An Unprecedented Deformation: Marcel Proust and the Sensible Ideas

Chapter 1: Nature: Variations on the Theme “Why are there several samples of each thing?”

13 Chapter 1 Nature: Variations on the Theme “Why are there several samples of each thing?” I. NATURE AND ONTOLOGY The last courses that Merleau-Ponty held at the Collège de France focus on the “concept of Nature” on the one hand, and the “possibility of philosophy today” on the other. Merleau-Ponty brings together under the first heading both the courses of 1956–57 and the courses of 1957–58—of these courses, the latter, centered on “Animality, the Human Body, Transition to Culture,” purport to be the “continuation” of the former. In 1959–60, Merleau-Ponty uses his last complete course to discuss the further issue of “Nature and Logos: the Human Body.” As for Merleau-Ponty’s reflections on “the possibility of philosophy today,” one can trace these not only to the 1958–59 course, where that expression actually appears,1 but also to other courses: two courses which Merleau-Ponty’s unexpected death left unfinished—“Philosophy and Non-Philosophy Since Hegel” and “Cartesian Ontology and the Ontology of Today”—and the remaining course of 1959–60, entitled “Husserl at the Limits of Phenomenology.” What is the connection between these two foci of attention toward which Merleau-Ponty’s last reflections converge? Undoubtedly, the connection lies within the problem of what he called “new ontology”: the problem of its configuration and of its philosophical formulation.2 Indeed, the preparatory notes for the last course dedicated to the “concept of Nature”—the goal of which is to define the “place of these studies in philosophy” (N, 263/203)—speak of “the ontology of Nature as a way toward ontology—a way that we prefer because the evolution of the concept of Nature is a more convincing propaedeutic, since it more clearly shows the necessity of the ontological mutation” (N, 265/204). Evidently, by retracing the path of what Merleau-Ponty had previously defined as the “philosophical history of the idea of Nature” (N, 117/83), as well as by exploring, with the help of contemporary science, the “problems posited” (ibid.) by this very history, these courses are an effort to show that a particular 14 AN UNPRECEDENTED DEFORMATION relationship operates between humanity and Being. This relationship eludes the modern formula that counterposes subject and object. According to MerleauPonty , our epoch has made this relationship more evident, but has not been able to give an explicit philosophical formulation for it, an onto-logy. This is most specifically the theme of the lectures on “Cartesian Ontology and the Ontology of Today.”3 I have already mentioned this, but it is still worth emphasizing: MerleauPonty ’s enquiry concerning Nature is not the kind of enquiry that, because of its ontological orientation, confronts the scientific standpoint with an attitude of denial. Just the opposite: it holds that such a confrontation with the scientific perspective cannot be avoided, and advocates an attitude of critical listening. Clearly, one should not expect to find in science a fully elaborated ontology capable of taking the place of the modern ontology, according to which Nature is the absolute Object and in which the Subject is Kosmotheorós (an equally absolute spectator). As Merleau-Ponty contends, science as such “does not provide an ontology, not even under a negative form. It has only the power to divest pseudo-evidence of its pretension to be evidence” (N, 145/106). Still, the formulation of ontological hypotheses, which is the task of philosophy, ought to be based on the outcomes of scientific inquiries too. In fact, Merleau-Ponty consistently emphasizes the way in which currents of twentieth-century scientific inquiry decisively converge. According to him, they converge in “emptying of evidence” the opposing causalistic and finalistic conceptions of Nature—which he considers “concepts of artificialism”—(RC 117/151) along with the idea of the separability of existence and essence4 (which he holds to be equally artificial). II. MELODY AND SPECIES Merleau-Ponty sees a contribution to this kind of “emptying of evidence” in Jakob von Uexküll’s theories. These theories see biology as an autonomous science inspired by Goethe’s conception of the knowledge of Nature, and consequently as essentially anti-Darwinistic5 ; on this basis, they see the study of the reciprocal action between the organism and its environment as the specific task of biology. Onto his examination of Uexküll’s theories, Merleau-Ponty grafts the ontological hypothesis that he attempts to elaborate. In so doing, he presents his own hypothesis in an especially enlightening way. Merleau-Pontyemphasizesthatthenotionofanimalenvironment...