The Barbarian Principle: Merleau-Ponty, Schelling, and the Question of Nature

CHAPTER SEVEN Être sauvage and the Barbarian Principle

121 CHAPTER SEVEN Être sauvage and the Barbarian Principle Merleau-Ponty’s Reading of Schelling Robert Vallier Abstract The readers of Merleau-Ponty have long recognized MerleauPonty ’s interest in the Naturphilosophie as developed in post-Kantian philosophy, most notably and radically by Schelling. In this essay, I discuss Merleau-Ponty’s relationship to Schelling and the barbarian principle, concentrating on the late lecture course, The Concept of Nature. This essay takes its bearings from a remark Merleau-Ponty makes in his essay dedicated to Husserl, “The Philosopher and His Shadow,” where he observes that the traditional characterization of phenomenology as a “philosophy of consciousness” is only half of the truth of phenomenology. The other half, excluded by the appropriative gesture of the Tradition, but seen clearly in Husserl’s last unpublished manuscripts, shows that phenomenology “descends towards Nature, toward the sphere of the Urpräsentierbar.” To take account of this other half brings to the fore a larger problem, that of “the mediation between the world of Nature and the world of persons.” If phenomenology is to follow its program rigorously, then it would have to take account of this other half, and transcending itself as philosophy of consciousness, take hold of its deeper historical and philosophical truth. And so “the ultimate task of phenomenology as philosophy of consciousness . . . is to understand its 122 Robert Vallier relation with non-phenomenology”—that is, with what does not belong to the philosophy of consciousness, with what is not constituted by consciousness (S1, 224; S2, 178). The Tradition might wish, for the sake of convenience, to exclude this other half, but Husserl himself pursued its elaboration in his later writings. These efforts are not a radical departure from the phenomenological project, and are in fact anticipated—if only in the vaguest of ways—from the moment Husserl articulates the phenomenological reduction: The epoché demands that we overcome the naive, natural attitude in favor of the transcendental attitude in order to bring to the fore the structures by which the subjectego perceives and “knows” the noema. But this in no way implies a destruction of the world of Nature or the positing of another world of ideas beyond this one of naive, lived experience. The ego is still situated in Nature, and the value of the epoché is to bring into relief the structures of this situation. But because, as Husserl says, “a real mind, according to its essence, can only exist tied to materiality as the real mind of a body,” then phenomenology can never be finished with and never be absolved of the world of Nature.1 Merleau-Ponty emphasizes this point in the last paragraphs of his essay, writing that “what resists phenomenology in us—natural being, the ‘barbaric’ principle of which Schelling spoke—cannot remain outside of phenomenology and must find its place in it” (S1, 225; S2, 178). To take account of its other half is thus an imperative if phenomenology is to realize itself, and doing so would necessarily move phenomenology beyond a “philosophy of consciousness” and thus disconcert the Tradition’s appropriative gesture. What is most striking is that in an essay dedicated to Husserl, Merleau-Ponty alludes to Schelling as the philosopher who already names—in the figure of the barbarian principle—the problem that phenomenology must confront, and who thus has already engaged in phenomenology’s last task. This allusion, inserted as a hiatus, is not an incidental or accidental remark. It serves rather as a clue, which we take as our starting point, a clue that bespeaks the importance of Schelling’s thought for Merleau-Ponty’s late work. On the basis of this clue, we should like herein to make explicit this importance, to show how Schelling’s work already engages the ultimate task of phenomenology. We propose to do so, first, by examining the place of Schelling’s thought in Merleau-Ponty’s text, with special attention to the role of the barbarian principle. We will then follow Merleau-Ponty’s reading of Schelling in the first course on “The Concept of Nature, 1956–7.” The elaboration of this reading will require that we attend to three key moments in Schelling’s work. By way of conclusion, we will indicate what purposes this appropriative reading may serve. 123 Être sauvage and the Barbarian Principle 1. Situating Schelling in the Later Merleau-Ponty We know that “The Philosopher and His...