  • introduces on the wiki nonphilosophy §"A-Philosophy as Positive Formulation" (foundational anchor; the wiki currently cites Carbone 2019, which post-dates this 2004 book by 15 years)
  • introduces on the wiki voyance §"Voyance as Carnal Wesensschau" (the first sustained wiki anchor for the gnoseological framing; Carbone 2015 develops it further)
  • anchors hyper-reflection §"Genealogy" Station via the Hegel "petite phrase" "to retire into oneself is also to leave oneself" (VI 74/49) — the wiki's existing genealogy stations 1–7 do not include this Carbone-2004 anchor
  • predates and grounds carbone-2015-flesh-of-images — the voyance, sensible-ideas, hollow-creux, mythical-time treatments in Carbone 2015 are systematizations of arguments first articulated here
  • predates and grounds carbone-2019-philosophy-screens — same trajectory continues; the arche-screen is a generalization Carbone develops post-2004
  • predates the three-readings-of-Vinteuil reconstruction in Carbone's chapter for johnson-carbone-saintaubert-2020-poetic-of-the-world — the 2020 essay is the systematic version of the convergence Carbone first reads here in Ch 3
  • applies MP's late ontology to the four interrupted dialogues (Husserl-Proust / Hegel / Uexküll-Proust / Heidegger) — a methodological move the wiki should preserve as Carbone's distinctive synthetic strategy
  • complements merleau-ponty-2003-nature — Carbone Ch 3 is essentially a reading of MP's 1956–58 Nature courses
  • complements merleau-ponty-2022-possibility-of-philosophy — Carbone Ch 2 is a reading of NC 272–342 (the 1960–61 preparatory notes)
  • complements merleau-ponty-1968-visible-and-invisible — Carbone Ch 1 is the cleanest single statement of the V&I "Indestructible Past" working note's significance
  • contrasts with Heidegger's Gelassenheit read via Arendt's Life of the Mind (LM 2:178) — Carbone's beneath-the-activity-passivity-distinction reading of MP's letting-be vs Arendt's beyond-the-distinction reading of Heidegger; the cardinal corrective claim of Ch 4
  • cross-traditional with Mario Perniola on Graciàn's baroque theory of concetto — the philological key to the closing argument; not a wiki entity yet
  • cross-traditional with Henri Maldiney's L'Art, l'éclair de l'être (1993) — the événement-avènement of appearing as the inflection of MP's letting-be; not a wiki entity yet
  • cross-traditional with Christine Buci-Glucksmann's La Folie du voir: De l'esthétique baroque (1986) — the baroque world as the form of the new ontology; not a wiki entity yet
  • cross-source motif: melody — confirms the motifs#melody HUB entry; adds the Uexküll-Vinteuil convergence register specifically
  • cross-source motif: mythical time — promotes the motifs#mythical-time entry from THEME to STRUCTURAL (Carbone 2004 + 2015 + 2016 + Knight 2024 = 4 sources)
  • new cross-source motif candidate: the hollow / creux* — recurring across all four chapters; cross-source attestation in grain-du-sensible, fold-pli, ineinander, chiasm — candidate for motifs.md addition at Step 6a
  • new cross-source motif candidate: dispossession — recurring across all four chapters; cross-source attestation in chiasm, hyper-reflection — candidate for motifs.md addition at Step 6a

Sources

This is a secondary source on Merleau-Ponty's late ontology. The book's primary source-anchors are:

  • merleau-ponty-1968-visible-and-invisible — heavily cited throughout, esp. Ch 1 (working notes April 1960 "Indestructible Past"; January 1959 "Tacit Cogito"; November 1960 "Time and chiasm"); Ch 2 (the idea of philosophy working note Nov 1960); Ch 3 (V&I Ch 4 sensible-idea passage); Ch 4 (operative language, hyper-reflection, hollow-vs-hole).
  • merleau-ponty-2003-nature — Ch 3 is essentially a reading of MP's Nature courses (Course 1: 1956–57 Animality, Course 2: 1957–58 Human Body Transition to Culture); the Uexküll metaphor and Vinteuil convergence are anchored at N 226–233/172–178.
  • merleau-ponty-2022-possibility-of-philosophy (Notes des cours au Collège de France 1958–1959 et 1960–1961, NC) — Ch 2 is the reading of NC 272–342 (the preparatory notes for "Philosophy and Non-Philosophy Since Hegel"); Ch 3 also draws on NC 174–204 (preparatory notes for "Cartesian Ontology and the Ontology of Today").
  • merleau-ponty-1961-eye-and-mind (OE) — voyance attestation at OE 30–31/128–29; multiple references throughout esp. Ch 3.
  • merleau-ponty-1945-phenomenology-of-perception (PP) — Ch 1 contrast-base for MP's pre-V&I conception of time; the half-sleep description from Proust at PP 211/181.
  • merleau-ponty-1964-signs (S) — multiple references; "The Philosopher and His Shadow" (S 201–28/159–81), "Bergson in the Making" (S 229–41/182–91), preface and "From Mauss to Lévi-Strauss" (S 154/123).
  • merleau-ponty-1973-prose-of-the-world (PM) — referenced in Ch 1 and Ch 4 for the algorithm and operative language.
  • merleau-ponty-1970-in-praise-of-philosophy (RC) — Résumés de cours; central in Ch 4 (RC 179/198–99 letting-be passage); RC 117/151 "concepts of artificialism"; RC 141/167 the 1958–59 course summary.

Cross-source secondary references (selected, with wiki entity / source page where present):

  • Claudel, L'Œil écoute (1946) — Ch 3 closing: the listening eye.
  • Proust, À la recherche du temps perdu (Pléiade 1954) — Ch 1 and Ch 3: anchor for embodied time, Vinteuil sonata, hawthorns.
  • Valéry — Ch 3 (Carbone NC 391 list of poets achieving voyance); already an entity on the wiki via valery-1960-oeuvres-ii Œuvres II Pléiade ingest.
  • Simon — Ch 3 (Carbone NC 391 list).
  • Rimbaud, Lettre du voyant (1871) — Ch 3 anchor for voyance.
  • Husserl — Ch 1 (internal time consciousness Vorlesungen 1893–1917, Husserliana X); Ch 2 (Krisis, Cartesianische Meditationen, Ideen II); Ch 3 (FTL §6 "logos of the aesthetic world").
  • Hegel, Phänomenologie des Geistes (1807) — Ch 2 anchor; cited in MP's reading via Heidegger's Hegels Begriff der Erfahrung (1942–43).
  • Heidegger — Ch 4 anchor; Conversation on a Country Path (1944–45), Letter on Humanism (1947), Sein und Zeit (1927), Vom Wesen der Wahrheit (1943), Der Satz vom Grund (1957), Nietzsche (vol 1, 1961).
  • Kant, Kritik der Urteilskraft (1790) — Ch 4 (Heidegger's reading of the first moment of judgment of taste).
  • Mario Perniola, Presentazione to Graciàn's L'acutezza e l'arte dell'ingegno (Italian trans. 1986) — Ch 4 closing philological argument.
  • Hannah Arendt, The Life of the Mind (1978) — Ch 4 (Arendt's reading of Gelassenheit as "beyond" activity-passivity).
  • Henri Maldiney, L'Art, l'éclair de l'être: Traversées (1993) — Ch 4 (the événement-avènement of appearing).
  • Christine Buci-Glucksmann, La Folie du voir: De l'esthétique baroque (1986) — Ch 3 fn 22, Ch 4 fn 42 (the baroque world).
  • Jakob von Uexküll, Umwelt und Innenwelt der Tiere (1909) and Streifzüge durch die Umwelten von Tieren und Menschen (1934) — Ch 3 anchor; secondary witness via F. Mondella's Introduzione to the Italian translation (1967).
  • David Michael Levin, The Philosopher's Gaze: Modernity in the Shadows of Enlightenment (1999) — Ch 3 fn 22, Ch 4 fn 29 (parallel Heidegger-MP comparative work).
  • Hans Blumenberg, Das Lachen der Thrakerin: Eine Urgeschichte der Theorie (1987) — Ch 2 fn 70 (Plato's anecdote of Thales and the maidservant).
  • Pascal, Pensées (1669) — Ch 2 opening.
  • Ricoeur, Temps et récit (1984) — Ch 1 references on Proust's time.