Abstract
Whereas Phenomenology of Perception concludes with a puzzling turn to “heroism,” this article examines the short essay “Man, the Hero” as a source of insight into Merleau-Ponty’s thought in the early postwar period. In this essay, Merleau-Ponty presented a conception of heroism through which he expressed the attitude toward post-Hegelian philosophy of history that underwrote his efforts to reform Marxism along existential lines. Analyzing this conception of heroism by unpacking the implicit contrasts with Kojève, Aron, Caillois, and Bataille, I show that its philosophical rationale was to supply experiential evidence attesting to the latent presence of human universality. It is a mythic device intended to animate the faith necessary for Marxist politics by showing that universal sociality is possible, and that the historically transformative praxis needed to realize it does not imply sacrifice. This sheds considerable light on Merleau-Ponty’s early postwar political thought. But inasmuch as the latter cannot be severed from his broader philosophical concerns, the prospect is raised that his entire phenomenological project in the early postwar period rested on a myth. Not necessarily a bad myth, but a myth nonetheless.
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Notes
Merleau-Ponty (PhP, p. 520/456).
See Bryan Smyth, “On the Problem of Exupérian Heroism in Merleau-Ponty’s Phenomenology of Perception” (Dissertation, Department of Philosophy, McGill University, 2006).
Merleau-Ponty (SNS, pp. 323–331/182–187).
Flynn (2007, pp. 136f).
I shall refer to other texts as well, of course, but emphasis is placed on this text on account of the relative lack of critical attention it has received.
And, by implication, the largely self-critical developments in his later political thought—in particular, Adventures of the Dialectic—a sound comprehension of which presupposes a more thorough understanding of the earlier positions.
Coole (2007, p. 123).
action 74 (1. II. 1946, pp. 12–13). The bibliographic information given at the end of the English translation of Sense and Non-Sense, which claims that “Man, the Hero” was “especially written” for this volume, is false. It was reprinted from action unchanged.
This preface is reprinted in Smyth, “On the Problem of Exupérian Heroism in Merleau-Ponty’s Phenomenology of Perception,” pp. 201–2.
Whiteside (1988, p. 211). Merleau-Ponty’s essay “Faith and Good Faith,” also published in February 1946, refers positively to the relative openness and honesty of Hervé’s Marxism (SNS, pp. 318–321/179ff), although he had criticized Hervé the previous month in his editorial article “Pour la vérité” (SNS, pp. 274f/155).
See Poster (1975, pp. 110f).
Merleau-Ponty (SNS, p. 143/82).
Merleau-Ponty (SNS, p. 303/171). Cf. Merleau-Ponty (NI, p. 63 [153]), where with respect to French existentialism Merleau-Ponty said that “we don’t have the feeling of doing sectarian work, but of taking up research to the point where it is carried by our time.”
Quoted in the editorial preface.
Without directly citing it, Merleau-Ponty paraphrases and quotes from the introduction to Hegel’s Lectures on the Philosophy of History (cf. NI, p. 130 [64]). See Hegel (1956, pp. 30f).
Quoting Hegel: “die nächste Gattung, die im Innern bereits vorhanden war.” In Sibree’s rendering: “the species next in order […] which was already formed in the womb of time.”
Merleau-Ponty (SNS, p. 324/183).
Merleau-Ponty (SNS, pp. 324f/183, emphasis added).
Merleau-Ponty (SNS, p. 325/183).
Merleau-Ponty (SNS, p. 326/184).
Merleau-Ponty (SNS, p. 326/184; cf. SNS, pp. 118f/68f).
Merleau-Ponty (SNS, p. 110/63f).
Cf. Hegel (1967, p. 245).
Kojève (1947).
Kojève (1947, p. 271).
Merleau-Ponty (SC, p. 227/210, emphasis added).
Bataille (Œuvres, 5:257).
Aron (1969, p. 15, emphasis added).
Although Merleau-Ponty does not name Aron in his published work at this time, he did develop an explicit critique of him, as Whiteside (1986) has convincingly shown.
Merleau-Ponty (SNS, p. 297/168).
See Whiteside (1986, pp. 147f).
Cf. Merleau-Ponty (NI, pp. 347f [103f]).
Merleau-Ponty (SNS, p. 298/168).
Merleau-Ponty (NI, p. 348 [104]).
Merleau-Ponty (SNS, p. 299/169).
Cf. Merleau-Ponty (NI, pp. 352, 350 [107, 105]).
Merleau-Ponty (HT, p. 110/101f): “There can be no definitive understanding of the whole import of Marxist politics without going back to Hegel’s description of the fundamental relations between men.”
Merleau-Ponty (SNS, p. 112/64).
Merleau-Ponty (NI, p. 18 [6]); cf. Whiteside (1988, p. 122).
Merleau-Ponty (PhP, p. xiii/xviii).
Tane (1998, p. 11).
Tane (1998, p. 453).
Smetana (1965, pp. 124ff).
Hemingway (1940, p. 11).
Merleau-Ponty (SNS, p. 327/184).
Cf. Lloyd (2003, pp. 165f).
Hemingway (1940, p. 470, italics added).
Merleau-Ponty (SNS, p. 329/186, emphasis added).
Merleau-Ponty (SNS, p. 64/112).
Merleau-Ponty (SNS, p. 288/162f; cf. pp. 216f/123).
Not only was the mission extremely perilous, but it was understood that due to the state of the French forces at the time, no reconnaissance information could be put to use anyway.
Merleau-Ponty (SNS, p. 328/185).
Cf. Bataille (Œuvres, 8:651n): “A sovereignty which serves no purpose is at once the coming apart and the completion of the human being.”
Merleau-Ponty (SNS, p. 328/185).
Merleau-Ponty (SNS, p. 258/146).
Merleau-Ponty (PhP, p. 520/456).
Merleau-Ponty (SNS, pp. 328f/185f; cf. HT, p. xli/xlv).
Merleau-Ponty (SC, p. 190n1/246n97).
Merleau-Ponty (SNS, p. 116/67).
Merleau-Ponty (SNS, p. 330/186, emphasis added).
Merleau-Ponty (SNS, p. 330/185, emphasis added).
Merleau-Ponty (PhP, p. 520/456).
Merleau-Ponty (SNS, p. 212/121).
Merleau-Ponty (SNS, pp. 211f/120).
Merleau-Ponty (SNS, p. 213/121).
Merleau-Ponty (SNS, p. 330/186).
Merleau-Ponty (SNS, pp. 324f/183; cf. p. 9/4).
Merleau-Ponty (SNS, p. 330/186).
Merleau-Ponty (Prs., pp. 47f/10).
Merleau-Ponty (SNS, p. 217/123).
See Merleau-Ponty (SNS, p. 121/70).
Merleau-Ponty (SNS, p. 116/67).
Merleau-Ponty (SNS, p. 331/187).
See Balthasar (1947).
For example, Lucifer was the original working title of Sartre’s Les Chemins de la liberté (Sartre 1971, p. 27).
Massonet (1998, p. 74).
Caillois (2003, pp. 166, 144).
Richman (2003, p. 36).
Ibid.
Cited in Hollier (1988, p. 36).
Caillois (1938, p. 199).
Caillois (1938, p. 221, italics altered).
Bataille (1985, p. 66).
Bataille (1985, pp. 69f).
Ibid., p. 70.
Ibid.
Ibid.
See Bataille (1955).
Cf. Bataille (Œuvres 1:275f).
Stoekl (1992, pp. 51f).
Bataille (Œuvres 5:263; cf. 5:37).
Cf. Claudine Frank, in Caillois (2003, pp. 27, 31, 167).
Ibid., p. 27.
Ibid., p. 168.
In reviewing Scheler’s Ressentiment in 1935, Merleau-Ponty wrote that Promethean humanism is based in hatred, “the hatred of the wisdom and goodness of God. […] Nature immediately loses in value since man has worth only inasmuch as he separates himself from nature and distances himself from it” (CR, pp. 27f; cf. EP, p. 36/43).
Cf. Merleau-Ponty (PhP, pp. 415/361; xvi/xx).
Marx (Collected Works, 1.31).
Kolakowski (1978, pp. 412ff) makes an argument to this effect.
Wessell (1984, pp. 62–64); cf. 22, 38f, 189.
Wessell (1984, p. 187).
Trân (1951, p. 318).
Merleau-Ponty (HT, pp. 104f/98).
Merleau-Ponty (PhP, pp. 343f/297).
In addition to the anonymous reviewers at Continental Philosophy Review, I would like to thank Philip Buckley, George di Giovanni, and Alia Al-Saji for their comments on an earlier version of this work.
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Abbreviations for Merleau-Ponty’s Works Cited
Abbreviations for Merleau-Ponty’s Works Cited
Where appropriate, page references are given as French/English.
- SC:
-
1942. La Structure du comportement. Paris: PUF
1963. The Structure of Behavior. Trans. A. L. Fisher. Boston: Beacon Press
- PhP:
-
1945. Phénoménologie de la perception. Paris: Gallimard
1962. Phenomenology of Perception. Trans. C. Smith. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul
- HT:
-
1947. Humanisme et terreur: Essai sur le problème communiste. Paris: Gallimard
1969. Humanism and Terror: An Essay on the Communist Problem. Trans. J. O’Neill. Boston: Beacon Press
- SNS:
-
1948. Sens et non-sens. Paris: Nagel
1964a. Sense and Non-Sense. Trans. H. L. Dreyfus and P. A. Dreyfus. Evanston: Northwestern University Press.
- EP:
-
1953. Éloge de la philosophie. Paris: Gallimard
1988. In Praise of Philosophy. In In Praise of Philosophy, and other essays, trans. J. Wild and J. Edie, 3–67. Evanston: Northwestern University Press
- CR:
-
1997. Christianisme et ressentiment. In Parcours, 1935-1951, ed. J. Prunair, 9-33. Lagrasse: Verdier
- Prs:
-
2000. Un inédit de Maurice Merleau-Ponty. In Parcours deux, 1951-1961, ed. J. Prunair, 36-48. Lagrasse: Verdier
1964b. An Unpublished Text by Maurice Merleau-Ponty: A Prospectus of His Work. In The Primacy of Perception and Other Essays on Phenomenological Psychology, the Philosophy of Art, History and Politics, ed. J. M. Edie, trans. A. B. Dallery, 3-11. Evanston: Northwestern University Press
- NI:
-
n.d. Notes inédites de Maurice Merleau-Ponty, 1946-1949.*
* Unpublished notes from the late-1940s. Collated, paginated, and transcribed by Kerry Whiteside—see Whiteside (1988, pp. 312ff). I would like to thank Suzanne Merleau-Ponty and Kerry Whiteside for making copies of the originals as well as the transcription available to me. Original pagination is followed by transcription pagination in square brackets. At Mme. Merleau-Ponty’s request, it should be noted that these materials were never intended for publication
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Smyth, B. Heroism and history in Merleau-Ponty’s existential phenomenology. Cont Philos Rev 43, 167–191 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11007-010-9138-5
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11007-010-9138-5