Merleau- Ponty and Nancy on Sense and Being New Perspectives in Ontology Series Editors: Peter Gratton, Southeastern Louisiana University, and Sean J. McGrath, Memorial University of Newfoundland, Canada Publishes the best new work on the question of being and the history of metaphysics After the linguistic and structuralist turn of the twentieth century, a renaissance in metaphysics and ontology is occurring. Following in the wake of speculative realism and new materialism, this series aims to build on this renewed interest in perennial metaphysical questions, while opening up avenues of investigation long assumed to be closed. Working within the Continental tradition without being confined by it, the books in this series will move beyond the linguistic turn and rethink the oldest questions in a contemporary context. They will challenge old prejudices while drawing upon the speculative turn in post-H eideggerian ontol- ogy, the philosophy of nature and the philosophy of religion. Editorial Advisory Board Maurizio Farraris, Paul Franks, Iain Hamilton Grant, Garth Green, Adrian Johnston, Catherine Malabou, Jeff Malpas, Marie-E ve Morin, Jeffrey Reid, Susan Ruddick, Michael Schulz, Hasana Sharp, Alison Stone, Peter Trawny, Uwe Voigt, Jason Wirth, Günter Zöller Books available The Political Theology of Schelling, Saitya Brata Das Continental Realism and Its Discontents, edited by Marie- Eve Morin The Contingency of Necessity: Reason and God as Matters of Fact, Tyler Tritten The Problem of Nature in Hegel’s Final System, Wes Furlotte Schelling’s Naturalism: Motion, Space and the Volition of Thought, Ben Woodard Thinking Nature: An Essay in Negative Ecology, Sean J. McGrath Heidegger’s Ontology of Events, James Bahoh The Political Theology of Kierkegaard, Saitya Brata Das The Schelling–Eschenmayer Controversy, 1801: Nature and Identity, Benjamin Berger and Daniel Whistler Hölderlin’s Philosophy of Nature, edited by Rochelle Tobias Affect and Attention after Deleuze and Whitehead: Ecological Attunement, Russell J. Duvernoy The Philosophical Foundations of the Late Schelling: The Turn to the Positive, Sean J. McGrath Schelling’s Ontology of Powers, Charlotte Alderwick Collected Essays in Speculative Philosophy, by James Bradley and edited by Sean J. McGrath Merleau-Ponty and Nancy on Sense and Being: At the Limits of Phenomenology, by Marie- Eve Morin www.edinburghuniversitypress.com/series/epnpio Merleau- Ponty and Nancy on Sense and Being At the Limits of Phenomenology MARIE- EVE MORIN Edinburgh University Press is one of the leading university presses in the UK. We publish academic books and journals in our selected subject areas across the humanities and social sciences, combining cutting- edge scholarship with high editorial and production values to produce academic works of lasting importance. For more information visit our website: edinburghuniversitypress.com © Marie- Eve Morin, 2022 Edinburgh University Press Ltd The Tun – Holyrood Road 12(2f) Jackson’s Entry Edinburgh EH8 8PJ Typeset in 11/13 Adobe Garamond by Cheshire Typesetting Ltd, Cuddington, Cheshire, and printed and bound in Great Britain A CIP record for this book is available from the British Library ISBN 978 1 4744 9242 3 (hardback) ISBN 978 1 4744 9245 4 (webready PDF) ISBN 978 1 4744 9244 7 (epub) The right of Marie- Eve Morin to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, and the Copyright and Related Rights Regulations 2003 (SI No. 2498). Contents Acknowledgements vii List of Abbreviations ix Introduction: The Speculative Realist Challenge and the Limits of Phenomenology 1 1. The context: The speculative realist challenge 1 2. The limits of phenomenology: Being and sense 5 3. Merleau- Ponty and Nancy: Influence and resonances 13 4. Chapter breakdown 16 Part I – BODY 1 Merleau- Ponty, Descartes and the Unreflected Life of the Body 27 1. Reading Descartes: The relation between reflection and the unreflected 29 2. Sensing and self- sensing body of the Phenomenology of Perception 34 3. The problem of the Phenomenology of Perception: Tacit versus operative cogito 41 2 Nancy, Descartes, the Exposition of Bodies and the Extension of the Soul 50 1. Nancy’s reading of Descartes: The unum quid against the modern subject 50 2. Nancy’s bodies: Skin, sense, touch 60 3 Divergences: Unity versus Dislocation 70 1. Synthesis of the body schema or partes extra partes? 71 vi | merleau-ponty and nancy on sense and being 2. Synaesthesia or dislocation of the senses? Self- touching or touching the outside? 75 Part II – THING 4 Things in the Phenomenology of Perception: The Paradox of an In- Itself- for- Us 89 1. The order of the phenomena: Between being and appearance 90 2. Answering the accusation of correlationism 94 3. The limit of the answer in the Phenomenology and the move to ontology 98 5 Things after the Phenomenology: Merleau- Ponty’s Cautious Anthropomorphism 104 1. Sartre’s things 105 2. Merleau- Ponty’s things 109 3. Anthropomorphism as defamiliarisation 113 6 Nancy’s Materialism and the Stone 119 1. The freedom of the stone and the creation of the world 119 2. The existence of the stone and its feeling hard 122 3. Materialism, materiality, matter 126 4. Thinking and things 134 Part III – BEING 7 Merleau- Ponty’s and Nancy’s Engagement with Heidegger 146 1. Is Merleau- Ponty’s late ontology Heideggerian? 147 2. Merleau- Ponty between Husserl’s Wesenschau and Heidegger’s Wesen 150 3. Merleau- Ponty between the negativism of doubt and the positivism of essences 154 4. Merleau- Ponty’s indirect ontology 157 5. Nancy and Heidegger’s withdrawal of Being 159 8 Two Ontologies of Sense 168 1. Merleau- Ponty, écart and the flesh 171 2. Narcissism and the reversibility of the chiasm 175 3. Écart as encroachment or separation 178 4. Conclusion: Two ontologies of sense for our time 183 Bibliography 189 Index 197 Acknowledgements In winter 2013, at the request of my students, I taught a seminar on Merleau- Ponty. Up to that point, I had not delved seriously into Merleau- Ponty’s thought and it is fair to say that r eading – as well as t eaching – Merleau- Ponty had a significant impact on my own thinking. My biggest debt of gratitude then is to my students, not only those who made their first foray into Merleau- Ponty’s work with me in 2013, but also those who studied Merleau-P onty with me in winter 2019. My understand- ing of Merleau- Ponty and my ability to explain his most complex ideas is indebted to our conversations. I am also grateful to all those who par- ticipated in our Nancy reading group in 2019 – M ackenzie, Júlia, Felix, Markéta, Jay – for reviving my enthusiasm for Nancy. Along the way, there were many conferences and informal conversa- tions with colleagues and friends, for which I am also grateful. Some parts of the following study have also been published in various forms. A much shorter version of Part I appeared as ‘Corps propre or corpus corporum: Unity and Dislocation in the Theories of Embodiment of Merleau- Ponty and Jean- Luc Nancy’ in Chiasmi International 18 (2016): 353–70. An earlier version of Chapter 8 appeared as ‘Flesh and Écart in Merleau- Ponty and Nancy’, in Irving Goh (ed.), Nancy Among the Philosophers (New York: Fordham University Press, 2022). Chapter 5 appeared in an earlier version as ‘Merleau- Ponty’s Cautious Anthropomorphism’ in Chiasmi International 22 (2020): 167–81. Some of the discussion of Nancy in Chapter 7 appeared in ‘“We Must Become What We Are”: Nancy’s Ontology as Ethos and Praxis’, in Sanja Dejanovic (ed.), Nancy and the Political (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2015). The beginning of the Introduction is adapted from ‘Continental Realism – Picking Up the Pieces’, with Vladimir Dukić, in Marie- Eve Morin (ed.), viii | merleau-ponty and nancy on sense and being Continental Realism and Its Discontents (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2017). My thanks also go to Carol MacDonald for her enthusiasm for the project and her renewed encouragement over the years and to all the staff at Edinburgh University Press for seeing this project through. Finally, the research for this study was supported in part by a research grant from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada. Abbreviations Works by Maurice Merleau-Ponty CPP Child Psychology and Pedagogy: The Sorbonne Lectures 1949–1952 MO ‘Man and Object’ N Nature: Course Notes from the Collège de France NC Notes de cours 1959–61 PP Phenomenology of Perception PoP The Primacy of Perception S Signs TFL Themes from the Lectures at the Collège de France, 1952–1960 VI The Visible and the Invisible WP The World of Perception Works by Jean-Luc Nancy A Adoration: The Deconstruction of Christianity II AR ‘Merleau- Ponty: An Attempt at a Response’ BP The Birth to Presence BSP Being Singular Plural C Corpus C II Corpus II: Writings on Sexuality CW The Creation of the World or Globalization D Dis-Enclosure: The Deconstruction of Christianity I EF The Experience of Freedom ES Ego Sum FT A Finite Thinking x | merleau-ponty and nancy on sense and being GT The Gravity of Thought MM Marquage manquant (et autres dires de la peau) NMT Noli me tangere SW The Sense of the World Other works AF Quentin Meillassoux, After Finitude BA Tim Ingold, Being Alive BN Jean- Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness BT Martin Heidegger, Being and Time EC Emmanuel de Saint Aubert, Être et chair 1. Du corps au désir LEEE Emmanuel de Saint Aubert, Du lien des êtres aux éléments de l’être MT Jean- Paul Sartre, ‘Man and Things’ OT Jacques Derrida, On Touching – Jean-Luc Nancy SC Emmanuel de Saint Aubert, Le scénario cartésien SEI Jeffrey Cohen, Stone: An Ecology of the Inhuman VOI Emmanuel de Saint Aubert, Vers une ontologie indirecte