Leonard Lawlor

This is a review essay on Véronique Fóti’s Tracing Expression in Merleau-Ponty. It attempts to display the pattern that constitutes “the in filigree tracings” of Tracing Expression in Merleau-Ponty. In other words, it reconstructs the conceptual features that go into the “unthought” of expression that Véronique Fóti has given us. The reconstruction takes place in two steps. The first reconstructs the concept of expression itself as Fóti sees it in Merleau-Ponty’s thought. Here, we follow Fóti’s analysis and resolution of what Merleau-Ponty himself called “the paradox of expression.” Fóti’s “resolution” of the paradox takes us then to a second step, in which we determine Fóti’s “radicalization” of the paradox. The radicalization of the paradox takes place through specific criticisms that Fóti levels against Merleau-Ponty’s writings on painting. These criticisms allow us to see that the unthought of expression lies in nascency. Fóti’s new concept of expression revolves around the idea of nascency. Nascency allows Fóti not only to envision a metaphysics of expression but also and especially an ethics. However, Fóti’s stress of nascency raises a difficult question that she does not pose. While the word “nascency” appears countless times in Tracing Expression in Merleau-Ponty, the word “death,” as far as I can tell, appears only twice in the entire book. I argue that the absence of death in Tracing Expression in Merleau-Ponty conjoined with the stress of nascency opens out onto the question of memory, hence the title of my presentation, “Nascency and Memory.” Tracing Expression in Merleau-Ponty exhibits a compelling combination of modesty and ambition. Undoubtedly, the modesty results from Fóti’s long-standing devotion to Merleau-Ponty’s thought. This devotion, however, did not stop her from recognizing the “failures” of Merleau-Ponty’s thinking. The ability to see beyond the thinking to which one is most devoted is truly one of the marks of a great philosopher.

Derrida wrote extensively on "the question of the animal." In particular, he challenged Heidegger's, Husserl's, and other philosophers' work on the subject, questioning their phenomenological criteria for distinguishing humans from animals. Examining a range of Derrida's writings, including his most recent _L'animal que donc je suis_, as well as _Aporias_, _Of Spirit_, _Rams_, and _Rogues_, Leonard Lawlor reconstructs a portrait of Derrida's views on animality and their intimate connection to his thinking on ethics, names and singularity, sovereignty, and the notion of a common world. Derrida believed that humans and animals cannot be substantially separated, yet neither do they form a continuous species. Instead, in his "staggered analogy," Derrida asserts that all living beings are weak and therefore capable of suffering. This controversial claim both refuted the notion that humans and animals possess autonomy and contradicted the assumption that they possess the trait of machinery. However, it does offer the foundation for an argument-which Lawlor brilliantly and passionately defines in his book-in which humans are able to will this weakness into a kind of unconditional hospitality. Humans are not strong enough to keep themselves separate from animals. In other words, we are too weak to keep animals from entering into our sphere. Lawlor's argument is a bold approach to remedying "the problem of the worst," or the complete extermination of life, which is fast becoming a reality

Further Questions. A Way Out of the Present Philosophical Situation(via Merleau-Ponty)This essay contains a short analysis of Merleau-Ponty’s Eye and Mind. The analysis focuses on the final pages of Eye and Mind, in which Merleau-Ponty speaks of a false imaginary. It is through this consideration of the “false imaginary” that we can determine Merleau-Ponty’s contribution to the idea of overcoming metaphysics, that is, the transformation of who we are, from manipulandum to being, all of us, painters. More generally however, the short analysis of Eye and Mind functions as the means to open a research agenda for what we have called in the twentieth century “continental philosophy.” The research agenda contains four conceptual features: 1) the starting point in immanence (where immanence is understood fi rst as internal, subjective experience, but then, due to the universality of the epoche, immanence is understood as ungrounded experience); 2) difference (where difference gives way to multiplicity, itself emancipated from an absolute origin and an absolute purpose); 3) thought (where thought is understood as language liberated from the constraints of logic, and language is understood solely in terms of its own being, as indefi nite continuous variation); and 4) the overcoming of metaphysics (where metaphysics is understood as a mode of thinking based in presence, and overcoming is understood as the passage to a new mode of thought, a new people and a new land). But, as we shall see, this conception of philosophy really ends up posing “further questions.” My essay attempts to summarize my new book called Early Twentieth Century Continental Philosophy (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2011).Altre domande. Una via d’uscita dalla situazione fi losofi ca attuale(via Merleau-Ponty)Questo saggio contiene una breve analisi de L’occhio e lo spirito di Merleau-Ponty. L’analisi si concentra sulle pagine conclusive dell’opera, nelle quali Merleau-Ponty parla di un falso immaginario. È attraverso l’esame di tale “falso immaginario” che possiamo determinare il contributo di Merleau-Ponty all’idea di un superamento della metafisica, ovvero la trasformazione di chi noi siamo, da manipulandum ad essere, noi tutti, pittori. Più in generale, la breve analisi de L’occhio e lo spirito funziona come mezzo per aprire un programma di ricerca per quella che nel XX secolo abbiamo defi nito “filosofi a continentale”. Tale piano di ricerca presenta quattro aspetti concettuali: 1) il punto di partenza nell’immanenza (laddove l’immanenza è intesa dapprima come esperienza interna soggettiva, ma successivamente, a causa dell’universalità dell’epoché, essa è compresa in quanto esperienza non fondata); 2) la differenza (laddove la differenza apre la via della molteplicità, emancipandosi da un’origine e da un fine assoluti); 3) pensiero (inteso come linguaggio liberato dai vincoli della logica, e compreso solamente nei termini del suo essere proprio, come variazione continua e indefinita); e 4) il superamento della metafisica (laddove per metafisica si intende un modo di pensare basato sulla presenza e per superamento s’intende il passaggio ad una nuova modalità del pensiero, un nuovo popolo ed una nuova terra). Ma, come vedremo, questa concezione della filosofi a finisce per porre “ulteriori domande”. Tale saggio si propone anche di compiere una sintesidel mio nuovo libro Early Twentieth Century Continental Philosophy (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2011).

The most basic idea behind this essay is the reversal of Platonism in which the difference between the real world and this world becomes blurred. The reversal results in time being conceived as without beginning and without end. In other words, the blurred world is equivalent to what Husserl calls temporalization. According to Husserl, the structure of temporalization implies the limit between temporal phases cannot be determined. Therefore, the limit cannot be closed, and the temporal phases necessarily pass into one another and contaminate one another. Since the limit between the phases cannot be closed, the limit is always violated. Temporalization therefore involves irreducible violence. The question is: how to react to this fundamental violence? If one reacts by attempting to repress the violence completely, that reaction seems to be worse than the original violence, the worst violence; it would amount to the complete elimination of life. The reaction of letting the violence be, while still violent, seems to be less violent than the complete repression reaction.

The publication of Cora Diamond's important 2002 “The Difficulty of Reality and the Difficulty of Philosophy” (in Philosophy and Animal Life) stimulated the writing of this essay. “The Difficulty of Reality and the Difficulty of Philosophy” attempted to show that there are experiences of reality (recounted especially in literature like John Coetzee's novels and Ted Hughes' poetry) in relation to which philosophical concepts and words encounter difficulty. The experiences resist conceptualization. By examining several of Diamond's earlier writings, I try to show that the difficulty of philosophical conceptualization of reality is due to the fact that reality does not exist external to experience. Reality being internal to experience means that reality contains an unfixed set of possibilities. Being experiential, reality is historical. The historical dimension of reality – such as the reality of animal life suffering – makes the words through we describe this reality too weak, i.e. they are not powerful enough to capture reality, hence the difficulty. Consequently, as I argue, for Diamond, the weakness of words means that words are never complete concepts. The meaning of them seems always still to come since reality seems always to have a surplus of possibilities. I suggest that because of this always still “to come” aspect of the meaning of words, we might characterise Diamond's thought as a messianism

In this essay, I start from Foucault's last text, his "Life: Experience and Science." Speaking of Canguilhem, Foucault makes a distinction between "le vécu" (lived-experience) and "le vivant" (the living). I then examine this difference between "le vécu" (lived-experience) and "le vivant" (the living); that is, I examine the different logics, we might say, of immanence that each concept implies. To do this, I reconstruct the "critique" that Foucault presents of the concept of vécu in the ninth chapter of The Order of Things (Les Mots et les choses): "Man and His Doubles." I try to show how this critique applies to the early Merleau-Ponty, the Merleau-Ponty of the Phenomenology of Perception. Then, I construct the positive logic of Foucault's relation of immanence by means of another text, which is contemporaneous with Les Mots et les choses: This is not a Pipe. The critique of the concept of vécu is based on the fact that the relationship in vécu is a mixture (un mélange) that closes "un écart infime." Conversely, Foucault's conception of the relationship in "le vivant" is one that dissociates and keeps "l'écart infime" open. At the end, I suggest, through three "landmarks," how Foucault's critique might be applied to the later Merleau-Ponty. This essay is Part I of a trilogy on Merleau-Ponty and Foucault. Part II concerns Merleau-Ponty's "mixturism," while Part III concerns "the blind spot" in Foucault. These three texts complete the work necessary to open the problem of memory and life.

Let us begin by assembling some signs of the present philosophical situation. On the one hand, the most important living French philosopher, Alain Badiou, calls for a “return to Plato,” despite the movement of anti-Platonism that dominated French and German thought in the 20 th century. On the other hand, the present moment sees a resurgence of naturalism in philosophy in general (including and especially Anglophone analytic philosophy), despite the criticisms of naturalism that have appeared throughout the 20 th century. Phenomenology seems to be at the center of both of these movements. On the one hand, it is the idea of a mathematized ontology that requires the return to Plato, a mathematized ontology constructed without a reflection on its transcendental grounds. On the other, the resurgence of naturalism is so strong that a book could be imagined and published with the bastard name of Naturalizing Phenomenology , as if the transcendental moment of phenomenology did not transform the very meaning of nature. These signs seem to indicate that we have entered into a phase of regression or even decline in philosophical thinking. If this interpretation of the signs is correct, if we have indeed entered into a phase of regression -- a twofold regression toward Platonism and toward naturalism -- we must ask the following question: is it possible for us to define something like a project or even a research agenda that would allow us to define a way of thinking that might lead us out of the present situation, a situation, it must be said, that seems dire for philosophy in general? If we can determine such a research agenda, perhaps we can also begin to understand what the tradition of “continental philosophy” has stood for