Filozofia 74, 2 111 ______________________________________________________________________ DOI: https://doi.org/10.31577/filozofia.2019.74.2.3 THINKING DESCARTES IN CONJUNCTION, WITH MERLEAU-PONTY: THE HUMAN BODY, THE FUTURE, AND HISTORICITY JAMES GRIFFITH, Bratislava International School of Liberal Arts, Bratislava, SR This article addresses a debate in Descartes scholarship over the mind-dependence or -independence of time by turning to Merleau-Ponty's Nature and The Visible and the Invisible. In doing so, it shows that both sides of the debate ignore that time for Descartes is a measure of duration in general. The consequences to remembering what time is are that the future is shown to be the invisible of an intertwining of past and future, and that historicity is the invisible of God. Keywords: René Descartes – Maurice Merleau-Ponty – Human body – Future – Historicity There is a debate whether time in Descartes is dependent on or independent of the mind. By turning to Merleau-Ponty's discussion of the intertwining of mind and human body, it becomes clear this debate is founded on a misunderstanding. The consequences of resolving this issue have much to say about history and historicity in Descartes. Now, Merleau-Ponty points out that there is a "change of perspective" within the Meditations between the Second Meditation's thought of the body as one part of extension among others and the Sixth Meditation's thought of it as in union with the mind or soul, both of which are necessary for Descartes and neither of which can be thought simultaneously (Merleau-Ponty 2003, 16; 1995, 34 – 36). While Descartes leaves this situation as a "juxtaposition," the contradiction of the body as part of extension and as unified with mind is for Merleau-Ponty "constitutive of the human" (Merleau-Ponty 2003, 20 and 129; 1995, 39 and 174). However, when the Sixth Meditation discusses the union of mind and body, it is as a conjunction (see Descartes 1904, 81), which is also the word used in the Principles (see Descartes FILOZOFIA Ro. 74, 2019, . 2 GRIFFITH, J.: Thinking Descartes in Conjunction, with Merleau-Ponty: the Human Body, the Future, and Historicity FILOZOFIA, 74, 2019, No 2, pp. 111 – 125 1905, 41). Rather than unity as oneness and rather than one substance placed against the other, it would seem that the mind and the human body are joined in their differentiation as distinct substances. The human body as a part of extension remains distinct from the mind even while the mind is conjoined to it. The human is contradictory insofar as it is a conjunction of material and immaterial substance. Understanding Descartes on the human body as a conjunction brings his philosophy closer to Merleau-Ponty's thought of the intertwining of visible and invisible. To be sure, the centuries between these two make for significant differences. Twentieth-century physics does not think particles, for instance, as Descartes thinks them (see Merleau-Ponty 2003, 90; 1995, 126). This progress believed itself to be founded on "Cartesianism," but the progress itself undermined those foundations (Merleau-Ponty 1968, 26). In addition, the emergence of modern physics occurs through, among other things, Einstein's proposal "to come back to" particle theories of light, rather than wave theories (Merleau-Ponty 2003, 90; 1995, 126). The movement of what is to come moves through what preceded, both in their successes and failures. To think Descartes as a philosopher of conjunction is made possible by, among others, Merleau-Ponty, but to think him in this way is not to transform the former into the latter. Rather, it is to think them in their conjunction, to hold them as joined in their separation such that a thought of Descartes that can better account for Descartes, perhaps invisible to his thought of himself or to what Cartesians made of him, may emerge.1 Cartesian Space and Descartes' Space To begin to understand Descartes as a philosopher of conjunction, it is helpful to look at Merleau-Ponty's critique of Sartre, "the last of the Cartesians" (Grene, 72). In Being and Nothingness, being-in-itself is non-conscious being, the thingness of a thing in its identity with itself and without differentiation of inside and outside (see Sartre, 28). Being-in-itself simply is what it is. Opposed to this is being-foritself, or consciousness, which apprehends the world as "a nihilation," the negation of the self-identity of the in-itself of non-conscious things such that they become objects of and for consciousness (Sartre, 52). However, there is no in-itself to the 1.Thanks to Richard A. Lee, Jr., Yves Charles Zarka, Petr Kouba, and the anonymous reviewers for their helpful remarks on earlier drafts of this essay. 112 Filozofia 74, 2 113 for-itself because to be aware of one's consciousness in this way entails being conscious, i.e., being-for-itself (see Sartre, 121). The gap between consciousness and the consciousness of consciousness means "it is necessary that the unity of this being include its own nothingness as the nihilation of identity" even while "the foritself is" (Sartre, 125). Among the in-itselfs that the for-itself nihilates is the past, which is "a For-Itself reapprehended and inundated by the In-itself" (Sartre, 175). My past is "My essence" insofar as those prior events become events to be apprehended, i.e., in-itselfs to be nihilated by a for-itself that is the present (Sartre, 175). The past is given meaning as or becomes my essential past by the for-itself's nihilation of the past as such. For Merleau-Ponty, Sarte's nihilation of the in-itself would link him to Descartes (see Merleau-Ponty 2003, 94; 1995, 131) and it misunderstands meaning (see Merleau-Ponty 1968, 216). That is, in nihilating the in-itself, Sartre's for-itself does not give it meaning, but rather reinscribes the in-itself as merely other than the foritself. What is visible to myself becomes what is invisible to the other, what is visible of the other what is invisible of myself. The invisible for Merleau-Ponty is "the secret counterpart" of the visible, rather than its opposite or contradictory, because the invisible only appears "within" what is visible (Merleau-Ponty 1968, 215). When I sense the world, I sense what is invisible of it as the not-visible, and meaning is the invisible of the world as it appears. That is, the world as meaningful is "not an informed mass" (Merleau-Ponty 2003, 223; 1995, 285). Finally, being is an "encroachment" or "junction at a distance [jonction à distance]" of my visible upon the other and the world and the world's encroachment upon myself whereby meaning is given, or a world appears (Merleau-Ponty 1968, 216; 1964, 265). However, he also does not want to oppose to Sartre a sacrifice of the for-itself to the in-itself. In such a sacrifice, the in-itself, non-conscious things identical with themselves, would be the model of thought and the for-itself would make the initself come to be as that to which the for-itself has no access. This is what he calls the anthropological meaning of humanism (see Merleau-Ponty 2003, 136; 1995, 182). Consciousness would generate the non-conscious world as that of which it cannot be conscious. The in-itself would then be a nothingness surrounding and created by the for-itself. For him, this model "is still to think the Weltlichkeit of minds according to the model of Cartesian space" (Merleau-Ponty 1968, 216). Cartesianism idealizes the world by defining it as objects placed before idealized thought, which, intentionally or not, places bodies in "a network of objective processes" (Merleau-Ponty 1968, 26). Cartesian space, then, is an immanent container within which objects appear. Even if that container is itself nothingness, it surrounds and envelops the objects of the world and each for-itself. Even if that space or nothingness is immanent, it is "objective-immanent," discernible as an object by the nothingness of in-itselfs (Merleau-Ponty 1968, 216). Behind that object of immanent nothingness enveloping the world stands God (see Merleau-Ponty 2003, 127; 1995, 171). Instead of Cartesian space, Merleau-Ponty proposes "a space of transcendence, a space of incompossibilities," an "aesthetic world" of things pushing such that being and nothingness are in "indivision" (Merleau-Ponty 1968, 216). With such a space, being and nothingness intertwine as separated and nothingness is already present in being's presence. One issue is that Descartes' understanding of space seems similar to this aesthetic world of the push. In the Principles, the nature of a body for Descartes is only its extension (see Descartes 1985, 224). Thus, "There is no real distinction between space, or internal place [locus internus], and the corporeal substance contained in it" (Descartes 1985, 227; 1905, 45). A real distinction for Descartes is only between substances, substances being what exists without dependence on anything else (see Descartes 1905, 28 and 24). A conceptual distinction is "between a substance and some attribute of that substance without which the substance is unintelligible; alternatively it is a distinction between two such attributes of a single substance" (Descartes 1985, 214). At most, then, the distinction between locus internus and the corporeal substance it contains is conceptual. 'Place' and 'space' in fact mean the same thing, but 'external place' (locus externus, place) refers to an object's position, while 'internal place' refers to its size and shape (see Descartes 1905, 47 – 48). This external place "may be taken as being the surface immediately surrounding what is in the place," where 'surface' indicates "the boundary between the surrounding and surrounded bodies" (Descartes 1985, 229). The network of objective processes that envelop objects would then be locus externus rather than locus internus, but the possibility of the former emerges from the mutual surfaces of the objects of the latter. As a result of this mutual surface between spatial bodies in their places, there is no vacuum between them, no immanent nothingness (see Descartes 1905, 49). The space of all bodies, or the extension of the world as such (including the heavens), "is indefinite" because it "has no limits to its extension" (Descartes 1985, 232). While we may imagine boundaries to the world in its extension, some extended space is always beyond them. We imagine not just the world's boundaries, but their beyond, and this beyond is "imaginable in a true fashion, that is, real [vere 114 Filozofia 74, 2 115 imaginabilia, hoc est, realia]" (Descartes 1985, 232; 1905, 52). As indefinite, space is understood as truly imagined to have boundaries beyond its boundaries, to push beyond itself. Space is not infinite because 'infinite' refers not to a lack of limits but to the positive understanding "that there are none," and is a term reserved for God alone (Descartes 1985, 202).2 Thinking in Conjunction 2 I therefore believe Puškari misses the nuance of a truly imagined beyond of space's indefinite boundaries as being perceived. The indefinite is not potentially infinite in the sense of being "incomplete" (Puškari, 286). What is indefinite is complete in itself as a locus internus, even if it lacks perfections. What is lacking is the perception of its completeness, though we can perceive a truly imagined completeness. The imagining of space as indefinite can be perceived as true, and what is perceived as true of this imagining is the completeness of space as locus internus as such. If it lacks perfections, it is not infinite even potentially because space as such is necessarily limited, bounded. The imagination is closer to the potentially infinite in the sense she gives it since it allows us to perceive as true what is beyond the limits of our understanding or perception. However, though I cannot enter into it here, I would argue that even the imagination as potentially infinite falls into the trap of sacrificing the for-itself to the in-itself insofar as what the imagination imagines is the world's invisible to my visible. The imagination is probably better conceived here as in motion between the finite and infinite so as to imagine an indefinite to be perceived as true. See Griffith, chapter 4 for this argument, though not directly engaging the question of the potentially infinite. There is a distinction, then, between Descartes' space and Cartesian, objectiveimmanent space. Descartes' space, as the extension of an object or as the extension of the world as such, cannot be imagined to be enclosed. Since there is no vacuum between the surface of different spatial objects in Descartes' space, there is no nothing enclosing, between, or among them. Descartes' spatial objects are objects of, not in space, and so are of space truly imagined as indefinitely pushing beyond its boundaries. In this way, bodies as objects of locus internus are the push of Merleau-Ponty's aesthetic space of incompossible jointure without real distinction between them. If Descartes' space as distinct from Cartesian bears similarity to Merleau -Ponty's aesthetic world of the push, then the latter may offer ways of thinking about issues in Descartes scholarship concerning motion and time. First, though, we should look at Merleau-Ponty on Descartes' understanding of the human body. In this way, the reality of the distinction between mind and human body can be thought in their conjunction. In the Principles, the mind is aware that sensations "cannot belong to it simply in virtue of its being a thinking thing," which shows that the mind is "joined [adjuncta]" or "conjoined [conjunctum]" with the human body (Descartes 1985, 224; 1905, 41). If, on Merleau-Ponty's reading of Descartes, the human body as human is unintelligible without being understood as a body conjoined with the mind, then to think the reality of the distinction of these substances is to think that reality as conceptual. This is not to say that the substances mind and body are not really independent of each other. Rather, it is to say that the distinction of human mind and human body as real can only be conceptual. Indeed, this conceptuality to the real distinction between a human body and mind as conjoined is what Merleau-Ponty encounters when he calls the body an "Enigma...there are not two natures in it, but a double nature" (Merleau-Ponty 2003, 211; 1995, 273). This body is not human without mind, this mind always of this body, the mutual and non-vacuous surface between them not a surface between being and nothingness but between material and immaterial substance. Without the conjunction of mind and body, the human body could not, as Descartes puts it in the Treatise of Man, be imagined (supposer) as a machine to which a soul could be "joined and united [iointes & unies]" (Descartes 2003, 2 and 1; 1909, 120). As conjunction of mind and body, the non-closed human body is of the push of the aesthetic, indefinite space of transcendence and incompossibility as itself a transcending incompossibility. This conjunction lets the body as human be discovered through its other 116 For Merleau-Ponty, Descartes understands the human body as "non-closed" and so "governed by thought" (Merleau-Ponty 1968, 234). On this understanding, the human body becomes a body that is human-distinct from other animals' "closed" bodies-through thought (Merleau-Ponty 1968, 234). That is, "human being is not animality (in the sense of mechanism) + reason" (Merleau-Ponty 2003, 208; 1995, 269). Reason is not superimposed upon the human body, but rather this body is discovered as body through thought. While other animals are within their bodies as a mechanism, leaving them closed, the openness of the human involves its being of its body (see Merleau-Ponty 2003, 217; 1995, 279). Even if the seeming closedness of non-human bodies "is founded on a Cartesian idealization, on the appearance of perceived exteriority" (Merleau-Ponty 2003, 276; 1995, 343), for Merleau-Ponty Descartes' idea of the human body is of one that reaches "completion" in thought, in what is invisible of it as a body that is specifically human (Merleau-Ponty 1968, 234). Filozofia 74, 2 117 and the mind as transcending itself discover itself as conjoined, find its limits in its completion as a mind of the human body. Duration and the Mind-Dependence or -Independence of Time Thinking the human body as a non-closed site of conjunction of indefinite aesthetic space is helpful for thinking time in Descartes. In the Principles, time is just duration in general and is a "mode of thought" or "in thought" rather than in the thing itself (Descartes 1985, 212). Modes, attributes, and qualities are identical here, though he uses 'mode' specifically for "thinking of a substance as being affected or modified [variari]," so the variation to duration given as time is of or in thought (Descartes 1985, 211; 1905, 26). As a mode of or in thought, time is the measure of objects' duration measured against the motion of the heavens (see Descartes 1905, 27). Objects as enduring depend on motion insofar as duration is a variation in or mode of matter ("materiae variationem"), even if that variation or mode is "simply in our thought" (Descartes 1985, 232; 1905, 55). Motion is "the action by which a body travels from one place to another" and involves the same amount of action as a body at rest, both being modes of or in the body since neither motion nor rest subsist without a body (Descartes 1985, 233). A temporal body, then, is a mode of thought and of body as the measure of its duration against celestial motion, both being produced by motion and being of motion even at rest. Motion's primary cause is God, who "always preserves [conservare] the same quantity of motion in the universe" (Descartes 1985, 240; 1905, 61). Time, as a measure of the duration in general of terrestrial bodies against celestial motion, is a mode of a non-closed body's thought. There is no time without durational bodies to measure or the indefinition of the world as such. Without these, it would at best be an abstract standard against which objects' duration is measured, a nothingness produced by the for-itself, a container within which objects endure. Instead, as the result of measuring between terrestrial and celestial bodies, time is immanent to bodies, and not objectively or discovered from a distance. Even if it is an abstraction since it is a mode of or in thought, it is an abstraction through objects in their duration measured against celestial motion. What is more, it is an abstraction of a mind that is the non-closedness of the human body. In this way, the debate in Descartes scholarship concerning the mind-dependence or -independence of time is based on a misunderstanding of mind. Those who argue for its dependence claim that, "since time and duration are only modes of thought, material substance cannot, as such, have time or duration. [...] Motions are in matter; both duration and time only help one understand motion" (Bonnen and Flage, 5; see also Marion, 181 – 187; Gaukroger, 368). One problem with this argument is that it ignores that rest is connected to duration, that enduring in the same place is a kind of motion, and so forgets that "motion presupposes duration" (Gorham, 34). However the mind-dependence claim also ignores that time is the result of measuring those objects' duration against celestial motion. Even if time is dependent on the mind, it is not dependent as pure abstraction or ideal concept, but as the result of measurements of duration (see Gorham, 38n34). What allows the duration of terrestrial objects to be measured against celestial motion, both being of space as such, is the human body as a non-closed site of conjunction of indefinite aesthetic space. The non-closed human body, in its measuring of terrestrial objects against celestial, allows terrestrial objects to transcend their duration as objects so they are understood as having endured and as enduring, as pushing themselves through space and time as that through which they are and endure. Those who argue for the mind-independence of time take this independence as arising from how we normally think about things: as within, not of, time. For them, objects have their own duration as a mode, meaning that duration in general (i.e., time) is a mode of objects in general (i.e., space or locus internus as such). Ken Levy, for example, claims that the mind-dependence argument means that time is either dependent on "a human construct or intuition" or results from "the imagination in the sense that an illusion or hallucination does" (Levy, 662). Even disregarding the idea that time is an imaginary illusion, its dependence on intuition does not for him answer to Descartes' claims in the Meditations that divine conservation of my being follows from the independence of the parts of time from each other (see Levy, 635 and 662; Descartes 1904, 48 – 49). To be clear, Levy does say that the Descartes of the Principles considers time mind-dependent (see Levy, 662). However, he still ignores that time, at least in the Principles, is a result of the mind's measuring the duration of terrestrial against the motion of celestial bodies. It is not "the object of the 'measure of movement'," but its result (Levy, 663). What is more, to dismiss the version of the mind-dependence argument of time as imaginary is to ignore that we can truly imagine the indefinite as the beyond of our understanding, like we do with space. Time as the result of measuring terrestrial duration against celestial motion does not demand that time itself be an object, nor does the indefinition of time mean that its dependence on the mind is an illusion if the mind is of the non-closed human body that measures those relational differen118 Filozofia 74, 2 119 ces. Thus, time can be a non-absolute abstraction of measuring relational differences of the duration and motion of bodies, the immanent transcendence of those bodies. This measurement is possible for a non-closed human body that transcends and discovers its own bodiliness in its mind's discovery of itself. In other words, time may be dependent on mind, but it is not independent of the world's bodies. Rather, it immanently transcends their duration without becoming an object against which to measure them. Again, time is a mode of a non-closed human body's thought. The Future, or Time as Upsurge However, time as the result of a non-closed human body's measuring of terrestrial duration against celestial motion does not address another issue concerning time in Descartes: the future. Because Descartes' space is an indefinite plenum, imaginary space as a container is discarded.3 Yet, if each moment of duration is distinct from all other moments, the possibility of imaginary time remains (see Gorham, 42n58). This distinction is why the received view is that, for Descartes, "time is ultimately composed of indivisible 'time atoms'," that each moment touches the next (Levy, 627).4 Temporal atomism means that each moment is either with or without duration. If without, it is difficult to understand how a series of durationless moments combine to form duration. If each moment itself has duration, either each is the mutual surface of the others' or there is a gap between them. This dilemma is why there is a debate over the strength of the discontinuity between time atoms (see Levy, 630 – 634). Regardless whether the discontinuity is like that of mutual spatial surfaces or there is a gap between temporal atoms, their very limitation, which is necessary for them to combine to give duration in general (i.e., time), means that the future is a nothing, a container within which duration appears as successive points in a timeline. That is, if the future is considered a not-yet in relation to an indefinite linear 3 The Scholastic concept of imaginary space was the result of both the Aristotelian claim that God could not create empty space and the 1277 condemnation of this claim. In Descartes' time, a common position was that space as such is distinct from the bodies that occupy it. Thus, imaginary space allowed for "an empty space beyond the world...that would allow God to move the finite world as a whole" (Garber 1992, 127). 4 This position is closely related to that of the mind-independence theory of time. Among the prominent names that hold to it are Gilson, Guerolt, and Kemp Smith. Those who reject temporal atomism include Beyssade and Garber (2001), though the latter claims that Descartes neither accepts nor rejects temporal atomism unambiguously (see Garber 2001, 194). It might still be, though, that the future is a container into which time surges. However, "Memory...always concerns the yet-to-come, the future" (Vallier, 123). A remembered experience or event has meaning "in function of an institution that has already occurred, and will in turn orient me to a possible future...; meaning, orientation, will come, advenir, come from the future, l'avenir" (Vallier, 125n3). The future emerges, then, as the demand of memory from out of an intertwined upsurge of past and present. The past as events remembered in the present has meaning as past that surges, with the present that remembers and memorializes it, to120 For him, time is an "upsurge [surgissement]" and constitutes itself (Merleau -Ponty 1968, 184; 1964, 235). Rather than being understood as "a segment of time with defined contours," the present is "a transcendent" (Merleau-Ponty 1968, 184). Thus, "The Stiftung of a point of time [point du temps] can be transmitted to the others without 'continuity'" insofar as past and present intertwine like mind and body, self and others, human and world (Merleau-Ponty 1968, 267; 1964, 315). The past is part of the present as that whence it comes and the present is part of the past as that which recalls what has been. Each brings the other into being as what it is. The past is not other than the present, but is what is remembered in it, while the present is what has endured. Thus, time is not a series, but "an institution" constituting itself through the mutual intertwining of past and present, through memory as what is remembered in the presentof thepast and the present as a consequent of what appearance of duration, it is the other side of the limitations of all time atoms without being of time as the measure of terrestrial duration against celestial motion because even the latter would be discernible as within a time contained by the future as a not-yet. In this way, the future would be the pure in-itself of time nihilated by the for-itself's understanding of durational things. Here, the non-closed human body does not seem of much help. To take account of the future, then, a return to Merleau-Ponty is necessary. is remembered (Merleau-Ponty 1968, 184). Past and present, then, are to be thought in their conjunction, a non-distant indivisibility that joins them in separation. In the upsurge that is time constituting itself, there are immemorial and memorial pasts. The former is an "originary nonpresence" that has never been present, an "original forgetting" that makes remembering, or memorial past, possible (Al-Saji, 184). It is memorial past's invisible. Through memorial past, "the past continues to coexist with and insinuate itself into the present" (Al-Saji, 188). Thus, memorial past and time's institution are not Sartre's in-itselfs nihilated by a present for-itself, leaving the past invisible to the present's visible and vice-versa. Filozofia 74, 2 121 ward the future, thereby instituting the future in the self-constitution of time. The future is not the in-itself of a not-yet encompassing the for-itself of a present that has nihilated the in-itself of the past, but is produced through the present's remembrance of the past as a past to be remembered. Each aspect of time is conjoined in their differences. If history, what seems to be memory institutionalized, is this future through present remembrance, then it might appear there is little room for the individual here. In orienting itself toward a future through the push of past and present, a specific human body "itself is an institution. Its past is not simply its own past" (Vallier, 123). If we appeal to the individual as a particular and specific thing, we risk understanding it as an atom in an objective-immanent container of space. The perception of such an individual is what Merleau-Ponty calls wild perception, which is "of itself ignorance of itself, imperception," merely perceiving, not perceiving something, a world (Merleau-Ponty 1968, 213). Wild perception is necessary, but only insofar as "The perceiving subject...returns from the thing itself blindly identified," as "the untouchable of the touch, the invisible of vision, the unconscious of consciousness" (Merleau-Ponty 1968, 201 and 255). Without this intertwining, "The corporeal schema would not be a schema," nor would the schematizing body schematize (Merleau-Ponty 1968, 255). The body schematizes as giving meaning to the world as it appears, as appearing in a schema, and this meaning is the invisible of that world as it appears. The body that schematizes of course schematizes from an individual point of view or perspective, but it schematizes that perspective as being of a schema, as meaningful. Thus the non-closed human body is individual insofar as individuality is the invisible of the meaning-giving schema perceived by and through that body. As this invisible, its individuality is found in its "Anonymity and generality," hence the possibility of subjectivity (Merleau-Ponty 1968, 201). The individual non-closed human body, to be individual, does not say, "I am perceiving x," but, "Perceiving x, as an x, I am, as an I."5 This understanding helps take account of time as a mode of a non-closed human body's thought insofar as an object endures as having endured, measured against the motions of heavenly bodies themselves enduring as having endured. The duration of objects as already of an intertwined past and present pushes forth an 5 This approach may serve to both clarify and complicate arguments against, for instance, Locke's equation of conscious memory with personal identity (see Rozemberg). aesthetic world of the present as through the past and past as remembered in the present. This aesthetic world is of the push, of the true imagination of the indefinition of time. The future is not a container within which temporal atoms appear, but the continuation of the past through the present, the invisible of the past and present called forth through memory's institutionalized representation of the past in the present. Rather than atomic, time as upsurge is a mode of thought where thought is understood as the transcendence of the human body whereby that body finds itself such that it is of the world of spatial objects coming to be through motion. Those objects endure as having endured, as being remembered. The future is the immanent transcendence of memory, the invisible of the past's representation and the present's being out of the past. It endures as the name of the truly imagined indefinition of time as upsurge. The Invisible of the Divine If institutionalized memory is history, individual or otherwise, a final word about historicity in Descartes is needed. On one reading, historicity as an idea places Descartes' realism in "the deepest conceptual jeopardy" because it replaces "the supposed need for invariances and necessities" (Rockmore and Margolis, 3). In Merleau-Ponty, though, historicity is "the intertwining of 'life' and meaning" (Diprose, 12). How can Merleau-Ponty's thought of historicity be conjoined with Descartes? A temporal body is a mode of thought and of body as the measure of the endurance of a terrestrial object of motion measured against celestial motion. The mind is the body's invisible such that the subject as in conjunction with them can make these measurements. The future is the invisible of the self-constitution of time in past and present, the truly imagined indefinite emerging through their push as an aesthetic world. Celestial motion as much as terrestrial is of this time of the intertwining of past and present pushing through as future. So what is Descartes' historicity if we think in conjunction, and not just for humans? To address this question, a final turn to the Principles will help. 122 Again, the primary cause of the motions that are measured and measured against is God, "the general cause of all the motions in the world" (Descartes 1985, 240). In creating the world, God created motion and rest, but of course God is not of the world, being infinite and so positively understood as having no limits, as fully perfect and complete. As such, Descartes' God is the immaterial substance conjoined to the material world, or the world's invisible. This infinite, immaterial substance does not contain the world and its motions as the nothing of an in-itself. It cannot Filozofia 74, 2 123 And yet, God also endures. In a letter to Arnauld, our minds "display a successiveness" of past, present, and future in their measuring of terrestrial against celestial bodies, but "the duration of God [duratio Dei]" is not of succession (Descartes 1991, 355; 1903, 193). Descartes seems to have hesitated on this question of a non-successive duration, but of import here is that God endures (see Gorham, 48). To be is to endure. While divine duration may not be measurable against celestial motions, it remains a duration, the incompossible invisible of terrestrial duration, immanently transcending terrestrial duration through its own. As creator of the truly imagined indefinition of objects pushing as aesthetic space, God is creator of the truly imagined indefinite time of terrestrial duration measured against celestial motion in an aesthetic push of presently remembered past oriented toward the future. God as immaterial substance discovers itself through this creation of matter and motion. As creator, God is of the historicity of matter, a historicity itself part of the self-discovery of the immaterial substance of mind in its conjunction with the non-closed human body that gives meaning by schematizing the world as it appears. Whether God conserves this motion successively or not, the creation of matter and its motion is not the creation of historicity understood as the memorialization of the past as of the present. Succession is 'a, then b', not its truly imagined indefinition, let alone the pastness of a as remembered in b. Historicity is the being-historical of succession. Yet, just this is what appears in the mind's selfdiscovery through the non-closed human body's schematizing measuring of terrestrial against celestial motion, all conserved by God. Historicity seems to be conjoined in separation from the creation and conservation of material motion, then. It is that through which succession as successive appears. Insofar as God creates and preserves matter and its motion as matter's invisible in a self-discovery through the world's indefinition that is the infinite's invisible, God is of the historicity that is succession given meaning. In this way, to be at all is to endure, in conjunction with the historical, and historicity is the invisible of the divine. be nothing insofar as it is fully complete. Rather, it is understood positively as transcending the indefinition of the world through its alterity to that world. The world finds itself as a world of moving and non-moving motion, a non-closed and durational world through a divine non-presence that is indivisible to the world's indivisible worldliness. 124 Bibliography BEYSSADE, J.-M. (1979): La philosophie première de Descartes. Paris: Flammarion. BONNEN, C. A., and D. E. Flage. (2000): Descartes: the matter of time. International studies in philosophy, 32 (4), 1 – 11. DESCARTES, R. (1985): John Cottingham (tr.): Principles of philosophy. 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