Merleau-Ponty Between Philosophy and Symbolism: The Matrixed Ontology

Author(s): Rajiv Kaushik Year: 2019 Type: book (SUNY Press, Contemporary Continental Philosophy)

A sustained argument that Merleau-Ponty's late ontology is fundamentally symbolic — that the symbolic matrix, introduced in the 1954–55 institution lectures as a psychoanalytic concept, is in fact the ontological tissue prior to formal ontology. Kaushik traces a diacritical tradition from Homeric poetry through Plato's Sophist to MP's *écart*, argues that MP is a non-occidental thinker aligned with Heraclitus rather than the Platonic-Heideggerian dialectic, and shows how the symbolic-matrix, the positive symbol, and the elements (fire, light, sleep) converge into a single ontological structure — the matrixed ontology — that is the limit of philosophy itself.

Core Arguments

Claim: MP's ontology is fundamentally symbolic, not merely perceptual — the symbolic matrix is the ontological limit of philosophy itself, not a regional psychoanalytic concept. Because: MP says "consider criticism itself as a symbolic form and not a philosophy of symbolic forms" (Institution lectures). If philosophical critique is itself a symbolic form, then every truth-claim enfolds a symbolic component. The "secondary passivity" and "latent intentionality" that phenomenology discovers when it recognizes its own sedimentation is this symbolic form. Against: Cassirer's philosophy of symbolic forms, which treats criticism as standing above the symbolic; readings of MP as a philosopher of flesh/perception who has no theory of the symbolic.
Claim: The symbolic matrix is an ontological tissue prior to formal ontology — it opens the difference between being and beings rather than mediating them. Because: The symbolic does not bring beings together with being but "opens up and is the very difference between them" (Intro, p. xxi). It is "inside ontology" and "does not, and cannot, close difference but is from where it opens." Against: Heidegger's ontological difference (being as self-identical ground that disjoins); Cassirer's symbolic forms as mediators.
Claim: MP's écart is a radical reversal of the Platonic diacritical method (diaeresis) — where Plato divides to collect into unity, MP's divergence produces difference without synthesis. Because: For Plato, the dialectician "sees past the multiplicity and into the unity." For MP, the sensible field is "itself a diacritical, relative, oppositional system" — divergence is primary. "If there are identities, it is only because there are first differences." Against: Platonic dividing-collecting; Ricoeur's account of the Sophist's "philosophical scandal."
Claim: MP is aligned with Heraclitean division (Fragment B1: "dividing each thing according to its nature") rather than with the Platonic-Heideggerian tradition — Heraclitean opposites are asymmetrical and do not require unification. Because: Following Bollack/Wismann, "radical separation as such [is] the condition of identity." The non-symmetry between opposing forces (sleep stronger against waking, not equal to it) allows temporal change without synthesis. Heidegger's Fügung (jointure) betrays Heraclitus by seeking unity where there is only productive division. Against: Heidegger's reading of Heraclitus through Lichtung and Fügung (Fink-Heidegger seminars).
Claim: Imagination in MP is ontological spacing — the space between concrete bodies where they diverge — not Husserl's neutral phantasy-consciousness. Because: Husserl treats phantasy as temporally interior and spatially neutral, keeping geometrical essences distinct from both phantasy and the sensible. MP shows the sensible is never a "plenum." The imagination "hovers" (Sallis) in the spacings between things, and these spacings are the most basic symbolic form. Against: Husserl's phantasy-consciousness (Ideas I, Thing and Space); Derrida's "inorganic" morphological types.
Claim: Light/fire in MP is an element — a non-luminescent spark or kindling — not a source of illumination. The elemental is the symbolic matrix of the phenomenon. Because: MP speaks of a "spark" and "incitement" of fire, not fire as unified source. "Deflagration" means being is away from what burns. Following Schelling, light is a "quasi-concept" and "symbol of primordial knowing." Against Heidegger-Fink, who read sun-fire as unified concealed source. Against: Heidegger's reading of Fragment B16; the geometrical model of lumen.
Claim: Sleep is "being in the divergence" — a positive ontological event that produces the difference between sense and dream perceptions, not the absence of phenomenality. Because: Sleep is "conduct" — defensive, productive. It constricts non-being so it does not become radical negation. Sleep is "the internal possibility" of being, endo-ontological. The sleeping body is "possible everywhere and at all times." Against: Heidegger/Fink (sleep = absorption into the clearing); Sartre (sleep = nothingness); Nancy (sleep = absolute self-enclosure, "tomb of sleep").
Claim: Freud's "positive symbolism" is the censor-repression struggle itself — a symbolic form that simultaneously produces and effaces itself. Not a coded content but the limit-structure of all signification. Because: The latent content is not "truly buried" — "the one who dreams and the one who sees to the bottom of the dream are the same." The symbol refers to symbolism itself and proliferates. "Consciousness and unconsciousness make but one divided being." Against: Freud's coded-disguise model; Sartre's hollow-negation model.
Claim: The method proper to ontological symbolism is hermeneutical-reverie (found in Proust), not decoding or unmasking — "reverie over dreams... an echo through totality." Because: Ordinary critique assumes its own distinctions without recognizing them as already formed by a symbolic form. Proust's In Search of Lost Time effects a double eclipse of reader and author, showing language as constitutive of meaning. This is a "psychoanalysis of philosophy." Against: Husserl's descriptive phenomenology; Sartre's committed prose; Barbaras's "originary metaphoricity."
Claim: There is no metaphor between the visible and the invisible — the relation is symbolic, not metaphorical. Barbaras's "originary metaphoricity" collapses being and non-being into a novel convergence that is itself ontological difference as such. Because: Metaphor transfers sense from one register to another. The symbolic configures within the terms. Proustian metaphor figures difference (de Beistegui) rather than reconciling it. Ontological metaphor implies an original meaning distinct from ordinary meaning — self-authorizing being — which leads to a politics of absolute power and post-truth. Against: Barbaras, "Métaphore et Ontologie"; the Aristotelian tradition of metaphor as resemblance.

Key Findings

The symbolic-matrix of the 1954–55 lectures is already ontological, not merely psychoanalytic: "symbolic matrices are openness upon being" (V&I Working Note).
The Heraclitean concept of fire (ἀπτόμενον) as non-luminescent kindling (not unified source) is the elemental correlate of the symbolic matrix: both are within phenomena, non-totalizing, productive of difference.
MP's "polymorphic matrix" (V&I Working Note) names the being that is "behind the point" of philosophy — an ontology without origins.
Sleep is the phenomenological site where the symbolic form is most concretely available — "being in the divergence" is the endo-ontological.
Erinnerung in the Proust-MP connection means interiorization, not memory — the body as "vinculum of the temporal and spatial distance, and transformer of space into time."
Language is ontogenetic: it generates meaning and referent, is "at every ontological tier," and "the impossibility of reducing language is its reduction."

Methodology

A philosophical monograph working through five paired oppositions (matrix events / methods; space / imagination; light–dark / awake–asleep; philosophy / symbolism; philosophical language / literary language), each chapter peeling back a layer of the matrixed ontology. Kaushik reads MP against Plato, Husserl, Heidegger, Sartre, Nancy, and Barbaras, and with Heraclitus, Schelling, Freud, Proust, and Sallis. Close textual work on the Visible and the Invisible Working Notes, the Institution/Passivity lectures, the Nature lectures, "Eye and Mind," and In Search of Lost Time.

Concepts Developed

matrixed-ontology — Kaushik's central concept: the symbolic form as ontological limit, producing the difference between being and beings from within
hermeneutical-reverie — MP's method for the symbolic form: "reverie over dreams... an echo through totality," paradigmatically in Proust
positive symbol / positive negation — the double character of the symbol: simultaneously producing and effacing itself (developed through Freud's dream-theory)
Erinnerung as interiorization — the body as transformer of space into time (developed through Proust)
polymorphic matrix — MP's own phrase: being "behind the point" of philosophy, ontology without origins

Concepts Referenced

ecart — central to the argument, read as diacritical reversal of Plato's diaeresis
symbolic-matrix — upgraded from psychoanalytic to ontological concept
primordial-symbolism — extended through the positive-symbol / censor-production double
flesh-as-element — connected to fire/spark/kindling as the elemental correlate of the symbolic
dedifferentiation — sleep as "being in the divergence," not absence
chiasm — as inter-crossing of language and the sensible (from Valéry)
implex — briefly referenced as "animal of words," consistent with Kaushik 2021
depth-profondeur — "going together of inpossibles" (via Mazis on Leibniz)
coherent-deformation — "coherence at once deforms"
institution — the instituted/instituting double on which the symbolic matrix is built
redoubled-negation — natural negativity as "negation of negation" that does not transcend
perceptual-faith — the "simple method" of interrogation
reversibility — must not be read as erasure of difference
nonphilosophy — "the barbarous source Schelling spoke of"
natural-symbolism — Schelling's Urwissen as "symbol of primordial knowing"
interrogation — MP's interrogative method against dialectical philosophy

Key Passages

"Consider criticism itself as a symbolic form and not a philosophy of symbolic forms." (MP, Institution lectures, cited Intro p. xix)

"The symbolic matrix is, in short, an ontological tissue prior to formal ontology. It is inside ontology. It does not, and cannot, close difference but is from where it opens." (Kaushik, Intro p. xxii)

"This separation (écart) which, in first approximation, forms meaning, is not an I affect myself with, a lack which I constitute as a lack by the upsurge of an end which I give myself—it is a natural negativity." (MP, V&I, cited Ch. 1 p. 19)

"[T]he flesh is diacritical and a system of oppositions." (MP, cited Ch. 1 p. 24)

"sleep [is] an activity of distancing the world.... To sleep is neither immediate presence to the world nor pure absence. It is being in the divergence." (MP, I&P, cited Ch. 4 p. 81)

"Freud discovered this positive symbolism: this meaning beyond the meaning has a double sense.... the one who dreams and the one who sees to the bottom of the dream are the same." (MP, I&P, cited Ch. 4 p. 86)

"Method proper to the understanding of dreams: reverie over dreams, hermeneutical reverie. Because it is not something said, but an echo through totality." (MP, I&P, cited Ch. 4 p. 100)

"There is no metaphor between the visible and the invisible." (MP, V&I, cited Ch. 5 p. 110)

"Language in forming itself expresses, at least laterally, an ontogenesis of which it is a part." (MP, V&I, cited Ch. 5 p. 114)

"We consider it as a vinculum of the temporal and spatial distance, and transformer of space into time: Erinnerung." (MP, I&P, cited Ch. 5 p. 120)

What's Not Obvious

Kaushik's entire argument depends on a single sentence from the Institution lectures — "consider criticism itself as a symbolic form and not a philosophy of symbolic forms" — which he reads as MP's most radical methodological proposal. This sentence is not prominently discussed in the standard MP commentary; Kaushik makes it the pivot of the entire book. If this reading is right, MP's ontology is not fundamentally about flesh, perception, or even écart, but about the symbolic limit of philosophy — a claim that reorients the entire secondary literature. (Intro, pp. xix–xx; connects to symbolic-matrix, primordial-symbolism)
The Heraclitean fire (ἀπτόμενον) is structurally identical to MP's "spark" in "Eye and Mind" — and Kaushik argues this is not analogy but the same ontological structure. Where Heidegger reads Heraclitus's fire as a concealed sun-source, Kaushik follows the Greek ἀπτόμενον as kindling — a non-luminescent friction that produces light only at the point of contact between resistant surfaces. This is exactly what MP means by "the spark is lit between sensing and sensible" — fire is not a source but a clash, and the clash is the symbolic matrix at its most elemental. This identification (fire = spark = symbolic matrix) is not made explicitly by any other commentator. (Ch. 1, pp. 26–27; Ch. 3, pp. 63–66; connects to flesh-as-element)
The political conclusion is the book's most suppressed but arguably most ambitious claim: that the difference between metaphor and symbolism maps onto the difference between absolute and non-absolute power. Ontological metaphor (Barbaras) implies being that self-authorizes — a politics of spontaneous, alternating "facts" (post-truth). Ontological symbolism (Kaushik's MP) implies being that works through its subjects' failure to recognize their own instituting role — a Machiavellian politics where "power does not coerce or persuade; it thwarts." This makes Kaushik's MP not merely an ontologist but a political philosopher whose ontology of the symbolic has direct implications for the critique of ideology. (Conclusion, pp. 126–131; connects to institution, conditioned-freedom)

Critique / Limitations

The political conclusion (Ch. 5 Conclusion, pp. 126–131) is suggestive but underdeveloped. The leap from ontological symbolism to a critique of post-truth politics needs more mediating steps.
The assumption that Heraclitus can be read independently of Heidegger's interpretation, and that this reading is more authentic, relies on Bollack/Wismann without defending the philological premises.
The readings of Nancy are detailed and productive but occasionally reductive — Nancy's écart may be closer to MP's than Kaushik allows, especially in Nancy's later work on corpus and touch.
The book occasionally conflates MP's own formulations with Kaushik's interpretive extensions — the boundary between exegesis and original argument could be clearer.
The treatment of Lacan is gestural (p. 93) — whether Lacan's "the real" is genuinely distinct from MP's symbolic form deserves fuller engagement.

Connections

develops the argument of kaushik-2021-negation-implex — the 2021 article's claim that the implex is the concrete form of redoubled negation is here generalized: the symbolic matrix as a whole is the "matrixed ontology"
extends merleau-ponty-2010-institution-and-passivity — Kaushik's primary MP source; upgrades the symbolic matrix from regional to ontological
reads in conjunction with merleau-ponty-1968-visible-and-invisible — the Working Notes (polymorphic matrix, Ursprungsklärung, diacritical conception) are treated as the late-ontological formulation of what the 1954–55 lectures state in psychoanalytic vocabulary
critiques renaud-barbaras — rejects "originary metaphoricity" as covert ontological difference
engages critically with jean-luc-nancy — accepts Nancy's lux/blind-spot analyses but argues MP's anonymity is between terms, not irreducibly other
builds on friedrich-schelling — Schelling's Urwissen and light-as-quasi-concept are the nature-philosophy correlate of the symbolic
applies Heraclitean division (B1, B16, B88, B217) to MP's écart — against Heidegger's reading
draws on Proust (In Search of Lost Time) — as paradigm of hermeneutical reverie and the chiasm between literary and philosophical language