Leonard Lawlor

This article is the third part of a trilogy investigating the relation between Merleau-Ponty and Foucault. All three essays are inspired by Foucault’s diagnosis of our epoch in terms of biopower. They therefore aim at the creation of a new concept of life. In ‘Un Ecart Infime (Part III)’, I lay out Foucault’s analysis, from the first chapter of The Order of Things, of Velázquez’s painting, Las Meninas. By stressing what Foucault says about the ‘sagittal lines’ exiting the painting, one can show that that there are three major phases in Foucault’s analysis: locating the blind spot; multiplying the invisibility; and the diffraction of the multiplicity into singularities. More generally, we can see that Foucault’s analysis of the painting concerns the informal space in auto-affection; in other words, it concerns the ‘blind spot’ in the mirror relation, in the ‘psyché’. The blind spot in the ‘soul’ - and the ambiguity in the French word psyché between mirror and soul - is why we can say that Foucault’s analysis concerns life: being blind, life must be conceived as informal and unmappable. I show in the conclusion that the inability of mapping and of seeing this space in fact allows for the increase of power.

The Cambridge Foucault Lexicon is a reference tool that provides clear and incisive definitions and descriptions of all of Foucault's major terms and influences, including history, knowledge, language, philosophy and power. It also includes entries on philosophers about whom Foucault wrote and who influenced Foucault's thinking, such as Deleuze, Heidegger, Nietzsche and Canguilhem. The entries are written by scholars of Foucault from a variety of disciplines such as philosophy, gender studies, political science and history. Together, they shed light on concepts key to Foucault and to ongoing discussions of his work today.

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.

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).

"... no other book undertakes to relate all these French philosophers to each other the way that [Lawlor] does, brilliantly." —François Raffoul For many, Jacques Derrida, Michel Foucault, and Gilles Deleuze represent one of the greatest movements in French philosophy. But these philosophers and their works did not materialize without a philosophical heritage. In Thinking through French Philosophy, Leonard Lawlor shows how the work of Maurice Merleau-Ponty formed an important current in sustaining the development of structuralism and post-structuralism. Seeking the "point of diffraction," or the specific ideas and concepts that link Derrida, Foucault, and Deleuze, Lawlor discovers differences and convergences in these thinkers who worked the same terrain. Major themes include metaphysics, archaeology, language and documentation, expression and interrogation, and the very experience of thinking. Lawlor’s focus on the experience of the question brings out critical differences in immanence and transcendence. This illuminating and provocative book brings new vitality to debates on contemporary French philosophy

After Husserl, the study of phenomenology took off in different directions. The ambiguity inherent in phenomenology - between conscious experience and structural conditions - lent itself to a range of interpretations. Many existentialists developed phenomenology as conscious experience to analyse ethics and religion. Other phenomenologists developed notions of structural conditions to explore questions of science, mathematics, and conceptualization. "Phenomenology: Responses and Developments" covers all the major innovators in phenomenology - notably Sartre, Merleau-Ponty, and the later Heidegger - and the major schools and issues. The volume also shows how phenomenological thinking encounters a limit, a limit most apparent in the aesthetical and hermeneutical development of phenomenology. The volume closes with an examination of the furthering of the division between analytic and continental philosophy.