Être et chair chez Merleau-Ponty

Author: Emmanuel de Saint Aubert Year: 2023 Type: Paper (lecture-derived article, French) Publication: Ágora Filosófica 23(3), pp. 5–35. DOI: 10.25247/P1982-999X.2023.v23n3.p05-35 HAL: hal-04284557 (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0)

The public-facing condensation of [[saintaubert-2021-etre-et-chair-ii|Saint Aubert's five-volume project]] on Merleau-Ponty, derived from a series of conferences (Serban–Gerschel–Darrobers; Pradelle; Farges–Perreau, fn 3). The paper is programmatic, pedagogical, and polemical: it states the anti-monism reading of MP's late ontology in summary form, catalogues four standard misreadings of the flesh, and introduces a NEW typology not present in this exact form in the books — the four gestures of being's portance (résistant, ouvrant, écartant, reliant).

Two distinctive features that the books carry only in dispersed form: (1) a clean four-misreadings typology (chair-without-body, chair-as-being, anonymous chair, chair-as-animated-body), each refuted with cardinal MP texts; (2) a systematic four-gestures decomposition of the portance function — being's bearing-and-supporting action on flesh.

Core Arguments

Claim: MP's philosophie de la chair and nouvelle ontologie are one and the same gesture, but the two expressions do NOT perfectly overlap and flesh and being are not a single concept. Because: MP's ontology is a three-term dramaturgy — notre chair, le monde, et l'être — in which being is not flesh but what flesh opens to; without the third term, only flesh and world remain, and flesh inevitably absorbs the world in a latent monism. Against: the chair-monde monism; readers who conflate Claude Simon's literary metaphor "chair du monde" (which MP borrows) with a flesh-monism. (Intro; II.2; III.1)
Claim: The expression "ontologie de la chair" is one MP NEVER uses — and for good reason. Because: it would collapse the three-term dramaturgy into a flesh-monism. The "chair du monde" metaphor is a Claude Simon borrowing; "la chair du monde est en relation avec notre chair mais ne se confond pas avec elle. Et elle est la chair du monde sans être pour autant le monde" (p. 6). MP's late ontology is a dramaturgie à trois termes. Against: any commentator using "ontologie de la chair" attributively for MP. (I.2.b)
Claim: Three common misreadings of MP's flesh and one reductive sense must be dispelled before any positive treatment: (a) chair-without-body — flesh as a late, abstract, Heideggerian-influenced concept that breaks with MP's anthropology; (b) chair-as-being — confusing chair and être under Heideggerian influence; (c) anonymous chair — essentializing the prepersonal adhesion as effacement of the person; (d) chair-as-animated-body — the retrospective scheme of incarnation. Because: (a) the concept of chair appears from 1949 (Mexico Conferences), enthroned 1951 (L'homme et l'adversité) — both contexts without Heidegger; MP is in dialogue with the human sciences (psychoanalysis, developmental psychology, Gestalt, neurology) "from first to last writings"; (b) MP read Heidegger seriously only summer 1958, was long hostile to "les heideggériens" (esp. Beaufret); even after 1958 his conception of being differs essentially from Heidegger's; (c) MP himself wrote that prepersonal and personal lives are "deux moments d'une structure unique qui est le sujet concret" (PhP 514); flesh is precisely style (recognizable singularity), not anonymity; (d) MP's perspective is animation progressive, not incarnation — the body becoming animate, simultaneously animated and animating, "toujours en train d'advenir, dans une naissance continuée" (p. 9). Against: the standard caricatures of MP in secondary literature; "deconstructive" readings that erase the person under generalized anonymity. (I.2.a–d)
Claim: MP's flesh is not a translation of Husserl's Leib. Because: in MP's Husserl courses as elsewhere, MP rarely translates Leib, and never by chair. Of more than 500 occurrences of chair in the MP corpus, the Husserl courses contain only 3 — all in the formula en chair et en os (the standard French rendering of Leibhaftigkeit). MP's chair was never a borrowed concept; his Husserl reading nourishes a personal trajectory that "vient d'ailleurs et suit son propre chemin" (p. 7). Against: the standard equation chair = Leib; readings that ground MP's chair exclusively in Husserlian phenomenology. (I.2 preamble; fn 8 → Du lien des êtres §148–158)
Claim: MP's chair is the photographic negative of Sartre's chair — inverting Sartre's concept term-by-term. Because: Sartre's chair in L'Être et le Néant is pure facticity, pure passivity, undifferenti ated mass — "rien n'est moins en chair qu'une danseuse, fût-elle nue" (EN 440), with breasts–thighs–belly as paradigms (not hands). Sartre's caress is "sans mains"; Sartre's desire is paradoxically impotent — pure passivity contacts nothing. MP's chair, by contrast, is "tissue dans l'échange dynamique d'un dedans et d'un dehors, dans le chiasme de l'incorporation désirante" (p. 12). The 1949 Mexico Conferences diagnose Sartre's chair as "désir pervers, tourné vers soi" — a fetishistic reduction of body to leather/cuirasse, an inanimate object. Against: Sartrean reduction; "vision pure" exerting a "pensée cruelle, sadique" (p. 12). (I.3.b)
Claim: Perception is "essentially a mode of access to being" (MSME 46), and being is the THIRD TERM that prevents the perceptive relation from collapsing into a duel sujet/objet. Because: the figure detaches from a fond (Gestalt), which is not figure but bears it; depth, horizon, silence, shadow, lighting are not corps and not choses perçues but the dimensions that make things appear in relief. They are "figuratifs" — MP also calls them "incorporels" — "preuve si l'en est que tout n'est pas chair pour lui" (p. 19). PhP 357 (citing Paul Guillaume) makes the early avowal: "l'œil 'tient compte de l'éclairage'. Nos recherches en un sens ne font que développer cette courte phrase". Against: monism of flesh; readings that conflate the figuratifs with chair. (III.1)
Claim: MP's late ontology articulates a CONJUNCTION WITHOUT PRECEDENT in the history of philosophy: body, unconscious, and being — three terms taken together. Because: MP's progressive abandonment of the term "conscience" (radical reform → outright rejection) opens the room for an inconscient primordial (more phenomenological than psychoanalytic) that constitutes "le corps inconsciemment ouvert à l'être". The PhP 357 passage already "speaks in its way of the body unconsciously open to being" (fn 79). Against: Cartesian mind/consciousness/object; Sartrean self-coincident consciousness; Lacanian linguistically-structured unconscious. (III.1; II.2; cross-ref E&C II Ch VI)
Claim (THE CARDINAL ORIGINAL CONTRIBUTION OF THIS PAPER): The portance de l'être — being's bearing-and-supporting of flesh — has FOUR COMPLEMENTARY GESTURES. (i) Résistant: being holds, contains, retains; resists intelligence (provokes wonder); resists liberty (allows it to butt-against and grow); "être sauvage", "vertical". (ii) Ouvrant: being acts as de-determination, "inobjectivable et désobjectivant"; generalizing Wallon's ultra-choses against Piaget's object-construction; opens flesh beyond projections, representations, and psychological states. (iii) Écartant: being keeps beings apart, prevents fusion, enables contour and relief; like depth and shadow, both enveloping and discriminating; supports differentiation and thereby relation. (iv) Reliant: being holds us together in the same space, time, soil, horizon; "Omnitenens plutôt qu'omnipotens", the invisible third-included that makes coexistence possible without fusion. Because: MP's metaphorical ontology of being-quoad nos must specify the FORMS of being's impact on flesh; otherwise the metaphors of "sauvage", "profondeur", "fond", "horizon" remain isolated figures rather than naming a common structural function. The four gestures cohere in producing the portance. Against: any reading that treats being as a single metaphor (e.g., depth alone) without articulating its plural structural functions. (III.2)
Claim: Being's omnitenens function makes us go from AMBIVALENCE to AMBIGUITY. Because: ambivalence is the alternation of monocular univocal incompossible visions (sadomasochistic face-to- face); ambiguity is the (hyper)dialectical achievement of seeing in depth — assuming both sides simultaneously, with two eyes, two ears, two hands. Being holds us together, so we can hold-together ourselves (com-prendre). This makes possible perceiving another in their depth, in their irreducible singularity (style). Against: readings that flatten MP's ambiguity-vs-ambivalence distinction. (III.2)
Claim: MP's being is constituted by its NEGATIVITY — "non-être ingrédient de l'être" — against Sartre's "plénitude absolue et entière positivité" (EN 50). It is "en haillons", lacunaire, inépuisable. The "incarnation change tout" formula (MP's critique of explanatory theology) is paralleled by an implicit "la profondeur change tout" — depth as the lever of MP's anti-survol ontology. Because: a being of pure positivity (Sartre's En-soi, Leibniz's perfectissimum) cannot communicate with flesh — we cannot test it nor be tested by it, nor desire it; it is a being of survol that "s'impose, important sans portance". The phenomenological alternative is a being whose immanence bears the transcendence of flesh, whose negativity is fertile and operates "à même la chair". Against: Sartre EN 50; "explanatory theology" (Leibniz, traditional metaphysics); positivity-only being. (III.3; fn 99 → Saint Aubert 2008 Archives de philosophie)
Claim: Common pregnance, common transcendence — flesh and being have double pregnance (chair-in-being and being-in-chair, fn 107 → E&C II Ch V) and a common surrection: "La transcendance, alors, ne surplombe pas l'homme, il en est étrangement le porteur privilégié" (PM 118). Being and flesh work ENSEMBLE: being makes humans (not only intersubjectivity makes humans), and human flesh works being's indetermination, "precipitating and crystallizing" until "concretions of the inexhaustible" become sense and form. The work is transitive AND immanent — réaliser in both senses. Against: "intellectual immanence" (idealism); Sartre's nothingness facing pure positivity; "intériorisme" (PhP v). (III.3)

Argumentative Movement

The paper moves through three stages:

Sources and genesis of MP's flesh (I): a philological-cultural archaeology of "chair" in French (physiological, biblical-Pauline bâsâr/sarx, anthropological-existential), then a corrective typology of misreadings (I.2), then a critical-genetic reconstruction tracing MP's chair through 1930s Brunschvicg-Scheler-Marcel and 1940s Sartre-Beauvoir confrontations (I.3), with the chair–désir and chair– perception subsections setting up the second stage.
Generalized flesh (II): poses the monism question — "Merleau- Ponty moniste?" — taking the reading seriously, then refusing it via the third-term thesis (II.2 close). Closes with the "appel à l'ontologie" diagnosis: MP turns to ontology in his last years to escape the anthropomorphism / anthropologisme of an idealist humanism that cannot think its own dependence on what is not human.
Relations between flesh and being (III): articulates the être tiers (III.1), then the FOUR GESTURES of portance (III.2) — the paper's cardinal original contribution — then the common pregnance and transcendence register (III.3), closing with the "l'incarnation change tout / la profondeur change tout" parallel and the travail (work, transitive-and-immanent) of flesh and being together.

Movement is diagnostic-and-corrective (I), aporetic-and-resolving (II), typological-and-synthesizing (III). The paper does not move by premise-conclusion argument but by surveying common errors and articulating a positive reconstruction in summary.

Key Findings

The "ontologie de la chair" attribution to MP is a misnomer: MP never uses the phrase, and using it commits the wiki (or any reader) to a monism MP explicitly rejects. The correct frame is philosophie de la chair + nouvelle ontologie, with chair and être as distinct concepts within a single project.
The "chair du monde" is a CLAUDE SIMON metaphor MP borrows; readers who project a chair-monde monism from this metaphor have generalized one literary borrowing into a metaphysical position MP does not hold.
The chair concept is dated: 1949 Mexico Conferences (first central use), 1951 L'homme et l'adversité (official enthronement). Both contexts are pre-Heideggerian for MP. The "late, Heideggerian, abstract flesh" reading is unsupported by the chronology.
MP's chair was constituted critically in TWO antagonistic dialogues: a 1930s anti-idealist genesis against Brunschvicg with seminal Scheler and Marcel influence, and a 1940s confrontation with Sartre. Husserl is not the principal anchor.
Saint Aubert's typology of FOUR GESTURES of portance — résistant, ouvrant, écartant, reliant — is the paper's cardinal original contribution. It articulates the plural functions of being's bearing- and-supporting of flesh, captures the omnitenens-omnipotens distinction, and grounds the move from ambivalence to ambiguity.
The body–unconscious–being triad is "conjonction sans précédent dans l'histoire de la philosophie" — Saint Aubert's strong claim about MP's late originality.
The "incarnation change tout / la profondeur change tout" parallel links MP's anti-explanatory-theology critique to the depth-as-lever ontology of the figuratifs.
Being is "Omnitenens plutôt qu'Omnipotens" — a striking Saint-Aubert formula distinguishing the bearing/holding-together function of MP's being from the omnipotence of metaphysical theology.
Being "important sans portance" — Saint Aubert's diagnostic for the failure mode of survol-being (Leibniz, Sartre's En-soi): being that imposes without bearing weight in the structural sense.

Methodology

Programmatic philological-and-archival summary, with most close-reading work referred to the five-volume project. The paper deploys cardinal MP quotes (PhP, VI, OE, S, EN, Conférences en Amérique, Notes de cours 1959–1961, Le primat de la perception, Parcours) without the deep manuscript apparatus of E&C II — readers needing archival weight are sent to the books (fn 2 and passim). The argument moves by polemical clearing-away of misreadings followed by positive reconstruction, characteristic of a public-facing lecture.

The four-gestures typology in III.2 is the only place in the paper where Saint Aubert performs constructive philosophical work that is not directly traceable to a particular volume — it is a systematic re-organization of being's functional roles that the books treat in dispersed form (especially E&C II Chs. III–V).

Concepts Developed

Concepts for which this source does original or substantial work:

portance — Saint Aubert's organizing concept; the 2023 paper's CARDINAL contribution is the new four-gestures typology (résistant/ouvrant/écartant/reliant) not present in E&C II's three figural registers.
epreuve-mutuelle-de-la-chair-et-de-letre — re-stated as the three-term dramaturgy (notre chair / monde / être), with the misreadings typology serving as its negative articulation.
flesh-as-element — substantial philological-cultural archaeology of "chair" in French; the chronology of MP's chair (1949 emergence, 1951 enthronement); the Scheler/Marcel pre-Husserlian anchors.
ultra-chose — public-facing statement that being is ultra-chose par excellence and that the ouvrant gesture corresponds to generalization-and-radicalization of Wallon's notion against Piaget.
figuratifs — public statement that figuratifs are "incorporels" and that "tout n'est pas chair pour lui" — anti-monism via figural ontology.
theologie-explicative — anchors the "incarnation change tout / la profondeur change tout" parallel; introduces the "important sans portance" diagnostic for survol-being.
perceptual-faith — clean public statement of the foi vs croyance distinction and the foi interrogative equation.
inconscient-primordial — articulates the body–unconscious–being triad as MP's "conjonction sans précédent dans l'histoire de la philosophie".

Concepts Referenced

Concepts the paper mobilises but does not develop originally:

chiasm, reversibility, ineinander, empietement — the structural figures of the chair-être relation, mostly via brief pointers; empiétement appears as paired with chair in the 1945–49 emergence period.
depth-profondeur, silence, visible-invisible — the figuratifs of late ontology.
ambiguity-vs-ambivalence — the move from ambivalence to ambiguity enabled by being's reliant gesture.
surrection — paired with portance in the l'enveloppement est le ressort d'un développement register.
onirisme — "L'onirisme de la chair" passing reference (p. 7).
wild-being — "être sauvage" appears in the résistant gesture.
primacy-of-perception — "L'homme perçoit comme aucun animal ne le fait" (Pri 68).
body-schema — schéma corporel and chair as quasi-synonyms in late personal manuscripts; Schilder is MP's principal reference (fn 69).
good-ambiguity — implicit in the ambivalence-ambiguity treatment.
motor-intentionality — implicit in the désir-perception articulation.
redoubled-negation — "non-être ingrédient de l'être" reformulated as "l'être en haillons".

Terminology (bilingual)

The paper is in French; the English translation is from the Ágora Filosófica abstract (the body is French only). Key technical terms:

French (original)	English	Attestation locations	Translation notes
chair	flesh	passim	the central term; never Leib-derived; cannot be replaced by English "flesh" without loss of biblical-anthropological resonance
portance	bearing / supporting	III.2; III.3; bio	Saint Aubert's term; not yet standard in English secondary literature
résistant / ouvrant / écartant / reliant	resistant / opening / separating-spacing / linking-binding	III.2	the four gestures typology — translation choices preserve gerundive force
ultra-chose	ultra-thing	III.2; ouvrant gesture	Wallon's term radicalized by MP
omnitenens	(Latin retained)	III.2.4	"all-holding-together"; coined against omnipotens
portance commune	common bearing	III.2.4	the anthropological-load-bearing extension of the reliant gesture
important sans portance	imposing without bearing	III.3	the diagnostic for survol-being
déformation cohérente	coherent deformation	(not in this paper)	–
empiétement	encroachment / overlap	I.3.a (passing)	paired with chair in 1945–49 emergence
foi perceptive	perceptual faith	I.3.c; II.1	distinguished from croyance (belief)
foi interrogative	interrogative faith	II.1; III.3	active confidence as acte, not affect
ek-stase / extase	ek-stasis	I.2.c; II.2; III.3	the carnal sortie-de-soi, vs. consciousness
figuratifs	figuratifs / figurative dimensions	III.1	also called incorporels in this paper
incorporels	incorporeals	III.1	"preuve si l'en est que tout n'est pas chair pour lui"
cristallisation	crystallization	(not central in this paper)	–
schéma corporel	body schema	I.2.a; fn 69	near-synonym of chair in late personal manuscripts

Key Passages

"D'après ses propres termes, Merleau-Ponty appelle de ses vœux une 'philosophie de la chair' et une 'nouvelle ontologie'. Il ne s'agit pas là de projets différents, mais bien d'un seul et même geste. Ce qui ne signifie pas pour autant que les deux expressions se recouvrent parfaitement, encore moins que la chair et l'être forment un seul et même concept." (Intro, p. 5) — the paper's organizing thesis: same gesture, different concepts.

"Merleau-Ponty ne fait pas une 'ontologie de la chair' — expression maladroite, qu'il n'emploie jamais, et pour cause. Il a pu contribuer à nous induire en erreur par une belle métaphore tardive empruntée à Claude Simon, la 'chair du monde'. La chair du monde est en relation avec notre chair mais ne se confond pas avec elle. Et elle est la chair du monde sans être pour autant le monde. L'ontologie de Merleau-Ponty n'est pas un monisme de la chair, mais une dramaturgie à trois termes : notre chair, le monde, et l'être." (I.2.b, p. 6) — the paper's CARDINAL passage. Definitive anti-monism statement.

"L'être, chez Merleau-Ponty, n'est pas tant la chair que ce à quoi notre chair s'ouvre. Notre chair, pour devenir chair et entrer en relation (avec d'autres chairs), a besoin de s'ouvrir à — et de se laisser ouvrir par — l'être." (I.2.b, p. 6) — chair ≠ être; chair OPENS TO être.

"L'être humain, comme il le souligne avec force un an avant sa mort, est d'abord une 'autre manière d'être corps' [Natu p. 269]. C'est cette manière singulière d'être corps, ce style, que la chair désigne avant tout." (I.2.a, p. 5) — flesh as modal manner-of-being-body, citing the cardinal Natu 269 formula.

"La notion de style est capitale, chez Merleau-Ponty, pour caractériser la chair : la chair est style, manière d'être singulière que l'on reconnaît entre mille comme on reconnaît une silhouette en mouvement qui passe devant nous [PM 83-84]. On est donc aux antipodes d'un anonymat entendu comme effacement de la personne." (I.2.c, p. 7) — refutes the anonymity reading.

"À l'inverse, sur plus de 500 occurrences de 'chair' dans le corpus merleau-pontien, les cours sur Husserl ne totalisent que trois mentions du terme, toutes employées dans l'expression 'en chair et en os', traduction convenue de la Leibhaftigkeit." (fn 8, p. 5) — the philological evidence against chair = Leib.

"Tout ceci offre une miniature inversée de la conception de la chair (et du désir) que Merleau-Ponty va à son tour élaborer." (I.3.b, p. 12) — Sartre as photographic-negative.

"La chair sartrienne, contenue dans l'impassibilité, recluse dans la parfaite visibilité et impénétrabilité de l'objet, n'est plus transitionnelle, matrice et vecteur d'une relation à autre que soi." (I.3.b, p. 12) — fetishistic reduction of Sartre's chair.

"La foi perceptive, en tant que telle, n'est pas une croyance. Si du moins on entend par 'croyance' une adhésion à un contenu de pensée plus ou moins déterminé, tandis que la foi perceptive s'appuie sur une réalité effective toujours en partie indéterminée." (I.3.c, p. 16) — clean public statement of foi vs croyance.

"Le désir et la foi perceptive sont pour celui-ci deux grandes modalités de l'ouverture de notre chair: de son ouverture au monde et à autrui, certes, mais aussi — sinon d'abord — de son ouverture à l'être." (II.1, p. 16) — désir + foi as the two voies of openness to indetermination.

"L'être merleau-pontien trouve ses analogués princeps dans le monde sensible, ou plutôt — et ce n'est pas une nuance — dans ce qui rend sensible le monde. Ce faisant, l'être n'est pas le monde, mais plutôt ce qui le met en scène." (III.1, p. 19) — being is not the world but what renders the world sensible.

"Ni monde ni arrière-monde, comme Merleau-Ponty le dit avec force, l'être est 'l'invisible de ce monde, celui qui l'habite, le soutient et le rend visible (...) l'Être de cet étant' [VI 198]." (III.1, p. 19) — Klee's macht sichtbar applied phenomenologically.

"Merleau-Ponty va peu à peu souligner combien cette ouverture est inconsciente, tant et si bien qu'il finit par articuler fortement trois termes: le corps, l'inconscient, et l'être — conjonction sans précédent dans l'histoire de la philosophie." (III.1, p. 20) — the body–unconscious–being triad as MP's late cardinal articulation.

"L'ontologie de Merleau-Ponty n'est pas une science de l'être en tant qu'être, mais une approche métaphorique de l'être en tant que correspondant de notre chair: de l'être quoad nos et non per se." (III.2, p. 20) — the methodological frame of the four-gestures decomposition.

"Résistant et enveloppant, espaçant et développant, écartant et différenciant, l'être est aussi et enfin reliant. Nous sommes tenus ensemble dans un même espace et un même temps, limités et illimités par un même sol, bordés et débordés par un même horizon, enveloppés et écartés par une même profondeur. (...) Omnitenens plutôt qu'omnipotens, l'être nous porte ensemble, et cette portance commune institue notre situation commune, permet notre accès commun au monde." (III.2.4, p. 22) — the reliant gesture and the omnitenens-vs-omnipotens distinction.

"L'être nous fait sortir de l'ambivalence caractéristique pour Merleau-Ponty de l'immaturité psychologique, intellectuelle et relationnelle. Il nous pousse à dépasser l'alternance des visions monoculaires, univoques et incompossibles, pour les assumer ensemble: pour voir en profondeur et discerner, dépassement (hyper)dialectique qui consiste à passer de l'ambivalence à ce que Merleau-Ponty nomme l'ambiguïté." (III.2, p. 22) — being's reliant gesture enables ambivalence → ambiguity.

"La conception merleau-pontienne de l'être est arcboutée contre la 'plénitude absolue et entière positivité' de l'être sartrien, que 'la négation ne saurait atteindre' [EN 50]." (III.3, p. 23) — anti-Sartre being-of-negativity.

"Un être de surplomb qui s'impose, important sans portance." (III.3, p. 23) — Saint Aubert's diagnostic for survol-being.

"'L'incarnation change tout', affirmait Merleau-Ponty, critiquant une certaine tradition théologique et la provoquant à se renouveler ; il suggère au moins autant, s'opposant à l'ontologie de l'objet et nous invitant à une nouvelle ontologie, que 'la profondeur change tout'." (III.3, p. 24) — the incarnation change tout / profondeur change tout parallel.

"La transcendance, alors, ne surplombe pas l'homme, il en est étrangement le porteur privilégié [PM 118]." (III.3, p. 24) — common transcendence, anchored in PM 118.

"L'être aussi nous fait humains, et pas seulement autrui." (III.3, p. 25) — strong anti-Hegelian/anti-Sartrean claim: being humanizes.

"La chair est ouvrée et œuvre, selon un travail immanent et transitif." (III.3, p. 25) — the ouvré-et-œuvre pun (old French ouvrer = to work) grounds the double réaliser.

What's Not Obvious

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

The "ontologie de la chair" attribution to MP is a misnomer widespread in secondary literature. Saint Aubert's claim — that MP never uses the phrase, and that to use it is to project a flesh- monism MP explicitly rejects (II.2) — is corrective at the level of the wiki's vocabulary. Anyone (including this wiki) who has spoken of MP's "ontology of flesh" has been making a category error. The correct frame is philosophie de la chair + nouvelle ontologie, with the three-term dramaturgy notre chair, le monde, l'être preserving the distinction. This is a philological-and-attribution finding with direct concept-page consequences (cf. portance, flesh-as-element, epreuve-mutuelle-de-la-chair-et-de-letre).
The four-gestures typology of portance is NEW in the 2023 paper relative to E&C II. The 2021 book gives three figural registers in the Épilogue (s'abandonner et surgir / endurer la nuit / co-naître et réaliser) — these describe FLESH'S POSTURE TOWARD portance. The 2023 paper's four gestures (résistant / ouvrant / écartant / reliant) describe BEING'S IMPACT ON FLESH — the symmetric counterpart, not a restatement. The two typologies are coordinate complements: one for each pole of the épreuve mutuelle. Saint Aubert provides the four-gestures schema only in this 2023 article (and, presumably, in the future portance book). For the wiki, this is the single public anchor for the four-gestures decomposition. The ingest should treat this as a new sub-section of portance.
The "Omnitenens vs Omnipotens" distinction is a Saint Aubert neologism with theological force. Omnipotens is the classical divine attribute (all-powerful), the centerpiece of the théologie explicative. Omnitenens — "all-holding-together" — is Saint Aubert's coined Latin alternative for MP's being. The shift from potens to tenens is not a softening of the divine but a structural re-orientation: power gives way to bearing, imposition to support, command to reliance. This single phrase (III.2.4) crystallizes the argumentative movement of the entire paper — from the survol-being that "s'impose, important sans portance" to the bearing-being that "nous porte ensemble". Without the omnitenens neologism, the four-gestures typology would lack a name for the distinctively-non-classical-theological structure being articulated. The phrase is unique to this paper in the wiki corpus.

Critique / Limitations

Programmatic-vs-evidential tension. The paper makes strong claims — about the chronology of chair (1949 emergence), the 500/3 corpus count, the chair–empiétement pair (1945–49), the body–unconscious–being triad as "conjonction sans précédent" — without on-page evidence. Each claim is referred to one of Saint Aubert's books. A reader who cannot or does not consult the books takes these on Saint Aubert's authority. The wiki's citation-traceability rule (General Rule 16) should propagate the underlying anchors when this paper is used as source: the 2004 Du lien des êtres §148–158 for the Leib count; E&C I and II for the chronology and the body-unconscious-being triad.
The four-gestures typology is constructive, not derivative. Saint Aubert presents the four gestures as a typology of MP's implicit decomposition of being's bearing. But the cardinality (FOUR, not three or five) is Saint Aubert's choice. A different reader could collapse écartant and reliant (since both name being's between-position) or add a fifth (e.g., nourrissant or exposant). Saint Aubert does not argue for exhaustiveness or non-redundancy. The typology should be taken as Saint Aubert's interpretive proposal informing future work (the portance book), not as MP's explicit four-fold structure. The wiki should record the typology as Saint Aubert's, not MP's.
The "ontologie de la chair never used by MP" claim depends on corpus search. Saint Aubert's corrective force is high, but the philological claim is empirically defeasible: a single MP attestation would falsify it. The wiki should treat this as Saint Aubert's finding pending independent corpus check (audit Phase 8 candidate).
The paper does not engage Falque, Dufourcq, Trigg, Legrand, Kristensen or other contemporary readings of late-MP ontology that would converge or diverge with Saint Aubert's anti-monism reading. As a public-facing summary, this is appropriate; but the wiki should flag that the four-gestures typology is Saint Aubert's among several active readings, not the consensus.
The Heidegger relation is treated more cleanly here than in Vers une ontologie indirecte. Saint Aubert's 2006 Heidegger monograph distinguishes carefully between MP's pre-1958 anti- Heideggerianism and his post-1958 selective metaphor-borrowing. The 2023 paper compresses this into a single sentence (raw 187), risking the impression that MP's late style is independent of Heidegger rather than selectively indebted. The complexity is in the 2006 book.

Connections

condenses saintaubert-2021-etre-et-chair-ii — the 2023 paper is the public-facing summary; the books carry the archival depth.
condenses johnson-carbone-saintaubert-2020-poetic-of-the-world — Saint Aubert's chapter on metaphoricity is the seed of this paper's III.3 register.
anchors portance — the four-gestures typology is the paper's cardinal contribution; pre-2023 portance page used only the three figural registers.
anchors epreuve-mutuelle-de-la-chair-et-de-letre — public three-term dramaturgy formulation.
critiques the "ontologie de la chair" attribution to MP — corrective force across the wiki's MP pages.
contrasts with merleau-ponty-1968-visible-and-invisible readings that take "chair du monde" as a metaphysical position.
contrasts with Heideggerian readings of late MP (Beaufret target).
contrasts with Sartre's chair (L'Être et le Néant) — chair as photographic-negative.
applies primacy-of-perception to the ontological level via the l'incarnation change tout / la profondeur change tout parallel.
is a public-facing version of the books' content and is appropriate to cite when wiki pages need a citable, open-access anchor for Saint Aubert's positions (HAL is open-access; Vrin is not).

Sources

saintaubert-2021-etre-et-chair-ii — referenced repeatedly (fn 9, 12, 14, 27, 33, 53, 65, 67, 86, 91, 96, 99, 105, 107). The book is the archival-evidentiary substrate the paper summarizes.
Saint Aubert's earlier four volumes (2004, 2005, 2006, 2013) — each cited at least once (fn 1).
MP primary citations: PhP, VI, OE, S, Conférences en Amérique (2022), Notes de cours 1959–1961, La Nature, Parcours, Parcours deux, Le primat de la perception, Résumés de cours, La structure du comportement, La prose du monde, Éloge de la philosophie, Entretiens avec Georges Charbonnier, Le monde sensible et le monde de l'expression (MSME, 2011), Maurice Merleau-Ponty Hermann 2008. Unpublished: Être et Monde (BNF), Notes sur le corps (BNF), Notes de travail inédites on Descartes (BNF), notes for Visible et Invisible préparation (BNF), notes for Signes préface préparation (BNF).
Sartre EN 1943 (cited: pp. 50, 397, 440, 441, 444, 446-447); cited throughout I.3.b–c as photographic-negative.
Husserl: implicit, mostly via the chair-vs-Leib refutation.
Saint Aubert 2008 Archives de philosophie article on "L'Incarnation change tout" (fn 99) — the published source for the théologie- explicative concept.
Saint Aubert 2022 Archives de philosophie dossier on Levinas-MP resonances (fn 13) — the published source for MP's 1958 spring reading of Levinas.