Texts and Dialogues: On Philosophy, Politics, and Culture

Author(s): Maurice Merleau-Ponty Year: 1992 (English collection); pieces span 1933–1961 Type: book (anthology)

A 1992 collection of fifteen short Merleau-Ponty pieces — interviews, dialogues, reviews, conference papers, lectures, newspaper columns, and aphoristic working notes — spanning the entire arc of his career from his 1933 Caisse Nationale des Sciences research proposals (his earliest archive-locatable philosophical work, written while teaching at a lycée in Beauvais) through the 1960 Chapsal interview, the Royaumont confrontation with Ryle, and the Five Notes on Claude Simon (Méditations 1961-62, posthumous). Three appendices supplement the primary texts: Forrest W. Williams on the early project; H. L. Van Breda on the Husserl Archives; Xavier Tilliette transcribing MP's 1957–58 Husserl-on-Nature lectures. The volume is edited by Hugh J. Silverman and James Barry Jr.; principal translator Michael B. Smith.

The editors' framing pointedly refuses pensée de survol — they offer "the texture" of a philosopher at work. The volume's wiki value is principally the early MP material (1933 Nature of Perception; 1935 Scheler review; 1936 Marcel review; 1936 + 1943 Sartre reviews; 1946 Crisis dialogue; 1947 Apology) the wiki has so far engaged only via secondary sources, and the late material that supplements Signs and V&I (1956 Founders and Discovery of History; 1956 East-West Encounter dialogue; 1957–58 Husserl-on-Nature lectures via Tilliette; 1959 Philosophy of Existence lecture; 1960 Chapsal interview; 1960 Five Notes on Claude Simon; 1960 Royaumont).

Core Arguments

  1. Claim: A new ontology — a "philosophy of brute being and not of docile being which would have us believe the world can be fully explained" — must replace the dominant Western ontology of "ens realissimum." Because: The "ontology of full being [être plein]" of Catholicism, Enlightenment, and Marxism alike has "outlived itself"; Heidegger and Sartre rightly insist philosophy must redefine being and the connections between thing and non-thing. Against: Catholicism, Enlightenment philosophy, classical Marxism, scientism (Laplace's "secularized god"). The "ontology of object" is named directly. (Chapsal 1960, pp. 33–35.)

  2. Claim: Politics is "action upon humans" — not the "confounding thunderbolt" of Manichean choice; "the 'yes' and the 'no' are interesting only in punctuating a cycle of action." Because: Hegel's truth-cannot-be-expressed-in-a-single-proposition motto applies to all genuine political thinking. To refuse Manicheanism is not to stand outside politics but to do what professional politicians actually do. Communism became distorted by Manicheanism. Against: "Purism of action" (Sartre); Stalinist Manicheanism. (Chapsal 1960, pp. 26–27; East-West 1956 echoes.)

  3. Claim: Engagement has an optimistic and a pessimistic form. The optimistic conception — "convergence between the values of culture and those of action" without subordination — extends political bearing even to literature about bees. The pessimistic conception (writers must lie or keep silent for the apparatus that holds the future) is tied to the Cold War period now ending. Because: If the writer must be silent for the future, the only choice is to stop writing. The optimistic engagement is "the coming into relation with others"; the writer "extracts a formula for living with them" via the work itself. Stendhal's Lucien Leuwen and Malraux's Espoir are paradigm cases. Against: Sartre's "totalitarian critique" (internal and socioeconomic critique each tied to the other) and Silone's pure "loyalty to the persecuted." (East-West 1956, pp. 53–54, 75–76.)

  4. Claim: A new universalism is possible — "if we place ourselves on the level of what men live" — beyond the "intellectual formula for the Cold War" that reduces culture to ideology. "Truth is not a fully coined currency" (Hegel cited). Because: Marx himself acknowledged the autonomy of culture (Engels on graphs of cultural and economic evolution; Marx on Greek art). Recognizing autonomy moves us toward a universalism not of "abstract reason" but of lived convergence. Against: The Cold War formula equating cultural truth and socioeconomic regime; Sartre's "we are not transcending [the two ideologies]" position. (East-West 1956, pp. 51–53, 60–61.)

  5. Claim: The Greeks founded philosophy by inventing the dialectic ("the truth that issues from paradox, the power of truth inseparable from the power to go astray, the being-oneself in the being-other"); they understood that "the extreme point of reflection is the rediscovery of the abrupt upsurge of being prior to reflection" — radical knowing rediscovers unknowing. Because: They created the type of reason that "knows that, in being no more than what it is, it would not be reason" — reason that consents to myth via "the imagination that saves from the imagination." They defined "the antagonisms that are our perpetual coordinates" and understood that "antagonists produce and reproduce one another unstintingly." Apollo without Dionysus, Socrates without Oedipus, would be nothing. Against: Cumulative-progress histories of philosophy; humanist or decadentist readings of the Greeks. (Founders 1956.)

  6. Claim: History is not a "second nature" but the very mode of existence in which institutions, plans, and the past are constituted retrospectively. "Truth is not ready-made in things, and yet, by a 'retrograde movement,' it presents itself to us as existing prior to our act of knowledge." Because: The "people of history" innovate by founding, instituting, taking up tradition, anticipating a future. Pre-capitalism does not "carry capitalism within itself as a plant carries a seed"; pre-capitalism "degenerated of its own accord, leaving the field open for something else." The discovery of history is "the discovery of a questioning and . . . a kind of anguish." Against: Hegelian-Marxist immanentism that reads history as causal-deterministic. Anti-progressivist. (Discovery of History 1956.)

  7. Claim: Perception is not an intellectual operation on non-extended sensations but a structural Gestalt-organization of the sensory field. The "form" is present in sense-knowledge itself; the "incoherent sensations" of traditional psychology are a "gratuitous hypothesis." Because: Gestalt psychology shows figure-ground, depth-perception, movement-perception are not constructed by judgment but immediately given. Neurology has clarified the role of "conduction" of nascent movements (perception in motor framework). Against: Critical philosophy / intellectualism; associationist empiricism; Lachelier-Lagneau-Alain's reflective theory of perception. (Nature of Perception 1933.)

  8. Claim: My body is not an object I own but is intimately me — "I and it form a common cause, and in a sense I am my body." "The Cogito is far from being the first principle"; "the root of the ingenuous affirmation is rather the body's consciousness." Because: Marcel: "Embodiment, the central given of metaphysics . . . is the given on the basis of which a fact is possible (which is not true of the Cogito)." Existence and objectivity are not two contents of thought but two regions of being. (Being and Having 1936, pp. 125–28; the earliest MP printed anti-Cogito statement.)

  9. Claim (Sartre Imagination 1936 review): The classical conception of the image as an "internal object" is incompatible with the spontaneity of consciousness. Consciousness "does not admit any pure givens within its precincts." The image is "a name for a certain way consciousness has of intending its object." Because: An image as internal object would require a force of the same nature as itself to be called/sent into the unconscious; consciousness is not a force. Against: Taine, Ribot, classical associationism, Bergson's "images." (But MP defends Bergsonian "images" as anticipating Husserlian noema — partially recanting Sartre's harsh dismissal.)

  10. Claim (Christianity and Ressentiment 1935): Scheler's diagnosis of ressentiment exposes the modern reductive style as a four-fold "rhythm" — reductions in the theory of life (Lamarckism/Darwinism reducing growth to preservation), in emotions (mechanism, Spinozist dualism), in knowledge (criteria-search displacing direct evidence), in morality (utilitarianism replacing love-of-neighbor). Because: A "psychology of history" reveals "the rhythm of ressentiment" in all these reductions. Christianity properly understood is not a ressentiment phenomenon, but humanitarianism (Comtean altruism, Pascal's le moi est haïssable) is — Promethean love-of-the-human-race-without-love-of-self/neighbor. Against: Empiricism, mechanism, Spinoza, utilitarianism, Comte/Mill/Spencer relativism. The Lutheran reduction of religious values to "affective states" also targeted.

Argumentative Movement

The volume does not advance a single argument; it presents the texture of MP's career across diverse genres. The editors' refusal of survol is itself doctrinal — the volume's structural movement runs by recurrent motif (engagement, brute being, body-and-cogito, lateral universalism, anti-reductive method) rather than by progressive thesis. Each piece performs MP's thinking in a different register: dialectical-analytical (reviews of Scheler, Marcel, Sartre 1936; Royaumont 1960); confessional-reconstructive (Chapsal 1960; Philosophy of Existence 1959); aphoristic-fragmentary (Five Notes on Claude Simon 1960); polemical-interrogative (East-West 1956; Crisis 1946); educational-historical (Founders + Discovery of History 1956); foundational-programmatic (Nature of Perception 1933).

The volume's implicit argumentative movement — recoverable across pieces — runs from anti-intellectualist Gestalt-psychology in 1933, through the anti-Cogito 1936 confrontation with Marcel + Sartre + Scheler, to the wartime Flies review's freedom-as-rupture (1943), the post-war engagement debate (1946–1956), the late ontology programmatic of 1959–60 (Maison Canadienne lecture; Chapsal interview; Royaumont; Five Notes), with the appendices (Williams; Tilliette) reconstructing the early project and the late Husserl-on-Nature workshop. The 1957–58 Husserl-Nature lectures (Tilliette appendix §I-II) are the workshop of the 1959 "Philosopher and his Shadow" essay; the Chapsal 1960 interview is the bird's-eye self-summary of the late ontology MP did not live to write up systematically.

Key Findings

  • The 1933 Nature of Perception proposals already articulate MP's anti-intellectualist Gestalt-program and the centrality of perception of one's own body, twelve years before Phenomenology of Perception. The eidetic/inductive distinction (which V&I working notes 1959 retract) is here in unproblematic form.
  • The 1935 Scheler review establishes MP's anti-reductive method via the four-fold "rhythm of ressentiment" — life, emotions, knowledge, morality — two decades before freud-without-demonology (1954–55).
  • The 1936 Marcel review is the earliest MP printed statement of "I am my body" / "the Cogito is far from being the first principle," nine years before PhP and 24 years before V&I.
  • The 1936 Sartre Imagination review is MP's earliest sustained engagement with Sartre and contains the "image-as-way-of-intending" thesis MP partially defends and partially qualifies (with a Bergson rehabilitation).
  • The 1956 East-West Encounter dialogue contains MP's cardinal articulation of optimistic vs pessimistic engagement — earlier than merleau-ponty-1964-signs / merleau-ponty-1955-adventures-of-the-dialectic echoes — with the polemic against Sartre's "totalitarian critique."
  • The Chapsal 1960 interview is the strongest public, non-archival anchor for MP's polemical category "ontology of the object" / "ens realissimum" / "ontology of full being [être plein]" — supplementing the archival reconstruction in saintaubert-2021-etre-et-chair-ii / saintaubert-2023-etre-et-chair with a 1960 first-person attestation in print.
  • The 1957–58 Husserl-on-Nature lectures (Tilliette §I-II) are the workshop of the 1959 "Philosopher and his Shadow" essay published in merleau-ponty-1964-signs. The lectures contain the cardinal claim "Husserl was not an instructor of Merleau-Ponty as much as an initiator and revealer: in the field of his writings, Merleau-Ponty has traced out new furrows, concerned to free up the implicit Husserl who resembled him like a brother" — which is shadow-philosophy method in its most compact form.
  • The Royaumont 1960 confrontation with Ryle contains MP's explicit elevation of the second person to a philosophical category: "the transference of the first person outside ourselves raises a problem requiring philosophical elucidation."
  • The 1960 Five Notes on Claude Simon contain (a) a 1960 attestation of "Vorhabe — a sedimentation to be described in the imagination no less than in Perception," (b) "Speech [la Parole] is the circle" against Sartrean ipseity-as-nihilation, (c) the figure of fetish as qualitative-textural mediation, and (d) the explicit phrase archéologie de la pensée (archaeology of thought) — six years before Foucault's Order of Things and eight years before Archaeology of Knowledge.
  • The Apology for International Conferences 1947 contains the earliest printed attestation of "thought in the nascent state, before it has become other" — extending the nascent-state genealogy back from PhP attestations to 1947.

Methodology

The volume itself uses no single method; it is an editorial compilation. But the editorial method matters: Silverman and Barry refuse a thematic survol and present the pieces in two parts (Interviews/Dialogues; Texts) ordered roughly by genre then by chronology within genre, not by chronology across genres. This is itself a doctrine: the texture-not-survol arrangement performs MP's anti-survol critique. Translations are differentiated by piece (Smith principal; Williams 1933 proposals; Wening 1935 Scheler; Hatley 1960 Royaumont; Weiss 1959 Maison Canadienne; Silverman 1960 Five Notes; Gaines 1956 East-West; Michelman Van Breda appendix; Leder Tilliette appendix; Barry Chapsal interview).

Each piece's argumentative form differs:

  • Reviews (1935 Scheler; 1936 Marcel; 1936 Sartre Imagination; 1943 Sartre Flies): premise-conclusion criticism + sympathetic reconstruction.
  • Lectures (1959 Maison Canadienne; 1957–58 Husserl-on-Nature via Tilliette): pedagogical-reconstructive.
  • Dialogues (1946 Crisis; 1956 Venice East-West; 1960 Royaumont): dialectical-aphoristic, with MP often interrupting his own arguments via interlocutor pressure.
  • Interview (1960 Chapsal): confessional-systematic.
  • Working notes (1960 Five Notes): aphoristic-fragmentary.
  • Newspaper columns (1954–55 L'Express): condensed-polemical-popular.
  • Editorial / conference apology (1947 Apology): polemical-narrative.
  • Foundational programs (1933 Nature of Perception): bibliographic-programmatic.

Concepts Developed

  • ontology-of-the-object — Chapsal 1960 names "ens realissimum" / "ontology of full being [être plein]" / "ontology of the object" in MP's own first-person voice, supplementing the archival reconstruction in saintaubert-2021-etre-et-chair-ii with a public attestation. The most direct printed MP-voice anchor in the wiki for this polemical category.
  • wild-being — Chapsal 1960's "philosophy of brute being and not of docile being" is MP's most accessible self-naming of the late ontology in print. The phrase "brute being" enters the wiki via this anchor.
  • action-of-unveiling-vs-action-of-governing — extends the 1955 AD distinction with Chapsal 1960's yes/no rhythm and East-West 1956's optimistic vs pessimistic engagement. The 1956 East-West formulation is the cardinal articulation of MP's positive engagement program.
  • lateral-universal — East-West 1956's "universality through opposition" / "concrete universality" extends the genealogy back from merleau-ponty-1964-signs (1960) to 1956.
  • motor-intentionality — Being and Having 1936's "I am my body" / "the Cogito is far from being the first principle" is the earliest printed attestation, pre-PhP.
  • primacy-of-perception — Nature of Perception 1933 is the earliest printed argument, pre-Structure-of-Behavior.
  • shadow-philosophy — Tilliette 1957–58 contains a more compact statement than the 1959 Signs essay: "Husserl was not an instructor of Merleau-Ponty as much as an initiator and revealer."
  • nascent-state — Apology 1947 contains the earliest printed attestation: "thought in the nascent state, before it has become other."
  • retrograde-movement-of-the-true — Discovery of History 1956 is an explicit print attestation, supplementing the 1954–55 course-notes anchor.

Concepts where this source is partially primary (newly developed sub-registers)

  • Optimistic vs pessimistic engagement as cardinal 1956 articulation (East-West Encounter) — could anchor a new sub-register of action-of-unveiling-vs-action-of-governing. The phrase "convergence between the values of culture and those of action" (East-West, p. 54) is the polemical anchor.
  • Vertical imagination / Vorhabe-in-imagination (Five Notes #3) — extends Vorhabe and sedimentation from perception into imagination; novel to the wiki.
  • Fetish-as-mediator (Five Notes #5) — qualitative-textural mediation; cousin of idole and figuratifs but at the register of perceptual texture.
  • Archaeology of thought (Five Notes #3, 1960) — pre-Foucauldian usage; potentially genealogically important.
  • Second person grammar as philosophical category (Royaumont 1960) — explicit MP elevation of Du / toi to a level of philosophical analysis Ryle's first/third-person framework cannot accommodate.
  • Anti-reductive method via four reductions (Christianity and Ressentiment 1935) — the systematic anti-reductive method established two decades before freud-without-demonology.

Concepts Referenced

  • gestalt-principles-of-unification — Nature of Perception 1933 cites Wertheimer's laws + Köhler + Goldstein + Koffka in foundational role.
  • figure-ground-relationship — Nature of Perception 1933 cites Rubin / Koffka.
  • phenomenal-field — pre-figured in 1933 as "spontaneous organization of the sensory field."
  • lebenswelt — Tilliette 1957–58 (Husserl's Lebenswelt implicit in Boden).
  • stiftung — implicit in Founders 1956 (the Greeks as founders, fondateurs); Discovery of History 1956 ("we are no longer concerned simply with juxtaposed individuals, but with a sort of human tissue").
  • institution — implicit in Discovery of History 1956 ("our institutions and our plans encroach upon the future").
  • two-historicities — Discovery of History 1956 maps onto event/advent distinction implicitly; Founders 1956 contains the Greek-as-founders register.
  • chiasm / ineinander — Tilliette 1957–58 references Ineinander ("the idea of chiasm and Ineinander"), citing 1960 working note.
  • volant — implicit in Tilliette 1957–58's "transitional synthesis" (Übergangssynthesis).
  • ultra-chose — implicit in Being and Having 1936 ("My relation to it is not that of the Cogito to the cogitatum").
  • texture-imaginaire-du-reel — Five Notes 1960 ("scene 'screens' (in the Freudian sense) those elements which lie behind it").
  • onirisme — Five Notes 1960 ("vertical imagination").
  • grain-du-sensible — Five Notes #5 ("texture of this red has a signifying virtue").
  • propaedeutic-dialectic — Founders 1956 ("they invented the dialectic").
  • freud-without-demonology — anticipated in Christianity and Ressentiment 1935 (anti-reductive method).
  • dehiscence — anticipated in The Flies 1943 ("free man is like a flaw in the diamond of the world, like a splinter in nature's flesh").
  • passivity — anticipated in Five Notes #4 ("the one who feels and lives is not an immediate given").
  • indirect-language — Royaumont 1960 (mute experience needing verbal formulation).
  • ultrabolshevism — East-West 1956 polemic against Sartre's "totalitarian critique" continues the 1955 AD register.

Terminology

French (original) English Attestation Translator note
brute being / être brut brute being Chapsal 1960 p. 35 Direct translation by James Barry Jr.
ens realissimum (Latin) "ens realissimum" Chapsal 1960 p. 35 Untranslated; scholastic-Cartesian-Leibnizian topos
être plein full being Chapsal 1960 p. 34 Saint Aubert's "ontologie de l'objet" target
pensée de survol high-altitude thinking Silverman/Barry Introduction p. 18 Wiki has high-altitude-thinking
engagement engagement East-West 1956 throughout "Optimistic" vs "pessimistic" registers
concrete universality concrete universality Apology 1947 p. 144 Hegelian register
Vorhabe (untranslated) Five Notes #1, #3 Husserlian "having-in-advance"
Verschmelzung (untranslated) Five Notes #5 Husserlian fusion-synthesis
l'avènement du concept the event/coming-forth of the concept Five Notes #3 Heideggerian Ereignis register
archéologie de la pensée archaeology of thought Five Notes #3 p. 166 Pre-Foucauldian (1960)
la Parole Speech Five Notes #2 "Speech is the circle" — being-of-language
ressentiment (untranslated) Christianity and Ressentiment 1935 throughout Nietzsche-Scheler register
blosse Sache mere thing Tilliette 1957–58 §I Husserlian; target of MP's Rückdeutung
Subjektleib subject-body Tilliette 1957–58 §I Husserlian; "organ of the I can"
Wechselbezogenheit, in Eins mit einander reciprocal relationship, in unity with one another Tilliette 1957–58 §II Husserlian; cardinal phrase for nature-body unity
Einfühlung empathy Tilliette 1957–58 §I Husserlian; intercorporeal not introjective
Boden / Urheimat / Ur-arche ground / primal-home / primal-arche Tilliette 1957–58 §II Husserlian earth-as-stock vocabulary
texture texture Five Notes #5 p. 167; Chapsal 1960 implicit Qualitative-figural register
fétiche fetish Five Notes #5 p. 167 Mediator of experience (not Freudian fetish)

Key Passages

"A philosophy cannot be sketched out in a few words. Let us only say that it must necessarily be a philosophy of brute being and not one of docile being which would have us believe the world can be fully explained. It must also be an attentive study of meaning, a meaning wholly other than the meaning of ideas, a volatile and allusive meaning which lacks any direct power over things — even though it may appear and proliferate in things, once certain obstacles have been cleared away." (Chapsal interview, p. 35)

"One of the important ontologies of the West treats the visible world as the only possible manifestation of an infinite productivity. If something had to be, it could not be other than this world. Being is thus conceived as full being [être plein]. There is not a trace of wavering, it manifestly could not be otherwise. It has the solidity of the object." (Chapsal, p. 34) — primary anchor for ontology-of-the-object

"By refusing to abide by the yes and the no the philosopher does not stand outside politics, but is confined to doing what everyone, and especially the professional politician, does." (Chapsal, p. 26)

"Truth is not a fully coined currency, and is recognizable from the outside only by the marks it carries." (Hegel quoted by MP at East-West 1956, p. 53; Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit preface)

"From the moment we engage in discussion as we are doing right now, we transcend the concept of ideologies." (East-West 1956, p. 60; against Sartre)

"Engagement is the coming into relation with others; and engagement succeeds when, in the course of this engagement with others, we come to extract from it a formula for living with them." (East-West 1956, p. 75)

"My body does not appear to me as an object, a set of qualities and characteristics to be linked up with one another and thus understood. My relation to it is not that of the Cogito to the cogitatum, the 'epistemological subject' to the object. I and it form a common cause, and in a sense I am my body." (Being and Having 1936, p. 125)

"In this sense the Cogito is far from being the first principle, the condition of all valid certainty. The root of the ingenuous affirmation is rather the body's consciousness, which may well underlie all affirmations of the existence of physical objects." (Being and Having 1936, p. 126)

"Now, experimental investigations carried out in Germany by Gestalt theorists seem to show on the contrary that perception is not an intellectual operation. The 'form,' on this view, would be present in sense-knowledge itself, and the incoherent 'sensations' of traditional psychology would be a gratuitous hypothesis." (Nature of Perception 1933, p. 98)

"Such is the response which the philosophy of Scheler gives to the naturalism of Nietzsche. A direct intercourse with things, creatures, and consciousness makes this sphere of life manifest itself where ressentiment has wished to imprison spiritual values and religious values under the mask of truth." (Christianity and Ressentiment 1935, p. 117)

"Standing up against the gentle might of forces lulling him to sleep, the free man is like a flaw in the diamond of the world, like a splinter in nature's flesh." (On Sartre's The Flies 1943, p. 140)

"For the attentive and generous spectator, to meet with a writer is to experience his or her thought in the nascent state, before it has become other. And as it happens, speaking and living writers all belong to one sole universe, that of human concern, whereas finished works, and regimes seen from a distance, seem to divide that universe into impenetrable cantons. In all dialogue there is an element of concrete universality." (Apology 1947, p. 144)

"What is more, [the Greeks] went so far as to understand that the extreme point of that kind of reflection is the rediscovery of the abrupt upsurge of being prior to reflection, and that radical knowing rediscovers unknowing." (Founders 1956, p. 148)

"Truth is not ready-made in things, and yet, by a 'retrograde movement,' it presents itself to us as existing prior to our act of knowledge." (Discovery of History 1956, p. 150)

"To see is to be granted the permission to not think the thing, since it is already seen." (Five Notes #1, p. 164)

"Here there is a Vorhabe — a sedimentation to be described in the imagination no less than in Perception. . . . strata. Archaeology of thought (and of the future as well)." (Five Notes #3, p. 166) — archaeology of thought anchor, pre-Foucault

"The texture of this red has a signifying virtue, a qualitative texture above all. . . . Our experience is not a flat field of qualities but rather always invoked by this or that fetish, a fetish which intercedes on its own behalf." (Five Notes #5, p. 167)

"Husserl was not an instructor of Merleau-Ponty as much as an initiator and revealer: in the field of his writings, Merleau-Ponty has traced out new furrows, concerned to free up the implicit Husserl who resembled him like a brother." (Tilliette appendix, p. 186) — primary anchor for shadow-philosophy in compact form

"The most singular, the most carnal, is the most universal." (Tilliette appendix, p. 189) — anchor for carnal-universalism / lateral-universal

"Intersubjectivity is intercorporeity." (Tilliette appendix, p. 190)

What's Not Obvious

  1. The 1933 Nature of Perception proposals already articulate what V&I working notes (1959) explicitly retract. The eidetic/inductive distinction MP uses in 1933 ("phenomenology distinguishes 'eidetic' method and 'inductive' method (that is, experimental method), and never challenges the legitimacy of the latter") is one MP himself flags as problematic in the V&I working notes (per Williams's appendix, p. 172 — citing V&I p. 22). The 1933 proposal is therefore not just a seed of PhP but already contains the terminological commitments MP will later have to detach from. This lets us read the 1933 proposal as both the foundation MP defends across his career and the vocabulary he must overcome — a structural ambivalence visible only when 1933 and 1959 are read together. (Reference: wild-being genealogy; pre-V&I-pre-PhP retraction site.)

  2. The 1960 Chapsal interview's "ontology of the object" / "ens realissimum" is the strongest public anchor for what Saint Aubert reconstructs archivally. Saint Aubert's 2021 Être et chair II derives MP's "ontologie de l'objet" from NMS 1957 archival texts; the wiki's ontology-of-the-object page anchors there. But Chapsal 1960 contains MP's first-person statement in a public interview — "ontology of the object," "ens realissimum", "ontology of full being" — which is the most direct public attestation of the same polemical category. This is genealogically significant: archival material is confirmed (not merely supplemented) by the public 1960 interview. Cross-link: ontology-of-the-object should now carry the 1960 Chapsal anchor alongside the Saint Aubert archival reconstruction.

  3. The Five Notes on Claude Simon (Méditations 1961-62) contain MP's explicit phrase "archaeology of thought" — six years before Foucault's Order of Things (1966) and eight years before Archaeology of Knowledge (1968). The translator's footnote 6 to Five Notes #3 already flags "the role of Merleau-Ponty in the background of Foucault's thought is often underplayed." This is a cross-tradition genealogical claim, not a direct-influence claim — but it complicates the standard "MP ends, structuralism begins" framing of French philosophical history. The 1960 attestation is also continuous with institution's genealogical-historical register: the "strata. Archaeology of thought (and of the future as well)" formula is internally Merleau-Pontyan, not anticipating Foucault. (Cross-link: could anchor a corner of institution or two-historicities genealogy.)

Critique / Limitations

  • The volume is editorial, not authored: Silverman and Barry decided which pieces to include and how to order them. The omission of MP's other newspaper columns from L'Express (only 4 of many are included) is editor-selected. The translation across multiple translators (Smith, Williams, Wening, Hatley, Weiss, Silverman, Gaines, Michelman, Leder, Barry) is uneven in style, sometimes more literal (Leder on Tilliette) and sometimes more interpretive (Gaines on East-West).
  • The Tilliette appendix is reconstructed lecture notes (Tilliette transcribes MP's lectures from his own notes), not MP's own writing. Citations from Tilliette §I-II should be flagged as attested via Tilliette's transcription, not direct MP texts.
  • The Williams appendix is interpretive commentary on the 1933 proposals, not primary MP material.
  • The Van Breda appendix (1962) is biographical-archival, not philosophically substantive — but it is the load-bearing source for chronology of MP's Husserl Archive consultations.
  • The Crisis 1946 dialogue, the East-West 1956 dialogue, and the Royaumont 1960 dialogue all show MP in interruption mode — his arguments are sometimes incomplete because interlocutors cut him off (e.g., Ristic to MP East-West; Ryle's brusque responses at Royaumont). This is partially compensated for by reading MP's follow-up clarifications in the same dialogues, but the dialogue genre itself produces a non-systematic argumentative texture.
  • The Christianity and Ressentiment 1935 review is extensively Scheler-mediated: MP's anti-reductive method emerges through his interpretation of Scheler's interpretation of Nietzsche. The fourfold-reduction structure may be Scheler's (not directly MP's). For claim-promotion purposes, the source-locating of "MP's anti-reductive method" requires distinguishing what is MP's own articulation (the rhythm-figure; the fourfold systematicity) from what is Scheler's content (the four objects of reduction).

Connections

Sources

(none — this is a primary source by MP, not a derivative work)