Michel Dalissier

Résumé Dans cette étude, je discute du « poids » métaphorique de la sédimentation en phénoménologie. Je délimite d’abord le cadre épistémique et dynamique au sein duquel un sédiment acquiert un poids à travers sa possibilité d’être réactivé par la conscience. Je montre à partir de là que Maurice Merleau-Ponty orchestre une institution dialectique, linguistique et historique de la sédimentation qui essentialise le problème lié à son poids. Enfin, je mets en évidence la manière dont Michel Foucault approfondit la problématique phénoménologique en conférant à la notion une dimension pathologique, sociale et intelligible originale, laquelle va bien au-delà de la simple répétition temporelle.

The remarkable destiny of Japan’s philosophical adventure during the XXI century invites us, in the person of its first great actor, Nishida Kitaro (1870‐1945), to consider a spiritual unification gesture, illustrated in the first place by a stunning reading of history of Western Philosophy, meditating in return the Oriental Thought as its nurturing soil. Second, these uncommon researches had a rather underground stake: to search for the very place in which a deeper understanding of metaphysics could spread in this beginning of the third Millennium. It seems that, for Nishida, the extent of such a project needs to question more radically a certain notion of « nothingness », irreducible to both Western ontologies as well as Confucians, Buddhist and Taoist philosophical speculations.

In this paper, I methodically dissect the fundamental hermeneu­tical process that Hans-Georg Gadamer theorizes in Truth and Method, at the light of the notion of meaning. I discuss the three moments of understanding, interpretation, and application, as well as their mutual relations, and place in the fore the grounding motive of correctness. Working from here, I reflect on the religious dimension of such a threefold structure, and analyse the main notions of Trinity, Incarnation, sacrifice, predication and event, to sketch how Gadamer’s approach analogically connects to the Christian dogmatic conceptual framework. I thereby explore the hypothesis of a Trinitarian structuring of the hermeneutical process itself, and probe its acute philosophical and theological significance.

Bergson is rightly considered the philosopher of duration. Has this theory, however, been sufficiently elucidated? Is there a domain, aside from life itself, to which the characteristics of duration can be meaningfully ascribed? Why, in his thesis from 1907, does Bergson write of a "real" duration? His subsequent work Duration and Simultaneity: With Reference to Einstein's Theory (1922) is the only volume written by Bergson in the period separating Creative Evolution (1907) and The Two Sources of Morality and Religion (1932). Duration and Simultaneity represents a polemical, unique, mature and relatively neglected work, one that allows us however to respond to these questions - provided that we read it as a work of philosophy and metaphysics. This book was awarded the 2020 Polydore de Paepe Prize of the Royal Academy of Science, Letters and Fine Arts of Belgium.

What does the imperceptible mean? Is not such a question unavoidable for Maurice Merleau-Ponty, who is an illustrious thinker of perception? In this paper, I demonstrate that the French philosopher, in his published texts and unpublished manuscripts, provides an insightful reflection regarding the phenomenon of imperceptibility, which permeates some main domains of his thought. I underscore that his approach is articulated on two intimately related concepts, namely the imperceptible and the imperception. I start by unveiling Merleau-Ponty’s archetypal refusal of two extreme philosophical positions that conceive of the imperceptible, on the one hand, as a purely factitious or factual entity, and, on the other hand, as a radical and absolute reality. This approach leads me to discuss Merleau-Ponty’s keynote conception, namely an imperceptibility that appears paradoxically at work for perception. I show that such an interdependence between imperception and perception typically takes for him the form of a specific chiasm, of which I scrutinize several notable expressions. Lastly, I address Merleau-Ponty’s insightful sketch of an even further sophisticated theory, wherein imperception would be eventually reintegrated within perception itself.

In this paper, I focus on the specific philosophical contribution of Jean-Paul Sartre’s What is Literature? (1948), in the context of the existentialist meditation of this period (Beauvoir and Merleau-Ponty). I first establish how Sartre underpins the concept of freedom, by probing its epistemic aspect of testimony and its practical aspect of consciousness-raising, as well as its intrinsic dimensions of negativity and construction. Furthermore, I prove that such a conceptual improvement entails a fresh meditation by Sartre on the motive “making History”. Such meditation corresponds to a drastic modification of the precedence and order of what Sartre describes as “the cardinal categories of human reality”, to the detriment of the categories of being and having, and in favor of the category of making. I demonstrate that there is a shift from Being and Nothingness. I conclude by considering the significance of such a conceptual improvement of freedom, such a meditation of history, and such a categorial reshuffle, when it comes to the questions of the practical meaning of literature, of its appropriate form, and of its possible totalization.

In the Theodicy, as well as in other texts, Leibniz approaches the notion of Trinity in the light of three divine perfections, that is, power, understanding and will, which express the three persons. Accordingly, philosophical reason is able to draw a portrait of God that is imperfect but pervasive, both metaphysical and moral. In this paper, I first analyze those perfections, as conceived of by Leibniz, in their own essence and in their internal Trinitarian structuring. I then sift through a kind of dialectics appearing in Leibniz’s thought, when it is confronted with the relations between those perfections. Those relations take the form of antecedence, non-creation and election, and, more problematically, of mixing them and of separating them. I conclude by dwelling on what is at stake in such considerations concerning the two Leibnizian topoi of the eternal return and relation.

RésuméJ'analyse la façon dont Bergson caractérise la logique tel un organe de simplification, de dissimulation, d'ordonnance, de limitation, de systématisation, comme habitude de pensée et comme ontologie foncière. Partout, la logique semble la prérogative de l'entendement et inapte à s'appliquer à la durée, voire à la réalité elle-même. Pour sortir d'un tel dualisme, je montre que Bergson conçoit une logique de l'absurde et de l'imagination, avec le rêve, la folie et le comique, laquelle transmute la logique dans le domaine du pathologique et de l'art littéraire, et offre à l'image une seconde gloire.In this paper, I analyze the sense in which Henri Bergson characterizes logic, which he understands to be a means of simplification, dissimulation, ordering, limitation and systematizing, as well as a habit of thinking and something basically ontological. Overall, logic seems to be the privilege of the understanding; it is unfit to apply itself to duration, or to reality itself. To help us out of such dualism, I show that Bergson — considering dreams, madness, and comedy — conceives of a logic of the imagination and of the absurd that transplants logic into the field of the pathological and literary art, and that offers a second glory to images.

The image of the “mirror” (鏡kagami) appears frequently in the philosophical texts of Nishida Kitaro (西田幾多郎1870-1945), where it assumes various functions. Mirror references first occur in meditations on the philosophies of Josiah Royce (1855-1916) and Henri Bergson (1859-1941). The most fascinating evocation here corresponds to the idea of a “self-enlightening mirror”, used to probe the philosophical ground for self-illumination. This idea seems to point back to Buddhist meaning that intervenes in Japanese intellectual history. We take this as our warrant for establishing here, firstly, how Nishidean philosophical speculation can be critically related to the thought of Dogen (道元1200-1253); and, secondly, in what sense it has stimulated some contemporary approaches in Japanese philosophy (for example, those of Nitta, Ohashi, and Sakabe).

How might we fathom out what is maturity? Is it by opposing it to immaturity? Is it a polysemous word? Who or what is to be said mature? And what are the domains where maturity reveals itself? In this paper, I probe how Merleau-Ponty innovatively fields those questions. He establishes that maturity is conquered in the actual work of an artist. Maturity consists in an awareness that makes our reading of the world and of others reach a higher degree and pass a critical point. Such a movement in maturity is conceptually refined as a too lengthy maturation that inhabits a process of learning, historical, and perceptual, also as a maturing of thought that is slow and shows intrinsic limitations. In such a facticity that is also an anticipation, maturity essentially becomes a prematuration, which is by no means premature for psychoanalysis, politics, and philosophy.

In this paper, I consider the idea of space-time in its philosophical specificity. Such an approach must satisfy three main conditions. First, the inquiry must meditate on the link epitomized by the hyphen in the expression “space-time”. Second, it must not reduce either space to time or time to space, but must instead explore the significance of their in-between-ness and of their interweaving reality. Third, the inquiry must rid itself of any priority of space over time or of time over space that would take place in the mediation of space-time. I explore whether there is a metaphysical approach that might be able to articulate the organic link of space-time epitomized by the hyphen in order to grasp the philosophical meaning of its irreducible, deep, and fleshly thickness. I argue that Merleau-Ponty might usher in decisive clues and some insightful tools for building such a theory. I accordingly begin by discussing his later topic of an endo-ontology, linking together concepts such as endospace and endo-time. Starting from there, I examine what he finally envisions as the chiasm and nexus of space-time.

ABSTRACT: In this paper, I demonstrate the pivotal function of consciousness in the second part of Phenomenology of Perception. A new meaning of the notion avoids the alternative between empiricism and intellectualism that gives this second part its structure. Consciousness, bogged down with the world, is neither only a state, nor only an act; in other words, it conveys life, conceived by Merleau- Ponty as a ‘living’ and a ‘making.’ Thus, it has a metaphysical dimension that renders it irreducible to experience. Consciousness, which I show is both ‘original’ and ‘philosophical,’ corresponds to an effective comprehension of contradiction in everything.

L’objet de la présente étude est de mettre en évidence de quelle manière Jean-Paul Sartre peut apercevoir, dans L’être et le néant, une problématique métaphysique pleinement originale par rapport à ses devanciers, et qui sera déterminante pour ses successeurs, tout particulièrement Merleau-Ponty. On pourrait se demander si la philosophie de l’existence de Sartre n’est pas résolument anti-métaphysique. On sait à tout le moins que l’Essai d’ontologie phénoménologique constitue une ontologie qui cherche à dire l’être, et ce en passant par une phénoménologie consultant le phénomène d’être. Or, nous voudrions montrer qu’il esquisse également une métaphysique où ces deux dimensions se conjuguent dans un être nommé phénomène, dont nous allons déterminer le mode d’approche au travers de préfigurations conceptuelles. Pour ce faire, nous mettrons d’abord en évidence la réflexion pionnière que Sartre consacre au thème du « se faire être » qui pilote sa réflexion. Cela nous conduira ensuite à resserrer l’examen sur le cœur agissant de ce même thème, le « faire », et sur la problématique de sa réduction à l’être et à l’avoir. Forts de ces analyses, nous serons alors à même d’envisager plus rigoureusement les « aperçus métaphysiques » sartriens sur lesquels débouchent les analyses de L’être et le néant, lesquels permettent d’envisager la métaphysique comme un fait, une interrogation, un problème et une discipline à part entière. Enfin, nous saisirons dans quelle mesure c’est le concept de structuration qui porte la spécificité de la métaphysique, par rapport à la morale.

Le désir se présente comme une sorte de point aveugle de la phénoménologie merleau-pontienne. Mais est-ce là la trace d’une carence ou d’un déplacement de la problématique en direction d’autres domaines de cette philosophie? Dans cet article, nous tenterons de dégager trois régions d’investigation principales, qui s’entremêlent les unes avec les autres. Tout d’abord, demandons-nous, quelle est cette signification explicitement « métaphysique » que Merleau-Ponty prête au désir, et en quels sens variés convient-il de l’entendre au beau milieu d’une phénoménologie, pourtant luxuriante, de la perception? Quelle spécificité en vient alors à posséder le désir par rapport à des notions qui lui sont apparentées comme la sexualité, l’amour, la pudeur, ou encore la volonté? Ensuite, sous quelle forme le désir se déploie-t-il sous nos yeux, à la faveur du dialogue incessant qu’entretient Merleau-Ponty avec la psychanalyse, en particulier celle qu’il dit « existentielle »? Le désir merleau-pontien, est-ce principalement le désir sexuel, ou encore l’Éros? Enfin, de quelle manière singulière l’approche merleau-pontienne du désir se retrouve-t-elle entrainée dans le courant ontologique mouvementé de sa dernière philosophie, dans les entrailles naturelles de l’esthésiologie, et le jeu de miroir du visible et de l’invisible? Ces considérations nous aiderons peut-être à mieux cerner l’étrange attraction que ce philosophe exerce sur les autres et sur nous-mêmes, nous faisant passer pour ainsi dire de Merleau-Ponty parlant du désir au désir de Merleau-Ponty.