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Passivity in the Philosophy of Merleau-Ponty Donald Jack Beith

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Passivity in the Philosophy of Merleau-Ponty Donald Jack Beith Passivity in the Philosophy of Merleau-Ponty Donald Jack Beith Department of Philosophy McGill University, Montreal Submitted August, 2012 A thesis submitted to McGill University in partial fulfillment of the requirements of the degree Doctor of Philosophy. © Donald Beith 2012 Abstract Modern philosophy, from Descartes and Kant to early articulations of the phenomenological method, is based upon the premise that nature is synthetically established by human consciousness. In his late thinking, Merleau-Ponty rethinks the notion of passivity, a concept he opposes to the pure activity of constituting consciousness, and through which he explains how novel meaning can emerge in nature without being the product of constituting activity. While Merleau-Ponty's early works are systematic studies of human consciousness, and though many interpreters thereby take these works to be premised upon the primacy of consciousness as a constituting activity, I argue that there is a pivotal redefinition of passivity underway throughout his corpus. I explicate Merleau-Ponty's rethinking of passivity by drawing three progressively richer concepts of passivity out of his works: first is a structural passivity through which conscious or vital activities are mediated by an environment, second is a genetic passivity according to which the activities of consciousness and life are formed out of developmental processes, and third is a more radical sense of passivity which generates living activities without itself being a mode of constituting activity. Explaining this notion of generative passivity requires a complex investigation of the temporal structure within which original meaning emerges in life. I explain this temporal "institution" of meaning by studying specific phenomena: animal embryology and growth, as well as human development in childhood and puberty. Based on these studies, I make the case that the notion of generative passivity can uniquely explain the emergence of different forms of meaning in nature. Résumé La philosophie moderne, de Descartes et Kant jusqu‘aux premières articulations de la méthode phénoménologique, est basée sur la prémisse que la nature est établie synthétiquement par la conscience humaine. Dans sa pensée ultérieure, Merleau-Ponty repense la notion de passivité, un concept qu‘il oppose à l‘activité pure de la conscience constitutive, et à travers laquelle il explique la manière dont de sens nouveaux peuvent émerger de la nature sans être le produit d‘une telle activité. Puisque Merleau-Ponty tente, dans ses premières oeuvres, d‘analyser systématiquement la conscience humaine, une tendance est née parmi ses commentateurs d'interpréter ceux-ci comme étant fondée sur la primauté de la conscience comme activité constitutive. Je soutiens au contraire que tout au long de son corpus, Merleau-Ponty entreprend de redéfinir la passivité. J'élucide la repensée de la passivité chez Merleau-Ponty en soutirant de son oeuvre trois concepts progressivement plus riches. En premier nous trouvons une passivité dite structurelle à travers de laquelle les activités conscientes ou vitales peuvent se déployer dans un environnement qui leur sert de médiateur. En second nous découvrons une passivité dite génétique en fonction de laquelle les activités de la conscience et de la vie se forment grâce à des processus de développement. Finalement nous dévoilons une passivité plus radicale, une passivité dite générative, qui produit les activités vivantes sans étant elle-même une modalité de l‘activité constitutive. Pour expliquer ce dernier concept de passivité nous devons effectuer une analyse complexe de la structure temporelle au coeur de laquelle le sens original émerge dans la vie. J‘explique cette ‗institution‘ temporelle du sens en étudiant des phénomènes spécifiques tel que embryologie et la croissance animale, et le développement humain à l‘enfance et à la puberté. Sur la base de ces études, je soutiens que la notion de passivité générative est la mieux placé pour expliquer l'émergence des différentes formes de sens dans la nature. Table of Contents A Note on the Text 1 Acknowledgements 2 Introduction: In the Shadow of Philosophy: The Problem of Passivity in the Philosophy of Merleau-Ponty 3 Chapter 1: Consciousness and Animality: The Problem of Constituting Activity in The Structure of Behaviour 22 1.1 Consciousness and the Problem of Animal Form 25 1.2 Passivity in the Structure of Consciousness 36 1.3 The Epistemology of Form: Learning to Perceive (as) Animals 47 1.4 The Auto-Figurative Origins of Animal Behaviour 59 Chapter 2: The Passivity of Life: The Problem of the Genesis of Possibility in Nature 79 2.1 The Genetic Passivity of Life in The Structure of Behaviour 83 2.2 The Generative Passivity of Life in Nature 99 2.3 The Spatiality of Generative Passivity in Life 116 2.4 The Time of Life in Institution: Beyond A Priori and A Posteriori 123 2.5 The Becoming True of Possibility 133 2.6 Foucault's Criticisms of Merleau-Ponty's Naturalism 154 Chapter 3: The Passivity of Agency: The Intercorporeal Institution of the Person 166 3.1 Static Phenomenology: The Person as Irreducible Form 170 3.2 Genetic Grounds of Personality: Habit and Bodily Temporality 3.2.1 The Temporality of Habit 173 3.2.2 Habit and the Passivity of Conscious Activity 184 3.2.3 The Ground of Habits: Genetic and Generative Structures 193 3.3 Generative Origins of Personality: The Institution of Second Nature 3.3.1 Institution: The Birth of Sense in Non-sense 206 3.3.2 The Person as Instituted: Childhood 212 3.3.3 The Emergence of Instituting Personality: Puberty 227 3.4 Toward a New Concept of the Social: Intercorporeal Agency 245 Conclusion 264 Bibliography 276 A Note on the Text: For all translated quotations of Merleau-Ponty's works, I include the English pagination followed by the French (e.g. PP Eng. #/Fren. #). For the lectures on Institution and Passivity, I cite Merleau-Ponty's original pagination numbers, from the Belin edition. When using primary texts from other philosophers translated from French or German I similarly provide dual pagination. For other texts I use abbreviated titles, with full information in the appended bibliography. Works by Merleau-Ponty are abbreviated as follows: SB The Structure of Behaviour (trans. Alden L. Fisher). 1963. Pittsburgh: Dusquesne University Press. (La structure du comportement. 1942. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France.) PP Phenomenology of Perception (trans. Donald Landes). 2012. Oxford: Routledge. (Phénoménologie de la perception. 1945. Paris: Éditions Gallimard). SNS Sense and Nonsense (trans. Hubert Dreyfus and Patricia Allen Dreyfus). 1964. Evanston: Northwestern University Press. (Sens et non-sens. 1948. Paris: Nagel.) CP Child Psychology and Pedagogy: The Sorbonne Lectures 1949-52 (trans. Talia Welsh). 2010. Evanston: Northwestern University Press. (Psychologie et pédagogie de l'enfante 1949-52. 2001. Éditions Verdier.) IP Institution and Passivity: Course Notes from the College de France 1954-5 (trans. Leonard Lawlor and Heath Massey). 2010. Evanston: Northwestern University Press. (L’Institution, La Passivite: Notes de cours au College de France (ed. Claude Lefort). 2003. Belin.) AD Adventures of the Dialectic (trans. Joseph Bien). 1973. Evanston: Northwestern University Press. (Aventures de la dialectique. 1955. Paris: Éditions Gallimard.) N Nature: Course Notes from the Collége de France (trans. Robert Vallier). 2003. Evanston: Northwestern University Press. (La nature: notes, cours du Collége de France (ed. Dominique Séglard). 1995. Paris: Seuil.) S Signs (trans. Richard McCleary). 1964. Evanston: Northwestern University Press. (Signes. 1960. Paris: Éditions Gallimard.) VI The Visible and the Invisible (trans. Alfonso Lingis). 1968. Evanston: Northwestern University Press. (Le visible et l'invisible. 1964. Paris: Éditions Gallimard.) 1 Acknowledgements This work is dedicated to the memory of my uncle David Martin Lauzon (1952-2011), who generously gave, and continues to give, a sense of life's possibilities to the people who knew him. I am grateful to the many excellent philosophy teachers I have had in the past several years. Alia-Al Saji has continually helped me clarify my writing and thinking, and has led me to insights about temporality in the work of Merleau- Ponty and Bergson, developed most fully here in chapter two. David Morris has constantly challenged me to think of being in terms of development, and to connect the issues of personal temporality with studies of futurity and courage, as I do toward the end of this work. I am grateful to Anthony Steinbock at the Phenomenology Research Center for sharing his engagingly original investigations with me and the inspiring philosophers there, and for his work on generative method in Husserl, out of which I developed the conceptual core of this thesis, the idea of radical or generative passivity. I cannot begin without thanking John Russon, for his outstanding teaching and work to lead vigorous philosophical seminars where I discovered the inspiration to study philosophy. Many graduate students and I cut our teeth on philosophical discussion together, and I owe them more than I can say, especially Erik Stephenson, Elaine Brown, Shiloh Whitney, Oran Magal, Anna Ezekiel, Sean Wood, Aaron Pinnix, Enoch Guimond and Noah Moss Brender. The major site of my learning has become discussion with my engaging philosophy students at Bishop's and McGill. At Bishop's, I am grateful to Bruce Gilbert and James Crooks for sharing their passion for teaching philosophy with me. I am indebted to Leonard Lawlor for sharing an early draft of his translation of Institution and Passivity with a small group of dedicated Merleau- Ponty scholars in Montréal in the winter of 2010. I am lucky to have had the colleagues of this informal Merleau-Ponty "institution" as interlocutors over the last four years; they are Shiloh Whitney, Noah Moss Brender, David Morris, Lisa Guenther, Donald Landes, Tristana Martin Rubio, and Dan Landreville. I could not have undertaken this project without the love and generosity of Donald Arthur Beith, Mary Anne Beith, Emma MacDonald, and Nicholas Beith.
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