free to function more purely as a painting.” (OE 75/143, Merleau-Ponty’s emphasis) Inthe course (“Cartesian Ontology and Contemporary Ontology”), Merleau-Ponty also speaksof the role of the title in Klee, saying that the title “disburdens the picture of resemblance[here Merleau-Ponty means imitation] in order to allow it to express, to present an alogicalessence of the world which … is not empirically in the world and yet leads the worldback to its pure ontological accent, [it puts] in relief its way of Welten [worlding], ofbeing world.” (NC 1959-61, 53) This citation means that the title designates the thingwhose genesis the painting is showing us -- without the painting imitating that thing. So,Merleau-Ponty says in “Eye and Mind” that Klee has paint<strong>ed</strong> the two holly leaves exactlyin the way they are generat<strong>ed</strong> in the visible, in the way they “holly leave,” we might say,and yet they are indecipherable precisely because the painting does not imitate theempirical object call<strong>ed</strong> holly leaves; the title instead designates this empirical object whichhas been generat<strong>ed</strong>. It is important that Merleau-Ponty does not say that the title in Kle<strong>ed</strong>enies that the painting is of holly leaves. Klee does not say, “This is not two hollyleaves,” “ceci n’est pas deux feuilles de houx.” The title affirms that they are inde<strong>ed</strong> hollyleaves, which implies that the title, like the phrases in the poem, like the geometry of thetiles at the bottom of the pool, is the outgrowth of the genesis, its final stage, its patinaor mold, its exhalation. We might go so far as to say that the relation between the titleand the painting in Merleau-Ponty is that of a calligram: the lines emerge from the depthand then they be<strong>com</strong>e words which still resemble the depth from which they came. Thus,recognizing the weaving of the words into the things, we can interweave the twoquotations Merleau-Ponty uses to frame Part IV of “Eye and Mind.” The first, which <strong>com</strong>pletesPart IV, is from Klee: “I cannot be grasp<strong>ed</strong> in [dans] immanence,” in the immanence,that is, of consciousness, of the cogito, of thought. (OE 87/148) The secondquote, which <strong>com</strong>pletes Part III, of course <strong>com</strong>es from Cézanne: the painter “thinks in [en]painting.” 30 (OE 60/139)Conclusion: Man and his DoublesThe preposition in this phrase from Cézanne, “pense en peinture,” expresses, for Merleau-Ponty, the indivision of the invisible and the visible, of words and things. Therefore, whatis at issue in this philosophy that <strong>com</strong>es from painting, is the connection between thesetwo, (OE 64/140) the “between,” and the “entre-lacs,” the inter-weaving, as Merleau-Pontysays in The Visible and the Invisible. Being a “thought of the inside,” 31 Merleau-Ponty’sphilosophy is always trying to move into this “between.” This interiority is why Merleau-Ponty rejects the traditional concept of imitation, in which the imitation is between twothings outside of one another. Yet, despite the criticism of imitation, we must say that,while depth (la profondeur) is no-thing, there is a resemblance between the figure and theground (le fond). If we are correct about the conceptual schemes for Merleau-Ponty’smixturism, then we must recognize that the logic of the positive infinite implies a relationof eminence between the figure and the ground. Of course, again, what Merleau-Ponty isspeaking about is not traditional imitation, not a copying relation, but he is speaking ofresemblance and images. In “Eye and Mind,” Merleau-Ponty’s thoughts about resemblanceare especially guid<strong>ed</strong> by the specular image. (OE 28/128) Resemblance therefore seemsto work in this way (for Merleau-Ponty). In a mirror, I see my flesh outside, and as30For the same quote, see also NC 1959-61, 206.31See Françoise Dastur’s “La pensée du d<strong>ed</strong>ans,” in idem, Chair et langage (Paris: Encre Marine,2001), especially, 125-26, where she <strong>com</strong>pares, but not a contrario, Merleau-Ponty’s “thought of theinside” to Foucault’s “thought of the outside.”136
outside, I recognize my inside (an inside which, if I am a child, had hitherto beenconfus<strong>ed</strong>ly felt affects). But, this recognition does not occur before the mirror image, andit occurs only on the basis of that specular image that is outside. Then, I can transfer thisrecogniz<strong>ed</strong> inside to other outsides, which are like the specular image I had seen of myselfoutside. In other words, on the basis of the specular image, I can attribute my inside toanother’s flesh, even though the inside of another’s flesh remains invisible, even thoughit is Nicht-Unpräsentierbarkeit. 32 (VI 292/238-39) As Merleau-Ponty says, “They [thatis, the image, the picture, and the drawing] are the inside of the outside and the outsideof the inside, which the duplicity [duplicité] of sensibility makes possible and withoutwhich we would never understand the quasi-presence and imminent visibility which makeup the whole problem of the imaginary.” (OE 23/126) It is significant, of course, that hereMerleau-Ponty is alluding to Lacan’s mirror stage, about which Merleau-Ponty hadlectur<strong>ed</strong> in 1949, and that he speaks of the imaginary and not of the symbolic. 33 But,what we must stress is that, for Merleau-Ponty, the vision of the painter “gives visibleexistence to what profane vision believes to be invisible…. This voracious vision, reachingbeyond [par delà] the ‘visual givens,’ opens upon a texture of Being of which the discretesensorial messages are only the punctuation or the caesura.” (OE 27/127) Because paintingreaches beyond and gives visible existence to what was invisible, for Merleau-Ponty thereis only ever “the invisible of the visible.” (VI 300/247) The invisible is always relativeto the visible and is always on the verge, imminently, of being visible, of coinciding withthe visible. (Cf. VI 163/122-23) The invisible is never a teeming presence but always onthe horizon of the visible. (VI 195/148) And even if we can speak of a “blind spot” (VI300-01/247-48), an “impotence” (impuissance) of vision, (VI 194/148) Merleau-Pontyalways conceives it, not on the basis of non-coincidence, but on the basis of coincidence,not on the basis of blindness, but on the basis of vision, not on the basis of impotence,but on the basis of the “I can.” 34 Here, in the question of power, we have the subtle shiftof emphasis between Merleau-Ponty and Foucault. This subtle shift of emphasis reallydoes mean that all the prepositions in Merleau-Ponty, the “to” (“à”), the “in” (“en”), the“within” (“dans”), the “beyond” (“par-delà”), and the “between” (“entre”), in short, theinside, have the signification of resemblance. If we are going to have a strict differencebetween immanence and transcendence, then the resemblance relation implies thatMerleau-Ponty is not a philosopher of immanence, but a philosopher of transcendence. Weshould recall again what Klee says: “I cannot be grasp<strong>ed</strong> in immanence.”What, or better, who is the emblem of transcendence in Merleau-Ponty? Who is the“between”? Between the two extremes of the distant view from the airplane and the up32See also my “The Legacy of Husserl’s ‘The Origin of Geometry’: The Limits of Phenomenologyin Merleau-Ponty and Derrida,” in Leonard Lawlor, Thinking Through French Philosophy (Bloomington,Ind.: Indiana University Press, 2033), 62-79. At the time of the writing of “The Legacy” essay (1999), Iwas not aware of the difference of emphasis that this imminence makes. See Jacques Derrida, Le Toucher– Jean-Luc Nancy (Paris: Galilée, 2000), 238-40.33Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Les relations avec autrui chez l’enfant (Paris: Centre de DocumentationUniversitaire, 1960), 55; English translation by William Cobb as “The Child’s Relation with Others,” inMaurice Merleau-Ponty, The Primacy of Perception (Evanston, Ill.: Northwestern University Press, 1964),135. The lectures date from 1949-1951. In reference to the difference between the imaginary and thesymbolic, see Gilles Deleuze, “A quoi reconnaît-on le structuralisme?” in idem, L’île déserte et autrestextes (Paris: Minuit, 2002), 238-269; English translation by Melissa McMahon and Charles J. Stivale as“How Do We Recognize Structuralism?” in Gilles Deleuze, Desert Islands and Other Texts (New York:Semiotext(e), 2004), 170-192.34For more on blindness in Merleau-Ponty, see Galen Johnson, “The Retrieval of the Beautiful,”unpublish<strong>ed</strong> manuscript, 2004. I <strong>com</strong>plet<strong>ed</strong> all three parts of this trilogy before reading Johnson’s essay,which he was kind enough to share with me.137
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various forms of idealist philosoph
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self-givenness (Selbstgegebenheit)
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It must be admitted in this regard
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down and all the way back.” 51 Fo
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Heidegger characterized his own pro
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Heidegger’s transcendental-existe
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perceived world” (PP, 25), Merlea
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in the unreflected, in “perceptio
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Nor would Merleau-Ponty have had an
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a way that we do not all crash into
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“I think” but in “the dialogu
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in existence a “super-abundance o
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crucial “other” in our becoming
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to its being grounded in terms of b
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manner (statistical or regression a
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and they are such, precisely becaus
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interpreted the world, and that the
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is not rationalist or idealist in t
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title Herbert Spiegelberg gave to h
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II.TOWARD A TELOS OF SIGNIFYING COM
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published in Being and Having. 12 T
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inside me which makes me able to re
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ReflectionPhilosophical thought is
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attempt at unification, the reflect
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thereof. And an ethical aspect: tha
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According to Ricoeur, “It is here
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the most meaningful contemporary sw
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ival hermeneutics that we perceive
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more pronounced recoil whereby the
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these structures throughout the who
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By seeking a deeper unity of Dasein
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folds a pre-given set of possibilit
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of experience is correlated to a pa
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IV.PHENOMENOLOGICAL MOMENTS IN THE
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Therefore, I would like to concentr
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classical Greek tradition of thinki
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This uneasiness in human beings, wh
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We can sense such a philosophical d
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the act of interpreting, except whe
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phenomenological development. The p
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II.A Liberation, With a Meeting in
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denken lässt -, sondern das Leben:
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Sinn” 17 and, following this: “
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Wenn ich dieses Buch sehe, sehe ich
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Der christlich-jüdische Gott ist d
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3. A “BETTER” OR JUST “ANOTHE
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if we have two persons, a master an
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cosmic world, and Nietzschean nihil
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absolute lawgiver to any possible
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solitude.” 26 If there is a “hi
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of reason, as far as the single hum
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transcendental reason, 46 pure rati
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2. HISTORY AS THE OTHER -- NOTES ON
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precisely the accomplishment of phe
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ought as such into the present, it
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the task and the very environment o
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stood “from itself.” As a resul
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of Being -- already grown into Bein
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the Husserlian idea of phenomenolog
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into the openness of Being, it diff
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We now need to quote a second, well
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“knowledge about the world.” In
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Husserl’s ConversionsTheological
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And this proved, probably, to be a
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Husserl’s Reflective Phenomenolog
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to beings of the same nature. But t
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worldlessness of Husserl’s intent
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According to Aristotle, intellectio
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The latter, the nonessential princi
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that, for Husserl, every act is ind
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not forget what Husserl meant by a-
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things, we shall comprehend by intu
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something,’ is not merely there (
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epoché in Husserl become a hermene
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When Heidegger characterizes world-