The Flesh of Images: Merleau-Ponty Between Painting and Cinema

Author(s): Mauro Carbone (trans. Marta Nijhuis) Year: 2015 (English, SUNY Series in Contemporary Continental Philosophy); 2011 (French original, La chair des images, Vrin) Type: book (6 chapters + Introduction)

Carbone's sustained reading of Merleau-Ponty's late ontology through the twin lenses of painting (Gauguin, Klee, Cézanne) and cinema (the 1945 IDHEC lecture, the 1952–53 course, the 1960–61 Bazin-oriented course notes). The book's central thesis: MP's "flesh" is another name for Visibility, and the structure of the visible is best thought as mutual precession — a temporal mutual antecedence in which the distinction between image and actual, gaze and thing, collapses. Carbone describes the book as "the other side" of his earlier Proust book (*An Unprecedented Deformation*, 2008/2010): where the Proust book developed sensible ideas, this book develops "images as the ideas' sensible side." Flesh of Images is also the archival and conceptual groundwork for *Philosophy-Screens* (2016/2019) — most of what PS summarizes about the 1957 Arnheim notes, the 1960 E&M drafts, and the Grand Résumé correction is established in FoI ch. 4.

Core Arguments

Claim: "Flesh" = "Visibility." The term Visibility (Sichtbarkeit) is the technical term; chair is its informal name. The terminological reorientation clarifies the ontological point and dissolves the bodily connotations of chair. Because: V&I 139 — "this Visibility, this generality of the Sensible in itself, this anonymity innate to Myself that we have previously called flesh, and one knows there is no name in traditional philosophy to designate it." Visibility avoids subject/object and gathers activity/passivity. Against: readings that take "flesh" as a revived Christian incarnatio trope (Derrida, Michel Henry); readings that assimilate flesh to corps propre (Nancy's Corpus).
Claim: Derrida's critique of MP — that "flesh of the world" smuggles in Christian semantics and is unfaithful to Husserl's Leib — is wrong, and Gauguin's Polynesian painting is the answer. Because: Gauguin's detour through stone or wood (Tahitian bodies as "sculptural bodies"; Manao Tupapau's opacity; Noa Noa's "sculptural form") deconstructs the Christian incarnat by refusing skin-as-veil-over-hidden-soul. Gauguin's polytheism + animism + eclecticism is a "philosophical figure of primitivism" aligned with MP's flesh of the world, not with a Christianized incarnatio. Against: Derrida, On Touching—Jean-Luc Nancy (2000). "Nowadays we encourage every form of illusive and allusive expression, especially pictorial expression, and in particular the art of the 'primitives'" (MP, Prose of the World).
Claim: The stone belongs to the flesh's horizon — against Derrida, Henry, and (partially) Nancy. Husserl's "stone flies"; MP preserves this; the Körper's being-stone is not annulled in the flesh horizon but reversibly included. Because: Husserl's 1934 "Umsturz" manuscript on Earth-as-soil extends kinship from Leib to "terrestrial bodies." MP keeps this extension (1952–60 course summary, "In Praise of Philosophy"). Nancy's The Sense of the World (on Heidegger's "worldless stone") resonates with MP: "by its touching earth, there is difference of places—that is to say, place—dis-location." Derrida/Henry retreat to self-affection as criterion; Esposito reinforces the flesh-as-relation reading. Against: Derrida's "the fleshless (without Leib) by essence"; Henry's Incarnation (2000) restricting flesh to the self-affecting human body.
Claim: Modern painting gives the flesh of things, not their skin. Gauguin and Klee exemplify this in distinct ways. Because: V&I 218 on Klee: "painting without identifiable things, without the skin of things, but giving their flesh." Gauguin gives back to skin opacity (via the stone/wood detour), thus restoring its unity with flesh; Klee "makes visible" rather than reproducing the visible. Both refuse the Renaissance "window" model. Against: the Albertian-perspectival model of vision as Vor-stellung, objectification, or décalque (copy).
Claim: Voyance (MP's technical term, in course notes 1958–61) names the "double sight" of vision-that-sees-farther-than-it-sees — a carnal Wesenschau, vision as seconding (seconder) the self-showing of the sensible. It is gnoseology as well as aesthetics+ontology. Because: The 1960–61 notes on "Cartesian Ontology and the Ontology of Today" organize around voyance; MP explicitly links it to Max Ernst's declaration ("the painter's role is to circumscribe and project what is making itself seen within himself"), to Rimbaud's Lettre du voyant, and to Leonardo's defense of voyance against poetry (for failing simultaneity). Buci-Glucksmann: "Voyance defines simultaneously the place of art and the access to Being." Against: Descartes's reduction of vision to a thought stimulated by signs (the "window" theory of perspective).
Claim: MP's 1945 IDHEC lecture ("The Film and the New Psychology") is a silent polemic against Bergson's Creative Evolution ch. 4. The 1952–53 course makes the polemic explicit. Because: MP's conclusion ("we can apply what we have just said about perception in general to the perception of a film") is formally identical to Bergson's — but with reversed premises. Where Bergson said "our knowledge is cinematographical and therefore false," MP says: perception is synthetic, therefore cinema is true to it. The 1952–53 course names Bergson + Wertheimer + Vigo's Zéro de conduite; the dormitory sequence's slow-motion + reversed-Jaubert-music becomes negative proof. Against: Bergson's condemnation of cinema as the model of falsified analytic perception.
Claim: Mutual precession is the central ontological figure of MP's late image-theory. "This precession of what is upon what one sees and makes seen, of what one sees and makes seen upon what is — this is vision itself" (E&M 147). Because: Carbone's archival reconstruction (via de Saint Aubert): (a) first use in MP's 1957 reading notes on Arnheim's Art and Visual Perception — Arnheim does not use the word; (b) in 1960 drafts of E&M, precession systematically replaces earlier candidate terms enjambement and empiétement (the swap is visible in BnF manuscripts); (c) in the unpublished Fall 1960 "Grand Résumé" of V&I, MP writes "Circularity, and precession visible-seer…" then corrects to "Circularity, but rather precession…" The correction is philosophically decisive: circularity is spatial; precession captures temporal mutual antecedence (astronomical metaphor: equinoxes, retrograde movement). Against: the conception of image as "a second thing" / copy / re-presentation of a prior actual. Also against a spatial reading of the chiasm (circularity).
Claim: Mutual precession digs a mythical time — a "past that has never been present." Because: Infinite mutuality of antecedence cannot be grounded in any chronological origin; only an architectonic past ("the true hawthorns are the hawthorns of the past … before India and China" — V&I working note April 1960). This is the time of the unconscious, of Proust's involuntary memory, of Didi-Huberman's "anachronism of images," and — Carbone adds — of cinema. "Cinema has made familiar to us the paradoxical experience MP describes apropos of painting."
Claim: MP's "new idea of light" (1960–61 course notes on Nietzsche/Schelling) is an ontological rehabilitation of the surface — light inseparable from shadow, against the Platonic sun. This reframes the screen as condition of visibility (rather than a veil to be pierced). Because: NC 305 — "truth is of itself zweideutig. The Vieldeutigkeit is not a shadow to be eliminated from true light." The heritage is: (a) Nietzsche's "Preface to the Second Edition" of Gay Science — "we no longer believe that truth remains truth when the veils are withdrawn"; (b) Schelling's "diffused reason" in Nature (per Moiso); (c) Hermes Trismegistus's Poimandres — "the voice of light" crying from darkness (via Delaunay 1912 article "Light"). This is the pre-arche-screen formulation: the screen as condition of possibility, not obstacle. Against: Cartesian intuitus mentis (natural light); Neoplatonic veil-over-higher-truth.
Claim: MP's flesh functions as a modified-khôra — an amorphous at once and informative matrix in which images differentiate and later sediment into models. Because: Timaeus's khôra requires external forms (models stamp copies into a neutral receptacle); MP's flesh generates form from its own differentiation. The Poimandres passage (light that cries from darkness; darkness as the component, not the neutral receptacle) maps closer to MP than Timaeus does. V&I 267: "it is the flesh, the mother." Against Husserl's "stratification" of experience, MP insists on circularity. Location: ch. 5 "Darkness and the Voice of Light: Hermes Trismegistus (Flesh as Khôra)."
Claim: A theory of ideas requires a theory of ideation, which is the simultaneous genesis of an idea and a hollow. Because: MP Nature 174 — "When we invent a melody, the melody sings in us more than we sing it; it goes down into the throat of the singer." Invention is a letting-be. The "we" is a hollow (creux) that opens in the encounter, not a pre-existing receptacle. Both "idea" and "hollow" are co-born (co-naissent, Claudel). Möbius-strip indistinction of activity-passivity. "I am not the author of my thoughts or of this hollow that forms within me" (V&I 101). Against: (a) khôra-style passive reception (pre-existing receptacle); (b) Platonic pre-existence of ideas; (c) the subject as void-or-plenitude dichotomy.
Claim: "A-philosophy" (not anti-, not non-) names the transformation of philosophy that can speak of the contemporary mutation in human-Being relations. The lineage is Hegel → Marx → Kierkegaard → Nietzsche → Husserl → Heidegger. Because: 1960–61 Philosophy and Non-Philosophy since Hegel: "real philosophy makes fun of philosophy, it is a-philosophy" (NC 275). A-philosophy takes sides with what philosophy traditionally excludes (appearing, experience, life). Cinema and modern painting are cases of "fundamental thought" doing this work before philosophy can.

Key Findings

"Flesh" and "Visibility" are one concept, technically. Using Visibility foregrounds the diacritical structure ("a difference between things and colors, a momentary crystallization of colored being").
The word precession enters MP's lexicon via a 1954 book on art perception (Arnheim) — it was not in Arnheim — in MP's 1957 reading notes.
MP's 1960 Grand Résumé explicitly corrects "Circularity" to "but rather precession" for visible-seer, silence-speech, I-Other.
Gauguin's manuscript of Noa Noa and "Miscellaneous Things" contains explicit figurations of the woman-turning-into-statue program; Manet's Olympia is the point-of-reference for Manao Tupapau's opacity.
MP's interest in Zéro de conduite centers on the reversed-music + slow-motion sequence (Jaubert's explanation of the technique is quoted).
Godard cites MP in Masculin Féminin (1966), co-signs "Le testament de Balthazar" (Cahiers 177, 1966) with Merleau-Ponty (posthumously), and quotes V&I in JLG/JLG (1995).
The "arche-screen" neologism is not yet coined in 2015 — but ch. 5's "ontological rehabilitation of the surface" and the reading of V&I 150 ("there is no vision without the screen") as general-not-regional are already doing the work PS 2019 will systematize.
MP's 1949 lecture at the Institut de Filmologie exists (referenced in Merleau-Ponty's Causeries 1948); appears to be lost.

Methodology

Carbone's method combines (a) archival close reading of unpublished MP manuscripts (BnF holdings; de Saint Aubert's transcriptions; Kristensen's 1952–53 course edition); (b) exegetical cross-referencing (the same motif across IDHEC 1945 → 1952–53 course → 1960–61 course → E&M → V&I); (c) polemical engagement with rival readings (Derrida, Nancy, Henry, Rodrigo); (d) constructive projection forward (how MP's tools help contemporary image-theory — Didi-Huberman, W.J.T. Mitchell, Casetti, Diodato).

The book's distinctive stylistic device: three-way citation clusters where MP + a painter/poet/filmmaker + a philosopher are made to illuminate one another (Klee + Rimbaud + Baudelaire's Correspondences; Proust + Schelling + Hermes Trismegistus; Gauguin + Nancy + Derrida).

Concepts Developed

Concepts this source is primary on — where it does original work, not merely references.

mutual precession — The primary archival source for the 1957 Arnheim → 1960 drafts → Grand Résumé genealogy. PS 2019 summarizes what FoI establishes.
voyance — the Rimbaudian-Ernstian "double sight" / carnal Wesenschau; ch. 3 is the most sustained treatment.
light-of-the-flesh — ch. 5's organizing concept: anti-Platonic light inseparable from shadow; Schelling's diffused reason; Hermes Trismegistus's Poimandres; flesh-as-modified-khôra.
making visible (Sichtbarmachen, faire voir) — Klee's phrase transformed into Carbone's methodological thread for ch. 3 and then extended to philosophy itself ("philosophy shows by words. Like all literature" — V&I 266).
Visibility = flesh — the Intro reorientation: the technical term is Visibility; chair is informal.
hollow-and-idea ideation — ch. 6's theory of ideation: idea and hollow co-naissent in the encounter, not in a pre-existing subject.

Concepts Referenced

sensible-ideas — ch. 6 restates Carbone's 2008/2010 Proust book; ch. 4 and ch. 5 anchor sensible ideas to the "new idea of light."
fundamental-thought-in-art — ch. 6 is one of Carbone's clearest restatements of the a-philosophy doctrine.
a-philosophy — ch. 6, Hegel-to-Heidegger lineage.
philosophy-cinema — ch. 4 "The Philosopher and the Moviemaker" coins the conceptual core of this program (the MP/Godard citation arc; Bazin-MP convergence).
arche-screen — not yet named in 2015, but ch. 5's "ontological rehabilitation of the surface" and the reading of V&I 150 ("no vision without the screen") are the pre-formulation.
visible-invisible — structural background throughout; sharpened by the flesh=Visibility identification.
reversibility, chiasm — used, not re-theorized.
retrograde-movement-of-the-true — ch. 4, named once in connection with sensible ideas and mythical time.
pregnancy-pragnanz — ch. 1 Intro (flesh as "pregnancy of the invisible in the visible").
indirect-language — in background of ch. 3 (voyance as "showing by words").
intercorporeity / interanimality — ch. 1 Husserl-kinship extension.

Key Passages

"It is well known that the notion of 'flesh' is at the very core of Merleau-Ponty's later reflection. However, what is often forgotten is that 'flesh' is another name for the 'element' he also calls 'Visibility.' This latter term is in turn a most interesting one, for it seems to be chosen so as to avoid any references to either a subject or an object, and to gather together activity and passivity." (Introduction, p. 1)

"if the image is not 'a second thing,' if it does not copy a model (but rather creates it), it reveals being much closer to the experience of birth than to that of death." (Introduction, p. 2)

"I do not look at [. . .] [a painting] as one looks at a thing, fixing it in its place. [. . .] Rather than seeing it, I see according to, or with it." (MP E&M 126, quoted pp. 3, 66)

"Nature as the other side of man (as flesh—nowise as 'matter')." (MP V&I working note, quoted p. 7)

"painting without identifiable things, without the skin of things, but giving their flesh." (MP V&I 218, quoted p. 21)

"The main figure will be a woman turning into a statue, still remaining alive yet becoming an idol." (Gauguin, "Miscellaneous Things" — announcement of a never-executed painting; quoted p. 25 — anchors argument #2)

"Art does not reproduce the visible; rather, it makes visible." (Klee, Schöpferische Konfession / Creative Credo 1920; quoted p. 31 — anchors argument #4 and ch. 3)

"Just as the role of the poet since the famous Lettre du voyant consists in writing under the dictation of what is being thought, of what articulates itself in him, the painter's role is to circumscribe and project what is making itself seen within himself." (Max Ernst, quoted via MP's course notes, p. 34 — anchors voyance)

"a film is not a sum total of images, but a temporal Gestalt." (MP "Film and New Psychology" 1945; quoted p. 43)

"Such is the contrivance of the cinematograph. And such is also that of our knowledge. […] the mechanism of our ordinary knowledge is of a cinematographical kind." (Bergson Creative Evolution ch. 4; quoted p. 47 — the position MP reverses)

"Therefore here movement = revelation of Being, outcome of its internal configuration and clearly different from change of place." (MP 1952–53 course notes; quoted p. 55 — the ontological elevation of cinematic movement)

"This precession of what is upon what one sees and makes seen, of what one sees and makes seen upon what is—this is vision itself." (MP E&M 147; quoted p. 59 — the unique published occurrence of precession)

"Circularity, but rather precession | visible-seer | silence-speech | I-Other." (MP Grand Résumé Fall 1960, BnF vol. VII NLVIa3 [181]; quoted p. 59 — the key archival evidence for mutual precession)

"The true hawthorns are the hawthorns of the past [. . .]. This 'past' belongs to a mythical time, to the time before time, to the prior life, 'farther than India and China.'" (MP V&I working note April 1960; quoted p. 60)

"truth is of itself zweideutig [. . .]. The Vieldeutigkeit is not a shadow to be eliminated from true light." (MP NC 305; quoted p. 64 — anchors argument #9)

"Light is not a quale, it is the impossibility of darkness, [. . .] luminosity is a structure of being [être]." (MP NC 193; quoted p. 67 — anti-Platonic light)

"we no longer believe that truth remains truth when the veils are withdrawn." (Nietzsche Gay Science 1886 Preface, in MP's French translation; quoted pp. 28, 68)

"it is the flesh, the mother." (MP V&I 267; quoted p. 72 — anchors flesh-as-khôra)

"Here, on the contrary, there is no vision without the screen: the ideas we are speaking of would not be better known to us if we had no body and no sensibility; it is then that they would be inaccessible to us." (MP V&I 150; quoted p. 60 n119 — the passage the 2019 Philosophy-Screens generalizes to arche-screen)

"When we invent a melody, the melody sings in us more than we sing it, it goes down into the throat of the singer, as Proust says [. . .] [T]he body is suspended in what it sings: the melody is incarnated and finds in the body a type of servant." (MP Nature 174; quoted p. 79 — anchors argument #11)

"real philosophy makes fun of philosophy, it is a-philosophy." (MP NC 275; quoted p. 77 — anchors argument #12)

"Phenomenological or existential philosophy is largely an expression of surprise at this inherence of the self in the world and in others, a description of this paradox and permeation, and an attempt to make us see the bond between subject and world, between subject and others, rather than to explain it as the classical philosophies did by resorting to absolute spirit." (MP "Film and New Psychology" 1945; quoted p. 49)

What's Not Obvious

The word precession is not in Arnheim, even though Carbone's archival work traces MP's first use to the 1957 Arnheim reading notes. This matters because MP's "invention" of the term is overdetermined: the Arnheim book (on Gestalt-psychological visual perception) provides the occasion for MP to reach for an astronomical figure. Carbone takes this as evidence that precession is born from MP's attempt to think visual Gestalt-theory in a specifically temporal register (the book is anchored in pregnancy-pragnanz-style spatial figural analysis; MP borrows the concept and re-temporalizes it). BnF vol. XXI, NL-Arnh [53] (50).
The book's "flesh = Visibility" identification silently corrects a generation of MP scholarship that treated flesh as primarily bodily-sensate. Carbone's terminological move makes "flesh" a diacritical-relational concept rather than a quasi-substantial one. This is not a dismissal of the body — but it displaces the body from being "the paradigm of flesh" to being "one exemplar of Visibility (alongside colour, relief, sound)." This quietly reorients how the Ch. 4 V&I passages are read: "this Visibility" is the element; "flesh" the informal name. Connects directly to flesh-as-element's three-modes structure (body-flesh, world-flesh, element).
Chapter 5's Hermes Trismegistus reading relies on MP reading the Poimandres through Delaunay's 1912 article "Light" — not through the philologically-accredited 1945 Festugière translation. This is philosophically significant: MP's Neoplatonic-light apparatus is artistic-modernist, not scholarly-philological. MP never engaged the Hermetic corpus directly. Carbone uses this to argue that MP's "new idea of light" belongs to a modernist lineage (Delaunay, Klee's German translation of Delaunay, Apollinaire's "I love today's art because I love Light above all else") — not to a revival of Hermetic tradition. The light-of-the-flesh is thus anti-Neoplatonic via modernist painting, not via Plotinus-scholarship. See light-of-the-flesh.

Critique / Limitations

The khôra parallel is evocative but thin. Ch. 5's argument that the Poimandres passage "maps closer to MP than Timaeus" relies on (a) reading MP through a Hermetic text MP only ever cites via a modernist painter; (b) projecting a "third component" reading onto MP's flesh. Carbone acknowledges the khôra parallel is "sort of"; it is not an argument but a resonance.
Heavy reliance on de Saint Aubert's archival access. Much of the precession archival argument depends on de Saint Aubert's inventories of unpublished MP manuscripts. Readers without BnF access cannot verify independently.
The Bergson polemic is staged as one-sided. Bergson's own nuances (the cinematograph as a method of analysis, not a fact about perception) are compressed. See also Deleuze (Cinema 1-2) for a more generous reading of Bergson.
"Deconstruction of the Christian flesh" via Gauguin is more suggestive than demonstrative. Gauguin's theosophic-syncretic inclinations are well documented, but Carbone's reading turns Gauguin into an implicit phenomenologist. The argument is philosophically strong on what Gauguin deconstructs, weaker on what Gauguin positively institutes.
Little engagement with MP's Catholic period. MP's youthful Catholicism (and later rupture) could have complicated the flesh/Christian-semantics polemic. Carbone takes MP's flesh as structurally anti-Christian, but MP's own biographical relation to Christianity is elided.

Connections

is the direct precursor of carbone-2019-philosophy-screens — ch. 2 of Philosophy-Screens "enriches and develops" ch. 4 of this book. PS 2019 generalizes to arche-screen; FoI 2015 does the exegetical and archival groundwork.
is the companion volume to Carbone 2008/2010 An Unprecedented Deformation: Marcel Proust and the Sensible Ideas (SUNY 2010) — the two books are "two sides" of the same project (ideas and their sensible side).
develops, more fully than anywhere else in Carbone, the Bazin-MP convergence on the ontology of image.
critiques Derrida's On Touching—Jean-Luc Nancy (2000) — especially its rejection of the "globalization of flesh" and its charge of Christian-semantic contamination.
contrasts with Michel Henry's Incarnation (2000) — Carbone reads MP's flesh as anti-Christian-incarnational, Henry reads it as insufficiently Christian-incarnational.
extends MP's reading of Husserl's Umsturz manuscript — the stone-flies passage is the pivot.
applies Gestalt psychology (Wertheimer's stroboscopic movement) to cinematic movement — contra Bergson's Creative Evolution ch. 4.
applies Schelling's Naturphilosophie to MP's "new idea of light" via Francesco Moiso (Chiasmi 1988).

Sources

merleau-ponty-1968-visible-and-invisible — primary source for flesh, Visibility, sensible ideas, precession. The "Intertwining" chapter is the governing text. Working notes cited throughout.
merleau-ponty-1961-eye-and-mind — primary source for precession passage (§4), "I see according to or with it," "carnal essences."
merleau-ponty-1964-signs — introduction on seeing as transcendence; "Philosopher and His Shadow" on baroque world.
merleau-ponty-2020-sensible-world-expression — the 1952–53 course notes transcribed by de Saint Aubert + Kristensen; primary source for the Bergson polemic and Zéro de conduite reference.
merleau-ponty-2022-possibility-of-philosophy — 1960–61 "Cartesian Ontology and the Ontology of Today" and "Philosophy and Non-Philosophy since Hegel" notes; primary source for voyance, a-philosophy, Bazin's ontology of cinema.
merleau-ponty-2003-nature — 1956–60 Nature courses; hollow-and-melody passage (p. 174); Schelling commentary.
merleau-ponty-1945-phenomenology-of-perception — cited for Proust's "little phrase" and movement-without-a-mobile refutation.
merleau-ponty-1970-in-praise-of-philosophy — "Themes from the Lectures" summary of 1952–60 courses; Husserl stone manuscript.
Proust, Remembrance of Things Past vol. I: "Swann's Way" — Vinteuil's little phrase (ch. 4 Kuleshov comparison); notions of light / sound / perspective / bodily desire (ch. 5).
Paul Klee, Creative Credo (1920), On Modern Art (1924), Notebooks (journals published 1956 German / 1959 French).
Paul Gauguin, Writings of a Savage (ed. Guérin); Noa Noa; "Miscellaneous Things"; "The Catholic Church and Modern Times"; "Notebook for Aline."
Husserl, "Umsturz des kopernikanischen Lehre" ("Foundational Investigations of the Phenomenological Origin of the Spatiality of Nature," 1934, ed. Faber 1940).
Bergson, Creative Evolution (1907) ch. 4.
André Bazin, "Ontology of the Photographic Image" (1945, trans. H. Gray).
Derrida, On Touching—Jean-Luc Nancy (2000).
Nancy, Corpus (2000), L'intrus (2000), The Sense of the World (1993), "Visitation: Of Christian Painting."
Henry, Incarnation. Une philosophie de la chair (2000).
Franck, Chair et corps: sur la phénoménologie de Husserl (1981).
Rodrigo, L'intentionnalité créatrice (2009) — ch. 4 criticism and reply.
Kristensen, "Maurice Merleau-Ponty, une esthétique du mouvement" (Archives de Philosophie 2006).
Moiso, "Una ragione all'altezza della natura. La convergenza fra Schelling e Merleau-Ponty" (Chiasmi 1, 1988).
Didi-Huberman, Devant le temps (2000).
Delaunay, "La lumière" (1912).
Hermes Trismegistus, Poimandres (in Corpus Hermeticum; cited via Delaunay's paraphrase).
Plato, Timaeus 49a–51b (the khôra passage).