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Heroism and history in Merleau-Ponty’s existential phenomenology

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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

  1. Merleau-Ponty (PhP, p. 520/456).

  2. See Bryan Smyth, “On the Problem of Exupérian Heroism in Merleau-Ponty’s Phenomenology of Perception” (Dissertation, Department of Philosophy, McGill University, 2006).

  3. Merleau-Ponty (SNS, pp. 323–331/182–187).

  4. Flynn (2007, pp. 136f).

  5. 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.

  6. 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.

  7. Coole (2007, p. 123).

  8. 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.

  9. This preface is reprinted in Smyth, “On the Problem of Exupérian Heroism in Merleau-Ponty’s Phenomenology of Perception,” pp. 201–2.

  10. 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).

  11. See Poster (1975, pp. 110f).

  12. In this Merleau-Ponty was broadly following Lukács’ 1919 essay “What is Orthodox Marxism?” (1971, pp. 1–26). Ironically, Lukács (1948, pp. 198–252) was a fierce polemical critic of Merleau-Ponty’s in the early postwar years.

  13. Merleau-Ponty (SNS, p. 143/82).

  14. 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.”

  15. Quoted in the editorial preface.

  16. 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).

  17. 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.”

  18. Merleau-Ponty (SNS, p. 324/183).

  19. Merleau-Ponty (SNS, pp. 324f/183, emphasis added).

  20. Merleau-Ponty (SNS, p. 325/183).

  21. Merleau-Ponty (SNS, p. 326/184).

  22. Merleau-Ponty (SNS, p. 326/184; cf. SNS, pp. 118f/68f).

  23. Merleau-Ponty (SNS, p. 110/63f).

  24. Cf. Hegel (1967, p. 245).

  25. Kojève (1947).

  26. See Cooper (1984); cf. Fukuyama (1992).

  27. Kojève (1947, p. 271).

  28. Merleau-Ponty (SC, p. 227/210, emphasis added).

  29. This is expressed in “Letter to X, Lecturer on Hegel…,” an incomplete letter addressed to Kojève dated 6.XII.1937. In Hollier (1988, pp. 89–93). A revised version was published as an appendix in Bataille (1944).

  30. Bataille (Œuvres, 5:257).

  31. Aron (1969, p. 15, emphasis added).

  32. 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.

  33. Merleau-Ponty (SNS, p. 297/168).

  34. See Whiteside (1986, pp. 147f).

  35. Cf. Merleau-Ponty (NI, pp. 347f [103f]).

  36. Merleau-Ponty (SNS, p. 298/168).

  37. Merleau-Ponty (NI, p. 348 [104]).

  38. Merleau-Ponty (SNS, p. 299/169).

  39. Cf. Merleau-Ponty (NI, pp. 352, 350 [107, 105]).

  40. 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.”

  41. Merleau-Ponty (SNS, p. 112/64).

  42. Merleau-Ponty (NI, p. 18 [6]); cf. Whiteside (1988, p. 122).

  43. Merleau-Ponty (PhP, p. xiii/xviii).

  44. Tane (1998, p. 11).

  45. Tane (1998, p. 453).

  46. Smetana (1965, pp. 124ff).

  47. Hemingway (1940, p. 11).

  48. Merleau-Ponty (SNS, p. 327/184).

  49. Cf. Lloyd (2003, pp. 165f).

  50. Hemingway (1940, p. 470, italics added).

  51. Smetana (1965, p. 126); citing Astre (1959, p. 153, emphasis added).

  52. Merleau-Ponty (SNS, p. 329/186, emphasis added).

  53. Merleau-Ponty (SNS, p. 64/112).

  54. Merleau-Ponty (SNS, p. 288/162f; cf. pp. 216f/123).

  55. 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.

  56. Merleau-Ponty (SNS, p. 328/185).

  57. Cf. Bataille (Œuvres, 8:651n): “A sovereignty which serves no purpose is at once the coming apart and the completion of the human being.”

  58. Merleau-Ponty (SNS, p. 330/186). Although he does not cite this, Merleau-Ponty may have been referring to Saint-Exupéry (1939, p. 176): “It is not danger that I love. I know what I love. It is life.” This line was also referenced by Gusdorf (1948, p. 247).

  59. Merleau-Ponty (SNS, p. 328/185).

  60. Merleau-Ponty (SNS, p. 258/146).

  61. Merleau-Ponty (PhP, p. 520/456).

  62. Merleau-Ponty (SNS, pp. 328f/185f; cf. HT, p. xli/xlv).

  63. Merleau-Ponty (SC, p. 190n1/246n97).

  64. Merleau-Ponty (SNS, p. 116/67).

  65. Merleau-Ponty (SNS, p. 330/186, emphasis added).

  66. Merleau-Ponty (SNS, p. 330/185, emphasis added).

  67. Merleau-Ponty (PhP, p. 520/456).

  68. Merleau-Ponty (SNS, p. 212/121).

  69. Merleau-Ponty (SNS, pp. 211f/120).

  70. Merleau-Ponty (SNS, p. 213/121).

  71. Merleau-Ponty (SNS, p. 330/186).

  72. Merleau-Ponty (SNS, pp. 324f/183; cf. p. 9/4).

  73. Merleau-Ponty (SNS, p. 330/186).

  74. Merleau-Ponty (Prs., pp. 47f/10).

  75. Merleau-Ponty (SNS, p. 217/123).

  76. See Merleau-Ponty (SNS, p. 121/70).

  77. Merleau-Ponty (SNS, p. 116/67).

  78. Merleau-Ponty (SNS, p. 331/187).

  79. See Balthasar (1947).

  80. For example, Lucifer was the original working title of Sartre’s Les Chemins de la liberté (Sartre 1971, p. 27).

  81. Caillois (1936). Reprinted in Caillois (1938, pp. 209–222) as “Pour une fonction unitaire de l’esprit.”

  82. Massonet (1998, p. 74).

  83. Caillois (2003, pp. 166, 144).

  84. Richman (2003, p. 36).

  85. Caillois (1937); cited in Caillois (2003, p. 171).

  86. Ibid.

  87. Cited in Hollier (1988, p. 36).

  88. Caillois (1938, p. 199).

  89. Caillois (1971). This was originally the Preface to Saint-Expuéry (1953). As Saint-Exupéry himself stated of Aéropostale: “I do not admire men for serving the postal line, but I uphold the myth of the postal line because it forms such men” (1975, 69).

  90. Claudine Frank, in Caillois (2003, p. 37); cf. Caillois (1946; 1947).

  91. Caillois (1938, p. 221, italics altered).

  92. Bataille (1937); reprinted in Bataille (Œuvres, 1:497–500); translated as Bataille (1986).

  93. For present purposes, I will draw on Bataille (1930), an earlier and longer piece; reprinted in Bataille (Œuvres, 1:258–70); translated as “Sacrificial Mutilation and the Severed Ear of Vincent Van Gogh” in Bataille (1985, pp. 61–72).

  94. Bataille (1985, p. 66).

  95. Bataille (1985, pp. 69f).

  96. Ibid., p. 70.

  97. Ibid.

  98. Ibid.

  99. See Bataille (1955).

  100. Cf. Bataille (Œuvres 1:275f).

  101. Stoekl (1992, pp. 51f).

  102. Bataille (Œuvres 5:263; cf. 5:37).

  103. Cf. Claudine Frank, in Caillois (2003, pp. 27, 31, 167).

  104. Ibid., p. 27.

  105. Ibid., p. 168.

  106. 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).

  107. Cf. Merleau-Ponty (PhP, pp. 415/361; xvi/xx).

  108. Marx (Collected Works, 1.31).

  109. Kolakowski (1978, pp. 412ff) makes an argument to this effect.

  110. Wessell (1984, pp. 62–64); cf. 22, 38f, 189.

  111. Wessell (1984, p. 187).

  112. Trân (1951, p. 318).

  113. Merleau-Ponty (HT, pp. 104f/98).

  114. Merleau-Ponty (PhP, pp. 343f/297).

  115. 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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  1. University of Memphis, Memphis, TN, USA

    Bryan Smyth

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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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