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Merleau-Ponty, a form, a relation of figure and ground (fond), a whole. (SB 101/91) Hereis the definition Merleau-Ponty provides of a whole: a whole is an indecomposable unityof internal, reciprocal determinations, meaning that if one of the parts changes, then thewhole changes and, if all the parts change but still maintain the same relations amongthem, then the whole does not change. (SB 50/47) In other words, not being the sum ofits parts, the whole is not an aggregate; there are no partes extra partes, no parts outsideof one another, and therefore the whole, the relation of figure and ground, is alwaysambiguous. (Cf. SB 138/127)Now, the second conceptual scheme for understanding this ambiguous or mixedrelation of parts and whole comes from the beginning of his 1952 “Indirect Language andthe Voices of Silence.” 14 It is well known, of course, that in “Indirect Language and theVoices of Silence” Merleau-Ponty introduces Saussure’s linguistics into French philosophy.Thanks to Saussure, we know that linguistic signs such as phonemes reciprocallydetermine one another by means of “diacritical differences.” The reciprocal determination,which refers us back to the Gestalt, implies that Saussure cannot base language on asystem of positive ideas. Due to the fact that Saussure is rejecting any other sense thanthe diacritical sense of signs, he must, according to Merleau-Ponty, be rejecting two waysof conceiving the whole and therefore two ways of conceiving the parts in relation to thewhole. On the one hand, Merleau-Ponty tells us that the whole of language cannot be “theexplicit and articulated whole of the complete language as it is recorded in grammars anddictionaries.” (S 50/39) On the other, the whole of a language cannot be “a logical totalitylike that of a philosophical system, all of whose elements can be (in principle) deducedfrom a single idea.” (S 50/39) Instead, as Merleau-Ponty says, “The unity [Saussure] istalking about is a unity of coexistence, like that of the sections of an arch which shoulderone another. In a whole of this kind, the learned parts of language have an immediatevalue as a whole.” (S 50/39, my emphasis) Merleau-Ponty’s comparison of the part-wholerelation to that of the sections (les éléments) of an arch (une voûte) is illuminating.Clearly, if you change one stone, the arch falls; or, if you change all the stones butmaintain the relations between them, then you still have the arch. The arch is not a mereaggregate of stones. Because the stones “shoulder” (s’épaulent) each other, each stone“has an immediate value as a whole”; each stone, in other words, is a “total part.” (Cf.OE 17/124) But this comparison implies that each stone, or, more precisely, each part,being a total part, is different from the whole and yet is identical to it. This sameness ofidentity and difference defines Merleau-Ponty’s mixturism; indeed, in “Descartes’s Ontologyand Contemporary Ontology,” Merleau-Ponty says that “the visible opens upon aninvisible which is its relief or its structure and where the identity is rather non-difference.”(NC 1959-61, 195) To anticipate, we should note that sameness of identity and differenceis precisely how Foucault defines the modern reflection on finitude: “towards a certainthought of the Same – where Difference is the same thing as Identity” (vers une certainepensée du Même – où la Différence est la même chose que l’Identité).” (MC 326/315,Foucault’s capitalization)In light of this definition of the modern reflection on finitude, it is not surprising thatthe third conceptual scheme for Merleau-Ponty’s mixturism comes from his 1956“Everywhere and Nowhere.” Here, Merleau-Ponty calls today’s science “small rationalism”(le petit rationalisme), and any consideration of his view of science must start here.shall return to this critique below. See Merleau-Ponty, Notes de cours, 1959-1961, 229.14Maurice Merleau-Ponty, “Le langage indirect et les voix du silence,” in idem, Signes (Paris:Gallimard, 1960); English translation by Richard C. McCleary as “Indirect Language and the Voices ofSilence,” in Signs (Evanston, Ill.: Northwestern University Press, 1964). Hereafter all essays in Signes willbe cited by the abbreviation S, with reference first to the French edition, then to the English translation.128