No More Learning

Leaving the sphere of knowledge for that of life and action, we find modern man coming to grips with ambiguities which are perhaps more striking still. There is no longer a single word in our political vocabulary that has not been used to refer to the most different, even opposed, real situations:
classical world, modern world
consider freedom, socialism, democracy, reconstruction, ren- aissance, union rights. The most widely divergent of today's largest political parties have all at some time claimed each of these for their own. And this is not a ruse on the part of their leaders: the ruse lies in the things themselves. In one sense it is true that there is no sympathy for socialism in America and that, if socialism involves or implies radical reform of rela- tions of property ownership, then there is no chance whatsoever of its being able to settle under the aegis of that country; rather, subject to certain conditions, it can draw support from the Soviet side. Yet it is also true that the socio- economic system which operates in the USSR - with its extreme social differences and its use of forced labour - nei- ther conforms to our understanding of what a socialist regime is nor could develop, of its own accord, in order to so conform. Lastly, it is true that a form of socialism which did not seek support from beyond French national borders would be impossible and, therefore, would lack human meaning. We truly are in what Hegel called a diplomatic situation, or in other words a situation in which words have (at least) two dif- ferent meanings and things do not allow themselves to be named by a single word.
Yet if ambiguity and incompletion are indeed written into the very fabric of our collective existence rather than just the
109
works of intellectuals, then to seek the restoration of reason (in the sense in which one speaks of restoration in the context of the regime of 1815), would be a derisory response. We can and must analyse the ambiguities of our time and strive to plot a course through them which we can follow truthfully and in all conscience. But we know too much about the rationalism of our fathers to simply readopt it wholesale. We know, for example, that liberal regimes should not be taken at their word, that they may well have equality and fraternity as their motto without this being reflected in their actions; we know that noble ideologies can sometimes be convenient excuses. Moreover, we know that in order to create equality, it is not enough merely to transfer ownership of the means of production to the state. Thus neither our examination of socialism nor our analysis of liberalism can be free of reser- vations and limitations and we shall remain in this precarious position for as long as the course of events and human con- sciousness continue to offer no possibility of moving beyond these two ambiguous systems. To decide the matter from on high by opting for one of the two, on the pretext that reason can get to the bottom of things, would be to show that we care less about reason as it operates - reason in action - than the spectre of a reason which hides its confusion under a peremptory tone. To love reason as Julien Benda does - to
classical world, modern world
crave the eternal when we are beginning to know ever more about the reality of our time, to want the clearest concept when the thing itself is ambiguous - this is to prefer the word 'reason' to the exercise of reason. To restore is never to reestab- lish; it is to mask.
There is more. We have to wonder whether the image of the classical world with which we are often presented is any more than a legend. Was that world also acquainted with the lack of completion and the ambiguity in which we live? Was it merely content to refuse official recognition to their exis- tence? If so, then far from being evidence of decline, would not the uncertainty of our culture rather be the most acute and honest awareness of something that has always been true and accordingly something we have gained? When we are told that the classical work is a finished one, we should remind ourselves that Leonardo da Vinci and many others left unfin- ished works, that Balzac thought there was, in fact, no way of saying when a work of art has reached the fabled point of maturity: he even went as far as to admit that the artist's labours, which could always continue, are only ever inter- rupted in order to leave the work with a little clarity. We should also remind ourselves that Ce? zanne, who thought of his entire oeuvre as an approximation of what he had been looking for, nevertheless leaves us, on more than one occasion,
111
with a feeling of completion or perfection. Perhaps our feel- ing that some paintings possess an unsurpassable plenitude is a retrospective illusion: the work is at too great a distance from us, is too different from us to enable us to take hold of it once more and pursue it. Perhaps the painter responsible saw it as merely a first attempt or indeed as a failure. I spoke a moment ago of the ambiguities inherent in our political sit- uation as if no past political situation, when in the present, ever bore the traces of contradiction, or enigma, which might make it comparable with our own. Consider, for example, the French Revolution and even the Russian Revolution in its 'classical' phase, until the death of Lenin. If this is true, then 'modern' consciousness has not discovered a modern truth but rather a truth of all time which is simply more visible - supremely acute - in today's world. This greater clarity of vision and this more complete experience of contestation are not the products of a humanity that is debasing itself but rather of a human race which no longer lives, as it did for a long time, on a few archipelagos and promontories. Human life confronts itself from one side of the globe to the other and speaks to itself in its entirety through books and culture. In the short term, the loss in quality is evident, yet this cannot be remedied by restoring the narrow humanism of the classi- cal period. The truth of the matter is that the problem we
classical world, modern world
face is how, in our time and with our own experience, to do what was done in the classical period, just as the problem facing Ce? zanne was, as he put it, how 'to make out of Impressionism something solid and lasting like the art of the museums'. 4
113
Notes
FOREWORD
1 Merleau-Ponty's term throughout for these talks is causeries, which con- notes a communication serious in subject-matter but less formal in tone than a lecture. (Translator's note)
INTRODUCTION
1 Phe? nome? nologie de la perception (Paris: Gallimard, 1945); translated by Colin Smith as Phenomenology of Perception (London: Routledge, 1962). Page ref- erences are to the new 2002 edition of this English translation.
2 Sartre's account of his childhood is set out in his autobiographical sketch Les Mots (Paris: Gallimard, 1964; trans. I. Clephane, Words, Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1967). Camus tells his very different story in his posthumously published incomplete novel Le Premier Homme (Paris: Gallimard, 1994; trans. D. Hapgood, The First Man, London: Penguin, 1996).
3 Phenomenology of Perception p. 403
4 La Structure du comportement (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France,
1942); translated by Alden Fisher as The Structure of Behavior (Boston MA: Beacon, 1963).
115
5 I discuss it at greater length in my introduction to Maurice Merleau- Ponty: Basic Writings (London: Routledge, 2003). For a more extended discussion, see The Philosophy of Merleau-Ponty by E. Matthews (Chesham: Acumen, 2002).
6 See A. Cohen-Solal Sartre: A Life (London: Heinemann, 1987) pp. 164ff.
7 L'Etre et le ne? ant (Paris: Gallimard, 1943); translated by Hazel Barnes as
Being and Nothingness (London: Methuen, 1958).
8 See especially the essay 'The war has taken place' (1945) in Sense and
Non-Sense.
9 Sartre's long essay about Merleau-Ponty describes their collaboration
and eventual parting - 'Merleau-Ponty vivant', Les Temps Modernes 17 (1961) pp. 304-76; translated by B. Eisler as 'Merleau-Ponty' in Situations (New York: G. Braziller, 1965).
10 Sens et non-sens (Paris: Nagel, 1948); translated by H. Dreyfus and P. Dreyfus as Sense and Non-Sense (Evanston, ILL: Northwestern University Press, 1964).
11 Les Aventures de la dialectique (Paris: Gallimard, 1955); translated by J. Bien as The Adventures of the Dialectic (Evanston, ILL: Northwestern University Press, 1973).
12 Signes (Paris: Gallimard, 1960); translated by R. McCleary as Signs (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1964).
13 Le Visible et l'invisible (Paris: Gallimard 1964); translated by A. Lingis as The Visible and the Invisible (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1968).
14 Phenomenology of Perception p. 373.
15 Phenomenology of Perception p. 458.
16 Phenomenology of Perception p. 353
17 Phenomenology of Perception p. 239.
18 Phenomenology of Perception p. 241; the reference here to a flaw in the great
diamond is to a famous poem by Paul Vale? ry, Le Cimetie`re marin.
19 Phenomenology of Perception p. xv.
notes
20 Although Merleau-Ponty usually takes Descartes to be the paradigm 'classical' theorist, he rightly does not do so here, since Descartes' con- ception of matter as extension actually resembles Merleau-Ponty's 'modern' conception of space more than the 'classical' conception to which Newton gave the definitive voice.
21 Phenomenology of Perception pp. 376-7. Merleau-Ponty also published a fine essay on Ce? zanne ('Ce? zanne's Doubt') in Sense and Non-Sense.
22 Phenomenology of Perception pp. 144-5.
23 The Structure of Behavior pp. 93-128.
24 The Phenomenology of Perception Part II, Chapter 4 - 'Other Selves and the
Human World'.
25 One cannot but be reminded here of Camus' essay 'The Myth of
Sisyphus' (in the book of the same title).
26 Elsewhere, when discussing language, Merleau-Ponty places great
weight on the 'creative' uses of language; see Phenomenology of Perception pp. 207-8.
1 THE WORLD OF PERCEPTION AND THE WORLD OF SCIENCE
1 Descartes, Meditations on First Philosophy, in Selected Philosophical Writings, trans. by Cottingham, Stroothoff & Murdoch (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988), Second Meditation, p. 80.
2 EXPLORING THE WORLD OF PERCEPTION: SPACE
1 Julien Benda, La France byzantine ou Le Triomphe de la litte? rature pure. Mallarme? , Gide, Vale? ry, Alain, Giraudoux, Suare`s, les surre? alistes. Essai d'une psychologie orig- inelle du litte? rateur (Paris: Gallimard, 1945).
2 Joachim Gasquet's Ce? zanne. A Memoir with Conversations, trans. by C. Pemberton (London: Thames and Hudson, 1991), p. 221.
117
3 Paulhan, 'La Peinture moderne ou l'espace sensible au coeur', La Table ronde, No. 2, February 1948, p. 280. Paulhan uses this expression again in a revised version of this article in La Peinture cubiste (Paris: Gallimard, 1953), p. 174.
4 Paulhan, La Table ronde, p. 280.
5 Malebranche, The Search After Truth, trans. and ed. by T. Lennon and P.
Olscamp (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), I, ch. 7, s. 5, pp. 35-6.
3 EXPLORING THE WORLD OF PERCEPTION: SENSORY OBJECTS
1 Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness. An Essay on Phenomenological Ontology, trans. by Hazel Barnes (New York: Philosophical Library, 1956), p. 609.
2 Ibid. , p. 609.
3 Joachim Gasquet's Ce? zanne, p. 151.
4 Sartre, Being and Nothingness, p. 186.
5 Paul Claudel, The East I Know, trans. by T. Frances and W. Bene? t (New
Haven: Yale University Press, 1914).
Just as a landscape does not consist simply of its grass and the colour of its foliage, but is distinguished by its outlines and the slope of the ground, so the Chinese literally construct their gardens with stones. They are sculptors instead of painters. Because it is susceptible of elevation and depth, of contours and reliefs, through the variety of its planes and surfaces, stone seems to them a more suitable medium for creating a background for Man than are plants, which they reduce to their normal place of decoration and ornament. (p. 18)
notes
6 Sartre, 'L'Homme et les Choses', Situations, I (Paris: Gallimard, 1948), p. 227.
7 Francis Ponge, The Nature of Things, trans. by Lee Fahnestock (New York: Red Dust, 1942), p. 29.
8 Gaston Bachelard, Air and Dreams (Dallas Institute of Humanities and Culture, 1988), Water and Dreams (Dallas Institute of Humanities and Culture, 1999), The Psychoanalysis of Fire, trans. by Alan Ross (London: Routledge, 1964), Earth and the Reveries of Will (Dallas Institute of Humanities and Culture, 2002).
9 Probably an allusion to Mad Love (University of Nebraska Press, 1987).
4 EXPLORING THE WORLD OF PERCEPTION: ANIMAL LIFE
1 Descartes, Discourse on the Method, Part Five, in Selected Writings, p. 45.
2 Voltaire, Essai sur l'histoire ge? ne? rale et sur les moeurs et l'esprit des nations, depuis Charlemagne jusqu'a` nos jours (1753, revised and expanded
1761-63).
3 Descartes, Discourse on the Method, Part Six, in Selected Writings, p. 47.
4 Albert Michotte, The Perception of Causality, trans. by T. Miles and E.
Miles (London: Methuen, 1963).
5 Ko? hler, The Mentality of Apes, trans. by E. Winter (London: Routledge,
1973).
6 Freud, 'Analysis of a Phobia in a Five-year-old Boy', Standard Edition of the
Complete Works of Sigmund Freud, Vol. X, pp. 1-149.
7 Gaston Bachelard, Lautre? amont (Paris: Corti, 1939).
8 Paul Claudel, 'Interroge les animaux', Figaro litte? raire, No. 129, 9 October
1948, p. 1. Reprinted in 'Quelques planches du Bestiaire spirituel' in Figures et paraboles, in Oeuvres en prose (Paris: Gallimard 'Ple? iade', 1965), pp. 982-1000.
119
5 MAN SEEN FROM THE OUTSIDE
1 Descartes, Discourse on the Method, Part Five, in Selected Writings, p. 46:
And I showed how it is not sufficient for it to be lodged in the human body like a helmsman in his ship, except perhaps to move its limbs, but that it must be more closely joined and united with the body in order to have, besides this power of movement, feelings and appetites like ours.
See also Meditations on First Philosophy, Meditation Six, in Selected Writings, p. 116: 'Nature also teaches me, by these sensations of pain, hunger, thirst and so on, that I am not merely present in my body as a sailor is present in a ship, but that I am very closely joined and, as it were, inter- mingled with it, so that I and the body form a unit. '
2 Franz Kafka, 'The Metamorphosis', trans. N. Glatzer, The Complete Short Stories of Franz Kafka (London: Minerva, 1992), pp. 89-139.
3 Franz Kafka, 'Investigations of a Dog', The Complete Short Stories of Franz Kafka, pp. 278-316.
4 Maurice Blanchot, The Most High (Bison Books, 2001).
6 ART AND THE WORLD OF PERCEPTION
1 Joachim Gasquet, Ce? zanne (Paris: Bernheim-Jeune, 1926), pp. 130-1.
2 Georges Braque, Notebooks 1917-1947, trans. by S.
Appelbaum (New
York: Dover, 1971), p. 22.
3 Ste? phane Mallarme? , passim. See, in particular, his Re? ponses a` des enque^tes
(response to Jules Huret, 1891), in Oeuvres comple`tes (Paris: Gallimard,
Ple? iade, 1945).
4 Henri Bremond, La Poe? sie pure, his lecture at the public session of the five
Academies, 24 October 1925 (Paris: Grasset, 1926).
notes
5 Paul Vale? ry, passim. See, for example, 'Avant-propos' (1920), Varie? te? (Paris: Gallimard, 1924); 'Je disais quelquefois a` Ste? phane Mallarme? . . . ' (1931), Varie? te? III (Paris: Gallimard, 1936); 'Dernie`re visite a` Mallarme? ' (1923), Varie? te? II (Paris: Gallimard, 1930); 'Propos sur la poe? sie' (1927), 'Poe? sie et pense? e abstraite' (1939), Varie? te? V (Paris: Gallimard, 1944). See also Fre? de? ric Lefe`vre, Entretiens avec Paul Vale? ry, with a Preface by Henri Bremond (Paris: Le Livre, 1926).
6 Paul Vale? ry, passim (in his literary criticism, prefaces, theoretical writings and lectures), for example 'Questions de poe? sie' (1935), 'Au sujet du Cimetie`re marin' (1933) and 'Commentaires de Charmes' (1929), Varie? te? III (Paris: Gallimard, 1936); 'Propos sur la poe? sie' (1927), 'L'homme et la coquille' (1937) and 'Lec? on inaugurale du cours de poe? tique du Colle`ge de France' (1937), Varie? te? V (Paris: Gallimard, 1944).
7 See, in particular, The Blanchot Reader, ed. by Holland (Oxford: Blackwell, 1995), 'How is Literature Possible? ' and Blanchot, Faux pas (Paris: Gallimard, 1943), 'La poe? sie de Mallarme? est-elle obscure? '.
7 CLASSICAL WORLD, MODERN WORLD
1 Descartes, The Principles of Philosophy, II, Nos. 36-42 in The Philosophical Writings of Descartes, trans. by Cottingham, Stroothoff & Murdoch (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984), Vol. 1.
2 Marcel Proust, La Prisonnie`re, trans. by Carol Clark (London: Penguin/Allen Lane, 2002).
3 Marcel Proust, Albertine disparue, trans. by Peter Collier (London: Penguin/Allen Lane, 2002).
4 Joachim Gasquet's Ce? zanne, p. 164.
121
'a priori' 8-10
aesthetics 28-31, 95-7
affective meaning 60
ambiguity 28, 31-2, 88-9, 107-8 anger 26-7, 83-5
animals 22-5, 69-77
anxiety 28, 88
art 28-31; 'classical' art 17-19,
51; modern art 12-13, 19, 49; and perception 93-101;see also aesthetics, painting
Bachelard, G. 65, 76
Balzac, H. 111
Benda, J. 49, 110-11
Berkeley, G. 7
Blanchot, M. 89, 101
body 26, 63; and mind 81-6; and
perception 6-13, 62; relation
to space 56 brain damage 24 Bremond, H. 100 Breton, A. 66 Burke, E. 32
Camus, A. 2, 14; The Myth of
Sisyphus 117n; Le Premier Homme
115n; see also Combat
Ce? zanne, P. 13, 18-19, 32, 51-3,
62, 64, 95-6, 111, 113 children 70-3
cinema 97-8
Claudel, P. 63, 76-7 Combat 4
Descartes 25-7, 16, 81-6; on animals 70-1, 77; on madness 23; Meditations 23; mind/body dualism 25-7, 81-6; primary and secondary qualities 21; as rationalist 8; on the senses 14, 41; wax example 41, 66
dreams 63, 73, 76
E? cole Normale Supe? rieure 3 Einstein, A. 18
embodiment see body empiricism 7-9
ethics 27-8
fallibilism 32-3 film 30, 97-8
Index
123
freedom 27-8 Freud 76
Galileo 21
geometry 18, 50-1 Gestalt psychology 3, 25;
perceptual constancies in 19-20; see also Ko? hler, Wolfgang
Goldstein, K. 10
gravity 18
God: death of 32; and human
reason 72 Goethe 60
Hegel 109
history 108
honey 60-1
humanism 28, 89
Hume, D. 7, 32; Treatise of Human
Nature 23
Husserl, E. 3, 8, 27; and the
'natural attitude' 12, 39; rejects psychologism 11
Institut National de l'Audiovisuel vii-ix
intentionality 6, 10
Kafka 89-90
Kant 8-10
Ko? hler, Wolfgang 25, 75
language 27, 30, 100 Lautre? amont 76 Lefort, C. 5
light 40
literature 30, 100-1 Locke, J. 21
Logical Positivism 7-8
madness 70-3
Malebranche, N. 55-6, 77 Mallarme? , S. 30, 100-1 Marxism 5
medicine 71-2
Merleau-Ponty, M. : The Adventures
of the Dialectic 5; analytic philosophy's response to 6; background to radio lectures of vii-ix; interest in painting of 1; and Kant 9; life of 2-6; Phenomenology of Perception 1, 4, 7, 10, 12-13, 19, 24, 27; Sense and Non-Sense 5; Signs 5; The Structure of Behaviour 3, 10, 25; The Visible and the Invisible 5, 10; see also Les Temps Modernes
Michotte, A. 74
modernity 13, 23; as decline?
106-13; difficulty in 49; modern and 'classical' 31-3, 105-13; modern humanism 28; rediscovery of world of perception in 39; see also art, painting
music 30, 99
Occupation, The 3, 4 other people 25-8, 86-7
painting 17-19, 29, 93, 112; 'classical' distinction between outline and colour in 51; and perspective 17, 18, 52-4; representational and abstract 29, 95-6
Paulhan, J. 5
index
perception 6-13; and art 93-101; of living movement 74-5; perceiving and defining 94-5; visual 53, 55-6
perspective 17, 18, 52-4 phenomenology 3, 12-13, 26 poetry 30, 100-1
politics 4, 108-10
Ponge, F. 64-5 post-modernism 14, 32-3 Poussin, N. 18
primitive peoples 22, 70-3, 82 Proust 107
psychoanalysis 63; see also Freud psychologism 10-11 psychology 3, 10, 55-6, 59-60,
74-5, 86; see also Gestalt psychology
Racine 106-7
radio vii-ix
reason 32, 72-4, 88, 110-11 relativity 18, 44 Riemann-Clifford hypothesis 18 Romanticism 24
Rousseau, J. -J. 24
Sartre, J. -P. 2-4; Being and Nothingness 4, 62; Les Mots 115n; on Ponge 64-5; on sense experience 21, 61-3; see also Les Temps Modernes
science 8; dogmatism of 45; French view of 40, 42; laws of as 'approximate expressions' 16, 43-4; and modern philosophy 43; as paradigm of knowledge 14, 40; scientific realism 15
self-consciousness 27, 86
sensory objects 20-2, 59-66 Socialism and Freedom 4
space 49-56; as constituted by the
senses 12; Newtonian 17-20; Einstein on 18
Temps Modernes, Les 4 Titian 19
Vale? ry, P.