Lecture notes: M. B.

Smith Date: [4/13/10] Subject: [Merleau-Ponty, VI, The Intertwining: The Chiasm] Session type: [Lecture] Notes 1 Rejection of reflection and coincidence (Bergson). The second term is associated with intuition. Direct seeing. This dichotomy comprises all previous philosophy (with the exception of phenomenology.) A return to the ple-mle of experience. Seeing, speaking, even thinking (but should we separate thinking and speaking absolutely? Davar = thing/word. (The functioning of speech requires that we forget that there is a distinction between words and things, M.-P.) undeniable and enigmatic. Tufts and bushes of meaning. An appeal to ordinary language. 2 The visible about us seems to rest in itself. (Relate this to p. 121, rejection of coincidence, i.e., intuition (not to be confused with a common current English use of this term, the adjective of which is intuitive. Here, intuition is direct seeing, or fusion.) Footnote on aseity (a se) independent or autonomous being. The second part of the note might serve to introduce paragraph , which is in opposition to the atomic quale. le faux barr, non annul. 3. The panoply of myriad reds. Blatantly cultural. Introduction of the new philosophical term, chair. We might note in passing that the biblical All flesh is grass ( Isa. 40, 6) was used to demonstrate the transitory nature of man: Everything is flesh, in Merleau-Ponty, refers to a participation of subject and object (the en tre) but also a common quality of being, which he refers to here as a latency (from Latin latere, to lie hidden). More on this, cf. p. 147 (French VI 193), or 15. 4. We are encouraged to take these expressions rather more literally than figuratively: The cette exgse inspire. Le regard...bouge sa faon dans son style saccade et imprieux... Different motions by which we interrogate the world. The crossover of the tangible and the touching. This material is stated in almost the same terms in Eye and Mind, p. 124 (Lil et lesprit, 17). The paradoxical expression total parts appears in both texts.

5. The concept of the en tre, which is an ontological one, derived from M.-Ps account of experience. The question of how far this identity of the seer and the visible goes, if we have a complete experience of it, or if there is something missing, and what it is. (This seems to be an allusion to 15 (Eng. p. 147-48; Fr. p. 194). My left hand touching my right hand touching the world: there is never complete coincidence; the reversibility is always imminent and never realized in fact. This gap is termed the cart. 6. The point made here is that the opacity or thickness of the body is not an obstacle to my perception of things in the world, by the very modality of my perception. It makes me a part of the world and makes the things in the world into flesh. 7. Here we have an attempt to describe the Ineinander of self/world. Several ambitious formulations undertake to evoke an intuitive sense of what that relationship might be. Consider the footnote (E. 136, F. 179). we are the world that thinks itself...a ramification of my body and ramification of the world and a correspondence between its inside and my outside, between my inside and its outside. (Note that ramification is less figurative in French than in English: it actually evokes leafy branches of two trees, in this case, intertwining. There is a relation between its inside and my outside in the sense that my physical body is inside of the outer world, or the natural world; my inside and its outside, in the sense that my inner world, my thoughts, or mental representations, are reflections of the outer edges of things, their form or external aspect.) Further elaboration of the en tre, which seems to mean at once to be of the world (a part of it) and from the world (apart from it). It is not a paradox of man, but of Being. (This puts man within the context of an ontology.) At the very end of the paragraph, M.-P. speaks of two circles, or vortexes, or spheres, concentric when I live navely, and as soon as I question myself, the one slightly decentered with respect to the other.... See helpful note on the meaning of flesh in Working Notes, p. 271 (French, 324-5). 8.Introduction of the notion of flesh as a philosophical term. It is to be thought of as an element. The Husserlian notion is once more brought up, of crossing out without erasure. 9 Flesh as a simple rather than combined notion, escaping dualism. 10 From the corporealnot to the incorporealbut to an intercorporeal. This seems to me reminiscent of Husserls distinction

between generality and abstraction. Something going beyond the hic et nunc. 11 The circularity of each sense, then of the senses with one another: an extension or a making explicit of the chiasm. (). 12 The encounter with the other For the first time (X4). The act of love. Key words, enlacer, fascinated by the unique occupation of floating in Being with another life, and the expression we already encountered in a footnote to 7, a ramification of my body and ramification of the world and a correspondence between its inside and my outside, between my inside and its outside. It should not surprise us that the same language, or an echo of the same language, reappears here in relation to the other person, the lover, since as M.-P. has already stated in 7, it is not a paradox of man, but of Being. 13 But M.-P. hastens to add that this is not the be all and end all of corporeity. The reversibility that defines the flesh exists in other fields: it is even incomparably more agile there and capable of weaving relations between bodies that this time will not only enlarge, but will pass definitively beyond the circle of the visible. We go on to discover leffrayante naissance de la vocifration. (which Lingis renders as the awesome birth of vociferation, which is certainly not a bad choice of adjectivebut I think I would have preferred the startling birth of vociferation. The fact that the world of things is described as being richer and more varied than that of the other person (and what is clearly a sexual relation) is also reflected in Freuds account of sexuality (prior to its centering on the genital organs) as all-inclusive, far more varied and polymorphous... 14 A technical point. The intuitus mentis, or idea, must be brought into view from the infrastructure of vision (in the general sense or visibility). 15 One of the longer paragraphs, containing further elaboration on the intertwining or dehiscence, or fission of its own mass. Horizonthaftigkeit, or horizonality. The inner and the outer horizon of things in Husserl (such as the earth or the sky). We sometimes use perspective in this way (or vista). 16 Proust, ideas without equivalents. The importance of these is that they show the morphological equivalent of what is in the process of becoming idea. Literature and music. 17 The idea, a certain sort of invisible of this world. An ideality that is not foreign to flesh, but gives it its axes, depth, dimensions. 18 A very long sentence that attempts, without a break, to bring this new landscape into view. It moves toward the notion of a pure

ideality. Proust again. The conclusion, to the rhythm of In a sense.... The last word: reversibility is the ultimate truth. (But what is that hinge between them, solid, unshakeable, that remains hidden from me? (comme si la charnire entre elles, solide, inbranlable, me restait irrmdiablement cache. ) We have, as philosophers, done our best to accompany what MerleauPonty describes as lclatement de ltre the explosion of being. A few other notable expressions: p. 155, Fr. la rgion sauvage There are many hints at an originary that is taking place right now, as we speak. Loriginaire clate, et la philosophie doit accompagner cet clatement. (VI 166, E. 124). The originary is exploding, and philosophy must accompany that explosion. Let me say that although translation is predestined to be a failure, it is a failure that has much in common with language itself. (cf. p. 167-68 in French, and 125-26 in English. (Interrogation and Intuition). You might even conclude by reading, first in English, then in French, the antipenultimate paragraph of Ch. 3. to conclude.