Abstract
In Dynamis. Ontologia dell’incommensurabile, Gaetano Chiurazzi offers an account of the philosophical sense and implications of the discovery of incommensurable magnitudes in ancient thought. In his study, Chiurazzi presents the scope of the idea of incommensurability in contrast to those theories that have interpreted perception as the primary access to reality. Chiurazzi claims that the discovery of incommensurable relations, such as that of “1/square root of 2,” which expresses the relation between the side and the diagonal of a square, introduces the conception of asymmetrical relations into Western epistemology and ontology. This conception finds in the modern idea of transcendental philosophy its mature formulation. In this paper, I draw on Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s proposal of a phenomenology of perception in order to critically evaluate the working assumption in Chiurazzi’s account that perception is the faculty of intuition that seizes upon the individual and therefore as “atomic” in nature.
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Notes
Plato develops his argument against pluralist and monist theories in the Sophist. The monists and pluralists maintain that the question of being and non-being can be solved “in a numerable way”. The Stranger points out in his critique that the problem of tò όn cannot be solved in terms of simple countable terms. He asks what is the meaning of “to be” and more in particular whether “to be” is reducible to the entities that are said to be. This question leads him to highlight the paradoxes of synonymy (“cold” and “hot” are said of the same thing, therefore the one is two) and homonymy (the same thing is said of both “cold” and “hot,” therefore the two is one) (Soph. 244a–c). Finally, he points to the paradox of divisibility (is “to be” predicated of only one term or of both? In any case, the manifold ends up being reduced to the one) (Soph. 245b). See Chiurazzi (2017: 93–96).
This interpretation of transcendental philosophy, which emerges from Chiurazzi’s work on incommensurable magnitudes and the idea of dynamis in ancient thought, finds further confirmation by the history that Thomas Ryckman has laid out in The Reign of Relativity. Philosophy in Physics 1915–1925. Ryckman claims that contemporary anti-transcendelist currents of scientistic philosophy have largely ignored the transcendentalist reading of relativity theory in several of its most authoritative interpretations, from Hermann Weyl to Max von Lauer, Ernst Cassirer, and Arthur Stanley Eddington. See Ryckman (2005).
Citations from Merleau-Ponty’s texts will reference the French original pagination and then the pagination in the English translation in brackets, when available.
A good summative study of Biran’s work and life is still that of Henri Gouhier, Maine de Biran par lui-même (Paris: Éditions du Seuil, 1970).
In passing, let me note that D. Janicaud points out that in Biran’s thought the notion of the impression d’effort is the source of “insurmountable difficulties”.
In connection with the particular experience of volitional effort, as for instance in the case of the movement of our limbs, Merleau-Ponty responds to Brunschvicg’s critical attitude towards Biran’s theory of the consciousness of the effort. Brunschvicg’s neo-Kantian conceptual framework stresses the distinction between consciousness and what is of consciousness, the givenness of consciousness to itself and the givenness to consciousness of what is other than itself. Biran, on his part, places the “antithesis” of consciousness and object as primordial. If the problem lies in the difficulty to prioritize the thinking or conscious subject over against the motor subject, Biran’s solution is that of identifying motricity with consciousness. See Merleau-Ponty (1997: 53 (64)).
“…tous les sophismes de l’idéaliste ne sauraient ébranler cétte conviction” (Maine de Biran 1987: 137).
Merleau-Ponty assigns Biran to the tradition of the so-called the “idealogists” (les idéologistes). Thanks also to the translation of John Locke’s works in France, empiricism imposed itself in eighteenth century France and it motivated the emergence of sensualist positions (e.g., Condillac). The movement of the ideologists dealt with the question about the origin of ideas. Maine de Biran opposed radical sensualist postitions that conceived all idea as originating from sense impressions. However, Merleau-Ponty sees in Biran’s closeness to the ideologists one reason for his still objectivist conception of corporeal experience (see Merleau-Ponty 1997: 70 (77)). For the presence of empiricism in France in the eighteenth century, see Lindén (2017: 58). The term idéologistes turned into that of idéologues, with derogatory undertones, by the mediation of Napoleon who did not have much sympathy for them.
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Rotundo, A. The Incommensurable and the Visible: Gaetano Chiurazzi’s Ontology of Incommensurability and Merleau-Ponty’s Theory of Perception. Hum Stud 43, 431–444 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10746-020-09544-5
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10746-020-09544-5