Être et chair II. L'épreuve perceptive de l'être

Author: Emmanuel de Saint Aubert Year: 2021 Type: Book (French, untranslated) Publisher: Paris: Vrin, « Bibliothèque d'histoire de la philosophie » ISBN: 978-2-7116-3021-9

Second volume of the Être et chair diptych (Vol I: Du corps au désir: l'habilitation ontologique de la chair, Vrin 2013), itself the culmination of Saint Aubert's five-volume cycle on Merleau-Ponty. Subtitled Avancées ultimes de la phénoménologie de Merleau-Ponty. The work mobilises the unpublished B.N.F. manuscripts (the dons 92-21 / 93-03) — Être et Monde, Notes sur le corps, Notes sur la vie, the DESC and OntoCart files, the préparation volumes for Le visible et l'invisible — to reconstruct MP's late ontology (1953-1961) around a single organizing thesis: perception is the épreuve mutuelle de la chair et de l'être, the reciprocal testing in which flesh and being evaluate each other. If E&C I (Du corps au désir, Vrin 2013 — not yet ingested) argued for the ontological habilitation of flesh, E&C II completes the diptych by tracing its symmetric counterpart: the carnal evaluation of being.

Core Arguments

  1. Claim: MP's late ontology develops a double movement — (a) ontological habilitation of flesh (E&C I) and (b) carnal evaluation of being (E&C II), convergent in the structural relation Saint Aubert calls épreuve mutuelle. Because: If being were sheer positivity (Sartre's En-soi), it could not "communicate with our flesh"; if flesh were closed subjectivity, it could not open to a "vrai dehors". The perceptual experience shows both that the perceived exceeds us (horizon / depth / silence) and that our flesh participates in its crystallization. MP's formula Einfühlung plutôt que Erfüllung is the signature. Against: Sartre's absolute freedom; Descartes' "tremblement vite surmonté" (OE 56); Piaget's ontology of the object; any "monism of flesh" reading.

  2. Claim: Against Sartre, MP systematically dissolves the real/imaginary split via a texture imaginaire du réel. Voir, c'est imaginer, et imaginer, c'est voir (EM2 1959). Perception "dépasses l'observable" only through imaginary investment. Because: Sartre's L'Imaginaire makes observability the criterion of the real, forcing a total dichotomy that MP cannot accept once he has traced perceptual recognition in deçà of complete observation. Against: Sartre's L'Imaginaire; polarized ontologies of real/imaginary.

  3. Claim: The ultra-choses (borrowed from Wallon against Piaget) are the ontological modality of every perceived thing, not a subclass of inaccessibles. Saint Aubert traces the concept's progressive radicalization across five stages (1949 → 1960): "il y a des ultra-choses" (Sorbonne 1949-52) → "toute chose est ultra- chose" (PhiDial 1956) → "il faut que la chose soit ultra-chose" (EM 1959) → "il faut que nous soyons nous-mêmes ultra-choses" (EM 1960). Because: If being were objective (observable), there would be no opening, no depth, no indétermination sustaining perceptual-faith. Ultra-chose names the modality by which being exceeds objecthood while remaining perceptible. Against: Piagetian genetic epistemology; Sartre's observability-as-real; any "ontology of the object".

  4. Claim: MP rewrites Husserl's Leibhaftigkeit (donation-in-flesh) with two simultaneous accents — tighter immanence AND heightened transcendence. The perceived is literally en chair (more flesh-charged than Husserl) and remains lacunaire/inépuisable (more transcendent than Husserl's Leibhaftigkeit seems to allow). This is not a contradiction but the dialectical structure of the perceptive épreuve. Because: The Husserlian scheme of empty intentions filled by evidence (Erfüllung) misses the co-donation in which my flesh and the flesh of the sensible give themselves together. "Ce qui manque à ma thèse: trop «positiviste»; je n'ai pas assez marqué que le leibhaft de la perception est précisément en tant que tel absence, présentation latérale" (DESC 208). The title inversion — "de la donation en chair à la chair du don" — captures the move: from unilateral thing-giving to a reciprocal chair du don. Against: Husserl ("ce que je reproche à Husserl"); Gurwitsch's objections.

  5. Claim: Prégnance in MP is bifid — gestaltist and ontological, the two senses converging in a figure of surrection/ naissance. Prégnance is reversible: being is both envelope and fruit of the carnal bond. "La chair du monde (...) est sensible et non sentant — je l'appelle néanmoins chair (...) pour dire qu'elle est prégnance de possibles" (NT 304). Because: The "good form" is not merely geometric; it mobilises the perceiving organism whose schéma corporel is already intercorporeal. The perceived acts as "another flesh" — the force of the form is épaulée by the generative power of being. MP deploys the English pregnancy (not Prägnanz) deliberately: "pouvoir d'éclatement, productivité (prægnans futuri), fécondité" (NT 262). Against: reductive gestalt that keeps the good form intrinsic to figure-only; any ontology where positivity excludes negativity.

  6. Claim: The late MP effectively abandons "conscience" and re-assigns its original gesture to an inconscient primordial — an inconscient d'ek-stase. The unconscious is not Freudian repression but our carnal opening to the indétermination of being. Body, unconscious, being replaces mind, consciousness, object as MP's late anthropological-ontological triad. Because: MP's lifelong attempt to "pull consciousness out of itself" fails on the term "consciousness" because consciousness is essentially self-relation (essentialism of presence-to-self). Notes sur le corps [86]-[91]-[102] maps the replacement: "perception archaïque est ek-stase"; "sentir c'est remplacer un savoir par un être à..." (not "je pense que..."); the "oui initial" / Bejahung assigned to the chair not to language; a "symbolisme sans négation, langage du corps en tant que sentir". Against: Freudian drive-unconscious; Lacanian inconscient structuré comme un langage; Sartrean existential psychoanalysis; all "philosophy of consciousness".

  7. Claim: Metaphoricity is not the sensible inscription of a pre- existing sense; it is the fruit of the co-naissance of flesh and being. "On ne pense pas sans le corps transfiguré" (MSME 162) — the body is the système d'équivalences from which all sense draws. The ontology of metaphor is the ultimate expression of MP's primacy of perception. Because: the body schema is already a system of equivalences (PhP 165-166); perception already "reads the latent in the manifest"; even the Schneider case shows that normal understanding of metaphor is non-subsumptive, sensori-motor. Metaphor is the output side of what perception already does. MP's écriture (his choice to privilege chair, empiétement, promiscuité — figures drawn from the mother tongue rather than neologisms) enacts the very thesis it defends. Against: Representationalism about metaphor; Perelman's "condensed analogy"; descending "incarnation" schemes where sense pre-exists and descends into body.

  8. Claim (Épilogue): MP's answer to idealism AND realism is a travail (work, both intransitive and transitive) of flesh and of being — a carnal Cogito "Où suis-je et quelle heure est-il?" (Claudel, Art poétique, recurring 13 times in the VI preparation). The perceptive faith is not blind submission but the double dynamic of déposition + surrection, whose topology Saint Aubert calls *portance* — announced as the subject of a further volume beyond MP exegesis. Because: Perception, interrogation, and faith converge at reversibility and appui. Three equations from unpublished NPVIf [162-163]: (a) "percevoir est interroger", (b) "la foi est interrogation", (c) "interrogation qui est la foi". The subject is neither constitutive (idealism) nor deposited-object (realism) but a chair who lets herself be supported by being ("s'abandonner") and in that support surges forth ("surgir"). Against: Descartes' Sixth Meditation retreat; Husserl's transcendental reduction; Sartre's "positivisme clandestin" of doubt.

Key Findings

  • Perception is MP's organizing question from the 1933 thesis project to the 1961 death: not one topic among others but the experience where flesh and being test each other mutually.
  • MP's *volant* (flywheel-of-inertia) — borrowed from Cassirer but never attributed — is the figure of the passive-active chair. Used ~20 times 1951-1961; Saint Aubert excavates it systematically (Ch I § 1b).
  • The Nature ou le monde du silence (1957) is MP's first properly ontological manuscript and the pivot where the critique of Sartre converges with the critique of Descartes under the concept of Nature as "vrai dehors".
  • The DESC file contains MP's own one-line definition of philosophy as empiètement: "L'empiétement, qui est pour moi la philosophie, n'est pour Descartes que confusion, c'est-à-dire néant" (DESC 84, last papers, red-underlined). See empietement.
  • The late Notes sur le corps (1956-1960, mostly 1960) contain MP's most explicit replacement of consciousness by unconscious: "conscience et inconscient redéfinis en termes de corps" (N-Corps [97]). See inconscient-primordial.
  • Chapter V embeds MP's ontological use of "prégnance" in a surprising biographical imaginary: the 1955 film Le Monde du silence (Cousteau & Malle, Palme d'or 1956), the 1956-7 clinical adoption of ultrasound (échographie, Donald & Brown), Picard's Welt des Schweigens, and MP's reading of embryology (Gesell, Driesch, Spemann, Brachet). See the "visibilité imminente de l'invisible" motif threaded through Ch V § 3b.
  • Saint Aubert's own announced concept — portance — will be the subject of a future post-exegetical book; the Épilogue gives its first sketch.

Additional findings (2026-04-23 re-ingest second pass)

The second pass closed the coverage gap for sections sampled-but-not-read closely in the first pass (Ch I §§ 2-3, Ch II entire, Ch III §§ 2d-e + § 3, Ch IV §§ 2-3, Ch V § 2, Ch VI § 1c + §§ 2-3, Ch VII § 1b-c + §§ 2-3).

  • The grain du sensible IS a volant (Ch II § 3): EM2 [157]v. MP appropriates Sartre's "grain de la peau" (L'Imaginaire p. 255) from the cyclopean mode (loupe/microscope), re-reads it as an optimum: "ni tout à fait substance ni tout à fait relation, le grain possède la vertu relationnelle d'une résistance (...), la dynamique d'un élément inertiel (un 'volant')". Cardinal cross-link between Ch I §1b (volant) and Ch II §3 (chair du sensible).
  • The ambiguïté/ambivalence distinction (Ch I §§ 2-3): these are NOT synonyms but opposed — ambiguïté is the sortie from ambivalence via the depth-perception paradigm. The genealogy: Wahl (12 Sept 1951) → EP (Jan 1953) → PhiDial 1956 → Natu2 prep 1958 (first hyperdialectic) → VI2 spring 1959. Frenkel-Brunswik 1949 "Intolerance of ambiguity" is the psychological anchor.
  • "C'est le thétique qui est ambivalent" (Ch I § 3a): MP's cardinal 1959 formula (EM2 [189]v(2), [177]v(II), [227]), forged from reading Henri Michaux's "Un certain phénomène qu'on appelle musique" (Encyclopédie de la Musique, Fasquelle 1958). Michaux's music as "axe d'avant l'ambivalence" gives MP the figure that organizes the mauvaise-dialectique critique of Sartre.
  • Sartre's three successive reductions (Ch II § 1): Saint Aubert's reading — (1) L'Imaginaire 1940 strips imagination of flesh → (2) L'Être et le Néant 1943 defigures flesh itself → (3) L'homme et les choses 1947 strips flesh from the perceived ("grand rêve nécrologique"). MP's counter-moves: three symmetric re-attachments producing the texture imaginaire du réel (OE p. 24), the grain du sensible (S(PhiOmb) p. 211), and the onirisme as third order.
  • Onirisme as troisième ordre (Ch II § 2): Sorb(SCCE) 1949-52 generalized in PbPassiv 1955; refuses the dream/waking clivage — "perçu et imaginaire sont deux modalités de l'être-au-monde" (PbPassiv 132/NP). Cardinal: "il n'y a de chair qu'imaginaire" (DESC 87, repeatedly underlined by MP in black then red).
  • Cristallisation replaces décision (Ch II § 4): MP takes Stendhal's De l'Amour (1822) via Breton's L'Amour fou (1937), generalizes love-cristallisation to ontological cristallisation (EM2 149, DESC 120). NMS [136] (autumn 1957): "mettre la notion de cristallisation à la place de celle de décision. C'est en cela que je me différencie de Sartre." Stendhal chapter planned for Prose du monde (PM-ms [190], [221], [229]) and treated in ULL 1953 (66-feuillet subset [94]-[159]).
  • Foi vs croyance (Ch II § 3 + Ép. § 2): properly MP distinction — foi is a relational modality, non-propositional; croyance is propositional adherence. PhP p. 468 anticipates ("foi primordiale en deçà de toute croyance"); fully forged 1955-1961.
  • Saint Aubert's own critique of MP (Ch III § 3): MP's generalization of ultra-chose from Wallon's absolute-inaccessible to universal-inépuisable is too positive — it loses the destructive registers (abîme, non-sens, anti-portance). Water as paradigm: can drown or support. Saint Aubert proposes hyper-objet (Winnicott's transitional object as surdétermination créatrice — atelier, outil, médiation) and anti-portance (both beyond MP). "Le désir ne suffit pas, ne se suffit pas à lui-même."
  • Gurwitsch causes MP's anti-Husserl turn (Ch IV §§ 2-3): the hardest anti-phenomenology note (NT p. 297-298, avril 1960: "prendre comme premier le tourbillon spatialisant-temporalisant qui est chair et non conscience en face d'un noème") is a direct reaction to Gurwitsch's 1957 Théorie du champ de la conscience. Gurwitsch's critique of MP as having a "cadre existentialiste rémanent" blocking the transcendental reduction drives MP toward abandoning rather than reforming consciousness.
  • Cardinal transcendance formula (Ch IV § 3): NTi [334] (janv 1960): "la transcendance ne veut rien dire en dehors de la notion de chair"; EM2 180: "le corps, c'est un transcendant habité par une transcendance"; EM1 16 autumn 1958: "la commune transcendance".
  • Gestalt laws are ontological laws (Ch V § 2): EM3 239: "Les 'lois' de la Gestalt énoncent les propriétés structurales de l'être. C'est le monde 'vertical' que dévoilent les lois de la Gestalt." Arnheim's "overlapping" → MP's "empiétement"; "avenue of freedom" = profondeur. Cardinal perceptual formula: "existence comprenant l'existence" (NL-Arnh 31, 1957).
  • Genealogy of "écart" (Ch V § 2c + Ch VII § 2c): MP invents the concept in MSME 1953 — "le cercle = mode d'écart" (MSME p. 56-57/[27-28]). First generalization in NL-Arnh 51 1957. Saussurean diacritique extension: MSME p. 203-204/[210-211]. EM2 [154]v(13bis): "Écart = perception-imperception".
  • "La perception est le véritable inconscient" (Ch VI § 3): EM3 [247]v(32). Cardinal formula of the replacement thesis. PbPassiv p. 247/259: "l'inconscient = excès du perceptif sur le notionnel". MSME p. 204/[211] (1953) anticipates: "Conscience est, si l'on veut, synonyme d'imperception".
  • "L'inconscient d'état, tenant à notre incarnation" (Ch VI § 3c): N-Corps 86. Body-indestructible as the anthropological nodal point, distinct from refoulement. Proust-Claudel chain: "c'est le corps qui garde le passé" (N-Corps [87]); "l'éternité existentielle, la cohésion d'une vie" (PbPassiv p. 223/181). NTi [317] 1959: "Les rapports d'un individu avec son inconscient sont rapports avec l'indestructible, i.e. non un ennemi de la liberté, mais le champ de la liberté" — the emancipatory unconscious.
  • "On ne pense pas sans le corps transfiguré" (Ch VII § 1b): MSME p. 162/128. THE cardinal formula of MP's ontology of the metaphor. The body is "métaphore-phore" (Guillerault 1996).
  • Metaphor as transitional object (Ch VII § 1c): Saint Aubert's original cross-link (Winnicott). Metaphor conquers the outside; risks "auto-figuration" when figures become fetishized.
  • Réversibilité des dimensions (Ch VII § 2b): MP's answer to Piaget — four senses to distinguish: (1) Piaget's réversibilité logique (rejected); (2) MP's 1959-early-1960 irréversibilité (EM2 172, EM3 241, EM3 236); (3) November-1960 réversibilité DES DIMENSIONS (OE p. 65, EM3 [245]v(28)); (4) réversibilité charnelle (VI4 p. 189). Saint Aubert: the concept was unstable in MP until Nov 1960 fixed it.
  • Latent = manifest taken literally (Ch VII § 2d): N-Corps 88 mars 1960: "Le contenu latent, c'est le contenu manifeste pris à la lettre, pris non comme symbole au sens d'analogie, mais comme identité. Donc le contenu latent n'est pas tellement latent." NT p. 275/[58]: "il n'y a pas de métaphore entre le visible et l'invisible".
  • Les figuratifs (Ch VII § 3): the cardinal ontological concept of the late manuscripts. Fond/ombre/horizon/profondeur/silence/ reflet/relief are not figures and not nothing — they "rendent visible" (Paul Klee via Grohmann 1954). EM3 [254]: "Les figuratifs ne sont pas des métaphores: ce sont les métaphores qui viennent d'eux". Polemical contrast: l'idole — figure without fond, "écran fétiche qui nous permet de refouler l'être" (Leibniz's Dieu de survol, Ruyer's "survol absolu", Descartes' idée claire et distincte).
  • MP's critique of théologie explicative (Ch VII § 3d): Leibniz as target. EM3 [244]v(26) + [256]: MP explicitly develops figuratifs "contre ce Dieu leibnizien" and "contre la logique de Leibniz". MP's reversal of the athéisme accusation: "la philosophie ne le [sacré] met jamais ici ou là, comme une chose, mais à la jointure des choses ou des mots" (EP p. 49). Kenotic God: "un autre nous-même, qui épouse et authentifie toute notre obscurité" (PM p. 118) — "s'est fait l'ombre de notre ombre".

Methodology

Archival reconstruction plus philological close-reading. Saint Aubert's five volumes have systematically mined the B.N.F. archive donated by Suzanne Merleau-Ponty (92-21) and Claude Lefort (93-03, the V&I manuscript). This volume returns repeatedly to Être et Monde (EM1 / EM2 / EM3, 1958-1960), Notes sur le corps (N-Corps, 1956-1960), the Problème de la passivité (PbPassiv, 1955), DESC (notes on Descartes and Gueroult), OntoCart / Fin OntoCart (1961 last course), and NTi (Notes de travail inédites). The method is cumulative: earlier volumes reconstructed the "scénarios" (Cartesian, Sartrian, anti-Heideggerian); this volume reads the avancées ultimes against the scaffolding those reconstructions established.

Concepts Developed

Concepts for which this source does original philosophical work (as opposed to mere exegesis):

  • ultra-chose — Saint Aubert's most extensive conceptual excavation; the 5-stage genealogy of the concept from Wallon to Être et Monde.
  • portance — Saint Aubert's own philosophical concept, announced for a post-exegetical future volume; first sketch in the Épilogue.
  • donation-en-chair — Saint Aubert's reconstruction of MP's double- accented Leibhaftigkeit rewriting.
  • empietement — Saint Aubert elevates MP's DESC [84] self-definition to philosophy-defining status.
  • inconscient-primordial — Saint Aubert argues for a replacement thesis (inconscient replaces conscience) in the late notes.
  • epreuve-mutuelle-de-la-chair-et-de-letre — the volume's organizing concept; flesh and being test each other mutually.
  • metaphoricity — substantially expands Saint Aubert's earlier treatment in the 2020 Fordham volume.
  • prégnance (bifid) — Saint Aubert's reading of MP as doubling the gestaltist sense with an ontological one (gestation).
  • surrection — Saint Aubert reconstructs MP's vocabulary of surrection as systematic (érection, insurrection, résurrection).
  • volant — Saint Aubert's excavation of MP's Cassirer borrowing.

Concepts Referenced

Concepts this source mobilises but does not develop originally:

Key Passages

"dans notre manière de percevoir est impliqué tout ce que nous sommes" (MSME 46/18, first C. de F. lecture, 22 Jan 1953) — MP's rétrospective définition of his own project.

"L'empiétement, qui est pour moi la philosophie, n'est pour Descartes que confusion, c'est-à-dire néant. La philosophie de la pensée distincte (...) est une philosophie de l'être objectif, horizontal, le contraire de notre philosophie de l'être vertical." (DESC 84, last papers, underlined with red marks, read and re-read by MP) — MP's terse self-definition. Saint Aubert returns to this passage repeatedly across the five volumes.

"Paradoxe : la chose est là, je la vois, ramassée en elle-même, leibhaft, et par principe cette plénitude n'est visible que de loin : de près il n'y a jamais que des aspects. Toutes les choses sont «ultra-choses», hors de nos prises, dans le «lointain» et c'est de cette absence que je suis rendu certain par leur présence" (PhiDial 13, 26 jan 1956) — the cardinal passage of the ultra-chose argument.

"Ce qui manque à ma thèse : trop « positiviste » ; je n'ai pas assez marqué que le leibhaft de la perception est précisément en tant que tel absence, présentation latérale" (DESC 208-[208]v(9)) — MP's self-critique of PhP, mined in Ch IV.

"Est en son cœur inconscience puisque la signification n'est pas possédée, extraite, qu'elle est là, figurée" (N-Corps [91]v) — the inconscient d'ek-stase in one line.

"conscience et inconscient redéfinis en termes de corps (...) comme être topologique-général" (N-Corps [97]) — the replacement thesis.

"Le « où suis-je ? » et « quelle heure est-il ? » de Claudel porte déjà la philosophie" (NPVI [190], nov. 1960) — the carnal cogito.

"Percevoir est interroger : définition d'adæquatio réaliste ou idéaliste rejetée, écart qui est rapport. (...) la foi est interrogation" (NPVIf [162-163], mars 1959, marked "Définitif") — the foi interrogative equation.

"C'est un corps que produit la prégnance, il n'y a pas de prégnance des âmes" (Natu3, p. 284/[45]-[45]v) — against the spiritualist reading of prégnance.

"On dit qu'un homme est né à l'instant où ce qui n'était au fond du corps maternel qu'un visible virtuel se fait à la fois visible pour nous et pour soi. La vision du peintre est une naissance continuée." (OE 32) — the embryology-vision figure; Saint Aubert reads this alongside the 1955 film Le Monde du silence and the ultrasound debut of 1956-7.

"L'homme n'est pas animalité (au sens de mécanisme) + raison — Et c'est pourquoi on s'occupe de son corps : avant d'être raison l'humanité est une autre corporéité, il s'agit de saisir l'humanité d'abord comme [une] autre manière d'être corps." (Natu3, p. 269/[37]) — flesh as modal, not substantial.

"s'abandonner et surgir (...) endurer la nuit (...) co-naître et réaliser" (Épilogue § 3 subsection titles) — the threefold posture of the perceiving chair.

What's Not Obvious

Three things that would not appear in a conventional summary or review:

  1. MP replaced consciousness with unconscious — it is not a reform but a substitution. Saint Aubert's reading of the Notes sur le corps (especially the feuillets [86], [91], [97], [101v], [102]) argues that MP finally abandons the term conscience and re-assigns its original gesture — the être à la chose par l'intermédiaire du corps (PhP 161) — to the unconscious. This is a replacement thesis, not a supplementation. MP's mature anthropology is body, unconscious, being rather than mind, consciousness, object. The implication: what PhP called the tacit cogito (pre-linguistic self-presence) becomes in the late notes the "oui initial" or Bejahung of the inconscient primordial — and MP himself, in 1959, had retracted the tacit cogito as "still a variant of the pensée de penser". What replaces it is not a refined consciousness but a pre-predicative oui spoken by the chair, not by a language. This is anti-Lacanian in Saint Aubert's reading: "comme être topologique-général" (N-Corps [97]), not structuré comme un langage.

  2. The volant d'inertie — not the steering wheel — is the hidden structural figure of MP's mature ontology, borrowed silently from Cassirer's Schwungrad. Saint Aubert's Ch I § 1b excavates ~20 occurrences of MP's volant from 1951-1961 (S(HoAdv) 290, PM-ms [212]v(a), Inéd 43, PbParole 116/[80]v, PbPassiv 179/127, and many more). MP never credits Cassirer, but the precise passage he has in mind — "Schwungrad (...) das ihn in den Kreis ihrer eigenen unablässigen Bewegung aufnimmt*" (Philosophie der symbolischen Formen III, 1929, p. 380) — maps exactly onto MP's usage. The volant conjoins passivity and activity: its mass-in-rotation sustains movement by its own inertia. This is the figure of the flesh that does the philosophical work of the later "surrection" — and bridges to Claudel's co-naissance via the "naissance continuée" of the perceiving body. The silent borrowing explains why the figure never appears in the TOC but is structurally load-bearing: it operates below the nominal level of MP's self-presentation.

  3. MP's late prégnance imports embryology, ultrasound (échographie), and the 1955 Cousteau/Malle film Le Monde du silence. Saint Aubert's Ch V § 3b anchors MP's OE 32 and OntoCart 167-168 passages (on the embryo "qu'un œil assez perçant ou {muni} d'appareils assez puissants pourrait voir au fond du corps maternel") in a precise historical conjuncture: (a) Paul Langevin's 1915-17 ultrasound → Donald & Brown's 1956-7 obstetric application, just as MP is reading embryology (Gesell, Driesch, Spemann); (b) the 1955 Cousteau/Malle documentary Le Monde du silence, Palme d'Or 1956 and Oscar 1957, which made "le monde du silence" a common French expression for the underwater — and MP's 1957 first ontological manuscript is titled La Nature ou le monde du silence. MP's 1958-60 endo-ontology thus imports a media-historical "visibilité imminente de l'invisible" that the reader who does not know this conjuncture will miss entirely. The "spectacle est là hors de toute vision, c'est lui qui se prépare à être vu" (OntoCart 167-168) is simultaneously ontological proposition and ultrasound report.

Critique / Limitations

  • The announcement of portance as MP's concept risks eliding exegesis and construction. Saint Aubert repeatedly signals that "la portance" is the subject of a future post-exegetical book — yet the Épilogue treats portance as if it were already present in MP. The move from Saint Aubert's own philosophical position to MP's texts is not always clean: many of the "portance" passages are Saint Aubert's own constructive synthesis of dispersed MP fragments. Readers should expect a less exegetical follow-up volume.

  • The replacement-thesis for consciousness depends heavily on fragmentary late notes. The Notes sur le corps are dated 1956-1960 (mostly 1960), unpublished, and uncompleted. MP never gave up "conscience" in published texts; what would he have written had he lived past 1961? Saint Aubert's claim that MP parvient à l'impossibilité de la conscience is a construction from incomplete material. A contrary reading — that the late MP merely radicalizes the PhP project of a non-representational consciousness — is also textually defensible.

  • Archive-primacy as methodological premise. Saint Aubert inherits from his earlier three volumes a premise that B.N.F. unpublished manuscripts give the "real" MP — that published texts (even V&I, edited by Lefort) are provisional shapes of projects more fully visible in the inédits. This has methodological cost: the reader without direct archive access depends entirely on Saint Aubert's transcriptions (some of which, he notes, correct prior published transcriptions). The counterweight — that published texts, whatever their limitations, represent MP's own chosen public philosophical interventions — is not strongly registered.

  • Saint Aubert does not engage, beyond the 2015 Trigg/Legrand occasional volume, with the Lacanian reading of MP's unconscious. The explicit demarcation from Lacan (Ch VI § 5c) relies on MP's fragmentary 1960 Bonneval intervention and a précis of the N-Corps feuillets; the broader Lacanian scholarship on MP (Dufourcq, others) is largely bypassed.

  • The scénarios organization (cartésien, sartrien) is productive but partial. A Hegelian-Marxist scenario — which would read flesh as a 1844-Manuscripts resonance — is suppressed by Saint Aubert's architecture. Cf. the wiki question flesh-metaphor-marxist-genealogy for an alternative reading.

Connections

  • builds on johnson-carbone-saintaubert-2020-poetic-of-the-world — Saint Aubert's chapter on "Metaphoricity: carnal infrastructures and ontological horizons" (trans. Deary, 2020) is the seed of Ch VII; E&C II § 7 is the "structure-analogue but content-different" expansion.
  • extends Saint Aubert's own earlier four volumes: Du lien des êtres aux éléments de l'être (2004, Sartre scenario genesis); Le scénario cartésien (2005, Descartes scenario); Vers une ontologie indirecte (2006, anti-Heidegger); Être et chair I (2013, body → desire → flesh habilitation).
  • critiques merleau-ponty-1945-phenomenology-of-perception — but only insofar as MP himself did: the ce qui manque à ma thèse of DESC 208 is Saint Aubert's scaffold.
  • applies archival method to merleau-ponty-1968-visible-and-invisible preparation files — Brouil, NPVIf, NLVIaf2, NPVI — recovered in systematic chronological order.
  • contrasts with chouraqui-2014-ambiguity-and-absolute — both diagnose MP's "self-falsification" structure (Saint Aubert via empiètement / ultra-chose / prégnance; Chouraqui via Nietzschean self-falsification). Saint Aubert's reading is more carnal-psychoanalytic, Chouraqui's more Nietzschean-truth-theoretic; both converge on the late MP's ontology as non-positivist and non-nihilist.
  • contrasts with kaushik-2019-matrixed-ontology — Kaushik's symbolic- matrix reading and Saint Aubert's flesh-being mutual-test reading are structurally parallel (both refuse monism of flesh), but Kaushik emphasizes the matrix side (symbolic tissue) and Saint Aubert the epreuve side (carnal testing).
  • contrasts with kaushik-2021-negation-implex — Saint Aubert's "non-être ingrédient de l'être" (DESC 208) parallels Kaushik's implex treatment of redoubled-negation, with different archival grounding.
  • applies archival method analogous to beith-2018-birth-of-sense's archival reading of Institution and Passivity — both are archive-deep MP studies.
  • anchors the wiki question is-ambiguite-the-sortie-from-ambivalence — whether Ch I §§ 2–3's distinction (ambiguïté as sortie from ambivalence, with the 1951–1959 Wahl → EP → PhiDial → NMS → EM1 → VI2 genealogy) is philologically defensible against the Waelhens-1951 reading of MP as "philosopher of ambiguity" in the loose, irenic sense.