Ambiguity and the Absolute: Nietzsche and Merleau-Ponty on the Question of Truth

Introduction

 Introduction Friedrich Nietzsche (–) and Maurice Merleau-Ponty (–) could hardly be more different men or, indeed, different thinkers. Initially, it seems only contrasts can be drawn between them. Jean-François Lyotard calls Merleau-Ponty “one of the least arrogant of all philosophers,” a description hardly anyone would apply to Nietzsche (Lyotard , ). Nietzsche’s radical temperament gave birth to a “hammer” philosophy that most consider irreconcilable with both Merleau-Ponty’s moderate personality and his entire philosophical edifice, which is often based upon subtle differences of degree and emphasis. In the Anglo-American world, Nietzsche was often denied the status of philosopher, at least until Arthur C. Danto’s Nietzsche as Philosopher (Danto [] ). Merleau-Ponty, on the contrary, has been described as “the philosopher’s existentialist” (Warnock , ) in opposition to those thinkers-writers identified with the existentialist movement, and with whom Nietzsche has often been associated . The list of such more or less prima facie contrasts could be continued, including the sheer differences in writing styles, historical contexts, and relations with the philosophical contexts of their times and with the traditions of the past. Most important is that the differences in their lives and writing styles express a clear opposition in their relations with the institutional tools of knowledge at their disposal. Both philosophers were active during periods when, in Merleau-Ponty’s words, “the modern philosopher [was] frequently a functionary,” times of professional and institutionalized philosophy (Praise, ). Merleau-Ponty spent all his working life under  ■ Introduction these institutions, from secondary education lycées to the accolade of the induction to the Collège de France. He founded, edited, and wrote in several academic journals, taking theoretical stances in the current philosophical debates with those other “functionaries” he considered his colleagues . Nietzsche, the wanderer, left his chair at Basel shortly before the completion of the last of the Untimely Meditations in , and although he did not formally retire until  he never formally returned either. By this time, one motif was already entrenched in his outlook: he would be, indeed, an “untimely” thinker. This has important philosophical consequences , as is demonstrated by the sustained frequency of the untimely motif in his subsequent works. Timeliness, for the young Nietzsche, means transitoriness, superficiality, and herd mentality; it is defined by fashions and trends that distract us from reality and numb our inquisitive powers. Timeliness is the opposite of philosophy. More than most other philosophers , Merleau-Ponty was timely. He wrote several articles in newspapers, gave circumstantial papers around the world, and dedicated a good half of SNS and S to essays relating to current, national, international, and sometimes merely Parisian affairs, not to mention the two remarkably political and, indeed, timely texts HT and AD. In fact, Merleau-Ponty even voiced his preference for philosophical timeliness. At a congress of thinkers from both sides of the Iron Curtain, Merleau-Ponty refused the terms of his “Soviet interlocutor” who spoke, he declared, in “an untimely [hors de saison] language, an intemporal language.” “Those terms,” he continued, “worried” him because they blocked the way to the intellectual’s political “commitment [engagement]” (P, ). This takes us to what I think is the most interesting opposition one may draw between Nietzsche and Merleau-Ponty: their opposition on the question of politics. When I say the “question” of politics, I really mean two questions. One is what this politics entails for the rest of a philosopher’s thought: What are the politics of this or that thinker, and what is its relation to their philosophy as a whole? For example, in what way, if any, can we still draw a parallel between two thinkers who disagree politically? The other is the question of what should be the philosophical (perhaps even ontological) place, role, and importance of politics. In Thus Spoke Zarathustra, Nietzsche passionately pleads against the “most despicable” of possible human types, which he calls the “last human .” The last human knows how to live in a community; he does not seek domination or power, be it political or financial, and he has “invented happiness.” This, Nietzsche thinks, is exemplified by the spirit of progress and humanism that he sees, with a shiver, spread over Europe. There is little doubt that Nietzsche would see this “despicable” spirit at work in the Introduction ■  very endeavors which Merleau-Ponty actively supported and engaged in. In the preface to...