The end of phenomenology: Expressionism in Deleuze and Merleau-Ponty

Continental Philosophy Review

Volumn 31, Issue 1, 1998, Pages 15-34

  Lawlor, Leonard ^a  

^a University of Memphis   (United States)

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EID: 54649084246     PISSN: 13872842     EISSN: 15731103     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1023/A:1010004210178     Document Type: Review

References (121)

1. An earlier version of this paper was delivered at the 1995 Merleau-Ponty Circle Conference at Duquesne University, September 23, 1995.
2. Jean Greisch, "Reading Heidegger in the Third Generation," unpublished manuscript, pp. 6-7.
3. See, for example, Natalie Depraz, Transcendence et incarnation (Paris: Vrin, 1995).
4. Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari, Qu'est-ce que la philosophie? (Paris: Minuit, 1991), pp. 47-48;
5. English trans. Hugh Tomlinson and Graham Burchell as What is Philosophy? (New York: Columbia University Press, 1994), p. 46. For simplicity's sake, I am ignoring the fact that What is Philosophy? is one of Deleuze's joint-authored books.
6. Gilles Deleuze, Empirisme et subjectivité (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1988 [1953]), p. 92;
7. English trans. Constantin V. Boundas as Empiricism and Subjectivity (New York: Columbia University Press, 1991), p. 87.
8. Deleuze and Guattari, Qu'est-ce que la Philosophie, p. 49;
9. What is Philosophy?, p. 47.
10. Gilles Deleuze, Différence et répétition (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1968), p. 154;
11. English trans. Paul Patton as Difference and Repetition (New York: Columbia University Press, 1994), p. 117.
12. Italics are Deleuze's. If there is a shortcoming to Michael Hardt's Gilles Deleuze: An Apprenticeship in Philosophy (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1993) it is his failure to see Heidegger's overwhelming influence on Deleuze; for example, Hardt says, "Even without close examination, the most general facts of Deleuze's biography, particularly the things he did not do, indicate his difference from nearly all other major French philosophical voices to emerge from his generation. He was never a member of the French Communist Party, he did not attend the exclusive Ecole Normal Superieure, and he was never fascinated by the work of Martin Heidegger" (p. 125n6).
13. Fichte formulates this principle in his The Science of Knowledge (trans. Peter Heath and John Lachs [New York: Cambridge University Press, 1982 (1794)]), where he says, "By virtue of its mere notion, the ground falls outside of what it grounds; both ground and grounded are, as such, opposed and yet linked to each other, so that the former explains the latter" (p. 8).
14. For other formulations of this principle by Deleuze see Le Bergsonisme ([Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1968], p. 100;
15. English trans. Hugh Tomlinson and Barbara Habberjam as Bergsonism [New York: Zone Books, 1991], pp. 97-98)
16. and Spinoza et le problème de l'expression ([Paris: Minuit, 1968], p. 39;
17. English trans. Martin Joughin as Expressionism in Philosophy: Spinoza [New York: Zone Books, 1990], p. 48).
18. Cf. also Rodolphe Gasché's analysis of Werner Flach's "pure heterology" in The Tain of the Mirror (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1986): "Flach is compelled to follow such a direction because he recognizes that Hegel's determination of the ground of reflection - of the originary synthetic unity - is not accompanied by a determination of that ground as ground. Instead of determining that ground as radically heterogeneous to what, as ground, it is supposed to make possible, Hegel's concept of the reflection of reflection understands ground in the sense of homogeneity, that is, in the sense of what the ground is to account for. Yet if a ground is to be an absolute ground, it must be heterogeneous" (p. 89).
19. Cf. Deleuze and Guattari, Qu'est-ce que la Philosophie, p. 142;
20. What is Philosophy?, pp. 149-150.
21. See also Deleuze, Différence et répétition, p. 179;
22. Difference and Repetition, p. 137.
23. Deleuze, Différence et répétition, p. 80;
24. Difference and Repetition, p. 57.
25. Ludwig Landgrebe has also characterized Husserl's phenomenology as a "transcendental empiricism": see Landgrebe, "The Phenomenological Concept of Experience," in Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, 34 (1973-74), pp. 1-13.
26. Deleuze, Spinoza et le problème de l'expression, p. 310;
27. Expressionism in Philosophy: Spinoza, p. 333.
28. Deleuze, Spinoza et le problème de l'expression, p. 311;
29. Expressionism in Philosophy: Spinoza, p. 335.
30. Gilles Deleuze, Logique du Sens (Paris: Minuit, 1969); English trans. Mark Lester with Charles Stivale (New York: Columbia University Press, 1990). Hereafter cited as LS with reference first to the French original, then to the English translation.
31. Michel Foucault, "Theatrum Philosophicum," in Language, Counter-Memory, Practice, ed. Donald F. Bouchard (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1977), p. 170.
32. Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Phénoménologie de la perception (Paris: Gallimard, 1945), p. 74;
33. English trans. Colin Smith and revised by Forrest Williams as The Phenomenology of Perception (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1962, revised 1981), p. 61. Hereafter cited with the abbreviation PP with reference first to the French original, then to the English translation.
34. Jean Hyppolite, Logique et existence (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1953);
35. English translation by Leonard Lawlor and Amit Sen as Logic and Existence (Albany: The SUNY Press, 1997).
36. See Gilles Deleuze and Claire Parnet, Dialogues (Paris: Flammarion, 1977), pp. 18-19; English trans. Hugh Tomlinson and Barbara Habberjam (New York: Columbia University Press, 1987), p. 12;
37. see also Deleuze's review of Hyppolite's Logique et existence in Revue philosophique de la France et l'etranger (1954), vol. 144, pp. 457-460;
38. English translation appears as an Appendix to the English translation of Hyppolite's Logic and Existence, pp. 191-195.
39. Cf. also LS 126n3/344n3, where Deleuze says that Gilbert Simondon's L'Individu et sa genèse physico-biologique (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1964) provides "a new conception of the transcendental." Simondon's book, by the way, is dedicated to Merleau-Ponty.
40. Deleuze, Qu'est-ce que la philosophie?, p. 49;
41. What is Philosophy?, p. 47; Deleuze here also stresses Sartre's "invocation of Spinoza."
42. Jean-Paul Sartre, The Transcendence of the Ego (New York: Noonday Press, 1957).
43. According to Sartre, the principle for the unity of an object identified by an indefinite number of consciousnesses lies in the object itself. See Sartre, The Transcendence of the Ego, p. 38.
44. According to Sartre, consciousness is self-unifying and self-individuating; see Sartre, The Transcendence of the Ego, pp. 38-39.
45. Sartre says, "All the results of phenomenology begin to crumble if the I is not, by the same title as the world, a relative existent: that is to says, an object for consciousness" (Sartre, The Transcendence of the Ego, p. 42; Sartre's emphasis).
46. Sartre, The Transcendence of the Ego, pp. 36-37.
47. See Jean Hyppolite's comments on Fr. Van Breda's "La Reduction phénoménologique," in Husserl: Cahiers du Royaumont, (p. 323) where he speaks of a "subjectless transcendental field."
48. Mentioned in Jacques Derrida's Introduction to Husserl's 'The Origin of Geometry', trans. John P. Leavey, Jr. (Stony Brook: Nicolas Hays, 1978), p. 88.
49. Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus, trans. Brian Massumi (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1987 [1980]), p. 367, 407-408.
50. See also, Jacques Derrida, Introduction to The Origin of Geometry (trans. John P. Leavey Jr. [Stony Brook: Nicolas Hays, 1978 (1962)]), pp. 48-49.
51. Edmund Husserl, Ideas Pertaining to a Pure Phenomenology and to a Phenomenological Philosophy, book I, trans. F. Kersten (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1982).
52. The notion of cause in Deleuze is based on his reading of the Stoics and cannot be associated with the modern notion of causality. Deleuze says, "[The Stoics] are in the process of bringing about, first, an entirely new cleavage of the causal relation. They dismember this relation, even at the risk of recreating a unity on each side. They refer causes to causes and place a bond of causes between them (destiny). They refer effects to effects and pose certain bonds of effects between them. But these two operations are not accomplished in the same manner. Incorporeal effects are never themselves causes in relation to each other; rather, they are only 'quasi-causes' following laws which perhaps express in each case the relative unity or mixture of bodies on which they depend for their real causes" (LS 15/6).
53. Cf. Constantin Boundas's excellent article, "Deleuze: Serialization and Concept Formation," in Gilles Deleuze and the Theater of Philosophy, eds. Constantin Boundas and Dorothea Olkowski (New York: Routledge, 1994), pp. 99-115, but especially, pp. 103-106.
54. Cf. also Dorothea Olkowski-Laetz, "Merleau-Ponty: the Demand for Mystery in Language," in Philosophy Today, vol. 31 (winter 1987), pp. 353-358.
55. Importantly, according to Deleuze, because a structure includes two distributions of singularities, it is unnecessary to oppose structure and event (or structure and genesis) (LS 88/71; DR 237-238/183); he says, "the structure includes a record of ideal events, that is, an entire history internal to it" (LS 66/50, Deleuze's emphasis).
56. Deleuze also defines the paradoxical element as that towards which the two heterogeneous series converge, while belonging to neither series; nevertheless, the paradoxical element articulates or differentiates the two series, reflects the one into the other, makes them communicate, coexist and resonnate (LS 66/51).
57. Gilles Deleuze, Proust et les signes (Paris: PUF, 1970), pp. 69-74, 168;
58. English trans. Richard Howard as Proust and Signs (New York: Braziller, 1972), pp. 55-60, 136.
59. Vincent Descombe, Modern French Philosophy, trans. L. Scott-Fox and J.M. Harding (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1980), p. 26.
60. What is also crucial is that a logic of sense not treat sense as a proposition and therefore as a predicate. We do not express the sense of a perception in the form of "The tree is green," but rather in the form of "The tree greens." A sense, for Deleuze, is always expressed in the infinitive form of the verb; the infinitive form allows the sense to become, to be an event; it allows it be free and nomadic (cf. LS 130-131/107, 33/21).
61. Gilles Deleuze, Expressionism in Philosophy: Spinoza (New York: Zone Books, 1990), p. 180. The lack of resemblance between expression and expressed entirely distinguishes Deleuze's notion of expression from that of Husserl found in paragraph #124 (LS 119-120/97-98, 147-148/122-123).
62. Cf. PP 498/436, 501/439, 513/450.
63. For other occurrences of the prepersonal, see PP 98/82, 99/84, 503/441.
64. Cf. PP 249/215, 275/238, 400/348, 511-13/448-450. Cf. also Rudolf Bernet's excellent "The Subject in Nature: Reflection on Merleau-Ponty's The Phenomenology of Perception, in Merleau-Ponty in Contemporary Perspective [The Hague: Kluwer, 1993], p. 57, where Bernet says, "When Phenomenology of Perception talks about the 'anonymous' (215, 238) character of a natural life governed by an indetermined and general 'They' (On) (215, 240), these terms borrowed from Husserl and Heidegger have a new meaning: prepersonal life is neither the life of a transcendental subject that accomplishes its activity of constitution of objects without being conscious of this activity, nor the inauthentic existence of a Dasein that flees from its personal responsibility by identifying with a silent majority." He continues on p. 58: "The 'They' of prepersonal life is not a personal subject that melts into the anonymity of the masses, but is a subject interwoven with the natural world because it lives only through its body." This remarkable essay ends by saying: "If Phenomenology of Perception reveals a common flesh of the world, things and body, it still tries to understand this within the horizon of bodily subjectivity. This is why the philosophy of nature leads to a naturalization of the perceiving subject that, in its turn, goes hand in hand with a subjectivization of nature. However, this philosophy of nature, surmounting the opposition between nature and subject, and providing a genealogy of the subject, also gives birth to a new conception of the subject as well as of nature. Arising out of things within a common world and affirming its identity through its difference from things, the human subject is at once itself and another, one and manifold, present and absent, visible and invisible. Within the universal intersubjectivity or 'intercorporeity' of the world, the subject is that singularity by which the world is articulated as an open system of diacritical differences" (p. 67).
65. For other occurrences of the word "typic," see PP 99/83, 377/326, 377/327.
66. Cf. Deleuze's use of the phrase "stylistic Idea," DR 34-35/22.
67. For more on the use of this phrase in Twentieth Century French philosophy see Robert Bernasconi, "The Trace of Levinas in Derrida," in Derrida and Differance, eds. David Wood and Robert Bernasconi (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1988), pp. 13-29.
68. M.C. Dillon, "The Unconscious: Language and World," in Merleau-Ponty in Contemporary Perspective, eds. P. Burke and J. Van der Veken (The Hague: Kluwer, 1993), p. 72.
69. Cf. Renaud Barbaras, De l'être du phénomène (Grenoble, Millon, 1991), p. 122n21;
70. Claude Lefort, Sur une colonne absente (Paris: Gallimard, 1978), pp. 26-27, 27nl2.
71. See also Maurice Merleau-Ponty, In Praise of Philosophy and Other Essays, trans. John Wild, James Edie and John O'Neill (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1970), pp. 9-33, especially, p. 23;
72. Maurice Merleau-Ponty, "Bergson se faisant," in Signes (Paris: Gallimard, 1960), pp. 229-241;
73. English trans. Richard C. McCleary as "Bergson in the Making," in Signs (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1964), pp. 182-191;
74. Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Le Visible et l'invisible (Paris: Gallimard, 1964), pp. 165, 170;
75. English trans. Alphonso Lingis as The Visible and the Invisible (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1968), pp. 124, 128.
76. See also Jean Hyppolite, "Aspects divers de la mémoire chez Bergson," in Figures de la pensée philosophique, vol. I, pp. 468-488, especially, p. 482.
77. Henri Bergson, Matter and Memory, trans. Nancy Margaret Paul and W. Scott Palmer (London: George Allen and Unwin Ltd, 1911), p. 179;
78. this translation has been reissued by Zone Books (New York), 1988, p. 139.
79. Bergson, Matter and Memory, p. 179 (Zone Books, p. 139).
80. Cf. Merleau-Ponty, "Bergson in the Making," in Signs, p. 185, where, fifteen years after The Phenomenology of Perception, he recognizes that pure memory is different in kind from pure perception.
81. Cf. Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Resumés de cours. College de France 1952-60 (Paris: Gallimard, 1968), p. 94;
82. cited in Rudolf Bernet, "Le Sujet dans la Nature: Reflexions sur la phénoménologie de la perception chez Merleau-Ponty," p. 62, where he uses the word "immemorial" to describe the past of nature.
83. Cf. Barbaras, De l'être du phénomène, pp. 80-88.
84. According to Barbaras, because of his constant concern to criticize intellectualism, Merleau-Ponty, in The Phenomenology of Perception, does not recognize the importance of the notion of expression. Comparing Merleau-Ponty to Leibniz, Barbaras claims that expression is what Merleau-Ponty means by ontology in The Visible and the Invisible. It is also interesting to note that Barbaras has Deleuze's 1988 book on Leibniz (Le pli) listed in his bibliography.
85. Merleau-Ponty also uses the word "realization." Deleuze distinguishes virtuality from possibility because possibility is separate from being; therefore, possibility's companion term is "réalization. " Virtuality is not separate from being, and its companion term is "actualization." In The Phenomenology of Perception, Merleau-Ponty however also uses the word "virtual" (cf. PP 126/109). It is unclear whether Merleau-Ponty is aware of such fine distinctions: possibility- realization; virtuality-actualization.
86. Cf. Yves Thierry, Du Corps parlant (Brussels: Editions Ousia, 1987), p. 33.
87. Cf. also Barbaras, De l'être du phénomène, pp. 64-65; here Barabaras cites the same passages from the expression chapter. In effect, he recognizes that there is no natural resemblance in expression, for Merleau-Ponty, but concludes from this that Merleau-Ponty turns expression into a convention and therefore reestablishes the difference between nature and culture. This interpretation however, overlooks the fact that Merleau-Ponty defines expression as mettre en forme. Mettre en forme, which itself depends on the originary past, is the making of a "pact" with the natural world (PP 289/250, 359/311); thus it is a sort of convention but one that precedes the very differentiation between nature and culture. Mettre en forme is a pact between nature and culture. One might say that Deleuze is precisely describing such a pact in his discussions of the relations of words and things.
88. For this discussion of expression, I have also consulted: Jean-Pierre Charcosset, Approches phénoménologiques (Paris: Hachette, 1981);
89. Maurice Rainville, L'Expérience et l'expression (Montreal: Bellarmin, 1988);
90. M. C. Dillon, Merleau-Ponty's Ontology (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1988), pp. 186-223.
91. Cf. Thierry, Du Corps Parlant, p. 33.
92. Quoted in Deleuze, LS 80/63 and in Jacques Derrida, "The Double Session," in Dissemination, trans. Barbara Johnson (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1981), p. 175.
93. Deleuze, Qu'est-ce que la philosophie?, p. 48;
94. What is Philosophy?, p. 47.
95. Deleuze, Qu'est-ce que la philosophie?, p. 48;
96. What is Philosophy?, p. 46.
97. Deleuze, Qu'est-ce que la philosophie?, p. 49;
98. What is Philosophy?, p. 47.
99. Cf. Merleau-Ponty, Le Visible et l'invisible, p. 253;
100. The Visible and the Invisible, p. 200.
101. Here, in a working note from July 1959, Merleau-Ponty makes the famous comment that "The problems posed in The Phenomenology of Perception are insoluble because I start there from the 'consciousness'-'object' distinction." In a working note from February 1959, Merleau-Ponty says, "...I must show that what one might consider to be 'psychology' (Phenomenology of Perception) is in fact ontology" (Le Visible et l'invisible, p. 230;
102. The Visible and the Invisible, p. 176).
103. Merleau-Ponty, Le Visible et l'invisible, p. 223;
104. The Visible and the Invisible, p. 169.
105. Merleau-Ponty, "Partout et nulle part," in Signes, p. 187;
106. "Everywhere and Nowhere," in Signs, pp. 148-149.
107. This piece was originally published as the preface to Les Philosophes celebre, 1956;
108. Deleuze wrote the essay on Bergson for this volume. And Deleuze cites this passage in Expressionism in Philosophy: Spinoza, p. 28
109. (Spinoza et le problème de l'expression, p. 22).
110. Cf. Deleuze, Qu-est-ce que la philosophie?, p. 49;
111. What is Philosophy?, p. 47, where he says, "No longer content with handing over immanence to transcendence, we want to discharge it, reproduce it, and fabricate it itself. In fact this is not difficult - all that is necessary is for movement to be stopped. Transcendence enters as soon as movement of the infinite is stopped."
112. Maurice Merleau-Ponty, "Philosophy and Non-Philosophy Since Hegel," trans. Hugh J. Silverman, in Philosophy and Non-Philosophy Since Merleau-Ponty (New York: Routledge, 1989), p. 52;
113. see also translator's note #86.
114. Maurice Merleau-Ponty, "An Unpublished Text," trans. Arleen B. Dallery, in The Primacy of Perception, ed. James M. Edie (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1964), p. 11.
115. Cf. Merleau-Ponty, Le Visible et l'invisible, p. 189;
116. The Visible and the Invisible, p. 144.
117. Deleuze, Spinoza et le problème de l'expression, p. 309;
118. Expressionism in Philosophy: Spinoza, p. 333.
119. Merleau-Ponty, Le Visible et l'invisible, p. 283;
120. The Visible and the Invisible, p. 229.
121. No one has come closer to resolving the issue of expressionism in Merleau-Ponty than Renaud Barbaras. See his forthcoming "Perception and Movement: The End of the Metaphysical Approach," in Chiasms, eds. Fred Evans and Leonard Lawlor (The SUNY Press, 1998).