Conférences en Europe et premiers cours à Lyon — Inédits I (1946–1947)

Author: Maurice Merleau-Ponty (1908–1961) Year: notes 1946–1947 (composition); 2022 (posthumous critical edition) Type: notes (manuscript notes for conferences and courses)

The first of two volumes of MP's previously-unpublished post-war manuscripts (Mimésis, 2022, ed. Michel Dalissier with Shôichi Matsuba). It assembles 365 leaves of MP's own conference and course notes, transcribed from photocopies of the original manuscripts, with an extensive editorial apparatus (140-page general introduction, glossary covering both volumes, annexes including K. Whiteside's earlier transcription work). The volume is the chaînon manquant of the MP corpus: the BNF Nouvelles Acquisitions Françaises archive (4000 ff.) covers 1950–1961; before this 2022 edition there was no major archival source for 1945–1950 — exactly the period running from Phenomenology of Perception to The Prose of the World.

The volume contains four major manuscript groups: (1) Belgian conferences, March 1946 — "L'individu et l'histoire" (Brussels, 14 March), "L'existentialisme et la politique" (Ghent, 18 March), "Les Aspects politiques et sociaux de l'existentialisme" (Paris, 23 March), and "[Complément] Humanisme et terreur" (October 1946, the workbench of HT); (2) Scandinavian conferences, March 1947 — "Problèmes d'hier et d'aujourd'hui. De Gide à Sartre" (Stockholm, 18 March), "Optimisme et Pessimisme. = Existentialisme" / "Conflits moraux et politiques dans Philosophie de l'existence" (Stockholm 19–20, repeated Oslo 26, Copenhagen), "La Tradition française et l'existentialisme" (Stockholm, 21 March, not repeated); (3) Lyon course notes Liberté – En particulier chez Leibniz (1946–47); (4) Notes on Hegel's Esthétique (1947?), with MP's marginalia on his ENS-library copy.

Core Arguments

Claim: There is a pente de l'histoire — a slope/inclination presented by history as the structure for our position-taking — neither the necessity Hegel claimed nor the contingency Aron defends. We give history a sense necessarily, "à partir des structures qu'elle nous présente," through reprise du passé et projet de l'avenir. Because: Aron's "no philosophy of history" is itself a philosophy of history, masking a conservative politics; Hegelian fatalism is "Grisaille de la philosophie. Chouette de Minerve" — history-from-the-end. Both share the rejected point de vue de Sirius. The third position is logique de fait — history as Gestalt orienting toward equilibrium, with "natural selection" of false attitudes. Against: Aron's Introduction à la philosophie de l'histoire (1938); the late-Hegel Realphilosophie; Sartre's "passé social toujours en sursis" (which MP says is "Faux si négation de pente"). Location: "L'individu et l'histoire" Brussels notes, pp. 195–196 (formula at p. 195: "il y a une pente de l'histoire... Reprise du passé et projet de l'avenir").
Claim: The political problem is the problem of vie à plusieurs + the on; it is ignored by both Kantian rationalist subjectivism (Alain: "lois de l'État comme des choses, à juger" — Sartre: "la politique est impensable") and Comte/Maurras-style objectivism (positive politics; Hegel-of-the-end's "tout ce qui est réel est rationnel"). Both share the point de vue de Sirius. Existentialism overcomes them via incarnation — "I am at once this and that, I assume myself as situated." Because: subjectivist morality (Kant: "fais ce que dois, advienne que pourra") cannot bridge to political efficacy without becoming magical; pacifism in privileged situations is itself political effect; objectivist sociology absorbs the individual without recognizing his judgment. The third path is the situation dialectique — l'homme en porte-à-faux. Against: Alain on the State; Comte's positive politics; Sartre on politics as impensable; Aron's slide from extreme subjectivism to extreme objectivism. Location: "L'existentialisme et la politique" pp. 204–205; "Les Aspects politiques et sociaux de l'existentialisme" pp. 211–213.
Claim: There is a third attitude beyond the Stalinism/conservatism dilemma — the opposition de gauche. Marxist (objective factors, materialism), without Christian/conservative morality; insists on judgment; refuses the choice "Terreur or échec." "On me dit: pour vous le marxisme n'est qu'un pis-aller, qu'attendez-vous pour vous rallier (Courtade). Ce n'est pas indécision en moi mais dans les choses." Because: marxism is the philosophy of history (no rival philosophy of history establishes itself except by destroying marxist explanations, which is not the case in 1946); the failure of revolution-in-one-country has produced "non plus politique fondée sur cours socialiste des choses, sur révolution dans le monde, mais pur réalisme politique"; the formal comparison of communism and fascism is possible but the material comparison fails. Against: Koestler "rediscovering America"; Victor Serge; Brice Parain; Hervé ("il n'y aura plus d'Octobre 17"); Courtade (PC). Location: "[Complément] Humanisme et terreur" pp. 219–222.
Claim: The Roubachof case (Koestler's Darkness at Noon) is the case of the October generation — a marxist who, because he believes the marxist philosophy of history, must avow what he did not do, must accept "trahison objective" against subjective truth. Roubachof, Gletkin, the n°1 share the same position of negation of subjectivity, judgment, contingency, scientism; only vieillissement separates them. Were Roubachof younger he would either reason like Gletkin or pass to action against the n°1; in either case he would fall back into the rules of the game. Because: "Roubachof avoue parce qu'il est de la génération d'Octobre et qu'il croit à philosophie marxiste de l'histoire — Donc accord individu-histoire n'est possible que dans la mesure où l'histoire n'avorte pas. Autrement, on revient à Hegel" (p. 197). The "fiction grammaticale" is what the marxist machine treats individuals as in moments of derailment. Against: Koestler's reading (Roubachof as tragic dissident); the choice stalinism-vs-conservatism that Koestler thinks exhaustive. Location: "L'individu et l'histoire" pp. 196–197; "[Complément] HT" pp. 218–222 (the case is the test of the entire 1946–47 political philosophy).
Claim: French existentialism is dissociated from Jasperian transcendence (Verzweiflung) and Heideggerian Sein-zum-Tode. Existentialism is "contradictions, lutte, contingence, raison dans la déraison sans garantie = tout cela, qui est existentialisme, est notre temps lui-même. Non désespoir." It begins by describing conflicts and failure but assumes them; it is not pessimist but takes contingence and risk seriously. Because: "Contingence, non absurde — Logique de fait, non désespoir. Chaque dialogue est commencement de rationalité." Hegel's death-struggle envelops recognition; love envelops more than dispossession; "il n'y a échec que parce qu'il y a succès." Against: pessimist readings of MP/Sartre; equation existentialism = philosophy of despair; Sartre's "L'homme est une passion inutile" read flatly. Location: "Optimisme et Pessimisme. = Existentialisme" p. 295; Conflits moraux pp. 296–298; Aspects politiques p. 215.
Claim: French existentialism (vs. Kierkegaard, Hegel/Marx, Heidegger) admits assumption and relative solutions: "il y a une part d'échec à partir de quoi il faut parler de succès; par suite ni dans l'intérieur ni dans l'extérieur mais va et vient et assomptions sans dépassement." Double front: against abstract spiritualism and against historicist relativism; with the Hegel of the Phänomenologie, against the late systematic Hegel. Because: the questioner cannot eliminate the contingency of his starting situation, nor find anything in human life that is purely chance; angoisse ≠ psychological fact / religious origin, but consciousness of being surpassed without guarantee of absolute rationality. Against: Kierkegaard's option for interiority; Hegel's synthesis of right; Heidegger's anonymous Mitsein lacking the freedom of the other. Location: "La Tradition française et l'existentialisme" pp. 300–302.
Claim: The Cartesian doctrine of liberty contains two incompatible conceptions — liberty as power-to-choose (indifference) and liberty as rational determination (Gibieuf-style). The IVth Meditation begins with the first ("nous pouvons faire une chose ou ne la faire pas") and slides via "ou plutôt" into the second. The lettre à Mesland (2 May 1644) glimpses a third conception: "se déterminer, c'est être libre." The lettre à Élisabeth gives "the two ends of the chain" without the concrete mediation; Mesland gives the mediation: "ce qui est affirmé ici ce n'est plus Dieu et nous... C'est Dieu en nous. Comme plus tard dira Lagneau." Because: in the Principia the critique of indifference disappears; the third conception requires a temporality of liberty — we are only momentarily occupied by evidence; Petau's distinction between two indifferences (equal solicitation vs. radical possibility of opposition) shows the technical resource. The course's hidden axis is faire-être / bienfaisance: liberty as making the good be as good, distinct from Sartre's faire-exister-le-monde in "La liberté cartésienne" (1946). Against: Gilson's reduction (La doctrine cartésienne de la liberté et la théologie, 1913); Sartre's reading of Cartesian failure as historical-psychological constraint; Spinoza on direct universalization; Leibniz's reintegration of Reason into divine liberty as definitive solution. Location: Liberté – En particulier chez Leibniz pp. 313–339; key passages on Mesland/Élisabeth pp. 316, 319.
Claim: Hegel's method in the Esthétique is neither a priori nor a posteriori — "il n'y a qu'une seule opération qui est de comprendre... le mouvement intelligible qui conduit d'un phénomène à un autre." Symbolic art ≠ allegory: the symbol has double sense, is non-possession of self, dépassement vers... quelque chose qui n'est pas possédé. Et qui est cependant là dans une présence sensible. The Sphinx is "le symbole du symbolisme"; its answer (Œdipe) is "man." Because: in symbolic art the spirit is not yet grasped for itself; the inner and outer are not yet distinguished (the man before the Cogito); the artwork participates in what it signifies (the consecrated bread is God for Catholics, p. 34) rather than merely signifying it. The continuity of Hegel's treatment of death (sacrificial in PhG, persistent in Esthétique) underwrites symbolism's "double sens." Against: any reduction of symbol to detachable signifier; the polarization of Hegel's procedure into top-down or bottom-up; Hegel's own refusal of empiètement-mélange-promiscuité between arts (MP appropriates empiètement against Hegel). Location: Hegel notes pp. 363–365; symbolic art pp. 365–369.

Argumentative Movement

The Inédits I do not have a single propositional structure: they form a réseau of recurring thoughts (Dalissier's image, p. 254) — partial assumptions of the same matrix (political problem, historicity, individual-history relation, communication-with-the-other, freedom) across different occasions. The same Belgian-conference matrix (3 ignorations of the political problem, then 3 attempted solutions, then "incarnation") returns in different orchestration in each Scandinavian conference, then drops to the conceptual register in the Liberté/Leibniz course (where Cartesian liberty plays the structural role that Aron's view-from-Sirius played in Brussels).

The two non-redundant advances across 1946–47 are: (i) March 1946 → October 1946, from the "L'individu et l'histoire" formula (pente + reprise + projet) to the "[Complément] Humanisme et terreur" elaboration of the opposition de gauche as third attitude — the Roubachof case becomes the test that rules out both flanks; (ii) March 1947 → 1947, from the Scandinavian conflict-matrix to the Lyon course's pivot toward Descartes — the political vocabulary of 1946 redeposited in the metaphysical vocabulary of faire-être. This is the conceptual move that prepares the Note on Machiavelli (1949) and Adventures of the Dialectic (1955).

Key Findings

The Inédits I are the laboratory of Humanism and Terror. The "[Complément] HT" sequence (October 1946) precedes both Part II of "Le Yogi et le prolétaire" (November 1946) and the book itself (November 1947). The Roubachof case organizes the entire HT preface; the opposition de gauche / third attitude becomes HT's "Le Yogi et le Prolétaire" position; the rejection of Koestler-Serge-Hervé is HT's preface in compressed form.
MP's first sustained articulation of pente de l'histoire, reprise, logique de fait, homme en porte-à-faux — vocabulary that recurs across HT, AD, EP, Signs.
The 1946 formula "l'individu se fait dans l'histoire et l'histoire se fait par l'individu" (p. 197) is the political-register prefiguration of the late chiasm structure (imminent and never realized).
The Lyon course Liberté – En particulier chez Leibniz does not in fact treat Leibniz. It treats Descartes via Gilson, ends in implicit confrontation with Sartre's "La liberté cartésienne" (1946), and articulates a third conception of liberty (faire-être / bienfaisance) routed through the lettre à Mesland (2 May 1644).
MP's marginalia on his ENS-library copy of Hegel's Esthétique IV anticipate (by ~5 years) the signe poétique doctrine of Recherches sur l'usage littéraire du langage (1953): "Le signe poétique n'est pas transparent. La signification poétique s'interpose entre moi et l'objet prosaïque auquel elle se rapporte."
Henri Maldiney's January 1948 letter to Père Dassance (cited in editor's introduction p. 182–183) names reprise as MP's signature concept — the earliest contemporary scholarly identification of the term, anticipating the wider scholarly literature.
The Glossary (Dalissier, pp. 462–484) gives load-bearing definitions for MP's 1946–49 working vocabulary: aliénation, ambiguïté, arriération, Brest-Litovsk, image du cheval, compromis, contradiction (with the rare A/B/C tripartition), dépérissement de l'État, être/faire, Gestalt, homme de l'histoire universelle, logique de l'histoire, mission historique du prolétariat, morale, praxis, Procès de Moscou, reprise, sélection naturelle, Stiftung/Fundierung, terreur, terrorisme, zéro et l'infini.

Methodology (editorial)

Dalissier and Matsuba worked from photocopies of the manuscripts (no original access for several leaves). The editorial apparatus reproduces MP's marginalia and ratures, his idiosyncratic symbols (=, ≠, +/−, parallel-bars), and ambiguous decipherings (notation {A/B} for "term unclear, A more probable than B"). The General Introduction (140 pp.) treats: (i) the "(Trans)cribe l'imperceptible" — the philosophical paradox that MP-the-philosopher-of-perception is hard to perceive in his own hand (the phänomenologische Lupe / entourloupe of the manu scriptus); (ii) "(Apprendre à) lire" — MP's pedagogical injunction recurring from PhP to V&I, here read against Sartre's Qu'est-ce que la littérature?; (iii) "Publier (de l'Inédit au Dit)" — editorial principles, transcription policy, marginalia treatment. K. Whiteside's earlier transcription work (Princeton 1983 dissertation) is the substrate that the Mimésis edition completes and corrects; Whiteside's remarks are reproduced in Annexe § 7.

Concepts Developed

pente-de-l-histoire — first explicit articulation; March 1946 Brussels conference is the term's birthplace in MP's vocabulary.
reprise — first sustained use; the term is named by Maldiney (January 1948 letter) as MP's signature concept. This source is decisive for reprise's genealogy.
logique-de-fait — first sustained articulation; recurs through HT, AD.
homme-en-porte-a-faux — coined here in the political register; ancestor of MP's late dimension-this / flesh problematics.
HT-laboratory thesis (candidate) — the [Complément] HT sequence as the workbench of the 1947 book.
faire-être / faire-exister axis — the philosophical (Cartesian-liberty) foundation of the 1953 MP/Sartre political rupture.

Concepts Referenced

coexistence — extended into the political register (1946 Aspects politiques p. 211: "vie à plusieurs et de la violence"; Conflits moraux p. 296: "C'est le conflit et non le Mit-sein qui définit rapports humains").
ambiguity-vs-ambivalence — Wahl's Fontaine April 1946 challenge to MP's "en aucun cas" is the early occasion of MP's later bonne/mauvaise ambiguïté distinction (1951, Pa.2).
good-ambiguity — anticipated; the 1947 reading of Gide as strabisme / ambiguïté consciente is the immediate precursor.
action-of-unveiling-vs-action-of-governing — 1946 ancestor in the être/faire discussion (Glossary p. 471, with Whiteside on Malraux's L'Espoir).
conditioned-freedom — the Liberté/Leibniz course's third conception of Cartesian liberty is a more technical / historical-philosophical version of PhP III.III's "conditioned freedom" against Sartre.
chiasm — the 1946 formula "l'individu se fait dans l'histoire et l'histoire se fait par l'individu" has the formal profile of the later imminent and never realized chiasm — a 1946 political prefiguration.
institution — the 1946 vocabulary (pente + reprise + projet + logique de fait) is structurally identical to the 1954–55 institution concept.
stiftung — appears in MP's Glossary (p. 480, Dalissier-defined).
mission-historique-du-proletariat (stub) — Marx's welthistorisch + MP's "homme de l'histoire universelle" formulation.
chouette-de-minerve (stub) — Hegel's late-rationalism figure cited as what to reject.

Terminology

French / Original	English	Attestation locations	Translation notes
pente de l'histoire	slope/inclination of history	p. 195	The figure resists both "trajectory" (too directional) and "tendency" (too dispositional); the structure history presents for our reading
reprise	resumption / taking-up-again	pp. 195, 202, 221, 297	Maldiney 1948 names it as MP's signature concept; later AD will deploy it (e.g., AD p. 207 "revolutions are true as movements")
logique de fait	factual logic	pp. 195, 295, 298, 316	Distinct from "logique formelle" (entendement) and "logique transcendantale" (Kant); the logic of facts as they assume rationality
pour soi / en soi	for-itself / in-itself	throughout	Sartrean lexicon assumed; MP uses without endorsing the rigid distinction
trahison objective	objective treason / betrayal	pp. 197, 222	Koestler's Darkness at Noon phrase; MP's appropriation is critical
fiction grammaticale	grammatical fiction	pp. 197, 219, 222	Koestler's phrase for individual treated by the marxist machine as bureaucratic grammatical placeholder
faire-être	making-be	pp. 311–312, 326–339	MP's bienfaisance-axis on Cartesian liberty; distinct from Sartre's faire-exister-le-monde
bienfaisance	well-doing / making-good-be-as-good	Liberté/Leibniz throughout	Course-internal moral-axis term
naturé-naturant	natured-naturing	p. 319	Spinozist couple repurposed for the human condition
homme en porte-à-faux	cantilevered being / overhanging human	pp. 205, 213	"il est ceci et rien, il est où il est et nulle part, voué à l'être et défaut dans l'être"
ambiguïté consciente	conscious ambiguity	pp. 277–279	MP's diagnostic for Gide's strabisme (Fernandez); precursor of bonne ambiguïté (1951)
transcendance horizontale	horizontal transcendence	p. 183 of editor's intro (MP's 1945 letter to Maldiney)	MP's self-description of his shift from Catholicism ("vertical transcendence") to existentialism

Key Passages

"il y a une pente de l'histoire, nous lui donnons nécessairement un sens et nous le lui donnons à partir des structures qu'elle nous présente. Reprise du passé et projet de l'avenir. Possibilité constante de changement ou déraillement, mais il y a à chaque moment des problèmes efficaces par rapport auxquels on peut dire que ce qui vient après offre ou non vérité de l'histoire" (p. 195) — anchors pente de l'histoire + reprise + projet de l'avenir + logique de fait.

"L'histoire a un sens parce qu'elle se déroule dans le cadre d'une situation humaine fondamentale: la mort, autrui, l'avenir, le particulier et l'universel et qu'elle est série de prises de position par rapport à ces dimensions, où les attitudes fortuites, fausses et menteuses sont éliminées comme par une sorte de sélection naturelle" (p. 195) — anchors sélection naturelle (Trotsky-derived).

"L'individu se fait dans l'histoire et l'histoire se fait par l'individu. Seulement, — et c'est en quoi l'histoire n'est pas un dieu, — faut-il se perdre en elle pour se sauver, ne faut-il pas la juger? Comment savoir jusqu'à quel point il faut avoir confiance et jusqu'à quel point il faut juger?" (pp. 195–196) — the formula plus its irreducible question.

"Donc situation dialectique qui vient de ce que l'homme est engagé dans une histoire: il est liberté et situation, rien et quelque chose, non-être et voué à l'être, néant et être. Et cela non tour à tour mais en même temps" (p. 213) — homme en porte-à-faux.

"Roubachof avoue parce qu'il est de la génération d'Octobre et qu'il croit à philosophie marxiste de l'histoire — Donc accord individu-histoire n'est possible que dans la mesure où l'histoire n'avorte pas. Autrement, on revient à Hegel" (p. 197) — anchors the HT-laboratory thesis.

"Ce n'est pas indécision en moi mais dans les choses" (p. 220, [Complément] HT) — the thesis of the entire Inédits I political philosophy.

"Roubachof se demande où finit l'intention et où commence l'acte, où finit le moi et où commence l'autre, où finit l'opposition et où commence la trahison" (p. 222) — trahison objective / fiction grammaticale.

"Contradictions, lutte, contingence, raison dans la déraison sans garantie = tout cela, qui est existentialisme, est notre temps lui-même. Non désespoir: au contraire il n'y a pas de fatum ni bon ni mauvais, l'humanité est possible mais non certaine" (p. 215) — existentialism ≠ pessimism.

"Contingence, non absurde — Logique de fait, non désespoir. Chaque dialogue est commencement de rationalité" (p. 295) — concluding formula of Optimisme et Pessimisme.

"Le point d'arrivée de Gide dans sa libération est le point de départ de Sartre: la disponibilité" (p. 279) — the structural relation Gide-Sartre.

"Le signe poétique n'est pas transparent. La signification poétique s'interpose entre moi et l'objet prosaïque auquel elle se rapporte" — MP marginalia on his copy of Hegel's Esthétique IV; reproduced p. 361.

"Il faut faire une théorie du signe qui le différencie du symbole, en tant que poésie, création de la spontanéité" — MP marginalia, same source, p. 360.

"L'intérêt de la lettre à Mesland est de faire entrevoir une médiation: ce qui est affirmé ici ce n'est plus Dieu et nous, puisque l'un ne s'affirme qu'aux dépens de l'autre. C'est Dieu en nous. Comme plus tard dira Lagneau" (p. 319) — anchors the third conception of Cartesian liberty.

Maldiney to Père Dassance, 19–20 January 1948 (cited p. 182–183): "Cette reprise en sous-œuvre d'aujourd'hui par demain n'est pas le monopole de J.-P. Sartre et de Merleau-Ponty, c'est le principe même de la philosophie chrétienne de l'histoire" — the first reprise-attribution.

Maldiney to Dassance: "Je l'avais connu à l'école normale où il était mon caïman: il était aussi catholique. Je l'ai retrouvé en 1945 existentialiste... Il m'écrit à peu près ceci: 'J'ai essayé autrefois de réaliser une transcendance verticale et il m'a paru que j'étais en plein impossible. Maintenant j'essaye de sortir de moi par une transcendance horizontale.'" (p. 183) — the only attestation of MP's own description of his shift from Catholicism.

MP to Sartre, 16 March 1947, from Stockholm (pp. 233–234): "j'ai trouvé dans la première page le mot 'le national-socialisme stalinien'... Mais je ne travaillerai pas aux Temps Modernes s'ils parlent ce langage" — the 1947 fissure (typographical error or substantive disagreement?), revealing MP's editorial vigilance and the early seed of the 1953 rupture.

Wahl reviewing MP's 23 March 1946 Paris conference (Fontaine, April 1946, cited p. 189): "Il y a une catégorie qui manque (dirait, dit un kierkegaardien) c'est la catégorie du 'en aucun cas'" — Wahl's challenge that drives MP's response across HT preface and Lecture de Montaigne (December 1947).

What's Not Obvious

The Lyon course on "Leibniz" never gets to Leibniz. The course title Liberté – En particulier chez Leibniz announces a treatment of Leibniz that the surviving notes never deliver — Leibniz is named exactly once (p. 339, the "labyrinth of philosophy first" reference). What we have is a critique of Descartes via Gilson, ending in implicit confrontation with Sartre's La liberté cartésienne (1946). MP's third conception of Cartesian liberty (faire-être + lettre à Mesland) emerges because Leibniz never arrives — the course's structural lateness echoes MP's structural lateness in his Belgian and Scandinavian travel arrangements (a recurring motif of the editorial introduction). This is itself one of the Inédits' philosophical findings: MP works via lateness and absence (cf. pp. 308–312 of editor's introduction).
MP plays Beauvoir against Sartre, not just Sartre against Beauvoir. In the 16 March 1947 Stockholm letter to Sartre, MP cites Beauvoir's Pour une morale de l'ambiguïté (1947) against Sartre's drift in Qu'est-ce que la littérature? II: "C'est contraire à ce que le Castor écrit par ailleurs dans l'Ambiguïté (quand elle dit que les violences en URSS ne doivent pas être séparées des fins supposées du régime)" (p. 234). The standard narrative (e.g. Beauvoir's "Merleau-Ponty et le pseudo-sartrisme" of 1955) has Beauvoir consistently siding with Sartre against MP; the 1947 letter reveals that eight years before that polemic, MP was using Beauvoir's text as a normative instrument against Sartre. This complicates the wiki's existing Beauvoir-on-Sartre framing — see ambiguity-vs-ambivalence for the Beauvoirian ambiguïté lineage MP is invoking.
The "fiction grammaticale" / Roubachof case is never just about Koestler. When MP returns to it across "L'individu et l'histoire," "L'existentialisme et la politique," "Aspects politiques," "[Complément] HT," and "Conflits moraux" — five separate manuscript groups across 1946–47 — the case has stopped being literary commentary and become a philosophical paradigm of the human condition under derailed history. The convertibility goes both ways: the case is about the marxist position-of-Octobergeneration, but it is also the case MP turns to whenever he needs to test a claim about individual-history relation in the dialectic. By the time of HT (1947), Roubachof can be cited without quotation marks as if he were a historical figure. The wiki's reading of HT (currently via chouraqui-2025-healing-schneider) needs this Roubachof-laboratory thesis to make sense of HT's compositional structure — see inedits-i-as-humanism-and-terror-laboratory (candidate).

Critique / Limitations

The volume is 80% editorial apparatus and 20% MP's own notes (by page count). The editorial framing is excellent (Dalissier is a philologist of MP) but the framing also constructs the philosophical narrative. Readers should distinguish (i) MP's own concise notes, (ii) Dalissier's reconstructions of context (often via secondary literature: Whiteside, De Saint Aubert, Cohen-Solal, Bellantone), (iii) the apparatus's debating positions. The Glossary (pp. 462–484) is Dalissier's composition, drawing on MP's usage but assigning structural weight that MP himself never explicitly assigned.
Several leaves are photocopy-only and decipherment is sometimes ambiguous (notation {A/B}). Where the text is contested, MP's intent is reconstructed from rature-patterns and from cross-attestations — a defensible methodology, but one that introduces editorial decisions into MP's text.
The volume is the first of two; cross-references to "In. II" (the second volume, containing Problèmes de la Philosophie de l'histoire, the Mexico/New York conferences 1949, and the autres inédits) cannot be checked against the wiki here.
The course on Liberté chez Leibniz is incomplete — what survives is the Descartes critique. The actual treatment of Leibnizian liberty (which would have engaged Molina's scientia media, the Théodicée, and the rapport individual-monad-to-monadology) is not in the surviving manuscripts; the editor speculates (p. 312) that it would have come later in the course but acknowledges the absence.

Connections

is the laboratory of chouraqui-2025-healing-schneider — Chouraqui 2025 explicitly draws on the Inédits to argue MP's Yogi/Commissar critique pre-dates HT; the Inédits I [Complément] HT sequence is what authorizes that argument. See mp-play-as-higher-seriousness-not-cynicism (candidate).
is a working draft of *Humanism and Terror* (1947) — pre-print laboratory.
prefigures merleau-ponty-1955-adventures-of-the-dialectic (1955) — the political vocabulary of 1946 (pente, reprise, logique-de-fait, Procès de Moscou, action de dévoilement vs gouvernement) is consolidated in 1955; AD's epigram "revolutions are true as movements and false as regimes" descends from the 1946 formula "Roubachof avoue parce qu'il est de la génération d'Octobre."
contains the proto-form of merleau-ponty-2010-institution-and-passivity (1954–55) — the "pente + reprise + projet" matrix is structurally identical to the institution concept; cf pente-de-l-histoire-as-proto-institution (candidate).
contrasts with Sartre's La liberté cartésienne (May 1946) and Qu'est-ce que la littérature? (1947) — the Liberté/Leibniz course pivots on the faire-être / faire-exister axis; cf faire-etre-vs-faire-exister-as-mp-sartre-axis (candidate).
responds to Aron Introduction à la philosophie de l'histoire (1938) — "L'individu et l'histoire" inverts Aron's title.
engages Koestler's Darkness at Noon (1940) and The Yogi and the Commissar (1945) — at length, esp. in [Complément] HT; the 1946–47 engagement constitutes MP's ongoing relation with Koestler that runs through HT to AD.
anchors MP's relation with Maldiney — the editor's introduction reproduces the otherwise-uncirculated 1948 Dassance letter; this is the wiki's only current source for the Maldiney-as-first-articulator-of-reprise thesis. See maldiney-as-first-articulator-of-reprise (candidate).
contains MP's marginalia on Hegel's Esthétique IV — anticipating Recherches sur l'usage littéraire du langage (1953) by ~5 years; cf mp-marginalia-on-hegel-iv-prefigure-signe-poetique (candidate).
cited by merleau-ponty-1992-texts-and-dialogues — anthology of MP's politiques / aesthetics; the 1946–47 conference contents partly overlap.

Sources

The volume is itself a primary source. Cross-references in the editorial apparatus, drawn upon for this page:

K. Whiteside, Merleau-Ponty and the Foundations of an Existential Politics (Princeton, 1988) — the principal scholarly framework for the political philosophy.
E. de Saint Aubert, Du lien des êtres aux éléments de l'être (Vrin, 2004) — period-context.
A. Cohen-Solal, Sartre 1905–1980 (Gallimard, 1999) — the Sartre-Stockholm-1947 episode context.
A. Bellantone, Hegel en France (2 vols, Hermann, 2011) — the French-Hegel reception background.
M. Dalissier, La métaphysique chez Merleau-Ponty (Peeters, 2017) — Dalissier's prior systematic treatment, frequently cited in the apparatus.