Northwestern University Phenomenology $ s t u d ie s in Existential Philosophy G E N E R A L E D I T O R John Wild. A S S O C I A T E E D I T O R James M. Edie C O N S U L T I N G E D I T O R S Herbert Spiegelberg William Earle George A. Schrader Maurice Natanson Paul Ricoeur Aron Gurwitsch Calvin O. Schrag The Visible and the Invisible Maurice Merleau-Ponty Edited by Claude Lefort Translated by Alphonso Lingis The Visible and the Invisible FOLLOWED BY W O RK IN G NOTES N o r t h w e st e r n U n iv e r s it y P ress 1968 EVANSTON Northwestern University Press www.nupress.northwestern.edu Le Visible et l'invisible. Originally published in French under the title Copyright © 1964 by Editions Gallimard, Paris. English translation copyright © 1968 by Northwestern University Press. First printing 1968. All rights reserved. Printed in the United States of America 15 14 13 12 11 ISBN-13: 978-0-8101-0457-0 isbn-io: 0-8101-0457-1 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication data are available from the Library of Congress Permission has been granted to quote from Being and Nothingness, Jean-Paul Sartre, trans. Hazel E. Barnes (New York: The Philosophical Library, 1956). @ The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of the American National Standard for Information Sciences— Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ansi Z39.48-1992. Contents Editor’s Foreword / xi Editorial Note / xxxiv Translatofs Preface / xl The Visible and the Invisible: Philosophical Interrogation i Reflection and Interrogation / 3 a Interrogation and Dialectic / 50 3 Interrogation and Intuition / 105 4 The Intertwining—The Chiasm / 130 5 [appendix] Preobjective Being: The Solipsist World / 156 Working Notes / 165 Index / 377 Chronological Index to Working Notes / 279