The Rhythm of Thought

Art, Literature, and Music after Merleau-Ponty

By JESSICA WISKUS

THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO PRESS

Copyright © 2013 The University of Chicago
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-226-03092-0

Contents

List of Illustrations………………………………………………viiPreface…………………………………………………………..ixAcknowledgments……………………………………………………xi1 Mallarmé and a Proffer of Silence………………………………….12 Cézanne: Depth in the World……………………………………….133 Proust through the Fold of Memory………………………………….264 Debussy: Silence and Resonance…………………………………….395 Cézanne and the Institution of Style……………………………….536 Proust: In Search of the True Albertine…………………………….667 Harmony and the Movement of Style in Debussy………………………..778 On the Musical Idea of Proust……………………………………..909 Debussy: The Form That Has Arrived at Itself………………………..10210 Synesthesia, Recollection, Resurrection……………………………114Notes…………………………………………………………….125Bibliography………………………………………………………157Index…………………………………………………………….163

Excerpt

CHAPTER 1

Mallarmé and a Proffer of Silence

The definition of philosophy would involve an elucidation of philosophical expressionitself (therefore a becoming conscious of the procedure used in what precedes”naïvely,” as though philosophy confined itself to reflecting what is) as the science ofpre-science, as the expression of what is before expression and sustains it from behind.MAURICE MERLEAU-PONTY, The Visible and the Invisible

In reading the philosophy of Maurice Merleau-Ponty, one must navigate boththe opacity of his language and the incompleteness of his work. His penchantfor holding in tension the relationship between oppositional pairs—visibleand invisible, activity and passivity, sensible and ideal—as well as his developmentof a unique vocabulary nevertheless replete with traditional Christianterms—”chiasm,” “advent,” “flesh,” “Word”—has led to more than onecharacterization of his work as something close to that of the mystic’s vision.Indeed, anyone who reads the final completed chapter, “The Intertwining:The Chiasm,” of The Visible and the Invisible cannot help but note thechanged tone of Merleau-Ponty’s discourse. His writing seems charged withphilosophical revelation, and the unexpected tragedy of his death followingso closely upon a claim of “ultimate truth” can tempt one to question fate.Why should this philosophical voice have been wrested away so immediatelyafter it had declared its aims? But better than succumb to such speculation,we might ask what has been left for us, now, to gather from his travail. For wehave only this: a few books, a few essays. The greater portion of his work wasnever brought to complete expression; rather, it lies within pages upon pagesof fragmentary notes.

Yet it is perhaps appropriate that much of Merleau-Ponty’s late workcomes down to us not in the form of narrative, but in rough outline. Forinstead of offering us the sedimentation of a philosophy spoken from the endof thinking, his work promises an opening—an initiation to a philosophicaldiscourse that by its very nature could be nothing other than ongoing andincomplete. In this sense, the course notes and working notes contribute toour understanding of his philosophy precisely in the degree to which theyillustrate that philosophy in practice. When we read the notes, we participatein a movement of thought.

And so the difficulties that one encounters when engaging with thesenotes invite us to develop a sensitivity to his writing that would take intoaccount not only the fixed meaning of each word or phrase, but also theprocess through which the word or phrase arrives at an original sense. Wemust turn to the viscous link that binds the words into meaning, for beneaththe conceptual content of each word—beyond our everyday employment oflanguage as representation—lies a dynamic and creative realm of expression.Thus Merleau-Ponty can write, “The words most charged with philosophyare not necessarily those that contain what they say, but rather those thatmost energetically open upon Being, because they more closely convey thelife of the whole and make our habitual evidences vibrate until they disjoin.”It is the play of ideas across disjuncture that inspires the philosopher. Thuswe begin to understand Merleau-Ponty’s work toward crafting a specific languageof oppositional pairs; the tension inherent to these oppositions allowsthem to “open upon Being” and offers a sort of philosophical energy not entirelyunlike the aesthetic vibration of a green that calls for a red in Manet’s Ledéjeuner sur l’herbe. Here, the power of the words or colors emerges from thespace that is cleared between a contrast of elements. Yet even considered notin pairs but individually, terms like “chiasm,” “advent,” “flesh,” and “Word”work in much the same way, insofar as Merleau-Ponty implicitly draws upontheir own charged history as counterpoint to his realization of them. His useof these terms does not so much make ambiguous a vocabulary that wouldotherwise appear as transparent to our minds, but calls upon us to recognizea dimensional meaning. Only then might we see that “language in formingitself”—or, we might say, language in performing itself—expresses “an ontogenesisof which it is a part.”

It is in this sense that Merleau-Ponty’s writing is poetic—poetic in theetymological sense—for it consistently works to disclose the creative generationof philosophical thinking as emerging from the depth between (orbeneath, behind, or before) articulated words. In this way, it might seem thatthe thinking that remains for us, through Merleau-Ponty’s late sketches ofnotes, stands close to the tradition of poetry. Indeed, the notes are significantnot only with respect to their content but also in the way that they exposelacunae upon the printed page. It is as if the later Merleau-Ponty deliberatelyemploys words in such a way that they work not so much to convey an explicitmeaning as to articulate the empty space upon the page: as space—as anopening—for a continuous reinitiation to philosophical thought.

Thus the status of his written work as unfinished is in harmony with thenature of the work itself. Though we feel his death to be the tragic cause of itsincompleteness, how, even if he had lived for many more decades, could weever have called his work complete? Would not that work, from a MerleauPontyof 1971 or 1981, also have left us with more questions, more openings,if it were truly philosophical work? Philosophy lives precisely through its incompleteness,offering its richness according to the demand that it be takenup again.

As we grapple with the distinct difficulties (and, it should be noted, pleasures)of engaging with a dynamic work of this sort, it is not altogether unexpectedthat we should find ourselves in good company. Many of the challengesthat confront us in taking up the “incomplete” work of Merleau-Pontyare similar to those that he himself encountered in his engagement with thewritings of Edmund Husserl. Indeed, what better guide could we find, in facingthese challenges, than Merleau-Ponty? With respect to Husserl’s philosophy,Merleau-Ponty asks: “What if its conclusions are merely the results ofa progression which was transformed into a ‘work’ by the interruption—aninterruption which is always premature—of a life’s work? Then we could notdefine a philosopher’s thought solely in terms of what he had achieved; wewould have to take account of what until the very end his thought was tryingto think.”

Merleau-Ponty suggests that we would miss the import of the philosopher’swork if we were to regard it as complete and finished. Above all, it isthe very nature of Husserl’s philosophy as irreducible to “a system of neatlydefined concepts” that necessitates a dynamic and creative approach. Onecan “take account of what until the very end his thought was trying to think”not by fleshing out a more thorough analysis of conclusions or concepts (asif Husserl’s work offered a closed system that had only to be clarified), butby attending to the generative movement of that thought—by attending towhat Merleau-Ponty describes as “the expression of what is before expressionand sustains it from behind.” For genuine philosophical inquiry does notcomplete itself first within the mind (fully formed and even clothed in an accessiblestyle), only then to spring forth, Athenalike, into the world throughlanguage. Rather, it is through the process of expression that truly philosophicalthought comes to be known. As Merleau-Ponty writes, “Speaking andwriting is [sic] not a codification of an available piece of evidence. Speakingand writing make it exist.”

And herein lies the crux of our own difficulty in engaging with the workof Merleau-Ponty. We cannot presume to complete a life’s work whosecreative quality resonates with its incompleteness; we would be foolish, indeed,to think that our own “speaking and writing” could bring the unfinishedmanuscripts and course notes into a codified version of the whole ofMerleau-Ponty’s philosophy. “What until the very end his thought was tryingto think” is not available to one who would analyze that thought throughthe language of concept; in aiming to coincide exactly with his conclusions,we would consistently miss the mark. What we seek, therefore, is not to thinkabout the content of his thought, but to think according to the movement ofhis thought; we seek “participation in an operative thought.” Rather thancodifying or completing his work, we recognize that the “miss”—the gap betweena work and the engagement it inspires—in fact confirms the generativecapacity of expression. And thus our very endeavor serves as an exemplar ofa principle that, according to Merleau-Ponty, characterizes all philosophicalreflection: that of noncoincidence.

* * *

Ordinarily, we may think of consciousness as the seat of a certain commandcenter, as that power of organized mental and perceptual faculties which enablesus to reflect upon the objects of the world absolutely, in their own place.We think that we meet the objects as they actually are, or as they would beif they were unobserved. But this notion of reflection as a hold upon thethings of the world does not take into account the temporal dimension ofperception. Merleau-Ponty asks us to attend to this process as a kind ofuncertainty principle of reflective thought: even at the moment that consciousnessfeels it has grasped the object, the original or “brute” perception ofthat object has already suffered a temporal dislocation. What consciousnessgrasps, therefore, is not the thing itself but the reflection—the image—of theinitial perception of the thing. There exists always a lacuna, a gap, betweenreflection and the thing; consciousness does not obtain to the world directlybut only, as it were, through a “cycle of duration that separates the bruteperception from the reflective examination.” Thus, in describing this cycle,Merleau-Ponty characterizes our perception of the thing as consisting of a”thing-perceived-within-a-perception-reflected-on.” What we thought wecould grasp—the thing itself—is not at all available to us. But how is it thatwe fail to notice this dislocation? How is it that we miss the lacuna? Reflectionwould propose to offer us the very thing—the very world; reflection wouldset itself up as a bulwark against discontinuity. Yet, according to Merleau-Ponty,in order to achieve this—in order to sustain the perception of thething across a cycle of duration—reflection “presume[s] upon what it findsand condemn[s] itself to putting into the things what it will then pretend tofind in them.” It constructs a sustained sense of the thing by retroactivelyidentifying the reflection with the initial perception. In so doing, however, itoperates according to a deception: it conflates the distinction between bruteperception of the thing and reflection upon the perceived thing. And whilethat conflation enables consciousness to claim that it has grasped the thingand not a momentary image, it nevertheless exposes a limitation inherent tothe structure of reflective consciousness: reflection is incapable of openingupon the world at the level of brute perception.

But it is just as sure that the relation between a thought and its object, betweenthe cogito and the cogitatum, contains neither the whole nor even the essentialof our commerce with the world and that we have to situate that relation backwithin a more muted relationship with the world, within an initiation into theworld upon which it rests and which is always already accomplished when thereflective return intervenes. We will miss that relationship—which we shallhere call the openness upon the world (ouverture au monde)—the momentthat the reflective effort tries to capture it, and we will then be able to catchsight of the reasons that prevent it from succeeding, and of the way throughwhich we would reach it.

By means of proposing a new understanding of the noncoincidence ofreflective thought and the thing itself, Merleau-Ponty claims that “we arecatching sight of the necessity of another operation besides the conversionto reflection, more fundamental than it, of a sort of hyper-reflection (surréflexion)that would also take itself and the changes it introduces into thespectacle into account.” This operation of hyperreflection would set itselfup within the dynamic process of thought, attuned to noncoincidence. Itwould not, that is to say, utilize reflection to effect conflation, as the powerof a kosmotheoros who looks out over the world and claims to see things “asthey are” because, being pure mind, it has no contact with the things. Rather,philosophy would attend to the prereflective by investigating thought as adynamic system involved in the world.

In The Visible and the Invisible, Merleau-Ponty initiates this investigationby turning toward dialectic thought. The process of dialectic thought, likethat of reflection, manifests a temporal dislocation. The distinction betweendialectic thought and reflection, however, hinges upon the way that the twooperations meet this dislocation. Reflection works upon brute perceptionand, as Merleau-Ponty phrased it, “put[s] into the things what it will thenpretend to find in them.” That is to say, reflection circles around noncoincidenceand, thanks to the temporal dislocation, projects backward intoperception what it had already formulated. Thus it is that reflection deceivesus into believing that we had grasped the thing, when in fact we are left witha reflective image and no contact with the thing at all. But the dialectic seizesupon the lacuna between brute perception and thought and, in contrast toreflection, operates from within its complex temporal structure. It seeks notto produce a single fixed image, but to return through a continuous cycle ofperception and reflection. It owes its authenticity to this return—a returnthat does not seek only what it wishes to find, but develops according tothe other-than-itself that is there: latent difference or possibility that is theexpression of the lacuna. It is indeed only because of the lacuna that dialecticthought can be dynamic. As dialectic thought turns back toward the bruteperception, it takes the measure of the separation between itself and the pastperception now held within the present; rather than to effect a conflation, itcan be said to embrace this difference, to reconfigure itself according to thisdifference, and to find within the difference the potential for movement andtransformation. This is why Merleau-Ponty writes, of the dynamic stages ofdialectic thought, “Hence there is a question here not of a thought that followsa pre-established route but of a thought that itself traces its own course,that finds itself by advancing, that makes its own way, and thus proves that theway is practicable.” Practicable: as operative thought—thought that worksfrom within the relationship between our brute perception of the thing andthe task of consciousness in arriving at the thing to be thought.

Therefore, this operative thought discloses a specific notion of the dialectic—a dialectic without synthesis. Merleau-Ponty writes: “In particular itdoes not formulate itself in successive statements which would have to betaken as they stand; each statement, in order to be true, must be referred,throughout the whole movement, to the stage from which it arises and hasits full sense only if one takes into account not only what it says expressly butalso its place within the whole which constitutes its latent content.” That isto say, dialectic thought continually goes back to take account of the noncoincidentstructure of reflection and advances according to this complexmovement. It therefore does not arrive at a complete, fixed statement. “Ithas never been able to formulate itself into theses without denaturing itself,”because to arrive at a fixed thought would be to betray the operative thoughtthat lies at the heart of the dialectic. By its very nature, it makes no claimtoward disclosing a realm of the predetermined; rather, it consists in openness—opennessto that which has never been formulated or spoken. Andso Merleau-Ponty carefully distinguishes between his own understanding ofthe dialectic and what he terms the ordinary or “bad” dialectic (where “thethought ceases to accompany or to be the dialectical movement, converts itinto signification, thesis, or things said”). Searching for a means to describehis dynamic notion of the dialectic, Merleau-Ponty adopts the term “hyperdialectic”as an expression for the “good” dialectic: “What we call hyperdialecticis a thought that on the contrary is capable of reaching truth because itenvisages without restriction the plurality of the relationships and what hasbeen called ambiguity. The bad dialectic is that which thinks it recomposesbeing by a thetic thought, by an assemblage of statements, by thesis, antithesis,and synthesis.”
(Continues…)Excerpted from The Rhythm of Thought by JESSICA WISKUS. Copyright © 2013 by The University of Chicago. Excerpted by permission of The University of Chicago Press.
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