Merleau-Ponty and the Essence of Nature: A Return to Elemental Symbolism

Author(s): Taylor Knight Year: 2024 Type: Book (Edinburgh University Press, New Perspectives in Ontology series) Foreword: Emmanuel Falque

A monograph arguing that Merleau-Ponty's late philosophy develops an "elemental ontology" governed by the image of primordial water, where the flesh is understood as an "element" in the Presocratic sense. Knight reads Merleau-Ponty not as a precursor to deconstruction (the dominant Anglo-American reception) but within a Platonic-Schellingian tradition of the "physics of form."

Core Arguments

  1. Claim: Merleau-Ponty's late thought develops an "elemental ontology" more fundamental than the concept of being, because the elemental includes non-being, negative potential, and active withdrawal. Because: The element is a dynamic ground that creates being by negating itself — like silt precipitating from receding floodwaters. Merleau-Ponty explicitly defines flesh as "element" in the Presocratic sense against Sartre. Against: Deconstructive readings (Lawlor) that make Merleau-Ponty a forerunner of post-structuralism; Heidegger's horizonal ontology; Levinas's il y a as pure positivity.

  2. Claim: Three phenomenological accounts of the originary map onto three Greek cosmogonies: Heidegger = earth-sky (Hesiodic), Levinas = Night (Orphic), Merleau-Ponty = primordial water (Homeric). Because: Each cosmogonic imaginary expresses the modality (the how) of the origin. Water is pre-horizonal — it must recede before any earth-sky horizon can gather. Against: Conflation of all phenomenological elementals under one heading; Heidegger's claim that all being is encompassed by the horizon.

  3. Claim: Ontogenesis operates as "desiccation of being" — forms emerge as the primordial aquatic milieu withdraws. Because: The axolotl's transition from swimming to walking exemplifies creation through self-negation. "Life hides itself in the very measure in which it is realised" (Merleau-Ponty, N, 193-4) — Knight's proposed Merleau-Pontian reading of physis kryptesthai philei. Against: Heidegger's reading of physis as concealment-within-unconcealment; Aristotelian hylomorphism.

  4. Claim: The barbarian-principle (Schelling's das barbarische Prinzip) cannot be separated from the concept of symbol — nature operates symbolically through tautegory (saying-the-same), not allegory. Because: For Schelling, symbol is a Naturphilosophie concept: the finite manifestation of the infinite through self-repetition. The succession of gods in mythology is real symbolic replication, not allegory for hidden concepts. Against: Post-structuralist reduction of all form to semiotic play; Freudian allegorization of symbols; de Man's critique of the Romantic symbol.

  5. Claim: The chiasm develops Schelling's tautegory by thinking "from the middle" — it radicalizes the symbol by making the relationship primary. Because: Both chiasm and tautegory overcome idealist correlation and naive realism. The chiasm is productive: it generates "another order" (from physical to psychic) through overlapping, not synthesis. Against: Schelling's own tendency to theorize "from on high" (philosophie de survol).

  6. Claim: The unconscious in Merleau-Ponty integrates Schelling (productive), Freud (repressive), and Husserl (phenomenological) through the syllogism: "perception is the true unconscious" + "symbol is most true to perception" = "symbol is the true unconscious." Because: Body schema overcomes Freud's Cartesian dualism; the perceptual field curves around what we don't want to know; animal instinct (Lorenz) operates symbolically, extending symbolism beyond the human. Against: Cassirer's restriction of symbol to the human; Freud's semiotic dream interpretation.

Key Findings

  • The dominant Anglo-American reading of Merleau-Ponty as forerunner to Derrida/Deleuze/Foucault misreads the ecart as a deconstructive tool; Knight argues it is a source of creative power in the original togetherness of sensing and sensed
  • The aquatic principle is pre-horizonal: primordial waters must recede before any earth-sky horizon can gather; this challenges the Heideggerian framework at its most basic level
  • Nature itself is symbolic — human symbols are a "second physis"; philosophy is nature's dream-symbol
  • "It is not we who dream of nature, but nature who dreams in us" (Knight's concluding formulation)

Methodology

Close reading of Merleau-Ponty's late works (The Visible and the Invisible, the nature courses, Eye and Mind) in sustained dialogue with Schelling's Naturphilosophie, Presocratic philosophy (Heraclitus, the Ionians), Bachelard's material imagination, and Freud. Knight traces Merleau-Ponty's sparse citations as gestures toward deeper philosophical commitments, uncovering Neoplatonic, Hermetic, and mythological resonances.

Concepts Developed

  • flesh-as-element — the flesh as "element" in the Presocratic sense; against Sartre; from Bachelard
  • aquatic-ontology — primordial water as governing image; creation through drying out; depth/latency
  • natural-symbolism — nature operates symbolically; tautegory; body as symbolism; "second physis"
  • barbarian-principle — Schelling's irreducible ground; linked to symbol; Merleau-Ponty's être sauvage
  • chiasm — development of Schellingian tautegory; from the middle; binocular vision
  • perceptual-cosmogony — being as perceptual all the way down; three cosmogonic models

Concepts Referenced

  • Gestalt — early foundation of flesh concept (Ch. 1 §2)
  • il y a (Levinas) — shapeless teeming, contrast to Merleau-Ponty (Ch. 4 §3)
  • physis kryptesthai philei — "nature loves to hide"; central hermeneutic key (Ch. 1, Ch. 4)
  • Stiftung / institution — contrasted with constitution (Ch. 6 §2)
  • Arch-original Earth (Husserl) — transcendental soil (Introduction §5)
  • Mens momentanea (Leibniz) — momentary mind; collision as proto-sensation (Ch. 6 §3)
  • ecart — not developed originally by Knight but given a counter-reading against deconstruction
  • ineinander — referenced as the flesh's temporal structure (Ch. 6 §2, "Time and Chiasm" note)

Key Passages

"The flesh is not matter, is not mind, is not substance. To designate it, we should need the old term 'element', in the sense it was used to speak of water, air, earth, and fire, that is, in the sense of a general thing, midway between the spatio-temporal individual and the idea." (Merleau-Ponty, VI, 181-2/139-40; cited Introduction §3)

"Being and the imaginary are for Sartre 'objects', 'entities' — For me they are 'elements' (in Bachelard's sense), that is, not objects, but fields, subdued being, non-thetic being, being before being..." (Merleau-Ponty, VI working note; cited Introduction §3)

"Life hides itself in the very measure in which it is realised." (Merleau-Ponty, N, 193-4; cited Ch. 1 §4 — Knight's proposed reading of physis kryptesthai philei)

"What resists phenomenology within us — natural being, the 'barbarian' source Schelling spoke of — cannot remain outside phenomenology and should have its place within it." (Merleau-Ponty, VI; cited Ch. 5)

"It is not we who dream of nature, but nature who dreams in us." (Knight, Conclusion)

"Merleau-Ponty often remains captive to the phenomenological horizon... the phenomenological unconscious as something that bends consciousness around what it does not want to know is a horizonal definition of the unconscious. His most radical late thinking, however, opens up an elemental operation that challenges the limits of the horizon imposes on phenomenality." (Knight, Conclusion p. 217 — the honest admission that frames the book's central tension)

What's Not Obvious

  1. Knight's most honest claim — softened in any conventional summary — is that MP's phenomenology of the body "risks flattening out the unconscious by reducing it to the unconscious of the phenomenal field" (Ch 7 opening, p. 185–186; restated in the Conclusion p. 217). MP "often remains captive to the phenomenological horizon" — and the book's contribution is precisely to identify this limit and to argue that MP's most radical late thinking opens an aquatic, non-horizonal operation that breaks away from this captivity. The Conclusion's "It is not we who dream of nature, but nature who dreams in us" is the resolution Knight argues toward, not the position MP himself reached fully. This shifts the reading of natural-symbolism and chiasm: they are not endpoints of MP's thought but exits from a horizonal tendency that MP himself struggled with.

  2. The "Lethean body" reading via Plotinus is Knight's most original and most fragile interpretive move (Intro §7, pp. 16–19). Knight argues that MP's "past which was never present" (PhP 289/242) participates in Plotinus's identification of the body with the River Lethe (Ennead IV.3.26: "the body's nature, moving and flowing, must be a cause of forgetfulness... this is why the 'river of Lethe' might be understood in this sense"). MP's "early interest in Neoplatonism... seems to be largely erased or at least hidden in his published work" (Intro §7 fn. 60 — the lost 1929 diplôme thesis on Plotinus). The reading is reconstructive: it depends on the philological intuition that body-as-liquid-non-being fits MP's ontology, but Knight's own fn. 61 cites a working note (VI 292/243, April 1960) where MP says the "past that 'belongs to a mythical time'" is "not compatible with phenomenology" — which could equally support the reading that MP resisted Plotinian framing. This connects to flesh-as-element as a Knight-specific Position note rather than an established attribution.

  3. The Hermes Trismegistus citation in Eye and Mind is the philological hinge of the book (Ch 4 §6, pp. 118–120). MP's oblique reference to Hermes Trismegistus on the "voice of light" (OE 70) — usually noted as an eccentricity in MP scholarship — is unpacked by Knight via the Poimandres: "downward tending darkness... changed into a watery substance... [which] gave forth... an inarticulate cry. But from the Light there came forth a holy Word, which took its stand upon the watery substance; and I thought this Word was the voice of the Light." The unpacking places MP in a theosophical tradition (Schelling-Böhme-Hermes) that links the aquatic to the symbolic to the inarticulate-cry-becoming-Logos. This is the "Knight find" the Falque foreword praises as a Gadamerian "divining-rod" moment — and motivates the elemental-symbolism subtitle of the book.

Critique / Limitations

  • Knight acknowledges Merleau-Ponty never rigorously distinguished between elemental imaginaries; the aquatic reading is partly reconstructive
  • The thesis depends on reading sparse, oblique citations (to Hermes Trismegistus, to Bachelard) as indicative of deeper commitments
  • Falque's objection (foreword, Ch. 5) that Merleau-Ponty constrains the barbarian principle as always "for" meaning is acknowledged but not fully resolved
  • The relationship between Merleau-Ponty's phenomenological unconscious and Freud's drive theory remains a tension Knight identifies but does not claim to resolve

Connections

  • builds on merleau-ponty-2022-possibility-of-philosophy — both treat Merleau-Ponty's late Collège de France period, but Knight focuses on the nature courses rather than the philosophy courses
  • critiques Lawlor and the Anglo-American deconstructive reception of Merleau-Ponty
  • extends martin-heidegger's treatment through cosmogonic contrast (earth-sky vs. water)
  • extends edmund-husserl's arch-original Earth into the aquatic dimension