We all secretly venerate the ideal of a language which in the last analysis would deliver us from language by delivering us to things.
Tag Archives: Merleau-Ponty
Present to the Past
A couple of times in the last few months I have tried to get involved in Otto Bollnow’s fascinating paper, “On Understanding a Writer Better than He Understands Himself”. But each time I have bogged down–for both internal and external reasons. So I want to just state here in one post the basic point that I hoped to make in a more complete and complicated way across several posts.
The basic point: The idea of understanding a philosopher better than he understands himself seems to me to typify the relationship between continental philosophers (and I guess I should say that I am thinking primarily of phenomenologists) and their forbears. This idea does not typify the relationship between analytic philosophers and their forbears. (Of course there are exceptions–vide McDowell among analytic philosophers.) Analytic philosophers see themselves as ‘external’ to their forbears: they agree with them or disagree with them, and they tend to understand their forbears’ work ‘discreetly’, as divided into chunks of argumentation with which they agree or not. But continental philosophers see themselves as ‘internal’ to their forbears: agreement and disagreement–well, neither is intimate enough to characterize the relationship. Rather their aim seems to be to penetrate so deeply into the thinking of the forebears that they no longer know where they begin and their forebears end. Criticism of the forebears thus becomes radically internal, almost always it is a “preaching to X from X” activity (vide Merleau-Ponty’s Husserl-contra-Husserl intro to The Phenomenology). The forebears work is understood ‘continuously’, as a living whole that must be responded to somehow as such. –That, such as it is, is the basic point.
Reading “RM” 11: “The Grace of Our First Certainties”
Now to address the final section of Merleau-Ponty’s “Reading Montaigne”. The section winds together the earlier sections, attempting to describe the conditions and motives for Montaigne’s “return to the world”. The initial paragraphs of the section set the tone:
It is not a question of reaching a reassuring conclusion at no matter what cost, nor of forgetting at the end what has been found on the way. It is from doubt that certainty will come. So we must measure the extent of it. Let us repeat that all belief is passion and makes us beside ourselves, that we can believe only by ceasing to think, that wisdom is a resolution to be irresolute, that it condemns friendship, love, and public life. And so here we are back to ourselves again. And we find chaos still, with death, the emblem of all disorders, on the horizon. Cut off from others, cut off from the world, incapable of finding within himself…and in an inner relationship to God the means of justifying the world’s comedy, Montaigne’s wise man, it would seem, no longer has any conversation except with that life he perceives welling madly within him for a little while longer, any resource except the most general derision, any motive except despising himself and all things. In this disorder, why not give up? Why not take the animals for a model–these neighing horses, these swans who sing as they die–why not join them in unconsciousness? The best thing would be to go back to the puerile security, the ignorance of beasts. Or to invent, against the feeling of death, some natural religion: the extinction of a life is the way to a thousand other lives.
This movement is to be found in Montaigne. But there is another one, too, which appears just as often…[T]he mind’s movement and irresolution are only half of the truth. The other half is the marvel that our volubility has stopped, and at each moment stops again, in appearances which we may indeed show cannot withstand examination, but which at least had the air of truth, and gave us the idea of it. Though, when it questions itself, never stops prolonging and contradicting itself, but there is a thought in act which is no little thing, and which we have to take into account. The critique of human understanding destroys only if we cling to the idea of a complete or absolute understanding. If on the contrary we rid ourselves of this idea, then thought in act, as the only possible thought, becomes the measure of all things and the equivalent of an absolute. The critique of passions does not deprive them of their value if it is carried to the point of showing that we are never in possession of ourselves and that passion is ourselves. At this moment, reasons for doubting become reasons for believing. The only effect of our whole critique is to make our passions and our opinions more precious by making us see that they are our only recourse, and that we do not understand ourselves by dreaming of something different. Then we find the fixed point we need (if we want to bring our versatility to a stop) not in the bitter religion of nature (that somber divinity who multiplies his works for nothing), but in the fact that there is opinion, the appearance of the good and true. Then regaining nature, naiveté, and ignorance means regaining the grace of our first certainties in the doubt which rings them round and makes them visible.
Volubility, versatility, visibility; a truly astonishing passage. Focus for now on the two Critiques, one of human understanding and one of human passion. Merleau-Ponty reads Montaigne as a Critical philosopher, even as anticipating Kant’s first two Critiques, although Kant’s Critiques and Montaigne’s are deeply different.
But the idea of reading Montaigne as a Critical philosopher, for me a philosopher of limits, is deeply right. Kant cartographizes transcendentally, finding reflection’s limits as reflection plays out. Montaigne cartographizes existentially, finding his own limits as he plays himself out. And what he finds is that unacted reflection plays itself out in a sickly, kill-joy chortle, chilling life itself in the pallor of thought; and that unreflected action plays itself out in pointless passions, vaunting vanities as lasting values. Thought in act, as Merleau-Ponty says, becomes the equivalent of an absolute. Thought in act: the meeting point of the two Critiques, a place from which we can see what is genuinely precious and can see how we distort it, devalue it, by dreaming dreams of complete possession of ourselves in understanding or of completely dispossessing ourselves of our passions. 
The point is not, of course, that thought in act is always true–‘always true’: both not false and not faithless. We are all too often false and faithless. But when we manage thought in act, we make ourselves available to the world and to others while remaining handy to ourselves. Such availability and such handiness are not to be understood as complete self-possession or as complete apatheia. In fact, such availability and handiness are irreconcilable with complete self-possession or complete apatheia, since thought in act is humble and vulnerable, not sequestered, aware of our opacity to ourselves and of the permanence of our passions. We have to acknowledge that we are ringed round with doubt, like an island in an ocean, but acknowledging that allows us to start westward to Eden, to leave our nodding dreaminess. It allows us to once again be graced by our first certainties: graced—acknowledging that here where we are and there where we are going there are no Pelagian certainties. Our original sin is our conviction that we can achieve the absolute. All we can hope for is to live in an absolute relationship to it. And, surprisingly perhaps, that requires that we live in a relative relationship to ourselves, without derision never taking ourselves fully seriously, never forgetting that we are investigators without knowledge, magistrates without jurisdiction, and, all in all, the fools of the farce.
Socratic Irony, Good and Bad
In his talk, “In Praise of Philosophy”, Merleau-Ponty begins his discussion of Socrates’ irony by considering his behavior at the trial:
What can one do if he neither pleads his cause nor challenges to combat? One can speak in such a way as to make freedom show itself in and through the various respects and considerations, and to unlock hate by a smile–a lesson for our philosophy which has lost both its smile and its sense of tragedy. This is what is called irony. The irony of Socrates is a distant but true relation with others. It expresses the fundamental fact that each of us is only himself inescapably, and nevertheless recognizes himself in the other. It is an attempt to open up both of us for freedom. As is true of tragedy, both the adversaries are justified, and the true irony uses a double-meaning which is founded on these facts. There is therefore no self-conceit. As Hegel well says, it is naive. The story of Socrates is not to say less in order to win an advantage in showing great mental power, or in suggesting some esoteric knowledge. “Whenever I convince anyone of his ignorance,” the Apology says with melancholy, “my listeners imagine that I know everything that he does not know.” Socrates does not know any more than they know. He knows only that there is no absolute knowledge, and that it is by this absence that we are open to the truth.
To this good irony Hegel opposes a romantic irony which is equivocal, tricky, and self-conceited. It relies on the power which we can use, if we wish, to give any kind of meaning to anything whatsoever. It levels things down: it plays with them and permits anything. The irony of Socrates is not this kind of madness. Or at least if there are traces of bad irony in it, it is Socrates himself who teaches us to correct Socrates…Sometimes it is clear that he yields to the giddiness of insolence and spitefulness, to self-magnification and the aristocratic spirit. He was left with no other resource than himself. As Hegel says again, he appeared “at the time of the decadence of the Athenian democracy; he drew away from the externally existent and retired into himself to seek the just and the good.” But in the last analysis it was precisely this he was self-prohibited from doing, since he thought that one cannot be just all alone and indeed, that in being just all alone he ceases to be just. If it is truly the City that he is defending, it is not merely the City in him but that actual City existing around him…It was therefore necessary to give the tribunal its chance of understanding. In so far as we live with others, no judgment we make on them is possible with leaves us out, and which places them at a distance.
For me, this is a Janus passage: it retrospects Reading “RM” 10 (as well as another recent post) and prospects Reading “RM” 11 (or it will, when I produce 11). –But for now I want to think about it just for Socrates’s sake. Montaigne I set aside. What interests me in the passage now is the contrast between good and bad irony. I agree that there is such a contrast and I agree in the main with Merleau-Ponty’s Hegelian understanding of it. Noting the contrast is important in reckoning with Socrates. (It is therefore important in teaching Socrates, as I now am. Students tend to react most strongly to the traces of bad irony in Socrates’ (good) irony and thus to treat his irony as (unalloyed) bad irony. Merleau-Ponty’s description helps me sympathize with the students when they react that way, without yielding to their reaction.) Socrates’ good irony hugs his ignorance, without crossing out that ignorance, rendering it merely apparent. As I have said in previous posts, Socrates targets double ignorance–thinking that you know when you do not know–and having that target makes irony all but unavoidable. Unlike simple ignorance–not knowing–double ignorance is not-knowing entombed in pride (self-conceit), coldly obstructed from the truth. Socrates’ good irony aims to disinter a person’s simple ignorance, and to bring a person to acknowledge that simple ignorance. Socrates’ good irony is, as Merleau-Ponty notes, a distant but true relation with others: distant–because if he comes too close he aggravates their pride, risks losing himself or approbates himself against their freedom; true–because genuinely hopeful and genuinely humble. Available, as I am now habitually putting it. Sometimes Socrates fails because he cannot maintain distance or maintain truth, and then he either misses irony altogether or he slips into some degree of bad irony. Good irony is Socrates’ way of making himself available to others without trespassing upon their freedom; it is also a way of targeting their pride, the pride that not only makes them unavailable to others, but makes them unhandy to themselves. Pride creates only the freedom to fall.
(A puzzle in Merleau-Ponty’s passage is its use of ‘distant’ and ‘distance’. Socrates’ irony is a “distant but true relation with others”, but Socrates will make no judgment on others that “places them at a distance”. I solve the puzzle this way: Socrates’ good irony does not place him at a judgmental distance from others. It is not a standing over and above them. In other words, Socrates can count himself among those he lives with, making no judgment on them that leaves him out, and which places them at a distance, even while his way of living among them is to maintain a distant but true relation to them. In fact, his ironic distance even aids his refusal to place others at a judgmental distance from himself: think of judgmental distance as a false relation to others.)
Reading “RM” 9: Skepticism and Christianity
One of the most remarkable paragraphs in Merleau-Ponty’s essay on Montaigne is this, the final paragraph in the section on Montaigne’s religion, his Christianity.
What he retains of Christianity is the vow of ignorance. Why assume hypocrisy in the places where he puts religion above criticism? Religion is valuable in that it saves a place for what is strange and knows our lot is enigmatic. All solutions it gives to the enigma are incompatible with our monstrous condition. As a questioning, it is justified on the condition that it remain answerless. It is one of the modes of our folly, and our folly is essential to us. When we put not self-satisfied understanding but a consciousness astonished at itself at the core of human existence, we can neither obliterate the dream of an other side of things nor repress the wordless invocation of this beyond. What is certain is that if there is some universal Reason we are not in on its secrets, and are in any case required to guide ourselves by our own lights. ‘In ignorance and negligence I let myself be guided to the general way of the world. I will know it well enough when I perceive it.’ Who would dare to reproach us for making use of this life and world which constitute our horizon?
I am in almost complete agreement with this. (My disagreements should show through in what I am about to say.) One of the accomplishments of the paragraph is that it reveals Montaigne’s skepticism finally to be (what I am calling) Church-Man’s skepticism. Merleau-Ponty inscribes into the paragraph Montaigne’s lexicon of Church-Man’s skepticism: ‘ignorance’, ‘strange’, ‘our lot’, ‘enigmatic’, ‘monstrous’, ‘question’, ‘answerless’, ‘folly’, ‘secret’. Montaigne’s skepticism has an epistemic side, and so can avail itself of failures to know of a standard epistemic sort, and subsequently use those failures to humble our pretensions to certain (forms of) knowledge. This is one form of ignorance and one use of it relevant to Church-Man’s skepticism. But Church-Man’s skepticism centers on existential, not epistemological, ignorance: on not-knowing classified best as ‘alienation’ or ‘restlessness’ or ‘dissatisfaction’. This skepticism is not one that construes religion, Christianity, as providing solutions or as yielding a self-satisfied understanding. It construes religion as acknowledging mysteries, acknowledging our monstrous condition. Its questioning is justified, then; as questioning of a mystery, it remains answerless. (Not all answerless questioning need dehort.) This is Christianity’s vow of ignorance. For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known. A familiar passage; but not often enough reflected upon. It stresses asymmetry: I now see God’s face through a glass, darkly. God now sees my face, face-to-face free of any darkling glass. (A strange one-way mirror that has only one side.) Now I know in part, I know partly. God now knows in total, He knows totally. We long for symmetry. Our heart is restless until it finds its rest in thee.
And of course we will have to guide ourselves by our own lights—but we need remember that not every light we count as ours is one we lit or one we power. No one should dare reproach us for making use of this life and world. What else do we have, here under the sun? As the Church-Man says (in Ecclesiastes 3):
So I became aware that it is best for man to busy himself here to his own content; this and nothing else is his alloted portion; who can show him what the future will bring?
In my days of baffled enquiry, I have seen pious men ruined for all their piety, and evil-doers live long in all their wickedness. Why then, do not set too much store by piety, not play the wise man to excess, if thou wouldst not be bewildered over thy lot. Yet plunge not deep in evil-doing; eschew folly; else thou shalt perish before thy time. To piety thou must needs cling; yet live by that other caution too; fear God, and thou hast left no duty unfulfilled.
We cannot help but to orient ourselves, or to dream of orienting ourselves, on something above the sun, some other side of things to which we make constant wordless appeal. And so fulfillment, surely our own, perhaps not our duty’s, is denied us. What we find here under the sun is not valueless, but it’s value is not full. We live amongst valuable vanities. We are fools in the farce who eschew folly. We are wonders, mysteries, to ourselves.
Astonishing.
Quantum Est In Rebus Inane 