Philosophy and Phenomenology of the Body

Pnilosophy and_PhenomenolQgy - -:- - ~otth~ B0tly --_ F

by

MICHEL HENRY

(ra,,;laled bM

-

GIRARD ETZKORN

MARTINUS NIJROFF -

-

THEl-IAGUE

PHILOSOPHY AND PHENOMENOLOGY OF THE BODY

PHILOSOPHY AND PHENOMENOLOGY OF THE BODY

by

MICHEL HENRY translated by

GIRARD ETZKORN

II MAR TINUS NIJHOFF - THE HAGUE - 1975

57 7640

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Translator's Note

VII

Author's Preface

IX

Introduction:

THE SEEMING CONTINGENCY OF THE QUESTION CON-

CERNING THE BODY AND THE NECESSITY FOR AN ONTOLOGICAL ANALYSIS OF THE BODY

Chapter I:

THE PHILOSOPHICAL PRESUPPOSITIONS OF THE BIRANIAN

ANALYSIS OF THE BODY

I. The Philosophical Presuppositions of Biranian Ontology .

2. The Transcendental Deduction of the Categories . 3. The Theory of the Ego and the Problem of the Soul Chapter II:

52

THE SUBJECTIVE BODY

Chapter III: MOVEMENT AND SENSING I. The Unity of our Senses and the Problem of the Relationship between our Images and our Movements 2. The Unity of the Body Interpreted as a Unity of Knowledge. Habit and Memory 3. The Individuality of Human Reality as Sensible Individuality Chapter IV:

77

83 92 102

THE TwOFOLD USAGE OF SIGNS AND THE PROBLEM OF

THE CONSTITUTION OF ONE'S OWN BODY

Chapter V:

11 11 22 36

CARTESIAN DUALISM

Chapter VI:

.

136

A CRITIQUE OF THE THOUGHT OF MAINE DE BIRAN. THE

PROBLEM OF PASSIVITY.

Chapter VII:

108

154

CONCLUSION. THE ONTOLOGICAL THEORY OF THE BODY

AND THE PROBLEM OF INCARNATION. THE FLESH AND THE SPIRIT

Index of Authors Index of Terms .

183 223 225

TRANSLATOR'S NOTE

In the present translation, we have followed the same principles which guided our task in the English rendition of L' Essence de /a Manifestation. Henry's present work on the body proves to be considerably clearer and "'ill shed no little light on the theses he defends in The Essence of Manifest· arion.

I would like to thank my wife, Linda, for her contributions in typing the manuscript and in admonishing me about the finer points of grammar and punctuation. My gratitude is likewise directed to Mme. Anne Henry, professo r of English literature at the University of Montpellier and wife of the author, who went over the entire manuscript and provided me v,-;tb a number of helpful suggestions. Finally, my thanks go to the author himself fo r his insightful comments. My only hope is that his work will rereive the acclaim it so richly deserves. The work of this present translation was begun early in 1972 and comp!:ted in July of 1974. Girard ETZKORN The Franciscan Institute St. Bonaventure University, New York

INTRODUCTION

THE SEEMING CONTINGENCY OF THE QUESTION CONCERNING THE BODY AND THE NECESSITY FOR AN ONTOLOGICAL ANALYSIS OF THE BODY

When we disclose and bring forth, within ontological investigations aimed at making possible the elaboration of a phenomenology of the ego, a problematic concerning the body, we may well seem, with respect to the general direction of our analysis, to elaborate only a contingent and accidental specification of such an analysis and to forget its true goaJ.I Up to the present, we pursued the clarification of the being of the ego [2] on the level of absolute sUbjectivity and in the form of an ontological analysis. Is it not possible that the reasons which motivated the project of conducting the investigations relative to the problem of the ego within a sphere of absolute immanence may cease to be valid because we might be led to believe that the body also constitutes the object of these investigations and belongs to a first reality whose study is the task of fundamental ontology? Actually, does not the body present itself to us as a transcendent being, as an inhabitant of this world of ours wherein sUbjectivity does not reside? If, consequently, the body must constitute the theme of our philosophical reflection, is it not on condition that the latter submit to a radical modification and cease to be turned toward subjectivity in order to be a reflection on the world and on the way in which certain of its elements present themselves to us and are constituted? And, moreover, among all these transcendent elements which can and must be the theme of so many particular investigations, why should we accord a privilege to the body such that our analysis, not content with abandoning the region where it first defined itself in its initial project, would determine itself as an investigation directed toward 1 As Michel Henry points out in his preface to the present translation, the ontological investigations, with respect to which the problematic of the body might seem to be a particular-and ultimately illegitimate-specification, are the same ontological investigations which led to Michel Henry's major wo rk entitled The Essence of Manifestation [crans. by Girard Etzkorn: The Hague: Martinus Nijhofl', 1973] to which frequent allusions will be made.

2

INTRODUCTION

the transcendent being of our body, an investigation which we admit is indispensable and properly belongs to the philosophical domain in general, but concerning which we would have to concede its total lack of relationship to the. ?:o' ,~ analysis of sUbjectivity or the ego identified with subjectivity? We could, it is true, try to base the contingency of the question on the contingency of its object. Is not the fact that a consciousness has a body a contingent fact, the contingent fact par excellence? Moreover, are we really in the presence of a fact? Rather, if the relationship sui generis of the body to consciousness rather proves to be the foundation of our idea of contingency, and more fundamentally, of the very fact that such a contingency and even contingent facts in general are possible for us, then does not this relationship [3J truly constitute a structure, which is not only rooted in human nature, but which must further serve to define it? One might characterize man as consciousness or as subjectivity in a purely abstract way, if between these latter and the body there likewise existed a dialectical relationship, such that every determination of subjectivity would be comprehensible only in and through the relationship to the body. The terms of this relationship would henceforth be in close solidarity to the point of growing at the same time, as we can see for instance in shame, where the spirit's presence to itself in SUbjectivity immediately signifies an increased and painful consciousness of the body. ' The 'effectiveness' of this same dialectical bond leads us-even when we begin with an analysis of consciousness-to ask ourselves about the being of the body. When we ask such a question, we get a hint on the level of the Logos about the very nature of things which is not constituted by autonomous realities enclosed within themselves, but by dialectical structures, and man himself would be one of these structures. To the extent that it puts mind and body into relationship, this structure is the most 'dialectic' of all, it is a paradox which we can, with Kierkegaard, look upon as fundamental,' for it truly plays the role of a foundation. Tragedy, comedy, the feeling of having a body, exhibitionism or timidity and many other existentiell or affective determinations are not feelings or attitudes which befall human nature without our being able to account for them by starting with human nature. Human reality must rather be 2 "The more a man feels himself to be spirit, the more, at the same time he feels himself to be body with its sexual character." Jean Wahl, Etudes kierkegaardiennes (paris: Aubier, 1938) 226. 3 cr. Saren Kierkegaard, The Concept of Dread, tr. W. Lowrie, 2nd ed. (princeton: Princeton University Press, 1957).

INTRODUcnON

3

determined starting with the requirements implied in questions like the following: "What must man be like [4] to be capable of feelings such as ... ?" For, underneath such feelings, there lies a more profound tonality which determines the various affective and existentiell modalities whereby individual or collective human history takes place. Must not this fundamental tonality be understood as the very moment of dialectical union between consciousness and body? The paradox, which is as the knot of existence and the origin wherein its different attitudes are rooted, must in the last analysis be perceived more or less clearly by a philosophical reflection from whose gaze the central phenomenon of incarnation cannot remain indifferent or indefinitely hidden. Because the incarnate being of man, and not consciousness or pure subjectivity, is the original fact from which, it would seem, we must start, the investigation must necessarily leave the sphere of subjectivity in order to elaborate the problematic concerning the body, and we may no longer regard this step as contingent but as required by the very nature of things. Inversely, this very nature now presents itself to us in its essence as contingent; as contingent, it is the primordial contingency which we are. Nevertheless, in a more precise way and from the ontological point of view, what does this contingency constitutive of the relationship between a consciousness and a body mean, this contingency which in its turn gives basis to, calls for, and hence renders necessary the question of the body? Correctly interpreted, such a contingency can only mean the following: With relationship to the sphere of subjectivity which is identified with that of existence itself, this other ontological region in which something like a body can appear and develop is a heterogeneous and essentially different reality. As long as an investigation moves exclusively interior to the sphere of subjectivity, it will encounter nothing which can be called a body, much less our body. But when we leave this original sphere, when we effect a 'passage' toward [5] something which is situated outside it, such an encounter with a 'body' then becomes possible. Transcendent being is to be found outside the sphere of subjectivity. Moreover, within such a being various ontological regions are further discernible. The body in general has been identified by a famous philosophy with extension. It was conceived as a reality composed of different parts outside one another. May not what we here call our body be identified with this body partes extra partes of physical nature? Rather, our body is a living body and because of this it belongs to an ontological region which, in virtue of its phenomenological characteristics (characteristics which allow us to consider it as an essence and as an autonomous region), cannot

4

INTRODUCTION

be confused with some extension, such as Cartesian extension, regardless of the deductions, dialectical or not, which might be made between these two orders of reality in constructs made by the various sciences. Nevertheless, in spite of its phenomenological foundations, biology itself is a science, its progresses take place within the transcendent masses of scientific knowledge, they are in principle limitless, and their overlapping with our immediate experience in no way constitutes their goal because immediate experience is only a simple appearance for the savant and in any case, if our body were a biological entity, the knowledge which we could acquire in its regard would be in solidarity with scientific knowledge, or rather, it would become one with it, in such a way that only a future man, situated in history at the ideal terminus of the development of the sciences, would truly know what he must understand when we speak of this body which is ours, and in all strictness, we could no longer see what sortofknowledge a primitive could have of his body nor how he might grasp it in order to arrive at the opinion according to which a body belongs to him. Actually, the body of biology is in a certain sense a cultural object, [6] and as such it is essentially historical, 4 both regarding its appearance and its modifications which are none other than those brought about by the very development of science. With such a biological body we, the men of today, certainly have an original relationship, and we are all to a certain degree historical beings to the extent that we all profess to believe in the science of our savants and to the extent that the representations of this science always encounter, more of less quickly, an echo in the conceptions of common sense. Nevertheless, from this original relationship we do not 4 Man is not essentially an historical being. He is always the same. Everything 'pro· found' in him-and by this we make no evaluations of an axiological order but rather designate what must be considered as original from the ontological point of view-remains identical to itself and is found in all eras. It is because it rests on an ontological foundation and because it refers to ontological po wers that ethics in turn exhibits the permanence peculiar to it, that each generation, as Kierkegaard says, finds itself confronted with the same task as the preceding generation. Since it is here a question of the body, and even if our reduction is accepted, even if abstraction is made from all biological evolution 'in the third person', it will be objected that the human body presents itself to man with characteristics which have varied throughout the course of history, characteristics which lead to such varying habits concerning nourishment, for example, clothing, sexuality, as well as the numerous 'modes' related thereto. However, this is not the original body, but various ways in which man represents this body to himself and behaves toward it. What is historical are the cultural or human objects and the different human attitudes related thereto. But the ontological basis which founds both objects and attitudes is indifferent to this evolution; the latter always presupposes the ontological foundation.

INTRODUcnON

5

draw our first knowledge about the body, nor do we find there the patterns of behavior where the body is involved. We do not wait until we have read the latest books on biology before running, leaping, walking, or raising our arms, and even if we devote our time to reading about such subjects, nothing would change with regard to our primitive powers. Nothing is more inoperative than science with regard to our conduct as well as with regard to the primordial knowledge that this conduct a/ways presupposes. From now on, we feel that we must be concerned only with this primordial [7] knowledge, that of it alone we must give an account. Far from being able to furnish us with any clarification of such knowledge, a science like biology rather finds its bases in such knowledge; biology cannot be counted on to explain what it presupposes as the condition for its possibility and as the ontological horizon within which it can find its objects, furnish its explanations, and before all else, pose its problems. We must now render more precise the meaning of the phenomenological reduction which we are now in the process of undertaking in order to discern more clearly the nature of this original knowledge and the frontiers which it maintains with diverse types of knowledge founded upon it. We say that our body is a living body; this, however, would not be understood as a biological reality. If life is not primordially for us the object of a scientific experiment or still less a scientific concept, does it not present itself to us in naive experience as a transcendent structure? Side by side with the inert objects, tools, cultural objects in our immediate environment, there are beings which we call living beings. Henceforth, the problem of the knowledge of the body would be resolved by a description of the characteristics presented by such 'living realities'. It is true that a difficulty arises from the fact that, among these living bodies, it would seem a distinction ought to be made between the body of an amoeba, for example, or even the body of superior animals' on the one hand and the body of man on the other. In the case of man, we are not merely dealing with a living body but a human body and the properties of this human body are so specific that we have the impression of having before us [8J a new structure which has nothing more in common with the preceding structures than the particularity of belonging with them to transcendent being in general. Consequently, up to this point we have distinguished 1) the body as a biological entity whose reality must ultimately be the common place for scientific determinations which deal with it, or better, which constitute it; 2) the body as a living being as it appears in our natural experience. 5 Here we are abstracting from the life of plants which exhibits quite different characteristics; we are deliberately leaving aside this problem of vegetative life.

6

INTRODUcnON

Such a body is likewise a transcendent structure whose phenomenological characteristics are the very characteristics of perception which presents this body to us; 3) the body as human body which is likewise a transcendent structure of our experience, but whose characteristics cannot purely and simply be reduced to those of the living body such that they would seem to be constitutive of a new structure or, as we say today, a new form . The clear conceiving of the relationships between the above mentioned three terms is certainly an enterprise fraught with difficulties. The biological body and the living body are bound together in such a way that they successively appear with regard to one another as the founding terminus and the founded terminus, depending on whether we place ourselves in the perspective of science which claims to accouilt for the phenomenological appearances of the living body with the constructs 'in the third person' which it builds, or whether we adopt the perspective of natural consciousness (not that of co=on sense already implicitly acquired from scientific theories even if natural consciousness is unaware of them) which lives these appearances and, with the phenomenologist, would think that science begins with them. With regard to the relationships between the living body and the human body, their study depends upon a comparative phenomenology, about how we perceive animals and about how we perceive other men-a study which would encounter, among other difficulties, the following: If the division between animal behavior and human conduct is easy to establish once these two structures have been grasped in their reciprocal opposition, how [9] can we discern, once we consider solely the perception of the human body, what in it is proper to a living being and what is proper to man; or, if you prefer, can we find the first structure of the living body, of the animal body, in the second, viz. the human body, as one of its elements or as its foundation? The various above-mentioned distinctions and the questions which they raise are, nevertheless, without importance in our view, because they do not raise the fundamental ontological problem with which we must ultimately occupy ourselves. Regardless of the region in which we ultimately decide to locate our body, whether this region be that of the biological body, the living body, or finally a sui generis region peculiar to the human body, in all cases we will merely be dealing with specifications and structures of transcendent being in general, regardless of how great the differences existing between these structures might be. As long as things are viewed in this way, the problematic concerning the body would remain, in spite of all we have said above, contingent with respect to the project of a fundamental ontology, foreign to the goal of a truly first philosophy. The contin-

INTRODUCTION

7

gency of the question of the body, and more profoundly, the contingency of the very fact of the belonging of a body to human reality, are insurmountable, if it is true that this body represents, with respect to transcendental subjectivity itself, something heterogeneous and irreducible. Has not the moment come to admit that first philosophy cannot be identified with an ontological analysis of subjectivity nor with the exploration of this region alone? It is only within an illusory perspective that the problem of the body appears so contingent that, so to speak, there is no reason for raising it. For a 'pure' man, if we may so speak-the abstract man reduced to the condition of a pure subjectivity- has no reason to ask himself about a body of which he is deprived, or which is no [10] more for him than a simple accessory or a contingent appendage. A disincarnate subject, like the Kantian spectator of the Paralogisms, is a pure spirit who surveys the world, and his own body cannot even intervene in the knowledge which he takes from the universe nor can it be the object of a special investigation; in all strictness, it constitutes an 'empirical' curiosity, deprived of all philosophical dignity. But we know that man is an incarnate subject, his knowledge is situated in the universe, things are given him in the perspectives which get their orientation from his own body. Hence, must not the latter become the theme of an investigation which takes the real man as its object, not the abstract man of idealism, but this being of flesh and blood which we all are ? And if we identify first philosophy with such an investigation, then we can no longer limit its field to the sole sphere of subjectivity; its object is actually something altogether different, for example, it is this dialectical structure which inextricably binds consciousness with the body, or again, it is existence precisely as the existence of a real and incarnated being. Consequently:-Either it is not necessary to take account of the body in defining man and hence we are allowed to pursue our study of the subjective ego while pretending to take account of human reality in its authentic being and in its totality. -Or such is merely an abstract view of man, a view wherein we would not be able to describe the primitive and concrete reality. Then the philosophy of subjectivity must cede its place to a realism or to an existentialism which would begin with central phenomena such as 'situation', 'corporeity', 'incarnation' and which would at least have the courage to recognize and study what is implied in the true status of human reality, for example, contingency, finitude, absurdity. - Or, the central phenomenon of the body, whose study is doubtless essential for the understanding of human reality, [11] in no way eludes the

8

INTRODUCTION

grasp of a phenomenological ontology which is built on the foundation of an analysis of subjectivity: The problematic dealing with it is implied in the general problematic which such an ontology necessarily develops, because the body, in its original nature, belongs to the sphere of existence which is the sphere of subjectivity itself. Various intentionalities are directed toward different transcendent structures which we have characterized as biological body, living body, and human body. The study of subjectivity along these lines would then seem to throw us back to the existence of a body, but the latter would be able to constitute only a determination of the other in general; and we do not see what would be capable of conferring upon it, within this sphere of the non-ego, the characteristic of belonging to the ego, a characteristic which would seem to be an essential property, nor do we see what would be able to bring about, within the development of a philosophy of the first person, the raising of a problematic concerning the body. Actually, our body is originally neither a biological body nor a living body nor a human body; it belongs to an ontological region radically different which is the region of absolute subjectivity. To speak of a transcendental body in no way means to make a doubtful and gratuitous affirmation, it means that we understand the need to answer affirmatively the question: Is the body, this body which is ours, known by us in the same way as any other intentionality in the life of the ego, and must its being receive, within a phenomenological ontology, the same status as the being of intentionality in general, as the being of the ego ?-It means we take cognizance of the conditions which alone will permit us to take account of the existence of a body situated at the heart of human reality: a body which is an '1'. Various philosophical systems have maintained quite diverse theories concerning the body but they all agree in one common and decisive doctrine, namely, in the affirmation [12] that the being of our body belongs to the world. Here we have one point which seems to be so well established that it never entered anyone's mind to doubt it. The first and actually the only philosopher who, in the long history of human reflection, saw the necessity for originally determining our body as a subjective body is Maine de Biran, that prince of thought, who merits being regarded by us in the same way as Descartes and Husser!, as one of the true founders of a phenomenological science of human reality. How is it that this fundamental discovery· of a 6 Maine de Biran was fully aware of the importance and originality of thjs discovery, as we see when he speaks to us of the "totally new viewpoint from which I consider the knowledge of my own body." Essa; sur les Jondements de fa psychologie et sur ses rapports avec ['etude de fa nature, in Oeuvres de Maine de Biran, ed. Tisserand, VIII (paris: Alean, 1932) 207.

INTRODUCTION

9

sUbjective body, a di scovery whose conseq ucnces, as we shall see, are limitless, co uld pass completely unnoticed, and how is it tha t the meani ng of the work of Maine de Birall wa s so rarely understood ? Th is fact will not be qu ite so surpri sing if one has refl ected on the sin gula r positio n of its author in the French philosopbical move ment or the ninetee nth century, fOf, in spite of appearan ces, Maine de Biran is one or the most isolated philosophers who ever lived. He has been customa rily situated at the source of a curren t of though t which would continue through Lachelier, Boutroux, Ravaisson, Lagneau, to Bergso n-a current of 'spiritualist' thought which would be ch aracteri zed by its attention paid to the ' inte rior life', by an ' introspective tendency'. This has co nstituted a serious misco nstruing of his contribution which co uld not but com prom ise in defini tive fashion the understandin g of his work. The histori cal dependency which we have indica ted doubtless exists, but Bi ran ian thought has noth in g to do wi th introspection, with the interio r life such as it might be understood by the [13] neo-Kantialls, or with the intuition of Bergson. A comparable dependency is, however, perfectly understandable because the absence of any ontology of subjectivi ty in Kantiani sm. and the consequences of such an absence, notably, regarding the problem of the interior life, nece ssarily led the heirs of this philosophy to look toward ideas which could to a certai n exte nt fi ll in such a lacuna. But the reason for the interest ill the work of At/aille de Birall was the very rame reason which could 1I0t but bar the way to any true understanding of what he did, because this interest was the fact of philosophers who moved withi n presuppositions incompatibl e with the central intuition of Biran ianism. Such an intuition could not be garnered by the French philosopher of the nineteenth or twentieth century except at the expense of a misinterpretation all the more da ngerous because it was pe rfectly involuntary, at the expense of a true fail ure which constitutes the measure of the split between an authentic conception of subjectivity and ' psychology'. Isolated from ph ilosophers who thought they were pursuing hi s undertak ing, Maine de Biran, beca use of the ve ry nature of his enterprise, was all the more cut off from the public at large. Actually, if the investigations belonging to first philosophy fi nd sO little fo llowing, this is not because they arc difficult or beca use they 'consist in fa ntastic or chimerical co nstructs wh ich vary from one philosopher to another according to his temperament; it is rather because they are depri ved of everything which constitutes, in the eyes of most people, what is 'sensational ', 'in teresti ng', 'original'; it is because their object is th at which is the most hum bl e, the most banal. the most co mm on. Maine de Biran wa s not misled abou t this sol itudc and its most profound motives: " It is for the small number of men among us

JO

INTROD UCTION

who dedicate themselves to cu ltivating this interior sense tbat I have erected, as far as I was able, this feeble monument destined to mark my passage in a deserted and unculti vated country which pilgrims seemed to have so little curiosity about visiting. There will be revealed to those who come after me such thoughts as at the time occupied a friend of the science of [14) man, what he thought about and what he wanted to do for progress therein .'" It is this 'feeble monument'-one of the greatest which has ever been erected to the human spirit throughout its history by drawing from materials found in this 'deserted country' which is the original place in which all [Husserlian)' constitutions are made and wherein first philosophy must move about- that we would like to try to discern in order to gather together bis teaching and to use it as a guiding light for our ontological analysis of the body.'[IS) , Ibid. 103. 8 Inserted at author's suggestion. 9 cr. J. Racette, "Michel Henry's Philosophy of the Body," in Philosophy Today. 13 (1969), 83 -94 which provides an excellent introduction to Henry's thought [translator's note].

CHAPTER I

THE PHILOSOPHICAL PRESUPPOSITIONS OF THE BIRANIAN ANALYSIS OF THE BODY

Maine de Biran's 'discovery' of the subjective body was not an accident. His discovery takes place in a context which makes it inevitable and this context is nothing other than that of a phenomenological ontology. As theme for his investigation, Maine de Biran took the problem of the ego which, as soon became apparent, was able to be solved only through an ontological analysis of the concept of SUbjectivity: the results of this analysis in tum force him to place the problem of the body upon entirely new foundations, and the problem of the body, correctly interpreted and situated, leads to the problem of the ego with which it is identified. Henceforth, the teaching of Maine de Biran may be summarized in these words: A body is subjective and is the ego itself. In defining man as body, Maine de Biran comes close to materialism, but this is only a false impression whose tme meaning is rather the undermining of materialism in its very foundations. Before setting forth the theses of Biran on the body, it is first expedient to outline the general project of ontology in which these theses naturally take place. In order to realize the first part of our task, we will study successively 1) the phenomenological presuppositions of Biranian ontology, 2) the anscendental deduction of the categories, 3) the theory of the ego and the problem of the soul.[l6] I. THE PHILOSOPHICAL PRESUPPOSITIONS OF BIRANIAN ONTOLOGY

The difficulty in understanding the originality of the theses of Biran and their frequently decisive importance stems from the very terminology which he uses in his different works. This terminology is not new, and because he uses a traditional and apparently clear vocabulary, the radical novelty and the intrinsic content of the ontological propositions in which Maine de Biran formulates his thought, risk being passed over unnoticed and these propositions lend themselves to misinterpretations which definitively

12

BIRANIAN ANALYSIS OF THE BODY

impede their understanding. To avoid such a difficulty, the more dangerous because it is not apparent, there is no other way than to overturn the language and not to retreat from a frequently thankless task, which easily lends itself to the irony of making language submit to the worst of treatments, even if the heaviness of expression seems to be the only benefit of such an undertaking. The very greats did not retreat from such heaviness of expression and overthrow of language, but the modest sub-prefect of Bergerac did not feel himself authorized to take such liberties. The result is that, paradoxically, and in spite of the very French simplicity of style in which it is expressed, hi s thought was destined to remain longer without being understood than the thought of a Kant or a Heidegger. In order to attempt to rediscover the clarity of Biranian thought at its source, we did not hesitate to sacrifice the clarity of his style and we tried to express the main philosophical themes of Birania nism within our own terminology. One could fault us for using such a rather loose procedure with regard to the work of Maine de Biran and the form which he thought best to give it only if one misunderstood our true intention: a more humble and faithful harvesting of the teachin g of a very great phil osopher. For Maine de Biran there are two kinds of knowledge and [17J consequently two kinds oj beings. In the fi rst form of k nowledge, being is given us through the mediation of a phenomenological distance, it is transcendent being. Maine de Biran calls this knowled ge "exterior knowledge." In the second form of knowledge, being is given to us immediately, in the absence of all distance; and this being is no longer any being whatever, it is the ego, whose being is uniquely determined according to the manner in which it is given us. Maine de Biran calls this second Jorm oj kllowledge "reflection" and the system of ideas founded on it a "reflective system." The term reflection, under the pen oj Maine de Biran, signifies exactly the opposite oj what we habitually understand by reflection, because the latter designates for us the operation whereby that which was immediately given to us withdraws from us and, through the mediation of its phenomenologica l distance, falls under the jurisdiction of the transcendental horizon of being. For lack of this simple remark, an essential confusion is introduced into the understanding of Biranian thought, and it is because of such confusion that the neo-Kantians, and many other philosophers, thought that they were Biranian. This confusion is, it must be said, favored by Maine de Biran himself who at times gives the classical meaning to the term reflection, and sometimes a third meaning1-but the total context of his philosophy shows that the original meaning is the one we have just defi ned. 1

Cf. infra, chap. VI, pp. 169 ff.

BlRANIAN ANALYSIS OF THE BODY

13

Passages wherein it is explicitly a question of reflection give itthequalification 'simple' which suffices to discard the mediating meaning of classical reflection . Biran speaks of "simple and perfectly clear ideas of reflection." 2 Reflection is identified with the original source of all evidence which is the cogito such as Biron understands it, i.e. not a reflective and intellectual act, [l8J but an action, an effort, a movement. The following is a series of texts wherein tbe identification of reflection with effort understood as a conscious spontaneous movement clea rly appears: "From the point of view of reflection, provided I do not take leave of the fact of consciousness ... "3 There are "two kinds of science, essentially diverse, and attempts to assimilate them have been in vain, namely, those attached to objects of the imagination are of exterior representa tion and those concentrated in the subject of reflection Or internal apperception."4 "The idea of the individuality of the ego and of everything belonging to him cannot be drawn from anywhere but from his intimate reflection and feeling of effort.'" Such decisive texts forbid understanding Bira nian 'reflection' as mediate knowledge introducing a distance between it and its object, as objectification, as the arising of a transcendent being. Speaking of an organic center from which, according to the physiological point of view, human action would emanate, Biran says that in such a center "the ego is, in all truth, objectivated in an indi vidual image rather tha n conceived in the reflective and uorepresentable idea which is proper to him." 6 "Are there not thoughts, intimate volitions, which can in no way be read from without or represented by any sort of image? To conceive them, would it not be necessary that they be identified with the active and knowingly productive force of such acts, with the ego itself, which feels itself a nd is aware of itself in its operations, but which in no way sees itself as object, in no way imagines itself as phenomenon?'" Again: "All [I9J modes or operations whose ideas we can acquire in no other way than by our intimate reflection are absolutely uorepresentable."·

~ Maine de Biran, Essa; sur les fondements de fa psychologie el sur ses rapports avec l'etude de la nature, in Oeuvres de Maille de Biran, ed. Tisserand, VIn (Paris: Alcan, 1932) 604. 3 Ibid. 126. [Henry's italics] 4 Ibid. 146. [Henry's italics] 5 Maine de Biran. Memoire sur fa decomposition de /a pellsee, in Oeu vres de Maine de Biran, ed. Tisserand, III (Paris: AJcan, 1932) 217. [Henry's italics] • Ibid. 156. , Ibid. 71. [Henry's italics except for 'sees' and 'object'] • Ibid. 72 note.

14

BIRANIAN ANALYSIS OF THE BODY

'Reflection' designates this knowledge which is included in every intentionality and which is not knowledge of what is aimed at by such intentionality. Therefore, the term is comprehensible when it means, not transcendence, but rather that which does not go out toward the world, rather that which returns to the self and remains close to the self in its distance with regard to all things. What Maine de Biran expresses in the word 'reflection' is the very profundity ofsubjectivity, its 'intimate' life, in opposition to transcendent being in general, which is without interior dimension and which Biran frequently designates by the term 'image' which makes us think of a Spinozist image, silent and painted on an easel as it were. Thus 'reflection' according to Maine de Biran is opposed to the movement of transcendence and hence would designate a particular case of transcendence, namely reflection in the classical sense. The very term reflection was borrowed by Biran from Locke, but it must be noted that it was a last resort for lack of anything better and solely in his concern to oppose the school of Condillac and his sensualist terminology: "Consciousness mean s know/edge with ... knowledge of self with that ... of something else. There is an interior knowledge ... a certain facu lty intimate to our thinking being, which knows .. . that such modifications take place, that such acts are executed, and without this reflective knowledge, there would be no ideology or metaphysics at all; therefore, it is necessary to have a name for this interior know/edge, for the name sensation cannot say it all.'" With all his strength, Maine de Biran summoned up this new terminology which would express the central intuition of his thought, and he believed that it alone would be capable of bringing to light the real found ation of the science of human reality, "of [20] metaphysical evidence": "If we had an express language appropriate for reflection, there is no doubt there would be metaphysical evidence, just as there is mathematical evidence."'· It is with this "express language" that we shall pursue the analysis of the problem central to Biranian philosophy and all philosophy, a problem which is formulated by the Essay thus : "Is there an immediate and internal apperception ?"11 The scope of this question stems from the fact that it directly questions what we have called "ontological monism, "12 namely, a philosophy which stated that nothing can be given to us other than within \I

10

Ibid. 69 note. [Utherefore .. . knowledge," Henry's italics] Maine de Biran, Mbnoire sur la decomposition de fa pensee, in Oeuvres de Maine

de Biron, ed. Tisserand, IV (paris: Alcan, 1932) 178-179. 11 Maine de Birao, Essa; sur les /ondements de La psychologie ... 111. 12 cr. Michel Henry, The Essence of Manifestation, transl. G . Etzkorn (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1973) 47-133.

BJRANIAN ANALYSIS OF THE BODY

15

and through the mediation of a transcendental horizon of being in general. For Maine de Biran there is no "being in general," his philosophy is a true ontological dualism: "I believed," he tells us, "that it was important to note the existence of two orders of facts, and to recognize the necessity for two kinds of observation for the gleaning of such facts." l3 Maine de Biran reflects on the ontology of nature as it is found in Bacon. This ontology is both a phenomenology and a methodology, the phenomena of nature being made to submit to the grasp of a determined method. Moreover, are there not "other phenomena"l. and because of this, does not a new method impose itself on us ? The problem is one of knowing "if the method of observing, classifying, analyzing can remain absolutely the same in its goal, its direction, and its means, when we pass from the science of ideas which represent objects from outside to that of the modifications and the acts which keep the ego within its own peculiar limits?"l5 This amounts to positing the problem of psychology in its relationships [21] to the philosophy of nature, a problem which constitutes the theme of the Essay of Biran: lG "If we consider psychology as a science of interior facts, it does not seem that this science can be founded on a method different from that which has been used, since Bacon, in all natural sciences."l7 Maine de Biran shows, however, that these "other phenomena" which are "interior facts" must be studied according to a totally different method because they are given to us in an altogether different way.-How are they given us? While Maine de Biran says and repeats that there are two sorts of observation, we must understand that the second type of observation is not an observation, that it is not an interior obser vation, parallel to exterior observation, which arrives at the facts of nature while the former arrives at psychic facts. This interior observation wou ld correspond to our 'introspection', to 'intuition', to classical reflection-so many modes of knowledge which, in order to give a foundation to his psychology, Biran rejects absolutely. The life of consciousness, in his view, could not be given us in an internal transcendent experience; therefore, it can be given us only in an internal transcendental experience.'· This is what the following Maine de Biran, Memoire sur la decomposition ... III, 85. Maine de Biran, Essai sur les fondement$ de fa psycho!ogie ... 167. l~ Maine de Biran, Memoire slir la decomposition ... III, 56. 16 We should recall that the complete title of the work is: Essai sur les fondements de la psycll%gie el sur ses rapports avec /'e/ude de fa nature. 17 Maine de Biran, Essai sur les [ondements de fa psych% gie . .. 50. 18 By 'internal transcendental experience' in this work, we understand the original revelation of the lived experience to itself such as it takes place in a sphere of radical 13

14

16

BIRANIAN ANALYSIS OF THE BODY

decisive text affirms unconditionally: "If the first art of interior observation was happi ly cultivated by the psychologists, disciples of Locke, was the second, far more difficult, the art of interior experience, ever truly practised ?"1. [22] Consequently, what Biran effects here is the substitution of a transcendental phenomenology for classical and empirical psychology; and it is clear that the working out of such a phenomenology goes hand in hand with the constitution of an ontology of subjectivity. It is because there exi sts something like an internal transcendental experience that an ontology of sUbjectivity is required and that the elaboration of a transcendental phenomenology or, as Maine de Biran calls it, a "subjective ideology" is possible. It is because all intentionalities in general, and consequently, the essential intentionalities of consciousness are known ori ginally in the immanence of their very being and in their immediate accomplishment that we are capable of naming them and acquiring the idea of them: " With regard to our faculties," says Biran, " .. . they certainly do not have some sort of a mirror which would reflect them exteriorly; like the eye, tbey are applied to all objects within tbeir ambit, without being seen or known themselves. 20 Hence, the imagination which creates or reproduces a sensible idea in no way imagines itself; the memory cannot apperceive itself in the present; reasoning, the judge of the most widespread relationships, does not judge itself or reason itself. Therefore, how ca n each of these faculties, unable to represent itself or apply itself to itself, be known as an object of knowledge, and by what means were we able to acquire the ideas which correspond to these terms: imagine, remember, judge, reason, will?"21 This is possible only through [23] "the exercise of a special sense," which might be called, mixing Bi ran's terminology with ours, an internal transcendental sense: "The exercise of this sense is to what happens within us as immanence, i.e. in keeping with the fundamental ontological process of auto-affection.

We have given a detailed analysis of the eidetic structure of this original mode of revelation in our work on The Essence of Manifestation, transl. G. Etzkorn (The Hague: Martinus Nijho/f, 1973). 18 Maine de Biran, Essai Slir les fondements de la psy clzologie ... 52. 20 The thesis which here seems to be affirmed by Maine de Biran is the very same one to which we have given the name 'ontological monism'. Actually, we must understand that these faculties are known non-reflectively, viz. by knowledge of ano ther sort. This is what Biran asserts several lines further on. Elsewhere, Biran says of the eye and the body in general exactly what he says here of the faculties. It is 'sufficient' that this comparison be made interior to the same ontological status-that of the internal transcendental experience-in order that the amazing discovery of the subjective body might be made . 21 Maine de Biran, Essai sur les /ondemen ts de /a psych%gie ... 67.

BIRA IAN ANALYSIS OF THE BODY

17

external vision is to objects; but it differs from the laller in that internal vision bears within itself its own flame and clarifies itself with the light which it communicates."" This remarkable determination of the nature of intentionality implies within it a conception of original truth as subjectivity: "Therefore, the primitive fact bears within it its own criterion without borrowing it from elsewhere. " 23 Hence, internal transcendental experience, the milieu wherein original truth takes place, is also the source of all the ideas of our faculties. Therefore, it serves well as the foundation for transcendental phenomenology; as Maine de Biran further affirms : "One cannot deny that there might be certain positive ideas attached to the terms which express the real operations of perceiving, willing, comparing, reflecting .. . [therefore it is necessary] to examine whether one might be able to relate their origin to a given particular interior sense, whereby the individual would be in relationship 10 himself in the exercise of his operations ... Henceforth, we would then have a conception of the natural foundation of the science of our faculties, of a truly subjective ideology."" Within the project of this "truly subjective ideology" is also comprised the idea of a return to a sphere of absolute certitude, a sphere upon which this ideology must be founded. Such a certitude stems from the very structure of the experience to which its content is given in the absolute transparency which results from the absence of all distance, i.e. in immanence. "Our intimate sense," says Biran, "is the most perfect manner of knowing, the only one which is truly immediate."25 It is necessary "to take note of it [the primitive fact] by using the [24] sense which is especially and exclusively capable of this. "2. Actually speaking, "fact" and "sense" are but one; these two terms refer, the first to the ontological aspect, the second to the phenomenological aspect of one and the same essence whose bringing to light presupposes the building of an ontology of sUbjectivity. Maine de Biran is the only philosopher in his century who painfully sensed the absence of such an ontology and who understood the necessity for building one. He says as much very simply: "Perhaps philosophers .. . exaggerate the impotence of the totality of means at our disposal for knowing primitive facts. " 27 Therefore, we must be given "a just measure of these means of " Ibid. [Henry's italicsl " Ibid. 68 . 24 Maine de Biran, Memoire sur la decomposition . . III, 103. [would be ... operations" Henry's italicsl Z5 Maine de Biran, Essa; sur les /olldements de la psychologie ... 20, footnote. 26 Ibid. 11 S. 27 Ibid. 30.

18

BIRANIAN ANALYSIS OF THE BODY

knowing."28 Hence is dissipated the pessimism which marks the theory of knowledge in the nineteenth century and which results in the fact that this theory can be nothing other than a theory of the world, that the knowled ge which it circumscribes is never more than a knowledge of the object. The ontological deficiency from which such pessimism results strikes at the very heart of the most valid systems, in particular, the Kantian system whose essential lacuna Maine de Biran describes in one phrase: "Kant in no way determined which were the primitive facts: he confused them with theftrst passive modifications of sensibility. "29 However, to give to the development of these means of knowing which are ours their just due is to catch a glimpse of the existence of an absolute knowledge and of the sphere of absolute certitude which this knowledge delimits; it is to understand the necessity. for buildin g an absolute science (of which the science of the faculties is but one element), a phenomenological science of human reality, a science which will be endowed with a characteristic of apod ictic certitude- it is to bring to light the possi bility, to speak as Maine de Biran does, of " 'elementing' the science of the human spirit."30 [25J The brin ging to li ght of thi s sphere of absolute certitude, which is also a sphere of absolute existence, presupposes that a division be established between that which stems from such certitude a nd th at wh ich rather cannot pride itself therewith, at least in a direct manner. To build a science endowed with an absolute certitude is to effect this division, to reduce the vast field of human knowledge to that of ori ginal a nd absolute knowledge, knowledge which presents itself to us phenomenologically in apodictic evidence; it is, in other words, to effect the phenomenological reduction. The 'discovery' of the existence of a 'second sort of observation' was not made by Maine de Biran in the course of an external inventory of our powers of knowing; rather the moment of this discovery was to be found in the phenomenological reduction itself with which it is but one. The entire work of Maine de Biran is no more than a vast phenomenological reduction as we can see most particularly in the theory of faculties which we have already spoken of, and in the theories of the category, the soul and finally the body, which we will study in succession. The idea of such a reduction can likewise be seen in the constant movement whereby Biranian thought opposes everything which is a construction, theory, hypothesis, probability, and denounces a priori all errors which would be avoided "if we had posited a line of demarcation more firmly between the domain of hypothetical truth and that of 28 Ibid. 45. " Ibid. 164, footnote. [Henry's italics] ,. Ibid. 116.

BIRANIAN A.."IALYSIS OF THE BODY

19

absolute truth."31 This is why the results acquired by scientific methods cannot claim to attain this absolute truth, not so much from the fact that in their domain they would be provisional or imperfect, but because they do not pertain to a domain wherein something like an absolute truth is possible. 'The hypothetical or conditional results obtained in this way, not having the means of interior verification, would not be able to give a solution to [26J any problem of this order;" regardless of what they might be, they would not even begin to broach, so to speak, questions posited from a reflective point of view."33 ever has it been said with so much force that the sphere of the absolute science of human reality is without relationship to the sphere of the sciences and, consequently, that it is totally independent thereof. "A truly first philosophy" must stick to tbe phenomenological datum in which being and appearing are identical, and it is this identification which is in principle realized in the spbere of subjectivity.34 If we fail to stick to such a datum, we risk, from a philosophical perspective, confusing it with various transcendent constructs; we risk mixing all levels, positing innumerable false problems, and finding ourselves driven to the worst non-sequiturs, "as if," for example, "I would deny the real perception of colors, basing myself on tbe fact that, not knowing tbe luminous fluid in itself, nor the perturbations whicb it communicates to tbe retina, it would be impossible for me to perceive its effects."35 Force, tbat entity so 'metapbysical' and so suspect, intervenes within tbe pbilosophy of Maine de Biran only when his philosophy has submitted to the treatment of reduction, when "its notion is reduced to its ultimate degree of simplicity, to everything that it can be for US." 36 This is the meaning of the Biranian thesis of "tbe immateriality of forces," and of the extremely important idea-and one which already marks a slight inclination of the tbought of Maine de Biran toward mysticism and toward a philosophy of absolute immanence-of the negation of any possible notion of "an absolutely foreign force."37 [27J We could mUltiply examples indefinitely because this movement of thought toward reduction is at the origin of all the analyses of Maine de Biran. Nevertheless, we must repeat the same warning regarding terminology Maine de Biran, Memoire sur fa decomposition ... IV, 233. This is a question of the order of abso1ute truths, truths which appear only from the "reflective point of view." 33 Maine de Biran, Memoire sur fa decomposition ... IV, 200. 3' And also, even though in another way, on the first phenomenological level of transcendent being. ss Maine de Biran, Memoire sur fa decomposition . .. III, 237, footnote. " Maine de Biran, Fssai sur les landements de la psychologie ... 575. [Henry's italics] 31 32

31

Ibid.

20

BIRANIAN ANALYSIS OF THE BODY

for Maine de Biran calls 'relative' what we have constantly called 'absolute', and he calls 'absolute' whatever has fallen beneath the blow of reduction and what is only 'possible', 'substantial', 'ontological', 'abstract'. Speaking of the idea of force and activity, the Essay says that when it is "conceived as relative before being conceived as absolute" it can furnish us with "the principle of the psychology or the science of ourselves."38 Hence, we find the return by way of reduction to an original sphere of certitude which will permit science to raise itself up upon a true foundation, one which will not be a mere notion, but existence itself: "It is here [in the actuality of the ego, viz. when the T is an 'actual' and not merely a 'virtual' force] and it is only here that it is for me the origin of the science identified with existence itself, not ontological or abstract, but real or felt."39 And this phenomenological foundation of the science of the faculties and of every absolute science will, in turn, be "the true object of metaphysics"4. which then ceases to be constituted by a body of transcendent constructs in order to become identified with a certain science, with psychology itself: "One would not be able to deny to such a metaphysics, so circumscribed within an entirely psychological field, the reality and the certitude or the very evidence of its object. This would indeed be a truly positive science, a science of the facts of the intimate sense bound to one another, and bound to a first fact, of itself evident, which would serve as foundation ... The objections ... attacking the reality of an entirely abstract metaphysics, [28] would not he able to touch it because questions which it would raise would never leave the domain of interior facts."4l For Biran, true metaphysics is a psychology. However, his thought is not tainted with psychologism,42 because the psychology which it promotes is in reality a transcendental phenomenology, an absolute science endowed with a characteristic of apodictic certitude. With regard to the ontology which every metaphysics elaborates, it is nothing more, in the case of a metaphysics "circumscribed 38 Ibid. 223; However, in the case of evidence, Biran uses the same terminology as we do and speaks, for example, of absolute evidence; cf. Essa; slir les fondements de la psychologio ... 537. 311 Maine de Biran, Memoire sur la decomposition ... III, 221. ["science ... itself," Henry'S italics] 40 This is the title of the first appendix to the £Ssa; sur les/ondements de fa psychologie ... 41 Maine de Biran, £Ssa; sur tes fondemellts de la psycllologie . .. 618-619. [Henry's italics] 42 As is the case for a number of philosophics of the 19th century, part icularly those related to Kant, and which, as far as the problems relative to psychology are concerned, are just as much victims of psychologism as are the empiricist philosophies which they believe they are opposing.

BIRANIAN ANALYSIS OF THE BODY

21

by an entirely psychological field," namely, a phenomenological field, than a phenomenological ontology. We can now understand what a philosopher like Maine de Biran could mean by an investigation into the "foundations of psychology." As a science, psychology requires a foundation. This foundation is furnished by the sphere of existence wherein internal transcendental experiences take place, a sphere of absolute certitude to which the reduction has led us. But in its content, psychology is rather constituted by a certain number of statements and propositions, namely, by a series of judgments whose body constitutes a science. The thesis of Biran amounts to affirming that the judgments of psychology are founded judgments or, as he says, "intuitive judgments," an expression which correctly notes that the judgment rests on something anterior to it and more primitive. This anterior something which is perfectly self-sufficient and in no way calls for the intervention of a judgment which would express it and hence effect its completion,43 this something which is therefore the absolutely concrete, is "immediate intuition," or [29J "internal apperception," viz. the internal transcendental experience. From this we can see that the question concerning the fonndation of psychology was the one posited in the Essay: "Is there an internal immediate apperception?" The nature of intuitive judgment in Biranian thought is clearly understood starting from th e following text which concerns the cogito around which all of psychology wiII be built: "Before thi s proposition, J think, J exist, can be expressed by these separate signs, J, think, exist, the existence of the r is given in an internal apperception or an immediate intuition. The intellectual act, which unites thought and existence as inseparable attributes of the essence of the subject J, is an intuitive judgment; the latter relies upon signs; the intuition is independent thereof."44 The endless discussions on the cogito merely deal with the intuitive judgment, the predicative form which, in the relationship between predicate and subject, surmounts the split which it itself had posited. But intuition, i.e. the internal transcendental experience, is unaware of such a split; it is independent of the predicative judgment and of predicative life in general; it escapes in principle all discussions, all reasonings, all critiques. Nevertheless, intuitive judgments bear within them a certitude which is the reflection, as it were, of the absolute certitude of the "primitive fact" upon which 43 Hence, with respect to life, psychology is something contingent; as a science, it is likewise an essentially historical being. 44 Maine de Biran, Essai sur les /olldements de fa psycho!ogie ... 525.

22

BIRANIAN ANALYSIS OF THE BODY

they are founded . The ensemble of these intuitive judgments of which the cogito as the "psychological axiom" is the first, constitutes rational psychology whose content is the same as that of the Essay of Biran. These judgments are not bound together by threads of a deduction properly so-called, but each is directly founded so that its truth, even if it is no longer original truth, nevertheless, escapes the vicissitudes of memory: "The intuitive judgments whose series I might well prolong ... are so many different expressions of the same fact [30] of consciousness."45 "The first intuitive judgment of a personal existence," the cogito, is not merely a "reflective judgment,"46 viz. this reflective judgment is not the privilege of the psychologist, rather it is a natural judgment which, in natural language, spontaneously expresses natural life, "a judgment coeval with our veryexistence."47

2. THE TRANSCENDENTAL DEDUCTlO

OF THE CATEGORIES

What we call "categories," viz. ideas such as force, cause, substance, unity, identity, person, freedom are those which Maine de Biran designates under the terms of "first notions", "reflective abstract ideas," "principles," "original ideas," and also, it would seem, "faculties." Actually, subjective ideology, which is the science of the faculties, not only includes the study of the categories, but also the study of notions such as imagination, memory, judgment, reasoning, etc.' Hence, the confusion which might possibly prevail concerning the exact extension of the term "faculty" is without importance; any confusion would be significant, for, with Maine de Biran, the theory of the categories is strictly parallel to the theory of the faculties in the narrow sense; the former theory, like the latter, amounts to bringing to light the sphere wherein all ideas-faculties or categories-find their source, a sphere of absolute SUbjectivity. To deduce the categories means, for Maine de Biran, to show that they have a mode of existence anterior to that whereby they appear to us in the form of ideas properly so-called and that in this more original mode of existence [31] they find their foundation. To understand, consequently, the theory of the categories is to be in possession of a philosophy which furnishes us with a status for this " Ibid. 566. 46 For Biran, a term synonymous with 'intuitive judgment'. 47 Maine de Biran, Essa; sur les /olldements de la psych%gle ... 627. 1 Commenting on the philosophy of Leibniz, Biran explicitly speaks of "faculties of understanding," of "forms or categories." cr. Memoire sur fa decomposition .. . III, 120.

BIRA1"lAN ANALYSIS OF THE BODY

23

mode of existence which is first of all and originally that of the category. This mode of existence is that of subjectivity considered as the sphere of absolute immanence. The idea of transcendental immanence alone permits us to understand what category must mean for Maine de Biran, not "an activity which is presupposed and not feit'" but rather something like an internal transcendental experience. The problem of the categories is now put into immediate solidarity with the problem of the status of sUbjectivity because Biranianism is first of all an ontology of sUbjectivity which could give a solution to the problem of the categories, a solution which is a remarkable complement to Kantian theory. It is because the subject "cannot exercise any of his faculties without knowing it, any more than he can know it without exercising it,'" that it becomes true to say that "the subject knows the categories," a proposition which, in Kantian philosophy, is without context. What was needed was to give to the word 'transcendental' a radically i=anent meaning, in order that the ensemble of the a priori conditions for the possibility of experience would no longer float freely in an indeterminate region and in the transcendence of a quasi-Platonic heaven. What makes experience possible would then not simply be posited as necessary in order to satisfy philosophical understanding, it would not be "a presupposed activity." To say that an activity is "felt" is to say that it exists phenomenologically as an unimpeachable datum, i.e. as an experience, or, in the terms of Maine de Bira n, that "speculative psychology ... is at the same time practical.'" And it is [32] because it is truly transcendental, i.e. based on a sphere of absolute i =anence, that the Biranian deduction of the categories is not truly a deduction but rather, as we will sec, a simple reading of the phenomenological characteri stics of the ego. Likewise for this reason, the deduction of each category is independent and refers directly to the ego, in the same way that each intuitive judgment of rational psychology is immediately based on a corresponding intuition. Thus we have proposed a first explanation of the "relationship bet ween internal apperception and original ideas," a proposition which forms the title of a section of the Essay and shows quite well the originality of Biran, which is to have bound the problem of the categories not to the problem of the spirit or reason, but to the problem of subjectivity. "Once we leave the absolute," says the Essay "we no longer have a foundation; we are beyond experience.'" That the Biranian deduction of the categories must receive 2 3

Maine de Biran, Mbnoire sur la decomposition . .. III, 58. [Henry's itaJics] Maine de Birao, Essa; sur les fondements de fa psychologie ... 85. [Henry's italics]

• Ibid. • Ibid. 219.

24

BIRANIAN ANALYSIS OF THE BODY

this meaning, viz. of being a reduction to the sphere of immanence, is further shown a) by the critique directed by Biran against various philosophies with respect to which he defines his own thought and b) by his exposition of the deduction of the main categories. A) The Biranian critique is directed both against empiricism and against rationalism. We will now expose in schematic fashion the argument of this twofold critique. The problem is one of defining the being of the categories, i.e. their nature and the region to which they belong. Empiricism knows only one ontological region, that of transcendent and sensible being. In such a region, there exists only facts in the sense of natural phenomena. Therefore, there is no region peculiar to the categories, the latter being nothing more than "ideas of classes or of purely artificial genre insofar as they are no more than collections of abstract modes of sensations,[33] and they depend on the nature of such compared sensations."· No matter how abstract such ideas may be, it is still necessary to understand what power effects their abstraction starting from a sensible datum. And Hume's recourse to feelin g is no more than a disguised appeal to subjectivity;' but Hume's empiricism is quite incapable of yielding a theory because it is an ontological monism and claims to know only one sort of experience and one sort of evidence. "The ideologists,"· says Biran, " .. . admit but one sort of experience, all of which is related to representative sensation, while they absolutely deny the reality of everything which is not physical.'" "They take," Biran says elsewhere, "exterior images as the exclusive type of all clarity or evidence."'· It is not because empiricism cannot give an account of our experience of the lVorld or the ideas implied therein, it is because it knows only this form of experience that Maine de Biran rejects it just as he rejects rationalism . There are, says Biran, two sorts of ideas, abstract, general ideas formed by comparing certain sensible qualities or modifications (ideas which are logical abstractions and necessarily collective) and on the other hand, reflective abstract ideas which are not impoverished when their extension is augmented, which are always universal and simple and which of them• Ibid. 458-459. 'l We already know that, according to Husserl, this need for a radical return to subjectivity is the hidden meaning of the philosophy of Hume. S The empiricism refuted by Maine de Biran is not merely English empiricism; there is a French empiricism whose critique profoundJy influenced the orientation of Biranian tbought. 9 Maine de Biran, Essai sur les fondements de fa psyclzologie .. . 619. " Ibid. 75.

BIRANIAN ANALYSIS OF THE BODY

25

selves enjoy a pecular and real value. The problem is precisely that of the status of these "reflective abstract ideas" which are none other than the categories. However, it will become apparent, at the end of the Biranian critique, that rationalism [34J cannot confer on these categories any definite and satisfactory status because, like empiricism, it is not in possession of an ontology of subjectivity and hence it finds itself totally helpless when the moment comes for determining, in a rigorous fashion, the mode of being of "innate ideas" and of the a priori. Against rationalism we must say that all knowledge is derived from experience because the condition for the possibility of experience is itself an experience. It is because the category was precisely for him an experience, and a specific experience, that Biran was able to circumscribe an absolutely original ontological region which, while being the SOUTce of all experience, was no less phenomenologically given and known. Henceforth, empiricism and rationalism were judged together: "Why do metaphysicians maintain that the primary and directive notions of cause, substance, unity, identity, etc. 'reside in the soul a priori" and are "independent of experience and prior to it, while the others would have it that they are deduced by way of a generalization or abstraction from facts given in external experience, i.e. sensation ... ? This is because, while misunderstanding the character and nature of primitive facts with which such notions are identified in their real source and taking them in that degree of generalization to which the repeated usage of the signs of language has raised them, they cannot recognize their primary character as facts."ll Already a passage from the Memoire established an explicit relationship between the doctrine "which reduces all the faculties of understanding to forms or logical categories and the doctrine which sees there no more than abstract characteristics of one and the same transformed sensation ."12 Leibniz and Condillac fall under the blow of one and the same critique whose meaning is the demand for an ontology of SUbjectivity [35]. In the absence of such an ontology, category can be no more than an abstract term, which it literally is in empiricism, but doubtless in rationalism as well; a condition for the possibility of experience burdened with synthesizing it, the category, if it is not included in an immanent theory, becomes a transcendent terminus 'x', analogous to any other transcendent terminus 'x' whatever. We might well show the necessity for admitting it, but no one has constructed anything like an explicative hypothesis for it; we have left the 11 12

Ibid. 32-33. Maine de BiraD, Memoire slIr fa decomposition ... III, 120.

26

B1RANIAN ANALYSIS OF THE BODY

sphere of certitude which is that of subjectivity, we build tbeories of knowledge whose content cannot but fall beneath the blows of the phenomenological reduction, and we have not yet taken cognizance of the conditions which a transcendental phenomenology of knowledge must satisfy. The result is that between the empiricist method, which by abstraction separates out the categories of sensible experience, and the reflective method which limits itself to realizing in a mind 'x' the same categories which it itself has also learned to recognize by reading them, so to speak, in sensible experience as that which is required to account for it, there is no essential difference. That this is in fact the thought of Biran on this point will be shown by comparing two texts from the Memoire, the first which treats of the empiricist method, the second of the method to which in fact rationalism resorts: "Bacon ... hearkens back to a real distinction between certain products of the intelligence to a hypothetical division between faculties or powers which were thought to form these products. Hence, the encyclopedic order does not in any way stern from a real and a priori division between the faculties of the soul ... but rather, the latter division is customarily established a posteriori, and according to the encyclopedic order itself. "13 "All distinctions or metaphysical precisions which might be made between these various points of [36] view, l4 are related only to an abstract world of possibles, whereby science is confronted with existence itself. But once we seek to reunite them to the world of realities, they are without applications; and their authors, brought back to the primary data of experience, find themselves constrained to use such data handed down from the oldest sorts of habi ts, without being able to go beyond them . Thus it is that metaphysics, while claiming to abrogate to itself the right to judge experience, by prescribing laws for it, rather receives its laws, adapts to its customs and sanctions them rather than rectifying them. "15 Actually, what Maine de Biran requires of us is an identification of science with existence, i.e. an understanding that existence is already a science, not an imperfect or provisional one, but the origin of all science, the origin of truth. The source of experience is not situated behind it but experience is its own origin. The reproach which Biran addresses to Descartes, to Leibniz, and to Kant is that with them "the source of all reality is realized outside consciousness." This is why, with Leibniz, the analysis Ibid. III, 32. It is a question of the viewpoints of Kant, Descartes and Leibniz which had just been studied in that order. I S Maine de Rirao, Memoire sur fa decomposition ... III, 122-123. 13 14

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27

of metaphysical propositions is identical to the geometric method for the resolution of equations and, in Kantianism, a mediation must intervene in the process of hringing to light the categories which are hardly known, but rather posited in an indirect manner." For lack of an ontology of subjectivity, the categories can only float about "in that region raised above all experience," such that if a critique must ultimately be directed against rationalism, it is the following: "The soul certainly has the power of making reflective acts and seeing what is in itself; moreover, the soul sees what is outside only by means of certain forms or ideas which are in [37] it alone; but there is no immediate or actual apperception of these forms or ideas at all, and the soul can grasp them only in the intuition of things. " 17 This text is explicitly aimed at Leibniz; however, it takes on for us a general and peculiarly infinite meaning, for it shows with startling clarity how the in-depth claim of Biranian philosophy is that of the constitution of a transcendental phenomenology of knowledge which in turn cannot but rest on an ontology of subjectivity. Biran recapitulates the meaning of the critique which he has addressed to the various systems of modern philosophy in the following terms: "It was merely a question of showing the origin which such systems hearkened to in certain excursions of the mind beyond the limits of fact, which alone can give a real basis to science."l8 The problem at the center of this entire discussion is that of the a priori. In the Biranian context, the term a priori has a pejorative meaning, it is synonymous with that of the absolute upon which we have already commented. Speaking of metaphysics, Biran says, in the first Appendix to the Essay, that "We can successfull y impugn a priori the reality of its object as science of the substance of the soul, or of every absolute and a priori principle."l9 The a priori designates that which, as the consequence of a "tendency toward the absolute," is posited and realized "beyond all possible observation," "in that region above and beyond all experience." What then does the Biranian critique of the a priori mean? It is essentially directed against admitting, at the origin of our experience, of a transcendent terminus 'x'. There is no doubt that that which is at the origin of our experience could not be the content or the object of our experience, because this content or this object presupposes a condition of possibility which is precisely that of the a priori itself; [38] but, on the other hand, if the a 16 This is why Kant needed a clue to discover the list of categories. " Maine de Biran, Essai sllr les fondements de la psychologie ... 137-138. [Henry'S italicsl 18 Ibid. 139 . .. Ibid. 617. [Henry's italicsl

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priori is something which we posit (in order, for example, to account for the possibility of experience), it itself becomes in turn a transcendent terminus and can no longer in any way render the services we expect from it. Experience cannot be conceived without an a priori which makes it possible, but this a priori can render experience accessible to us only if it is situated interior to ourselves and becomes one with the very being of our intentionality. What is here in question is not the idea of the a priori; it is its phenomenological status; the Biranian critique amounts to saying that the a priori cannot be a transcendent terminus, known or unknown, situated in front of or behind us ; it rather pertains to the sphere of absolute immanence. Interpreted within an ontology of sUbjectivity and henceforth understood in the light of its own internal exigencies, the idea of a priori ends up by finding a place in Biranianism, as we see in the following passage which treats synthetic judgments as intuitive judgments of rational psychology: "We might likewise say that these synthetic judgments are a priori not because they are independent of all experience, but because tbey stem directly from the primitive fact of existence."2o Moreover, now related to "the primitive fact of existence," i.e. situated at last in its true place, the a priori is that which alone permits us to understand that existence can be a science and that the being of the ego consists in an original knowledge. After having rejected innatism, after having declared that "The supposition that there is something innate is the death of analysis"21-by this he means to say that the admission, at the origin of th ings and as their principle, of a transcendent terminus which is of itself unknown is no more than a recourse to a Deus ex machina, whatever name might be given to it, e.g. whether spirit or [39) matter- Biran makes innatism submit to the treatment of the reduction and rediscovers it in the sphere of immanence understood in its true sense, at the heart of which he finds the ultimate reality, viz. the phenomenological transcendental ego. And this is how a question of infinite scope arises which, if we had the means at our disposal to receive it, would lead us to a region where we could contemplate the very essence of ipseity: "If the ego is not innate to itself, what can be?"'" B) In Biranianism, the deduction of the categories takes on a very particular meaning, without equal in any other philosophy. As we have seen, to deduce a category is to determine its status in a phenomenological ontology, it is to bring to light the mode of existence which pertains to it at its origin, and not to quibble about the necessity for admitting it as Ibid. 63 0. Ibid. 218. " Ibid. 351. 20

21

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29

a condition for the possibility of experience. The category will in fact prove - 0 be the condition for the possibility of experience, but this will be in an altogether different meaning, viz. in the sense that it is true to say that, without subjectivity, there is neither world nor experience for us. Hence the category is the original truth itself and this truth is the condition for the possibility of all experience, the original ontological possibility; but this original ontological possibility is of itself nothing 'possible', it is rather a fact, it is given, it is an internal transcendental experience. The ontological possibility is subjectivity; consequently, it does not need to be deduced, but simply to be read and known in the sphere of original existence pertaining to it. Actually, the deduction is a reduction; to deduce a category is to reduce its being to what it is originally and, this time, in an irreducible fashion. Before being deduced-i.e. before its being has been reduced-the category is a category of the thing, it appears [40] in the element of transcendent being as a characteristic of this being. Nevertheless, it cannot maintain itself in such a situation, with a status which is not originally its own. It will have to be deduced, i.e. a reduction must intervene in which its being will submit to a transformation and pass from the sphere of the transcendent to that of immanence and subjectivity. Take causality for example: It is first of all a causality of the thing, a causality in the thing. But, since the tbing is only a spatial and sensible determination, there is no place in it for causality, which is thus no more than an obscure force hidden behind it. The behavior of the thing, thus moved by an unknown agent, has a magic allure; we might well attempt to reduce this behavior to its v isible and objective characteristics; nevertheless, we have not succeeded in exorcizing entirely this idea of cause which remains behind as a sort of remorse of philosophy. The phenomenological reduction acbieved by empiricism and positivism is true on its level which is that of transcendent being; it shows that, on such a level, there is no place whatever for the idea of causality and that all representations which this idea might conjure up would only be imaginary representations of obscure forces and magical powers. The idea of causality is not, to speak as Maine de Biran, homogeneous to any sensible ideas whereby one might represent external phenomena. However, "Whence comes this lack of homogeneity? ... Why does the existence of a productive force or an efficient cause persist so obstinately in our minds ... while on the other hand this cause remai ns hidden to the view of imagination and forever conceals from us its face and its manner of working?"'3 23

Ibid. 227. [Henry's italics]

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The problem of the origin of the idea of causality is an ontological problem. If the idea of causality does not find its so urce in the sphere of transcendent being, it is necessary, in order to [41] account for this idea and its origin, to bring to light another region of being, i.e. to have at our disposal an ontology which can find a place for the original being of causality. T he deduction of the categories is possible only within an ontology of subjectivity. In the absence of such an ontology, the critique of the various philosophies which limit themselves to transcendent being-as if the latter were selfsufficient, without raising the problem of the possibility and the foundation of transcendent being-could not receive its full development. For example, we will show that the diversity of sensible intuition cannot be united in one consciousness unless it submits to the action of the category of causality; henceforth, the latter will appear as a condition without which there would be no world possible for us . But from the fact that the idea of causality is indispensable for the constituting of a human world and for the existence of a human experience, it in no way follows that man possesses such an idea. To posit causality as an a priori condition for experience, this does not yet furnish us with the origin of this idea. There is a world for us if this world submits to the world of causality, but whence is it that we have at our disposal a category such as that of causality; where do we get this idea, since it does not come from the diversity of sensible intuition? This idea comes from somewhere else, it is a priori; but what is this 'somewhere else', by what mystery is this a priori at our disposal in order that a world might exist for us? Moreover, in order that we might form the project of showing that a world is possible for us only if it subm its to the category of causality, is it not necessary that we are already in possession of the essential, i.e. of this category itself and its idea? Therefore, it is the problem of the origin of the idea of causality and not that of its reflective implication under the rubric of the universal condition for experience which must first orient our efforts toward a true deduction of the categories. As long as we have not satisfied the internal exigencies of such a problem, we will encounter [42] the worst difficulties : The world of experience in fact exists, it is certainly a real world; but that which makes it possible must be no less real, for lack of which the world of experience would cease in turn to be real in order to become a pure possible. Condition for experience and experience [itself] are both possible and hence there is not yet anything; or else, they are both real and then only a human experience and a human world exists. But we cannot take as our departnre point solely the reality of the world and then posit the condition for its possibility in the possible. Nevertheless, even if we feel authorized to proceed in

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31

this way, we would have no means for determining this condition for possihility in general, whose being would float aro und somewhere outside the real without our being able to say exactly where; we would have no means for giving it a name and for calling it causality, for example. Actually, it is causality which knows causality, and if we do not need to recur to empirical judgments to form its idea by abstraction, if, on the other hand, its deduction needs no hints or clues, it is because causality, like all the other categories, belongs to "an order of more intimate facts which constitute thinking and acting being, in the relationship of immediate knowledge with itself,"" it is because the problem of the categories cannot find a solution except in an ontology of subjectivity. In a text which treats explicitly of causality,25 Maine de Biran states: "The entire mystery of a priori notions disappears before the flame of internal experience, where we learn that the idea of cause has its primary and unique prototype in the feeling of the ego, identified with that of effort." Once the being of subjectivity has been identified by Maine de Biran with the being of the ego, the deduction of the categories likewise leads to the ego, the absolute being wherein the categories find their ultimate origin. [43J On the other hand, if the movement of this reduction does not result in putting the world in parentheses nor of withdrawing it from the action of the categories-a result which one might bring as an objection to Biranianism because, as we have shown, there is no place in the world for the being of the categories-it is because the world is a world lived by the ego and not separate from it such that it is not a dead world but has a life, the very life which the ego gives it. The life of the world is that of the ego and, henceforth, the world is a world wherein causes and forces intersect, it is a world with zones which are centers of interest, of attraction or repulsion, of strong points or weak points, which have a unity of action or reaction, a power, a force which I can neither ignore nor always defy. The world is a world which my causality penetrates, and dominates even in the refusals which it addresses to my causality, even in the resistance which it opposes thereto. Things have their category, their manner of acting i.e. presenting themselves to us, their manner of being for the ego. It is because the ego is causality, force, unity, identity, freedom, that things are realities, individualities, and they have an autonomous power as it were which is peculiar to them and defines them in our eyes. The world is the same because I am the same. The magic being of the world is ultimately irreducible, because the world is a human world. The world of science, a world which 24

25

Maine de Bifan, Essai sur les fondements de la psychologie ... 621. [Henry's italicsl Ibid. 227. [Henry's italics]

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lVould be without causes, is but an abstract world. There is no purely scientific world, for such a world, in the last analysis, would be nothing more than nothingness. The world of positivism is a surface world, a parade of images which will never be able to affect man nor do him the least harm; it is a world without relationship to man. However, if such a world exists in its bloodless and feeble reality, it is because it still hidesinit something for which it cannot account and which refers to the powers of the ego. The truth of weightiness, that which permits me to speak of it, even interior to a strictly scientific point of view, [44J is the fact that I can fall and that contact with the earth is a sort of blow which affects me. And how could positivism, or any scientific theory whatever, account for this contact, i.e. the presence of a world to the ego? This presence is based upon a transcendental relationship, and the world which this relationship yields to us is not primarily a scientific structure. Scientific relationships are based on other relationships and the primitive world comprised by these relationships is the world of meo. The cosmos is the ensemble of elements, i.e. of those things which are originally things for us. What makes water water is the fact that I cannot hold it between my fingers and the fact that if I plunge into it, I si nk down and risk drowning if I lack the proper technique. The liquid milieu means for me the end of the reign of solidity, the absence of solid ground and a stable point of reference. The pleasure of contemplating the sea does not pass without a secret anxiety; everyiliing bears within the heart of its being the image of a human destiny; the world is penetrated by a life which is mine: I am the life of the world. While proposing a subjective theory of the categories and identifying subjectivity and ego, Maine de Biran forbade every interpretation of the categories which would view them as rules for reflective thought and which would intervene only in the constitution, for example, of science, of rational language, or of logic. The categories are the powers of ilie ego, they are the fundamental modes of life, the primary determinations of existence. When we speak of the ideas of causality, unity, force, etc., we must be careful, since by these we can understand two quite different things: first of all, an idea of causality in which causality is the theme for thought. We form the idea of causality as we form the idea of the sea, of the proletariat, of ilie state. We have this idea and we use it in order to establish, for example, a causal relationship between two phenomena and by degrees to constitute a science. Such an idea of causality certainly exists, but far from our [45J being able to confuse it with the category of causality, ilie idea is rather founded on the latter. The category is not an idea in any way, but a manner of living the world, a structure of natural life. Therefore,

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33

the theory of the categories in Biranianism is no longer a theory of reason or of understanding, it has become a theory of existence. However, at the same time, because for him existence is ego, because the ego is subjectivity, because he gives an explicit theory of subjectivity, Biran had to avoid the reefs of numerous subsequent styles of thought which, under the pretext of fleeing intellectualism, and for lack of a theory of existence, i.e. an ontology of subjectivity, are only able to recur to descriptions, to simple suggestions, and ultimately fade into literature. By sinking its roots into existence, the Biranian deduction of the categories appeals, not to an indeterminate region of being-a region which would draw all its prestige and power from its very indetermination-but to a sphere of absolute existence which is determined, for it is the sphere of transcendental immanence. Hence, the deduction of the categories depends on a region which we know, for it is the original place of all knowledge. It is to this spbere of subjectivity, i.e. to the ego, that the deduction of each category is referred. We have shown, apropos of causality, how, as an idea, it is deduced starting from the original power which is one with the very being of our existence: "To de~y the feeling or the interior knowledge of power," says Maine of Biran, "is to deny one's entire existence." 26 The deduction of the idea of force shows well in what the Biranian deduction consists and how the being of the idea is borrowed from something more original, namely the very being of the ego: "The idea of force cannot actuaIly be grasped originaIly except in the consciousness of the [46] subject who makes the effort, and even when it is made totally abstract from the fact of consciousness, transported outside and totaIly displaced from its natural base, it always conserves the imprint of its origin."" It is because it bears the imprint of an origin which it does not contain that the world, as we have seen, has this magical characteristic which makes it a human world, but which first permits it to exist as a world, as the world of the ego. The deduction of the ideas of unity and identity have the same meaning: "Every idea of 'one' or 'same' [is] essentiaIly understood in the primitive fact or in the ego of which it is a form."' . The unity of the object is a derived unity, the original unity is that of the ego whose reproduction coincides with the apperception of itself as one in this reproduction. This apperception by the ego of the unity of its phenomenological being takes place, of course, on the level of absolute immanence, to the point of being constitutive-not in the habitual sense of a transcendent constitution, but in a radicaIly 26

21 28

Ibid. 232. Maine de Biran, Essai sur {es fondements de fa psychologie .. . 220. Ibid. 243.

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immanent sense- of the very being of the ego, which is hence a transcendental phenomenological being: "The ego ... constantly reproduces itself or apperceives itself in effort under one and the same form ." The unity of the world can only be founded on that of the ego: "Take away the ego, and there is no more unity anywhere."29 With regard to freedom, its idea is no less derived. Hence, the world is invested with the powers of the ego; the category which reigns in it is truly deduced, led there from another region which is that of subjectivity. It is in this latter region that the original category is situated and concerning which we can hardly say that it is still an idea: "This idea," says Maine de Biran, speaking of freedom, "is at root nothing but an immediate feeling." '· Biranianism [47J thus gives us an immanent theory of the categories and, in particular, of freedom, which leads it, in the latter case, to reject the messy confusion of limitless discussions dealing with the idea of freedom , but unable to question the being of the ego or the sphere of infinite and free existence proper to it." An immanent theory of the categories alone can explain that the latter are truly in our possession, that we can know them and recognize them originally on the transcendental level and consequently that we can know and recognize things. If the category were not immanent, it would be of no use to us at all in knowing things because we would not know the category itself immediately. Because it had an absolute understanding for the necessity of the immanence of the category, because it gave to this immanence a radical interpretation which led it to make the powers of knowledge and the conditions of experience to be the very being of the concrete ego, Biranianism not only takes its place among the eternal philosophies, it advances further than them to the interpretation of origillal truth as existellce. Subsequently, it is not easy to understand the deduction which Maine de Biran gives to the categories of substance and necessity, since he assigns to them a foundation which is not at all the original being of the subjective ego, but which is transcendent being, even more it is the foundati on of every transcendent being in general. It is true that the idea of substance seems first to have been deduced from a concrete mode of the existence of the ego, i.e. from effort, and its origin is hence the same as the origin of the idea offorce. But we have been alerted to the fact that the origin of the idea Ibid. 243-244. Ibid. 251. 31 "To make a probJem of freedom is to make a prob1em of the feeling of existence Of of the ego from which it in no way differs; every question concerning this primitive fact becomes frivolous by the very fact that it is questioned." Maine de Biran, Essai sur les fondements de fa psyc1z%gie ... 250. 29

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35

of substance is "mixed," that it [48] may also be found, not in effort, but in the terminus which resists effort, and it becomes more and more apparent that it is not from the unity of the ego but from this "substratum", which is the "resisting continuum", that the idea of substance is finally deduced. The polemic directed against the Cartesian cogito and against the appellation of substance given to the being of the latter, the rejection of substantialism in general, the appeal to activist philosophers such as Fichte, Schelling, or de Tracy, accentuate this movement and impede Maine de Biran from making any assimilation of substance to the primitive fact of the cogito. Substance and cogito are rather opposed as the being of the world is opposed to that of the ego. The origin of the idea of substance is the otherness of the world or rather, it is the foundation for this otherness, the resisting terminus upon which everything which peoples the world is built. As far as the category of substance is concerned, the fact of admitting as its origin that which, in the sphere of transcendent being, is the foundation of every transcendent being, is not, it is true, a mark of inferiority with respect to the other categories wbich are derived fr om tbe transcendental spbere of subjectivi ty for, in Biranianism, tbe existence of tbe resisting continuum enjoys the same absolute certitude as tbat of SUbjectivity and effort. The world is just as certain as my own existence. Certainly in Biranianism there is a phenomenological reduction, but the latter, as is the case with certain commentators on Husserl, does not question the being of tbe world; it rather seeks to circumscribe tbat which, in such a being, is original and endowed witb true certitude. It is tbe terminus of effort, the resisting continuum, which in Biranian philosophy plays such a role.32 The modes of sensibility- colors, sounds, odors, etc.-which are based upon the resisting continuum in order to constitute the sensible world, [49] alone fall beneath the blow of tbe reduction whereas the resisting continuum remains in the sphere of certitude as does the pure being of the ego now reduced to effort. Actually, the primitive fact is a "primitive duality." The two termini of this duality are equally endowed with an irreducible certitude and it is understandable, at first glance, tbat Maine de Biran had thought one terminus as useful as the other as tbe foundation for his "original ideas" and of these two termini, he based the categories of substance and necessity on the one which is both transcendent and fundative of the world. The deduction of the category of substance has the merit of bringing to light one of tbe riches of Biranianism, the existence in it of a sort of "ontological proof" revealing to us the presence at the heart of transcendent 32 Concerning the reason why the 'resisting terminus' belongs to the transcendentally reduced sphere of certitude, cr. infra, chap. II.

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being of an element endowed with an absolute certitude. The problem of the certitude of this element has, nevertheless, no relationship with that of the origin of the category. The latter would in no case find its foundation in transcendent being, for if things were this way, we would be deprived of the means for intuiting the milieu wherein it is thought to appear and, consequently, it would remain always unknown to us. In order to read the category of substance in the element of transcendent being, we must already be in possession of it, even if only in order to recognize it. But to say that we must already be in possession of it is to say that the being of the category belongs to the sphere of transcendental immanence in general, and that a deduction of the categories cannot receive a philosophical meaning unless it presents itself to us in the form of a return to such a sphere, to the sole region wherein something like an absolute beginning is possible. The uncertainties witnessed by the Biranian deduction-so strict to this point-are related to more general difficulties, when it encounters the categories of substance and necessity, difficulties concerning a problem which goes beyond that of the category a nd which not only Biranianism but almost all philosophies have [50J left in total ontological obscurity, the problem of passivity'3 Before returning to this particul ar aspect which the latter problem assumes in Biranianism, we will pursue our study of the philosophical presuppositions of the analysis of the body, assuming as acquired that the reduction to i =anence represents the essential in the doctrine of the Essay concerning the problem of the category. This viewpoint is not only justified by the fact that it is, with regard to the deduction of the quasitotality of original ideas, the viewpoint of Biran who likewise had a presentiment of the insufficiency of his deduction of the idea of necessity and also by the fact that, correctly interpreted, the deduction of the category of substance has the same meaning as that of the other categories, but it is necessary to maintain this point of view if we wish to understand the profound unity of Biranian ontology and in particular, his theory of the ego, a prelude to his theory of the body.

3. THE THEORY OF THE EGO AND THE PROBLEM OF THE SOUL

Biranianism is one of the rare philosophies, perhaps the only one, which claims to give us an ontological theory of the ego. What is here in question 33 We studied this problem explicitly in The Essence of Manifestation, chapters 37, 41,53, transl. G. Etzkorn (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1973) 281-297, 335-345, 468-478; concerning the problem of passivity in Biranianism, cf. infra, chapter VI.

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are not the characteristics of the ego or its properties or even the relationships which it can maintain with its biological or social milieu, with its time or with some other reality which it pleases philosophers, psychologists, or savants to consider and most often to raise subreptitiously to the level of the absolute. It is not a question of a psychological, sociological, or historical, viz. literary, description or even less of theories containing the presuppositions of such descriptions and aiming at justifying them, it is a question of an ontological analysis which deals with the being of the ego, i.e. [51J what makes the ego an ego, the essence of ipseity in it. Such an analysis leads to the identification of the being of the ego with that of subjectivity. The being of sUbjectivity was determined by Maine de Biran in rigorous fashion by its appearance [parailrej. This appearance was in turn determined in no less rigorous fashion starting from its radical opposition to the being of ideas or "notions," images or things, starting from its radical opposition to exterior being in general whose appearance, i.e. being, resides in its very exteriority. Such was the result of the problematic which went back to the found ati on of "a twofold observation," i.e. the bringing to evidence of two irreducible modes of manifestation. The determination of the being of the ego by the internal structure of amode of man ifestation truly has an ontological meanjng; tbe positing whicb it accomplisbes is not one of "some thing," of a "being" in the sense tbat common or philosopbical tbought understands it, viz. tbe positing of a being, because tbis "some thing" is ratber constituted by its "bow" and by tbe internal structure of its mode of manifestation. Thus tbe designation of tbe being of tbe ego as identical to tbat of subjectivity signifies that, for Maine de Biran, the ego is not a being. Because the ego is not a being, tbe opposition between tbe ego and tbe non-ego cannot be defined in ontic terms, for a sort of opposition necessarily intervenes between bomogeneous elements. Like the ego, the non-ego must bave an ontological meaning. The traditional interpretation of the Biranian opposition between the ego and the non-ego as being between effort and the real which resists it is unacceptable. For effort is still sometbing and so is tbe real wbereby it tests itself. It is tbe being of effort, its original mode of presence to itself whicb constitutes the ipseity of tbe ego; it is tbe mode of marufestation of tbe resisting continuum, its exteriority, wbich permits it to present itself once and for all anteriorly to its resistence and independent of it, as [52J otber, as that very tbjng whicb is otber. Tbe opposition between the ego and tbe non-ego is an opposition between tbe being of effort and tbe being of tbe world, it is an ontological opposition. Tbe tbeory of subjectivity is completed in Biranianism by the theory of

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the faculties and the categories, but for a philosophy which identifies the being of sUbjectivity with that of the ego, the subjective theory of the faculties and the categories, "subjective ideology," is at the same time a theory of the ego. Conversely, the fact that the subjective theory of the categories leads, as we have seen, to the ego as to the being wherein these categories draw their origin is a proof as well as a consequence of the subjective ego. The deduction of the categories, by very reason of the central role of the ego within this deduction, stands as a decisil'e confirmation of the thesis of the belonging of the ego to the sphere of absolute immanence. A proposition which we have already cited apropos of the deduction of the category of unity may seem equivocal: "The ego constantly reproduces itself and apperceives itself in effort in one and the same form." We might ask if the being of the ego which presents itself to itself in this reproduction is not subject to the category of unity insofar as it would be thought through this category, subsumed beneath it in the same fashion as any other being of the world. The philosophical direction of the Biranian deduction of the categories absolutely rejects such an interpretation. The category is identified in its original being with the very being of the ego; it is no longer possible for the latter to be a sort of object known by means of the category or constituted by it in any way whatever. The deduction has this primary consequence of tearing the beiug of the ego away from tbe sphere of transcendent being in general which is always the product of a constitution. The ego, on the other hand, is not constituted, it cannot be so as long as it is one in its being with the category, i.e. with the power of constitution in general, as long as it is itself such a power. [53] At the same time, the affirmation of the transcendence of the ego appears as deprived of all foundation and, because it destroys the characteristic which constitutes the very essence of ipseity, as a frivolous theory. The interiority of the immediate presence to itself constitutes the essence of ipseity, of 'ego-ness', as Maine de Biran says. "It is necessary," says the Essay, "that the ego had already begun to exist for itself."l If the ego is transcendent, it follows that it does not exist for itself but only for something other than it, some power 'x', some transcendental milieu, some purely logical subject, nothingness, or any other name which we might care to give it. Nevertheless, is not interiority a condition sine qua non in order that the concept of the ego might receive a meaning? If the being of the ego did not belong to the sphere of absolute i=anence, nothing would permit me to designate as mine-rather than that of some other man-that 1

Maine de Biran, Essai sur les /ondements de fa psych%gie ... 186.

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39

ego which now pertains to the sphere of transcendent being. Inversely, we do not see what would impede some other ego from insinuating itself into the sphere of absolute immanence from which this ego, which is mine, was ejected,. such that we might just as well be able to apply to the transcendent ego .as well as to the immanent ego this phrase which Maine de Biran obviously reserved for the latter: "I could doubt ... whether, when I feel or apperceive my indi vidual existence, it is not another being which exists in my place.'" The consequence of the absolute immanence of the ego is that the latter is identified in its being with life itself rather than being an abstract and generic term, the beginning of a rubric under which one could rank a certain number of phenomena which psychology traditionally attributes to the ego in opposition to those which it attributes to the exterior world : "The ego which exists or apperceives itself interiorly as one, simple, identical, is in no way some abstract of sensations as [54) that which is common to them and general in them ." 3 The belonging of the ego to the sphere of absolute immanence has as anothe r consequence, in the eyes of Maine de Biran, the fact that the knowledge of self must assume the characteristics which are those of this sphere, characteristics wh ich. determine it as a sphere ofabsolute certitude. In the ego's relationsh ip to itself, there is no place, in such a philosophy, either for bad faith , or for lying, or for deceit, because there is not, in this relationship, any distance, any constitution possible: "The only modifications or operations which can be attributed to the ego are those which are actually attributed in the fact of consciousness.'" Because the ego is subjectivity, it draws the knowledge which it has of itself from a source whose transparency is perfect, it is in structed in "the great school of consciousness which never deceives. '" The ego is not transcendent; it is, says Biran, in terms which will be the very ones employed by Husserl in characterizing the transcendental ego, "the closest to us, or rather ... it is ourselves."6 Certainly there is a transcendent ego, and one passage in the Essay relative to the idea of force gives us certain indications about what the mode of constitution of such an ego might be. We can read there that mingled with the idea of force which has been set apart from the consciousness of our own force, regardless of how abstract this idea might be, there is always "a confused feeling of , Ibid. Ibid. • Ibid. , Ibid. • Ibid. 3

258. 272. 152. 97. 180.

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this force of ours, constitutive of the I, which the mind seeks to separate out, but which is still intermingled in spite of us.'" This idea of force which, as we have shown, gives to the human world its magical characteristic, concerns more particularly,[55J interior to such a world, this ego which is now an existent. Actually, this idea is constitutive of its being, for the transcendent ego, whether within the milieu of the real or the imaginary world, is but one object more magical than the others, an occult force, which would be more menacing to me than the powers of nature if this transcendent ego were not truly at my disposal, for I can never entirely forget that it is constituted and that it is I, the original transcendental ego, who gives to it these powers and these designs by which I can only feign to be moved. 8 But the original transcendental ego is not constituted and it eludes the jurisdiction of the categories because of what is implied in this very interesting critique which the Memoire sur la decompostition, with respect to the theory of the faculties, directs against Locke and Descartes, who are accused of having posited these faculties "as permanent forms in which the feeling alld thinking subject subsequently apperceives his own existence, or represents to himself foreign existences," who are accused of having made them "real .. . by separating them from the ego,"· which subsequently-by means of such faculties-could only be represented, constituted, transcenden!.'o The belonging of the categories to the sphere of the absolute immanence of subjectivity, which is also the sphere of the ego, leads us to the understanding of the fundamental relationship between the ego and ontological knowledge. Experience presupposes a condition of possibility which is ontological knowledge itself; the analysis of the categories [56J is the bringing to light of the structure of this ontological knowledge. Philosophy begi ns with the questioning of such a knowledge without which there would Ibid. 222. The transcendent ego dealt with in this analysis is obviously my own ego; we are not dealing here with the ego of another person. 9 Maine de Bifan, Memoire sur fa decomposition ... III, 117. [Henry's italics] lO This immanence is again affirmed in an important text which gives a synopsis of the Biranian anal ysis concerning the relat ionships between the ego and the categories: "If it is sufficient for us to look within ourselves for the idea of being, substance, cause, the one, the same, then each of these ideas finds its immediate origin in the feeling of the ego ... By showing that all reflective and so-called innate ideas are but the primitive fact of consciousness, analyzed and expressed in its va rious characteristics, we shall have also made it apparent that these ideas have an origin because the ego or the individual personality has an origin." Maine de Biran, Essai sur /es fOlldemellts de /a psychologie ... 219. [Henry's italics] 7

8

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41

be nothing for us. But philosophy does not merit being called a first philosophy unless it takes this problematic concerning ontological knowledge as far as it can, and unless it deliberately takes up the task of determining in rigorous fashion the very being of ontological knowledge. The Biranian answer to this fundamental problem of philosophy is the following: The ego is the being of ontological knowledge. In a text which is perhaps one of the most important which philosophical tradition has handed down to us, Maine de Biran first says: "The feeling of the ego is the primitive fact of knowledge." Commenting on this profound affirmation, he expresses himself as follows: "Man neither perceives nor knolVs anything properly so-called, except insofar as he is conscious of his own personal individuality, or in other words, insofar as his own existence is a fact for him, or finally, insofar as he is an ego. "11 Here we are inevitably faced with the interpretation which we have proposed concerning the Biranian conception of ipseity, an interpretation which might be thought to surpass somewhat the letter and the spirit of the work of Maine de Biran. Actually, the ego cann ot be understood as the condition for all knowledge unless it is not "some thing", not a being, as we have said, but precisely the condition and the very element of knowledge, the ontological element of pure manifestation. Furthermore, we ought to understand this in its most original structure, viz. insofar as it does not coincide with the manifestation of exteriority, but rather excludes this from itself at the same time as it gives it a foundation. It is because the ego presents itself to itself in an internal transcendental experience, or rather, it is because it is the very fact of thus presenting itself, because its structure is the structure of this experience [57], its substance and peculiar phenomenality-which we have elsewhere called the fundamental ontological event of auto-affection- that it realizes in itself the first condition of the experience of the world and the effectiveness of our access to things. This is why, shortly after he has posited the identity of the being of the ego with that of ontological knowledge,12 we see that Maine de Biran determines this 11 Maine de Biran. Essai sur les fondements de ta psych%gle ... 114-115. [Henry's italics] 12 This identity is again affirmed by Biran in a text where he reveals the general project of his ontology; he states that he intends to demonstrate "that there is a fact or a real mode-unique (sui generis) in its own genre-totally based on the subject of sensation who is made such by this very mode itself; (to demonstrate] that this mode can subsist and of itself have the characteristic of being a fact of consciousness without being actually and indivisibly united to any passive affection of sensibility or to any external representation; [to demonstrate] that in it is found, together with the feeling of individual personality, the special origin of all p rimary ideas of cause, force, unity, identity, substance whose usage

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being by the way in which it presents itself to us, and we likewise see that he is preoccupied with defining the sui generis mode whereby this original auto-presentation to self, which is the very phenomenon of the ego and of subjectivity, takes place. This being, he says, "is in no way a phenomenon nor an object which represents itself. .. it is an interior fact sui generis, rather obvious without doubt for any reflective being, but which requires being apperceived by means of its own peculiar and special sense." Hence, the being of the ego becomes one with original truth itself which is, if you wish, the auto-knowledge of ontological knowledge, i.e. its foundation, its true and subjective being. Consequently, "There is no question here whatever of proving this fact which itself serves as the foundation for aU proofs, for all truths of fact."13 It is only when it is formulated interior to a problematic of subjectivity that the identification of tbe being of the ego and that of ontological knowledge takes on a philosophical meaning. Outside such a context, tbe determination of the ego [58] as being tbat of ontological knowled ge has only a formal value and becomes analogous to the Kantian tbesis according to which the "I think" ought to be able to accompany all our representations. The latter thesis does not constitute a veritable theory of the ego, and because it allows the original essence of presence as presence to self to escape it, it does not constitute a sufficient interpretation of the nature of ontological knowledge. I n this perspective, the ego is merely a logical, purely formal subject for which the designation 'nothingness' would doubtless be more suitable than that of being. [t is by way of a strange paradox that the indepth study of ontological knowledge which is related, if not identified witb the ego, still yields us nothing regarding the being of the ego. Tbe presence of an ontology of subjectivity-lacking in Kantianism-is rather that which constitutes tbe argument in Biranian tbought. Henceforth , within this ontology of subjectivity, the thesis, according to which the ego is the being of ontological knowledge, no longer makes this ego a simple form; it rather gives basis to the possibility of this knowledge at the same time that it determines it as the very being of life and of concrete and personal existence. Tbe constitution of the world is not tbe fact of an impersonal activity, detached from the individual henceforth reduced to some empirical status; this constitution becomes one with the apprehension of by our minds is so constant and so necessary." Maine de Biran, Essai sur les fondements de fa psycho[ogie ... 176. We see here unequivocally that ontological knowledge is a real

being and that this being is that of the ego. 13 Maine de Biran, Essai Slir les /ondements de la psych%gie ... 115-116. [Henry's italicsl

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the world, it is our way of living it, and it is only within such a life that we know the world. Ontological knowledge is an individual knowledge; the being of each individu al is the light of the world, and more profoundly, it is, as original truth, the light of this light. The absolute immanence of the ego, the condition for its ontological determination, can be established once again starting from the analysis which Maine de Biran consecrated to the problem of the soul. Actually, this analysis will show us tbat if the original being of the ego cannot be a transcendent being, neither must it be assimilated to a transcendent terminus [59] 'x'-which is just another way of affirming its immanence. The problematic of the soul is presented to us in the discussion of the Cartesian cogito. The cogito, as an internal transcendental experience in which the existence of the ego is immediately given to itself, is recognized by Maine de Biran as the very foundation of philosophy, and Cartesianism, which brought to light such a foundation, is "the Mother doctrine."" The cogito asserts the phenomenological unity of the being of the ego with that of subjectivity which Maine de Biran calls, with Descartes, thought or apperception, the latter naturally being understood as an internal transcendental apperception. "The simple proposition I think, identical to J exist for myself, announces the primitive fact, the phenomenal liaison between the ego and thought or apperception in such a way that the subject does not begin or continue to exist for himself except to the extent that he begins or continues to apperceive or to feel his existence, i.e. to think."l5 The discussion can bear only on the formulation of the primitive fact and on the deductive appearance which it risks assuming, but this is only an appearance. It is when the soul intervenes in Cartesianism in order to designate the being of the ego identified with thought that the critique begins. We must understand the originality of this critique and be careful not to confuse it with the critiques which are habitually directed against the Cartesian cogito notably by classical French philosophy. This risk of confusion is all the more great because Maine de Biran seems to reproach and actually does reproach Descartes for his substantialism, which, as all agree, is the most classic and banal critique. This reproach of substantialism, moreover, was directed against Descartes by the philosophers who were inspired by [60] Kant and notably by the French neo-Kantians, and it would be surprising, after everything we have said concerning the problem of subjectivity and its history, concerning Biran's isolation in this regard, if the critiques of the Essay were similar to classical critiques; rather, if our analyses have 14 16

Ibid. 131. Ibid. 124.

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been exact, they should not only be different, but opposed. The truth of the cogito has not been altered because the latter affirms that the ego whose existence is identified with that of thought is a real being. Rather, it is the ontological realism oj the Cartesian cogito which constitutes, in the eyes of Maine de Biran, its truth and profundity. While classical philosophy reproaches Cartesianism for its passage from the cogito as pure phenomenon of thought to the affirmation of the being of this thought, as the being of the ego, Biran, follo wing herein the authentic teaching of Descartes, posits the following: 1) that pure thought, because it has a mode of original revelation which is not the mode of manifestation of things, also has an original being which, while being different from transcendent being, is no less a real being; 2) that this being, which is thus phenomenologically determined, is the very being of the ego. Where then is the critique? In the philosophical movement of the cogito there is truly an illegitimate passing from a true conception to a false conception; but this passage, in the eyes of Maine de Biran, is no longer a passage from pure thoughtotherwise totally undetermined in classical philosophy which can only repeat that the spirit is not the thing, that it is absent, or when it seeks to surpass this purely negative determination, it can do no better than posit it as nothingness-to a real ontological determination; this passage now takes place beginning with the being of the ego, originally and correctly interpreted as that of subjectivity and the internal transcendental experience, in order to lead to the positing of the ego as an element oJtranscendent being. The sole reproach which Biran directs against Descartes' notion of the soul is its determination as a transcendent being 'x', instead of [61] absolute subjectivity where the being of the ego is affirmed in its radical immanence. If Descartes was incorrect in calling the ego a soul and a substance, this is not because, while proceed ing in this fashion, he made this ego a being; it is because this being is no longer, according to Biran, the one which Cartesianism itself, in its infinite profundity, originally recognized, viz. a being determined phenomenologically by an appearance whose absolute originality necessarily had to lead a phenomenological ontology to circumscribe a being of an absolute originality, namely the being of the ego. The Biranian critique in fact intervenes at the moment when the cogito thought it was able to posit "the real and absolute existence of the soul or of the thinking thing." However, we have already indicated that with Maine de Biran the term 'absolute' does not apply to the sphere of immanence which we call absolute, but rather designates that which no longer belongs to this sphere, that which is outside it and hence finds its place

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45

interior to transcendent being. The syllogismI. which Biran attributes to Descartes is the following: "I think, I exist for myself ... However, everything which thinks or knows that it exists, exists absolutely as substance or thinking thing outside thought. Therefore, I exist substantially."17 We have underlined the essential 'absolutely', 'outside thought'. The critique of the Cartesian cogito has therefore exactly the same meaning as all the Biranian analyses which we have encountered to this point: The principle is always the same, it is the need for a return to a sphere of absolute immanence, as the milieu of existence of an absolute being, it is the call for the need to undertake a phenomenological reduction whose work of destruction can alone bring to light the fundamental structure [62J which is concrete existence, ontological knowledge, and finally, the element of the science of the human spirit which makes philosophy possible. "By suddenly spann ing the entire interval which separates the fact of personal existence or the feeling of the ego from the absolute notion of a thinking thing, Descartes opens the door to all sorts of doubts concerning the ob;ective nature of this thing, which is not the ego. "18 Maine de Biran in no way reproaches Descartes for ha ving considered the ego as a being, for having determined the ego as a soul; rather he reproaches him for having determined as the soul something "which is not the ego", something which is "absol ute," which is transcendent, wh ich is no longer certain, which eludes the grasp and the competence of a transcendental phenomenology, which is no more than a term 'x', the object of a belief, the postulate of a theory. The soul could not be anything other than the ego, but the ego has a being which is precisely the soul. Consequently, either the soul designates a being which is not determined interior to the sphere of absolute immanence and SUbjectivity, but is rather situated beyond this sphere and finds itself to be transcendent with respect to it, and hence, by virtue of the very phenomenological presuppositions ofBiranian ontology, it can only be considered as an insidious hypothesis, it is "the soul (and no longer the ego) of a metaphysical hypothesis;"" or else the soul designates nothing other than the very being of the ego as subjective being, and not only does it have the rights to citizenship in Biranian philosophy but it Ie Let us note again that Biran in no way reproached Descartes for having constructed a syllogism; the mode of expression of the cogita is not a determining one; we ask only that we be given a concept of what the cogllo is in itself-this atone is important-and the cogito is neither a reasoning process, nor a proposition, nor anything of the sort. 11 Maine de Bifan, Essai sur les fondements de la psychologie __ . 124-125. [Henry's italics] 18 Ibid. 127. [Henry's italics] 18 Maine de Biran, Memoire sur fa decomposition ... III, 218.

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further constitutes its very foundation, and its acceptance amounts to the affirmation of the real being of the ego which is no longer a pure, logical, and formal subject, but life itself in its concrete and absolute existence. This distinction frees us from "the constant equivocation which is born [63] of the common sign given to two subjects of attribution, viz. the soul which is the ego and the soul which is not the ego. "2. The total effort of the biranian critique aims at founding the being of the ego and this task of foundation takes place in. conformity with the progress of a reflection which essentially seeks the ontological region wherein it is possible to determine, in a rigorous and certain fashion, the being of this ego. Henceforth, it becomes apparent, to the gaze of this type of reflection, that the being of the ego is precisely that of a determined region : in fact of the only region wherein an absolutely certain determination is possible. Therefore, it is the possession of an ontology of subjectivity which permits Biranianism to resolve the problem of the being of the ego as the main articulations of the critique of the Cartesian cogilO clearly show: "Do we stick to the knowledge of feeling or to the immediate internal perception of the thinking subject?" And then the determination of being in this case is not on ly possible but "perfect." "Do we asp ire to an exterior and objective knowledge of the thinking thing outside thought? This mode of knowledge, to which we vainly seek to reduce everything, and which is certainly not primitive knowledge, is without any application to the thinking subject,"'! i.e. to the ego. By denouncing ontological monism as the absolutely incorrect horizon for elaborating the question concerning the being of the ego, the Biranian problematic not only raises itself to a position from which the philosophical theses of modern thought relative to the soul, to the being of the ego, to self-knowledge, must be re-questioned and re-examined upon entirely new bases, but it also shows itself to us in its absolute opposition to the Kantian critique of the para logism of rational psychology, a critique whose heritage weighs heavily [64J on contemporary conceptions which we felt obliged to oppose. The upshot of the Biranian critique of the soul is the presence of an ontology of SUbjectivity, it is the richness and profusion of a type of thought which is no more than a phenomenology-the principle, if it can be called such, ·of the Kantian critique is, in the present case, an indigence so complete that we must not merely affirm that in Kantianism 20

21

Ibid. Ill, 189. Maine de BiraD, Essai

italicsl

Slir

les /ondements de fa psych%gie ". 128-129. [Henry's

BIRANlAN ANALYSIS OF THE BODY

47

internal experience is reduced to the same status as the experience of the world, but that, precisely fo r this reason, it is far more imperfect than the latter of which it is but a pale imitation, and actually an impossible imitation according to Kant's own testimony, where the clever German thinker did not think it necessary to ask about this strange paradox according to which the soul would be less easy to know than the body, and where the philosophical presuppositions whose consequences had to lead to the ruin of psychology and all positive science of human reality in general were never questioned by him." Whereas the Transcendental Dialectic brings to light the difficulties which preside over the constitution of the soul as substance, and then over the constitution of internal experience, Maine de Biran asserts that the soul is in no way constituted, because the internal experience in which the being of the ego is given to itself is radically immanent. It is this latter point which the Biranian critique will confirm, not concerning the Cartesian cog ito, but the concept of the soul in general, and in particular Stahl's concept of the soul. If the soul, i.e. the being of the ego, is not determined interior to a [65] sphere of a bsolute immanence, it becomes either a transcendent ego or, and this is the case with which we are now concerned, a transcendent terminus 'x'. The latter is then placed at the source of co nscious determinations of the ego, it is their hidden origin. Why would not the soul, situated behind us as an absolute force from which our conscious life is derived, be also the cause of the organic effects which we observe in our own body? This is the thesis of Stahl concerning which Biran gives this remarkable critique: "Considered as the cause of movements or the unknown productive force, consequently distinguished from the ego which exists on ly insofar as it perceives and perceives only in sofar as it acts, the human soul could then be ranked in the class of all other forces for which there is no science whatever properly so-called, unless it be a science of sensible effects wherein alone such forces can manifest themselves. Thus it is that philosophers were led to construct an objective idea of a thinking and motive principle ... Stahl, having realized the substance of the soul outside the ego, was led to relate to this common cause 'x', the fu~ctions which could only be imagined

:!:l If we insist on the opposition between the doctrines of Biran and Kant regarding the soul, it is not merely because the critique ordinarily directed against id. IV, 7 footnote. [Henry's italicsl

164

I,

, j"

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into account the existential distinction between activity and passivity is justified. The understanding of the validity of such a project is at the same time a more profound understanding of the dogmatic content of this [227] ontologica l theory of the body; our body is an act, but it is often an act which does not act, our body is essentially moving, but it is likewise a question of an immobile movement. The common root of our acting and sensing is a power which is more profound, which gives basis to both of them; it is habit upon which the unity of our bodily life is based throughout all the modalities whereby it unfold s itself; it is the original being of the body, finally, it is the ego. Only a theory of original ontological passivity will permit us to understand in a more precise way just what this common root is. But what we can presently understand is the necessity of the existence of a principle which gives basis to the unity of our bodily life, a unity of which this life is the very experience. Before returning to this problem, we would first like to show quickly, starting with one of the more remarkable analyses of Maine de Biran, how the unity of movement and sensing and, subsequently, the identity of a common ontological foundation are required by the development of the philosophy of the body. Let us consider the union of the sense of hearing with that of the voice. When I hear a sound which emanates from an external object, it is through the operation of a passive synthesis that this sound is apprehended by the ego. Let us say, in Biranian terms, that the feeling of causality, or of personality, is associated according to a simple relationship of co-existence or simultaneity with the passive sonorous impression. When I hear a sound which I have voluntarily produced by the use of speech, the internal transcendental experience which corresponds to this phenomenon is twofold: On the one hand, it is tbe experience of the act of speaking and, on the other hand, the subjective and passive grasping of tbis speech. The sonorous impression, as a transcendent element, maintains a twofold relationship with subjectivity, i.e. with the ego, viz.-to speak as Maine de Biran does-a derived relationship (insofar as it is a spoken word) and a simple relationship of co-existence (insofar as it is a 'heard' word). What [228] is here in question is the ontological homogeneity of the act of speaking and the act of hearing, i.e. the unity of the original being of our body. However, we have shown that this homogeneity and, consequently, this unity resides in the subjective nature of the two acts in consideration. If we care to have a confirmation of this thesis, we need only reflect on the problem which arises when I voluntarily reproduce a sound which I have primitively heard in a passive systhesis. How is it that I can reproduce such

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a sound voluntarily? There exists a knowledge which does not only co-exist with my first passive apprehension of the sonorous impression but which is one with this apprehension, viz. insofar as it is subjective, insofar as it is an internal transcendenta l experience, it is precisely an original knowledge of this type. And it is because I am in possession of such a knowledge (we have sufficiently explained what this "to be in possession of" means) that I can just as easily recognize this sonorous impression whenever it is reproduced, as when I reproduce it myself voluntarily should I so desire. This voluntary reproduction is possible only because it is the motor modification of an intentionality of which the ego is already the possessor, interior to the ontological phenomenon of habit. We say 'modification' and not, for example, 'motor actualization' in order to signify that intentionality is not absent from the first experience of passive apprehension, but that it rather constitutes the essence of hearing in exactly the same way that it constitutes the essence of speaking. Doubtless, speaking is not listening, but the difference which separates these two phenomena is an existential difference, it is not an ontological difference. Speaking and listening are two Erlebnisse; the milieu in which they take place and wherein, in a general way, the two phenomena of activity and passivity take place is ontologically the same, it is that of absolute subjectivity. The ontological nature [229] of the latter is the reason why the unity of this milieu is nothing other than that of knowledge. It is precisely because the unity of a knowledge subtends the lived experiences of hearing and speaking that a passage is possible from one to the other, that we can say again what we have heard and that we can hear what we say. To say that the ontological unity is that of knowledge is to refuse to situate this unity 'beyond' or 'inside' phenomena; it is to make it possible as effective unity. This means then that ontological unity is also, in a certain way, an existential unity, that in spite of the differences which separate our experiences (of speaking and hearing for example) with regard to their transcendental phenomenological content, this content is, nevertheless, the same in many ways. This is truly the mystery of the unity of the ego, of its phenomenological unity throughout the diversity and the phenomenological differences of its multiple experiences. However, this mystery is not a sort of 'beyond' of our reason, or rather it is only in the eyes of such a reason that it can appear as an incomprehensible fact. For the ego itself this mystery disappears because it is its immediate life, i.e. not a mystery at all, but an absolute transparency. If the ontological phenomenon of habit becomes troubled by an exterior look, it is because we cannot understand life by misunderstanding its fundamental ontological character, viz. the one whereby it is defined

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as a milieu of radical immanence. It is precisely by re-immersing the body in such a mi lieu and understa nding it as a subjective phenomenon that we have arrived at an ontological interpretation of habit, i.e. at the affirmation of the immediate and concrete presence at the very heart of phenomenological experience, of an ontological power which is broken up and already represented in a transcendent milieu when we speak of "the ensemble of the powers of our body." To such a conception of the original being of our body, Maine [230] de Biran doubtless rose when he speaks to us of a state of immanent effort and when he bases the unity of the ego on this effort. Actually, we are not dealing here with a determined effort presiding over the accomplishment of some movement or other, or over the active exercise of some sense or other, but a sort of latent tension which is but one with the very being of our absolute body and which maintains, so to speak, in the unity of its own life, our organ ic body and perhaps the effectiveness of every presence of the world in general. This latent tension is also the essence of sensing and the essence of the power of being affected as well as the essence of motor effort, it is truly the interior trembling of knowledge insofar as this knowledge is a live and not a dead knowledge. It defines the state of alertness, i.e., for Maine de Biran the actuality and the reality of experience, and at this level which is truly one of an origin, there is not yet any place for a distinction nor a fortiori for an opposition between activity and passivity. By going back to a common root of activity and passivity, by asserting their homogeneity interior to one and the same ontological status, are we not suppressing the very obvious difference which separates these two modes of our life, are we not at least minimizing the essential opposition which Biranianism in many ways seems to establish between them? Actually, the ontological homogeneity of activity and passivity is the only possible foundation for their distinction. To the extent that Biranianism does not recognize such a homogeneity when it asserts, as is explicitly done in the Memoire sur la decomposition that " the active modes alone are homogeneous among themselves,"" it is then rendered incapable of assigning a foundation for the difference which is inaugurated between the latter and other determinations of our experience. First of all, if we compare the Biranian distinction between activity and passivity to this same distinction, as Condillac, for example, conceives it, we can easily see [231] the progress which has been made. Actually, it is from a purely external viewpoint that the author of the Traite des sensations considered the opposition in question. The 21

Ibid. IV, 154.

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statue, he said, is active when the cause which modifies it is in it, it is passive when this cause is exterior to it. But Biran understands the necessi ty for placing himself within the statue, i.e. in a sphere of absolute immanence, in order to give a phenomenological meaning, and consequently, a real meaning to a distinction which the individual can make because this distinction "takes place within him."" It is because he has an internal transcendental experience of his activity that the ego recognizes it as a state distinct from that which is his when this activity is not exercised. Nevertheless, what takes place in the latter case? Is there simply a privati on and absence of the feeling of action? But then there would be nothing at all if it is true, as Biran asserts so many times, that the being of the ego is identical to this feeling of action . But we would not be able to oppose an active state to a passive state of the subject; the subject would exist in one case, viz. as active subject, but in the other he would no longer exist; the experience of passivity would be denied him and no comparison between the active and passive modalities of his life would, henceforth, be possible for him. Consequently, it is only if an experience of passivity is originally given to the ego that we are in the presence, in this case of the passive life, of a phenomenological content which can then, and only then, be compared and opposed to another equally original content, i.e. to another mode of the absolute life of the ego. If, from a strictly Biranian viewpoint, it is not possible for this ego to establish an opposition nor, first of all, to make a comparison between his activity and passivity, it is because in reality one of these two terms is lacking to him, it is because too often the conditions necessary for the existence of an effective experience of passivity are not recognized. Obviously, these conditions can [232J consist only in the admission of a passive intentionality, of a passive synthesis, not as an explicative hypothetical principle, but as a real phenomenological experience given to the ego in a sphere of absolute immanence. Because our experience of passivity is truly an original experience of this type, we do not need to oppose it to the active modes of our existence in order to recognize it and define it in itself. Abstraction made from every context and every contrast, this experience was lived as 'passive, it needed no truth discovered from somewhere else, it was already the certitude of this truth. The absence of a positive ontological theory of passivity puts Maine de Biran into other difficulties which we will now quickly examine. If subjectivity is actually present only when it decides to act according to a specific motor intentionality, then each time such an intentionality becomes blurred " Ibid. IV, 23.

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or is interrupted, this same subjectivity must also cease to be the very real experience which is but one with our very existence, actually it mu st cease to be the experience of any existence, it is no longer anything more than nothingness. The embarrassment experienced by any philosophy which claims to make subjectivity anyth ing other than what it lirst is, viz. the original experience of its own life, was felt by Mai ne de Biran each time that he had to circumscribe the nature of the determinations of the life of this subjectivity, determinations which were none other than motor determinations. The uncertainties to which his analysis of the sense of sight testify are particularly revealing in this regard . The moment it is a question of revealing at the heart of our power of seein g the immanence of a motor effo rt which orients one's look and chooses the visual sensations which it yields, Biranianism moves in a domain familiar to it. But seeing is not always looking. There is a passive seeing in which every motor effort is absent and wbicb is rather identified with tbat latent tension of whicb we have spoken and which constitu tes both the essence of every passive synthesis and the (233) original form of the life of our body. Nevertheless, this passive synthesis is a determination of subjectivity and, consequently, an experience. Maine de Biran is too careful a psychologist not to recognize the existence of this phenomenon of passive vision, but when the moment comes for him to oppose it to active seeing or a deliberate look, he can do it only in these terms: "This distinction between simple seeing and looking ... is entirely based on the relative absence or the immediate presence of the will."" What ought we to understand by this "relative absence" of the will, unless it be the mode of existence which is that of subjectivity in passive vision and, hence, a positive mode ? How can we account for the positivity of such a mode in Biranianism ? The insufficiencies of the Biranian theory of vision have a curious effect. It is to the sense of sigbt that Biran links all the philosophical errors of the empiricist tendency, of sceptical idealism as well as the doctrine of transformed sensation. It is because philosophers who have maintained such doctrines " have reasoned as an intelligence reduced to the sense of sight wo uld do" that experience is dissolved in their viewpoint into imaginary composites, into phantoms and transitory modes where "everything is ... accident," where "nothing is substance. "" Does this dissolution of experience, so well described by Maine de Biran, truly stem from the fact that the philosopher takes only the sense of sight into consideration, to the exclusion of 23 Ibid. IV, 82. [Henry's italics] " Ibid. IV, 93; the philosophers here alluded to are obviously Hum. and Condillac.

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all others?" Does it not rather tbreaten every pbilosophy which allows interior experience to flyaway into the transcendent flux of its representations because, for lack of an ontological theory of passivity, it bas previously made sUbjectivi ty to vanish into notbingness, such tbat nothing any longer maintains [234] tbis sUbjectivity in tbe region wherein the effectiveness of its life takes placc, i.c. in a spbere of absolute immanence? Nevertbeless, tbe insufficiency of tbe Biranian theory of passivity likewise reacts upon the very conception of activity and again in tbis respect, it leads to tbe most serious consequences. Once a pbilosophy bas subm itted to tbe threat of an eventual identification of subjectivity and notbingness, it becomes tbe prey of an interior dialectic wbose power of destruction is then not easy to stop. Let us consider active seeing: It is dependent upon tbe attention, i.e. an eminently active mode of the life of tbe ego. Motor effort, which directs the look in the desired direction, ceases well before our contemplation of the object ends. However, once our attention is no longer confused with an explicit motor effort, Biran is incapable of preserving its peculiar ontological character, its subjective and immanent character. Actually, the latter is abolisbed once attention is represented to us as losing itself in tbe elements toward whicb it surpasses itself, as being absorbed in these modes. " The agent wbo represents," says Maine de Biran, "disappears or bides himself beneath the represented thing." Nevertheless, where does tbis absorption of subjectivity in the object lead, this disappearance of the element of its own life for tbe sake of a transcendent being wbicb intentionality can aim at and attain only on conditi on of continuing to be a subjective 'aim' of tbis sort, to what does it lead unless it be to a destruction of tbe very concept of sUbjectivity in its peculiar ontological meaning? Tbe ontological meaning of tbe concept of subjectivity finds its expression, as we bave seen, in the affirmation that sUbjectivity is reflection; the very moment when this meaning is lost to Biran is precisely tbe one in wbich be declares that attention is not a reflection. "This voluntary power which we call attention, is in no way directed by the vivacity of its modes, even though it [235] is related only to them, without reflecting within .... "26 Rather it is because each mode of the life of subjectivity belongs to it and participates in its radical interiority that it is possible to construct for ourselves an idea corresponding to this mode and in a general way to give a meaning to "reflected abstractions," to "simple ideas of reflection." Because he failed to recognize the subjective nature of attention, Biran naturally If thi s conception of the sense of sight were correct. how could it result in an error? Maine de Bican, Memoire slIr fa decomposition . . . IV. 92. [Henly's italics] - This text is all the more significant because his analysis here deals with the active life of the ego. 25 26

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comes to say with regard to active seeing itself, "There are ... in the modes which are particularly related to the exercise of sight, nei ther reflected abstractions nor simple ideas of reflecti on. " An obviously false thesis-how could we speak of seeing, ho w cou ld we know what we understand by it, if it were not precisely, as a n internal transcendental experience, the co ntent of our idea of seeing and the different modifications of its exercise?- a thesis which leads Maine de Biran to add the following lines which cause the philosophy of subjectivity to tremble on its foundations at the expense, it is true, of an ontological absurdity: "It is here that all the faculties and the operations of the one who perceives can be characterized and judged from without, because, for the subject himself, they are no more than their appearin g to the spectator, and the two points of view of which we spoke are but one."27 The concepts which philosophical thought uses are in cl ose solidarity. From the moment that the ontological structure of attention had not been recognized, reflection which necessa rily comes to be opposed to it in order to re-di scover the essence of su bjectivity which has been lost find s its meaning falsified ; it no longer expresses the essence of subjectivity but a particular determination of it. The terminus of reflection then receives [236] in Biranianism a new acceptance; it no longer designates the immediate subjective experience nor a return of consciousness to itself, a grasp of reflective consciousness according to classical terminology, but a sort of re-grasping by feeling of an originally motor activity. This meaning becomes clearly apparent beginning with the analysis of the relationships between hearing and speaking, more precisely starting with the requirements and the internal difficulties which lead Biranianism to give to this analysis a decisive importance. Originally, reflection was the internal transcen dental experience of effort, but "This consciousness of effort clothes itself," according to Biran, "with the passive affections with which it was uni ted from the beginning." Hence, the attention is absorbed in the thing, the consciousness of effort disappears in the passive impression, subjectivity is no longer anything but nothingness. "What will enable us to distingui sh feelin g from our effort?"" In order to impede this absorption of subjectivity which would lead to its destruction, it would be necessary that the 'being-there' manifest in it a character in virtue of which it would present itself to us as emanating from an effort of the ego, which is to say with Biran, as bound to consciousness and, consequently, to the real existence of this ego. Only then could this consciousness and this existence be conserved at the very heart of the 27

28

Ibid. Maine de Biran, Essai sur les landemellls de fa psychologie ... 477.

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apprehension of the being-there, and consequently, attention, to speak as Maine de Biran does, would still be a reRection. However, being-there will mani fest in itself this characteristic of being a product of our effort when it will effectively be such. Henceforth, its simple perception (a perception which, like attention, would signify the very disso luti on of the ego in the object) will, nevertheless, not forget, in its operation, the bei ng of the ego which effects it, because the mode to which it is attached, i.e. the being-there under consideration, bears within it the imprint of this ego, the mark of an effort to which it presents itself as its product. [237J The conditions which we have just disclosed are naturally fulfilled in the union of the senses of hearing and speaking. " When the auditory impression is the word which has just been spoken, it is perceived precisely as the product of the effort of the ego, a conscious effort of the self in the transcendental experience of the act of speaking. Therefore, this impression can no longer be the being-there in which the ego is swallowed up in the self-forgetfulness of attention; it is rather that which reflects it to itself, for it is its own word in the world. In the perception of a sonorous-impression-produced-by-it the ego will no longer lose itself, as it does in ordinary attenti on, but will veritably re-discover itself. It is the totality of the phenomenon under consideration, viz. the relationship of speech and hearing bound together by the mediation of an impression perceived by the second as produced by the first, which must be present to our minds in order to understand this third meaning, which is specifica lly Biranian, of the term 'reflection' . Nevertheless, such a meaning can only be secondary and derived, for subjectivity has no need of any mediation in order to experience its own life. It is rather of itself such an experience; the simple hearing of any sonorous impression whatever is a real moment of our lives, just as the perception of the sounds emitted by us or the effort of the voluntary production of these so unds are real moments of ou r lives. Consequently, we must say against Maine de Biran that the simple "attention" is already a " reflection," that it already bears within it the profundity of subjectivity. Doubtless, the phenomenon in which I voluntarily 'impress' myself is, in many [238J respects, a privileged phenomenon: "Here it is the animated harp which 29 In stitutionali zed language, for Maine de Biran, will have the same rate as spontaneous speech: it prevents an interior apperception from being transformed or absorbed into sensations or immediate intuitions or into the resu hs of our very acts. "Signs," adds Maine de Biran. "in tbeirs econdary institlltion. are hardl y a suffic ient enclosu re fo r

retain ing or preserving the apperception of this linkage of habit." Memoire sur fa decomposition ... IV, 238.

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plucks itself."30 The difference which exists between the intentionality in which I am impressed by a sensible element concerning which I likewise know that it emanates from my will, and the one in which I am impressed independently of my will, is not for all this an ontological difference; it is a difference between two modes of existence. We cannot base the consciousness of the ego, i.e. the real existence of the ego, upon a specific intentionality without encountering the insurmountable difficulty which will consist in not knowing what becomes of such an ego when this intentionality is no longer realized, what becomes of it, for example, when it no longer hears the noise of its own words, but a symphony or any sounds whatever coming from the external world." It is always starting with itself that the ego knows itself. No impression, however privileged it might be, will bring the ego the revelation of its own being, for such a revelation is always original and can take place only interior to a sphere of absolute immanence. The privileged character of the impression under consideration-this sound which is my speech-rests itself upon this original revelation of the ego, whether this takes place at the heart of the motor effort of speaking or by way of the passive synthesis of hearing. To be itself, the ego does not need to find its shadow in the world, and if it should happen to encounter it, nevertheless, this experience, which may be privileged, is dependent upon the general conditions of experience and upon its [239] fundamental ontological condition which is precisely the very phenomenon of the ego, its original mode of revelation. The absence of a positive theory of passivity entails other difficulties in Biranianism. Thus it is that the admirable phenomenology of the memory is altered once it is a question of the memory of the passive modes of our existence. Memory rests, as we have seen, on the ontological structure of the being of the ego, on the unity which belongs to it insofar as it is an original ontological power. Wherever the ego is, there is habit and, consequently, the ontological possibility of effecting acts of memory. But where the ego is absent, there can be neither habit nor memory. Consequently, if there exists an "affection without the ego," a pure affection, as Maine de Biran says, it is taken away in principle from the conditions which make rememberMaine de Biran, Essai sur les fondements de la psychologie ... 480. We can give to the phenomenon of interior speech a considerably broad extension, even to the point of seeing there an ontological condition for the phenomenon of hearing in general. This thesis, which is not Biran's, would only confirm, in many ways, the results of our analyses relative to the relationships between movement and sensing and, in a general way, the results relative to the ontological homogeneity of acts of speaking and listening. 30 31

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ing possible. Our entire affective life, but also our entire sensible life and our imaginary life, according to the presuppositions of the Biranian philosophy of passivity, must elude and do in fact elude, according to the express declarations of Maine de Biran, all possible repetition as well as every simple remembering properly so-called. Certainly the ego does not have the power of repeating its sensations and affections," if we understand by this a repetition of the transcendent element, i.e. of the sensation or affection in their very materiality. But the intentionality which, in the synthesis of passive apprehension, was raised toward such an element can well reproduce itself, and this is why determinations of our power of sensing and affective attitudes can arise in us again. We are then able to form sensible and affective memories which are bound to these determinations and these attitudes according to a relationship of foundation which is a particular case of the general relationship which unites habit and memory. These different modalities of the life of [240] absolute subjectivity are quite evident and clear of themselves. To contest, for example, the role of memory in our affective life is to deny the most manifest experience; and when Maine de Biran states that infants do not have memory or, in a general way, that the affective life is not capable of repetition, his thesis obviously goes against the most profound laws of the human psyche, laws which contemporary psychology necessarily had to bring to light regardless of how incorrect the vocabulary and the concepts-such as those found in Freud- which served to recognize and express the permanence of the most profound intentionalities of our affective and sensible life. The consideration of various psychological problems, for example, that of insanity which Maine de Biran is incapable of characterizing in a positive way and distinguishing from the imaginary life of a normal man, would bring to light other insufficiencies which likewise stem from the absence of a positive theory of passivity and whose detailed examination could not be made here. The problem of the relationships between activity and passivity arises again, this time in quite different terms it would seem, in the later philosophy of Maine de Biran. The doctrine of the three lives reveals a zone of superior existence-above the sphere in which subjective movement takes placewherein experiences of a new type take place, privileged experiences whose clarification leads to the construction of a psychology of grace. This new region of existence seems to be characterized by a passivity with regard to a transcendent principle which the ego gathers to itself and which it 32

Regarding images, such a power evidently belongs to the ego.

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experiences in a "sublime passion." The passivity here in question must not be confused with that which constituted the essence of the organic or animal life. Whereas the latter is the psychological translation of the union of the soul with the body, i.e. with an inferior principle, the passivity whose experience coincides with that of grace, doubtless expresses [241J the intervention into thought of a heterogeneous reality, but this time it is a question of a superior reality which is no longer the body but divine life itself. Moreover, the experience of passivity in which the soul experiences the presence of grace as a sort of "addition to its own life" is possible only when the first form of passivity has disappeared, i.e. when the soul has freed itself from the union with the body in order to become disposed to the influence of transcendent life. Nevertheless, if Biranianism is essentially a philosophy of motor effort, if it defines the ego by starting with conscious and voluntary activity, how can we understand the intervention of the doctrine of 'the third life', i.e. of a life which is no longer an activity where the ego experiences its own autonomy and a somewhat personal power, but rather a passion wherein it is handed over and abandoned to an outside force. According to the terms of earlier Biranianism, must not passivity signify, for the ego, not a growth of its own life, but rather the destruction of its being, if it is in fact true that its being begins and ends with motor effort? In the philosophy of the 'I can' and immanence, how can we accept the sudden. appearance of a transcendent absolute and the dissolution of all personal reality in such an absolute: "How can we reconcile this with my psychological doctrine of the ego?"33 is an oft-quoted and famous question which seems to have embarrassed his commentators as well as Biran himself. The solution, which is rather the absence of a solution, consists in juxtaposing-to the two forms of animal and motor life-a third life in which man passively abandons himself to the influence of grace. The analysis of a certain primitive fact would have led Maine de Biran to elaborate a philosophy of effort and will; the discovery of a "new [242J primitive fact"3. leads him to revise this philosophy or rather to add to it a new element constituted by the psychology of grace. The first primitive fact was that of the union of the soul and the body; the second expresses the experience of their separation, the liberation of the soul given back to the absolute life of the spirit. Nevertheless, how can we reconcile these two facts successively discovered by Maine de Biran? How can the two psychologies which philosophical 33 Maine de Biran, Journal intime, Dec. 28, 1818, ed. La Valette·Monbrun. (paris: PlOD, 1927-1931) II, 151. 34 H. Gouhier, Les conversions de Maine de Biran. (paris: Vrin. 1947) 362.

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reflection would bring into correspondence with these facts be made to agree? Must not Biranianism encounter difficulties which inevitably arise once it is a question of confronting the power of the will of the ego with the power of a grace or a curse which stems from another source? Must Biranianism know the bitter destiny of remaining in the shadows of interminable and sterile discussions resulting from juxtaposing two different principles placed at the origin of our being, of our spiritual history? Is not its originality exhausted in the resurrecting of orphic images and Greek concepts relative to a soul mired in a body and ultimately freed from its constraint? And, before all else, is there any philosophical meaning in speaking of the existence of "two primitive facts"? Is not 'primitive' that which makes something possible? How would that which makes something possible have need, from an ontological point of view, of something else in order to exist? The second primitive fact would then be only contingent with respect to the system of existence which rests on the first. How could something contingent be regarded by us as fundamental from the ontological point of view? Three lives exist, this is the letter of Biranianism. Are we veritably incapable today of re-discovering his spirit? Of understanding that there are not three lives but only one? Of understanding, first of all, that the opposition between the animal and the motor life is [243J foreign to the fundamental intuition of Biranianism? Of understanding that the ontological structure which such an intuition attains is immanent to our sensible life whose essence it constitutes as it constitutes the essence of subjective movement, that the philosophy of effort has nothing to do with any union between soul and body such as it might be apprehended in the perspective of traditional dualism, finally, that there is no opposition between motor activity, first recognized as constitutive of the being of the ego, and the experience of an absolute life actually immanent to this activity as it is to any other existential determination of SUbjectivity whatever? The object of the later philosophy of Maine de Biran is the same as that for which the ontological theory of the body furnished the first clarification. This object is the ontological structure of absolute subjectivity. To understand Biranianism would perhaps be to nnderstand how the progress of the clarification of such a structure leads to the clarification of an original ontological passivity which, as such, could not be confused either with the passive modes of sensible life, i.e. with certain Erlebnisse which, for example, come into opposition to the active modes of the will, nor with this quasi-ontological passivity, incomprehensible and unacceptable, whereby the dualist theory would account for the existence of passive Erlebnisse and confused thought,

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nor ultimately with other equally passive but privileged Erlebnisse, viz. those in which the subject experiences grace. Nevertheless, is it not to these latter that the philosophy of the third life explicitly refers? Moreover, if the third life is immanent to life in general, if it is present in all forms thereof, even the most humble ones, is it not because the passivity of which we speak is more than an existential characteristic proper to certain determined Erlebnisse and that we must speak of an ontological passivity whose structure can in no way be reached byway of hypothetical and transcendent constructs and deductions, but as [244] a real condition implied in the phenomenon of the original revelation which constitutes the very being of the ego? The dogmatic expose of the ontological theory of the body was made starting with the theses contained in the Memoire sur la decomposition de la pensee and in the Essai Sur les fondements de la psychologie. Actually, in these two texts the theory of the body receives its full development; here also intuition, which forms the center of this theory, is more easily discovered, in spite of the presence of heterogeneous elements which already risk hiding it. In the works which immediately follow, these parasitic elements spread dangerously to the point of calling into question at times the veritable foundation of Biranian philosophy, viz. the phenomenological basis for the ontology which it builds. One text of the Essay, on which we have commented, already opposed to the phenomenological point of view a noumenal point of view whose legitimacy was curiously recognized by Maine de Biran at the very moment when he explained that it is only interior to such a point of view that the relationship between soul and body becomes unintelligible. 35 Subsequently, the value of the noumenal point of view and the philosophical necessity for its admission are affirmed in a more explicit and insistent fashion such that all ontology of subjectivity seems to be questioned again. Significant in this regard is the modification of the doctrine of principles, a modification which appears notably in the Rapports des sciences naturelles avec la psychologie. Henceforth, these principles are no longer founded on the primitive fact of the intimate sense. As foundation and origin of all our principles, the latter enjoyed the role of an absolute in the Essay. But the theory of belief ejects the absolute from the sphere of internal transcendental experience; the principles are no longer its simple translation, [245] they answer to the internal exigencies of thought which is led to formul ate judgments whereby it posits the existence of these principles 35

Cf. supraJ chap. V.

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which are, henceforth, considered as conditioning it. The permanence of the ego, for example, becomes a principle; this means that it is no longer an ontological determination whose affirmation rests entirely on the phenomenological content of transcendental experience, but a simple affirmation of reason constrained by logical necessity-"To think we must be" -an affirmation to which something really ought to correspond somewhere. Transcendent noumena again cast their shadow on the philosophy of subjectivity. The theory of the ego is seriously compromised because the ego becomes a noumenon, a hypothetical term situated beyond the phenomenon, i.e. beyond immanent experience. Henceforth, the being of the ego is no longer one with that of SUbjectivity. Under the influence of Kant, or rather of his Parisian friends, Biran admits having confused "the intimate sense of our individuality with the very foundation for the substance of the soul."36 The latter necessarily remains inaccessible, it escapes the grasp of the thinking subject reduced to the knowledge of "phenomena." In other words, if we are able to acquire some idea of the subject of this substance, i.e. of our absolute being, this can take place only on condition of turning ourselves from the sphere of phenomena and effecting a passage toward something else, a passage which the new theory of principles is entrusted with making intelligible, i.e. necessary. But if, by this bias, the absolute re-discovers the rights of citizenship in the philosophy of the Rapports des sciences naturelles avec la psychologie, it is only through the mediation of a theory of belief, which seeks, doubtless, to surmount Kantian agnosticism; but [246] because it develops interior to the same philosophical horizon, it can succeed in doing this only by way of byzantine distinctions (between effort, force, substance, substantial force) and an endless array of reasonings which can never arrive at anything but a hypothetical object, viz. at an object of belief The separation which exists between felt force and substantial force will never be lifted as long as we distinguish between the absolute and the phenomenon and as long as we feel the need to transcend this phenomenon toward a reality of another order. We must be careful not to give too much importance to the theses which immediately follow those of the Essay; to take them at face value would perhaps lead to losing what is essential in Biranian thought. What takes place in these texts wherein such theses are expressed is a devaluation of the concept of phenomenon. However, the meaning of this is perhaps the reverse of what it first seems; far from leading to an abandonment of phen om36

A footnote by l'abbe de Lignac to a very remarkable passage in Maine de Biran's

Tbnoigllage du sens intime, ed. Tisserand, X (paris: Alean, 1932) 377.

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enological perspectives, it rather leads to them, after a detour which has as its ultimate effect the deepening of the idea of a phenomenological foundation of ontology. In order to understand the devaluation of the concept of phenomenon which takes place in the Rapports des sciences naturelles avec la psychologie, we must recall the meaning of this concept in the French philosophical context of the beginning of the nineteenth century. By "phenomenon" the contemporaries of Maine de Biran in no way understood some phenomenological absolute; the integration of this concept into an ontology of subjectivity was impossible for the very reason that the latter had not yet arisen; it was reserved to Maine de Biran to build it. "Phenomenon" could not designate anything more than a natural phenomenon, which ideology, sensualism, and empiricism were then led to identify-as far as its profound ontological status was concerned-with an interior phenomenon or psychic fact. Consequently, the term "phenomenon" had an essentially sensualist and empiricist meaning, and it is by way of a reaction against such a meaning that Maine de Biran felt the need to appeal to the idea of the absolute. The intervention [247J of the idea of the absolute in Biranian philosophy has the same meaning as the affirmation of the existence of non-tmpirical phenomena and of a region of being sui generis wherein such phenomena are originally revealed. This meaning, which then amounts to the opposition between the empirical phenomenon and a transcendental phenomenon, between natural science and psychology as pure psychology (an opposition which dominates all the writings of Maine de Biran) surely remains hidden and in part falsified by the historical circumstances which surround "the eruption of the absolute in 1813"37 in Biranianism. The otherwise uncertain knowledge of Kantianism, the conversations with Royer-Collard, Ampere, and above all with Degerando, the fear of being considered a materialist and sensualist philosopher in the eyes of the latter, and, in a general way, in the eyes of the metaphysicians of the absolute who identified phenomenon and natural phenomenon and for whom, subsequently, a phenomenology could mean only a return to empiricism, led Maine de Biran to speak of "noumena", of an absolute which would be situated beyond our experience. Thus it is that there appear in Biranianism the new philosophy of principles and the theory of belief. Nevertheless, we reject ontological monism which knows only transcendent phenomena, and once the idea of a transcendental appearance arises, i.e. an immediate revelation of the being of the Erlebnis in the sphere of the original i=anence of subjectivity, then the doctrine 37

H. Gouhier, Les conversions de Maine de Biron, (paris: Vrin, 1947) 220.

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of principles, as well as the theory of the noumenal ego as a simple object of belief will appear only as a dead element in the system; the distinction between felt force and substantial force will no longer have a raison d'etre and, in a general way, the opposition between a noumenal point of view and a phenomenological point of view will ultimately show us its true origin by referring us to the deficiency and the misery of philosophy which can only wander [248] in agnosticism when it does not possess the idea of an absolute phenomenon. It is precisely on the recognition of the absolute value of the phenomenon that the later philosophy of Maine de Biran rests, and this is why it is not at root different from the Essay. This recognition, which leads to placing phenomenology at the very foundation of ontology, does not merely result from the assuredly complex ensemble of theses which arise in his later writings, it is frequently explicit: "Being and appearance," asserts Biran, "coincide in the consciousness of the ego."" The "absolute" is no longer opposed to the "relative" as the noumenon to the empirical phenomenon and to the sensible datum, but the relative rather receives the meaning we have constantly given it throughout our entire expose on the ontological theory of the body: It is nothing other than the absolute: "We can say that the relative and the absolute coincide in the feeling of force or free activity,"39 which is to say, for Maine de Biran, in a sphere of experience wherein the real and absolute being of the ego reveals itself to us. Moreover, this being is not something which, through the mediation of the sUbjective experience of effort, for example, would manifest itself to us in a doubtless adequate manner, but as a reality nonetheless situated beyond this experience; it is [revealed] rather as absolute being which is nothing other than the very revelation in which it presents itself to us, an original revelation which constitutes the ontological phenomenon of the ego. If it were otherwise, if the ego as real and absolute being were different from the subjective experience, the ego present therein and identical to its essence would be separated from its true being. This latter [249] would doubtless be accessible in an adequate knowledge, similar for example to that which God could have of this real being or noumenal ego, but these two knowledges, that of the concrete ego and that of God, would, never· theless, remain two different knowledges, concerning which perhaps we would vainly seek what allows us to assert that one is similar to the 38 Maine de Biran, Nouveaux essais d'anthropologie-part II, ed. Tisserand, XIV (paris: Alcan, 1932) 273. lHenry's italicsl 311 Maine de Biran, Examen des lefons de philosophie de M. Laromigu.iere, ed. V. Cousin, IV (Paris: Ladrange, 1841) 250. [Henry's italicsl

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other. Without doubt, the texts where Maine de Biran relates self-knowledge to God's knowledge of the ego frequently seem not to go beyond the affirmation of their similarity. Nevertheless, in an ontology of subjectivity such an affirmation cannot remain extrinsic, viz. the simple affirmation of similarity or of resemblance. Is not the understanding of this affirmation rather one of having in mind its ontological foundation, i.e. the internal structure of subjectivity? Actually, it is in self-knowledge where we must read that it is similar to the knowledge of the real being of the ego wh ich is God's knowledge. Is it then sufficient to say that this self-knowledge conforms to its object, to the real being of the ego ? Nevertheless, what does this conformity mean and what must we understand by the word 'object'? Actually, subjectivity cannot be in absolute conformity to an object unless this object is nothing other than itself; its knowledge cannot be an absolute knowledge unless it is no longer a transcendent knowledge but an original revelation where there is in fact no place for any adequacy but only for the pure unity of self and life, a life which is not separate from the self and which, in this absence of all phenomenological distance, nonetheless knows itself because its being is nothing other than the experience which it has of itself. The ontological structure of such a phenomenon, which defines the very being of the ego, henceforth, obliges us, to reject the concept of the adequacy of self-knowledge and, a fortiori, the idea that this adequate knowledge would adequately grasp even a part of the being of the ego, other [250] aspects of which would be known only by God, for example. Such aspects would actually have nothing to do with the real being of this concrete ego, and we do not at all see what would prohibit us from attributing them gratuitously to any other ego whatever, to which being their attribution would add nothing other than the nothingness of unconscious transcendent noumena. If self-knowledge is an absolute knowledge, the problem surely arises of knowing if the idea of a knowledge which God would have of the ego, alongside the immediate revelation of this ego to itself, still has any meaning. Would not an in-depth study of this problem rather lead us to discard the idea of a veritable duality of the two knowledges in question, to the assertion that similarity presupposes identity in a certain way; ultimately would it not allow us to give a strict ontological interpretation to the similarity of the knowledge of God and that which is the lot of the ego? If Biranianism did not advance to this ultimate ontological interpretation, it at least asserted the existence of such a similarity. A philosophy which has raised itself to the concept of an absolute subjectivity has at the same time posited the foundation for the possibility of an absolute knowledge.

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It is the recognition, whether implicit or explicit, of such a knowledge as the peculiar possibility of the being of man which led Maine de Biran to the idea of such a relationship and perhaps to a unity of self-knowledge and divine knowledge. 4 • Because this idea finds its foundation in the ontological structure of absolute subjectivity, a structure which Biranianism in its totality clarified, it necessarily had to be expressed in other forms: The rejection of fideism, the designation [251] of psychology as the foundation of theology, and the phenomenological conception of grace, are so many affirmations which only co=ent on the same fundamental intuition and which strictly correspond to the different critical directions which come to light from the Essay and from the Memoire sur la decomposition and notably from the general critique directed against the idea of a transcendent absolute. Here again, we need not speak of an evolution, but only of a deepening of Biranian thought. The later philosophy of Maine de Biran is far from re-questioning the results of the ontological analysis of the body, it is rather the confirmation of these results. Also we will find it quite natural and not surprising to note that the lack of understanding so often manifested with regard to the philosophy of these later writings is the same as that encountered by the central theses of the Essay. In both cases, we find the same misunderstanding of the Biranian ontology of subjectivity. When it is no longer understood interior to the philosophical horizon which alone permits it to preserve its authentic ontological meaning, the psychology of grace can obviously no longer be anything more than an empirical psychology. To confuse the life of the spirit with the 'psychological' determinations of the concrete subject, this is an insufficiency which the true philosopher cannot but deplore. To base theology on such a psychology is a danger, not to say a sacrilege, which the theologian can hardly fail to denounce. 41 [252] 40 In Meister Eckhart we find an explicit theory of the identity of self-knowledge and divine knowledge; on this, cf. The Essence of Manifestation, trans). G. Etzkorn, chaps. 39, 40, 49 (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1973) 309-335, 424-437. 41 BruDschvicg, who proved to have an almost complete miscomprehension of Biranian philosophy. reproached Biran for having conceived of the life of the spirit "in an empirical, almost materialist, fashion."! Brunscbvicg, Le progres de La conscience dans la philosophie occidentale, II (paris: Alcan. 1972) 615. The reason for this insufficiency-which prevented Biranianism from rising to a conception of the spirit close to that of Brunschvicg-is to be found, according to the latter, in the fact that Biran had not read Kant thoroughly. These somewhat presumptuous affirmations did not prevent Brunschvicg from stating, in a letter to Politzer, that, as far as psychology is concerned, he relies on Maine de Biran. It seems that if Brunschvicg had a more precise idea of Biranian psycho-

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We cannot understand, interior to the traditional philosophical horizon which attributes only an empirical status to psychology, a thought whose meaning is to break with such a horizon, to crack open the cadre in which psychology had been enclosed, and whose essential content consists in the building of an ontology of subjectivity interior to which the problem of psychology arises in an entirely new way, where, in a more precise fashion, the problem of the foundation of psychology becomes, perhaps for the first time, the theme of philosophical reflection. But the principle which presides over the elaboration of such an ontology and which will furnish us with the foundation for psychology remains immanent to the later philosophy of Maine de Biran: It is the idea of an absolute subjectivity, an idea which is, therefore the central intuition of Biranianism, its beginning and its end. [253J logy, he would not have believed it compatible with the status which his philosophy of the mind assigns to psychology. In a profoundly more understanding way. M. Gouhier reproaches Biran for having given too much importance to the "impressions of grace," for having sought "an experience in which the transcendent would enjoy sensible ev· idence," and for not having gone "to the point of that act of faith in a non-sensed presence." M. Gouhier, Les conversions de Maine de Biran, (paris: Vein, 1947) 418-419. In the same way. P. Fessard speaks of "a transcendent empiricism" in Maine de Biran. P. Fessard, fA methode de rejlexion chez Maine de Biran. (paris: Bloud, 1938) 117; cited by H. Gouhier, ibid. 420, footnote. The reality dealt with by Biranianism is, in fact, neither empirical nor transcendent. It is the reality of an internal transcendental experience to which alone an ontology of subjectivity can do justice.

CHAPTER VII

CONCLUSION. THE ONTOLOGICAL THEORY OF THE BODY AND THE PROBLEM OF INCARNATION. THE FLESH AND THE SPIRIT.

The problem of the body occupies a central place in the concerns of a philosophy of existence. However, is the latter immune from the reproach which is made against practically all theories and opinions which treat of the body, a reproach which must be expressed as follows: The ensemble of problems relative to bodily life and the phenomenon of incarnation have never been raised to the clarity of a concept nor submitted to the jurisdiction of ontology. Outside such jurisdiction, thought can only move in vague and uncertain representations regardless of the permanence of the experience to which these representations refer, regardless of the number and the depth of the moral or religious conceptions which present us with a knowledge of man and his destiny because of the role and the status which they assign to his body. Precisely because we have not previously asked ontology for a rigorous determination of this status, we cannot get a precise notion of the value which we must assign to the interpretations which can stem from true experience, but which are frequently attributable [254J to an insufficient idea of tbe body (for example, the idea ofthe objective body) and, consequently, from an idea incapable of playing the role which is almost always and exclusively assigned to it. With regard to the cultural or religious heritage which humanity has at its disposal as guide for its practical life, as well as the positive contribution mankind makes in its constant effort to understand itself and to acquire an evermore precise view of its 'nature', its rich and complex content is not the object of some objective discrimination resting upon the real data of a positive science such as ontology; it is purely and simply asserted, denied or interpreted by each one in his own way, if not by way of some fantasy, at least by way of a subjective preference which does not even seek any rational foundation whatever. Moreover, it happens that all efforteven individual and subjective-at interpretation ceases such that, similar to the content of a letter which passes from hand to hand without being

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opened, the dogmatic contribution which generations transmit is no longer, even in the most favorable case of tradition- i.e. when the latter is still respected-anything more than a dead element without relationship to the life of concrete existences. Thus it is that religions die as does science. For science, absolute science-one built upon an apodictic foundation, one whose 'corpus' is constituted by the ensemble of propositions which manifest an eidetic necessity- alone permits us eventually to give a meaning to the content of this dogmatic contribution when it compares this content with its own results. It is the life of science which gives its life to tradition if the latter is still capable of living. The return to the data of ontology is all the more indispensable when we treat of the body, since to the being of the latter are bound not only important speculative problems but also a large number of questions which stem from the categories of existence and morality. In dogmatics or in the great [255] metaphysical representations which humanity has given to itself, all these different levels-theoretical, existential, or moral-are inextricably bound together. It is important to dissociate these latter, not for the sake of studying separately the practical and speculative problems which have dealt with the problem of incarnation, but in order first to submit them to one and the same fundamental discipline without which they cannot even be posited. Only ontology can get rid of the vague notions which cloud theoretical consciousness and at the same time furnish ethics with the bases from which it can establish itself as an autonomous discipline. The ontological analysis of the body must constitute the first clarification which will permit us both to judge tradition, and to determine in it the part which is dead and that which is living, and also to give us, on our own account and in a certain way for our own personal existence, an exact conception of the essence of the body and, consequently, of the hierarchy of problems of all orders which follow from it. Before entering into such an indispensable confrontation with the system of ideas which the cultural world to which we belong has at its disposal with regard to the body (whether it is a question of vague and diffused representations of co=on sense or the strictly circumscribed data of dogma, whether understood or not), we must first return to the results of the ontological analysis of the body, not in order to attempt to summarize them here, but in order to indicate now, concerning a certain number of important points, directions which ontology prescribes a priori for the science of existence to the extent that the latter deals with the problem of the body. The fundamental question at the origin of these investigations is the following: Must the ontological analysis of subjectivity be considered as constitut-

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ing a part of a problematic concerning the body? Can such an analysis prescribe for the latter, for ontological reasons, a determined status ? To say that it can is to assert the identity of the being of subjectivity with that of the body. Actually, [256] it is not a question of our reading the correlative and eidetically determined structure of their objects in the eidetic structure of certain intentional acts. Such a noetico-noematic correlation is always and everywhere valid for all objects. The thesis which we are asserting is more original and also more specific; this thesis concerns only this determined body which I call my own and consists, not in reading the eidetic structure of this body in the correlative nature of intentionalities which would constitute it, but rather in denying that, at least in its original being, it can be the product of such a constitution. If the study of subjectivity necessarily involves that of the body as SUbjective body, it would be inexact to say, conversely, that the ontological clarification of the original being of our body constitutes an exhaustive analysis of the sphere of absolute subjectivity, i.e. of the totality of intentional possibilities peculiar to it. This can further be expressed in the following way: If we traverse the ensemble of eidetically (and not similtaneously) compatible intentionalities which constitute, in virtue of this compatibility, the being of the absolute ego, i.e. practically speaking, the ensemble of intentionalities which we know and about which we can speak, then we are sure to find among them the totality of intentionalities which comprise, in their unity, the original being of the subjective body. For example, we find intentionalities such as we express in the terms 'to see', 'to hear', 'to sense', 'to move', 'to desire', etc. Moreover, it is obvious that these bodily Erlebnisse represent only a part of the ensemble of our possible Erlebnisse or, to speak more exactly, it is obvious that the different eidetic types to which the intentionalities of the body correspond in no way exhaust the totality of intentional eidetic types in general. These bodily Erlebnisse are, nonetheless, Erlebnisse and thus, as we have established against Descartes, their structure is that of absolute subjectivity [257] without the adjunct of any heterogeneous element whatever. Henceforth, the body, and by this we obviously understand the absolute body, is in the strong sense a SUbjective body whose being is originally revealed in a sphere of absolute immanence and this in such a way that it is one with this very revelation. The recognition of the being of the absolute body in its peculiar ontological nature leads us to make, by way of conclusion, a series of remarks. Obviously the majority of them, given the orientation of these investigations, will deal with the eidetic status of one's own body and with the consequences which such a status implies for a philosophy or an ethics of the body.

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Moreover, certain remarks will deal with subjectivity itself and will help us to definitively discard every idealistic interpretation of it. Let us begin with the latter. With the ontological theory of the subjective body, the concept of sUbjectivity acquires the reality too often lacking to it. When it is raised to a correct interpretation of its object, the philosophy of subjectivity can no longer be considered as an abstract philosophy, as an intellectualism. Subjectivity is in no wayan impersonal milieu, a simple 'transcendental' field which, at the end of classical thought, dissolves into a pure mirage, into an empty continuity, a simple representation deprived of all content. 'Transcendental' does not designate what subsists after this flight from reality, in this dissolution of all effectiveness, viz. a pure nothingness, but a region of perfectly determined and absolutely concrete being. For us, what merits the name 'nothingness' is not sUbjectivity but its shadow, its dream, its projection into the element of transcendent being. That sUbjectivity cannot be confused with this pure universal and empty milieu which floats around in representation and which is perhaps the element of every representation, this results i=ediately from the fact that subjectivity is nothing transcendent. That which characterizes subjectivity from an eidetic point of view is rather the fact that it is a life [258] in a sphere of absolute immanence, that it is life itself. The abstract is transcendent. The transcendent element is a dead element which must be maintained in life by something more concrete than it, for to maintain in life that which is dead is, as Hegel says, "that which requires the greatest force. "1 Moreover, that which maintains in life is life itself, not understanding, but the effective life of absolute subjectivity in all its forms, viz. the body as well and, in a general way, that which ordinary language itself also calls life. Can the concrete character of absolute subjectivity be doubted if it welcomes within it, as its most profound determinations, the intentionalities which together comprise our bodily life? If it defines the being of the body, is subjectivity a fiction, an abstraction of idealism ? Is there anything more dense or more real than a look? Is there anything less illusory than an appetite? Doubtless, the concepts of subjectivity and body are in close solidarity with regard to their correct ontological interpretation; for example, what is the use of saying that the body is subjective if we make a false idea of subjectivity, if we consider it as a milieu of inert elements or as a pure 'emptiness' confronted with the world, if, in a general way, we give it a 1 G. W. F. Hegel, The Phenomenology of Mind, tr. J. B. Baillie. (New York: Humanities Press Inc., 1966) 93.

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psychologistic or nihilistic interpretation? Rather, our investigation must progress in such a way that the analysis of the body, conducted in conformity with the conditions which are prescribed for it a priori by the structure of absolute subjectivity with which the original being of the body is identified, can nevertheless help us in return by giving us a more precise idea of this fundamental structure. Hence, the idea that sUbjectivity is not an impersonal and empty milieu finds its confirmation in the fact that interior to the ontological analysis of the body the being of subjective movement as well [259] as the being of sensing were determined as belonging to a concrete individual. A power, as we have seen, is never an indeterminate power, it is always one of an ego. The analysis of sensing (whether it is a question of determined acts or the general possibility of sensing understood as an ontological foundation for such acts) led us to an analogous conclusion, for the idea of a passive sensible synthesis without reference to an ego (or, to speak in a more precise manner, whose very being, insofar as this being is one of an original revelation in a sphere of absolute immanence, would not be identified with the being of this ego) appeared to us as deprived of meaning. In the same way, the connection between the idea of an ontological possibility understood as a foundation and the idea of original reality, i.e. not reality made possible by the foundation but the reality of the foundation itself, is clearly indicated and made precise by the analysis of the body at the moment when the being of the latter is interpreted precisely as the reality of the ontological possibility. Another idea, closely bound to the preceding and no less decisive for the understanding of the being of subjectivity and to which the theory of the subjective body likewise contributes, is the one which stems from the possibility of an absolute knowledge. The idea of such knowledge implies that the latter is not reduced to a mere form, a form to which a contingent and foreign content is invariably opposed. Certainly, subjectivity is always a life in the presence of a transcendent being. Nevertheless, in itself this subjectivity is not an empty form, it already has a content and it is not for all that constituted by transcendent being itself, but is an original content, viz. that of internal transcendental experience as such. Concerning this original, transcendental content we can say that this is precisely what constitutes the density of life, a first and irreducible ontological density which persists even when this life is gaunt with despair [260] and seems to lose all seriousness. Even in this case, life is something other than a form; of itself and independently of the being toward which it surpasses itself, it has a content. The analysis of SUbjective movement and sensing constantly put us in the presence of a content of this sort. Insofar as our experience

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is related to a transcendent content, it is receptive, and the knowledge which it realizes must be called a finite knowledge. But when it is a question of the original content of our internal transcendental experience, the knowledge related thereto is no longer transcendent, it is nothing other than an absolute knowledge, for it has a content of which it is, in one sense, the origin. Such is life: an absolute knowledge of this sort, and this is why it deserves its name. The ontological analysis of the body contributed to making manifest the nature of this absolute knowledge when it showed that a knowledge of the body was given us prior to the arising of the latter in the element of transcendent being, when it interpreted such knowledge as an original revelation endowed with its own transcendental content, irreducible to any conceivable transcendent content. Herewith, the analysis of the body allowed us to understand how an absolute knowledge is really possible for man, a knowledge which is directed both toward a content and a form. The possibility of an absolute knowledge thus understood obviously refers to the very phenomenon of absolute subjectivity and, in the case with which we are dealing, to the phenomenon of the transcendental subjective body. The obstacle which impedes our recognizing the peculiar ontological structure of these two original phenomena (the second of which is actually only a particular case of the first) and, consequently, the admission of the possibility and the existence of an absolute human knowledge is ontological monism, i.e. the conception in virtue of which something real cannot be given us except in the element [261] of transcendent being. This conception leads to emptying subjectivity of all reality, or if it persists in considering this subjectivity as a reality, it can only in fact be a question of a reality which manifests itself in the only milieu of being which it knows, i.e. in a milieu of radical exteriority: Thought then fades into psychologism. Concerning the theory of the body, ontological monism had the following decisive consequence: It constantly impeded philosophical reflection from raising itself to the idea of the subjective body. The body, a real element in the effectiveness of being, could only belong to the ontological milieu of being in general, it was necessarily something transcendent. Thus reduced to its objective manifestation, it was mutilated in what constituted its essential-being, viz. the subjective body as internal transcendental experience of movement and of sensing. Consequently, the idea man had of human nature had to be profoundly altered: For, if it is true that reality is defined for us by consciousness, we can no longer understand the relationship which the latter maintains with the body, as long as this body is looked upon as an element of the world,

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as a simple determination posited in being among other indifferent determinations. In such a perspective, the phenomenon of incarnation necessarily appeared, in the eyes of consciousness, as a paradox, as a mysterious synthetic adjunct made to its own being, reduced, it is true, to a pure form. Hence, an opposition arises between what is, on the one hand, nothing more than a pure nothingness and, on the other, a fixed determination, a simple being-there. Actually, consciousness is not the emptiness of nothingness and the body is not an object. Subjectivity is real and the body is subjective. The phenomenon of incarnation signifies nothing more than the reality of an ontological possibility which is not abstract but rather proves to be identical to the very being of the ego. With regard to the being of the body, it is originally neither a simple being-there nor [262] some objective determination whose finitude, contingency, or absurdity man, as a metaphysical being, must take note of. This is the moment when the course of our reflections leads us to make a second series of remarks which are more particularly relative to the problem of the body and its peculiar meaning for human existence. A being is contingent which is contained in a universal milieu with respect to which it presents itself as a particular determination. Contingency is a category which refers to a determined ontological region, viz. the region of transcendent being. Everything manifesting itself interior to such a region is contingent because it has a horizon. This horizon which, with respect to the thing, is as the 'surplus' which comes from the milieu within which it bathes means for the spirit the possibility of surveying the present determination, and by showing its particularity, shows at the same time its possible transformation or disappearance. For example, an extended thing is contingent with respect to space; it can always be other than it is, have a different form or be suppressed. This contingent characteristic is obviously not peculiar to spatial things, it affects every transcendent thing in general. On the other hand, that which pertains to the sphere of subjectivity is in principle deprived of every horizon. The ontological characteristic of absolute subjectivity is actually transcendental immanence. In virtue of such an immanence, the sphere of subjectivity is opposed in a radical way to that of transcendent being in the sense that it cannot be considered by us as a milieu which goes beyond the determinations which arise in it. To say that transcendental intentionality is immanent is to say that it is not immersed in a milieu which is in some way vaster than it. The immanence of a transcendental determination rather means that subjectivity exhausts itself in it, because such a determination does not be-

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long to a world, [263J because it is not surrounded by an element which surpasses it. Hence, life in general, as absolute life, is nothing contingent. Because it also reveals itself in a sphere of pure i=anence, the life of the body does not escape this rule. Doubtless, the nose, the eye, the members, etc., manifest themselves to us as determinations concerning which no justification, for example, a functional one, suffices to hide their strange configuration or absurd characteristic from the view of a lucid mind. But we have shown that the body is not an ensemble of determinations of this type, determinations which would be, so to speak, surveyed by a pure spirit. In its original being, our body is rather a structure made of virtually compatible intentionalities in conformity to their various eidetic types, i.e. an organic totality of transcendental determinations taking place in a sphere of absolute immanence. From the viewpoint of this totality, the body was characterized by us as an ontological habit, the foundation of all our psychological habits. Therefore, the absolute body in principle eludes the category of contingency, and if the problem of the situation of the body inevitably arises for us, we must clearly see what the fact of thus being in situation means for the absolute body. We say "for the absolute body" since the problem of the situation of the body can be regarded with seriousness only because it does not merely nor first of all deal with the objective body which is, it would seem, situated in the same manner as any other object whatever. To say of the absolute body that it is situated, this is a proposition which must obviously be understood in an altogether different sense when it is applied to the objective body, for the objective body is situated in the world, i.e. in a general milieu which comprises other objects among which relationships of position 'in the third person' arise. For the object, i.e. for the transcendent thi ng, situation is synonymous with contingency. But, [264J as we have seen, the absolute body cannot be submitted to the category of contingency. It could be only if it became something transcendent. However, the fact of being situated would not imply for the original being ofthe body a change in its fundamental ontological status. The idea of such a change is, from the ontological point of view, an absurdity because such a change would imply for our original body not modification but the annihilation of its being. To-be-in-situation truly signifies for the absolute body to be in a certain relationship with transcendent being, but in this case it is a question of a transcendental relationship. To say that our body is situated is to say that it is related to the world and, interior to the world, to such or such a determination of transcendent being. To maintain with the world such a relationship is not to belong to it as a thing belongs to its element. Rather,

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our body can be in the world only on condition of being nothing of the world. It is because it is subjective that our body is situated. Hence, the fact of being in situation finds its possibility in the ontological structure of the original body. Since this structure is one of absolute SUbjectivity, we are here further persuaded that, far from leading to an abstract idealism which would, so to speak, allow the human being to float around in air without being able to account for his insertion in the world, the philosophy of subjectivity is rather that which allows us to account for such an insertion, i.e. give an ontological foundation to the fact of being in situation. Conversely, the interpretation of the situation of the human being starting with the ontological theory of the body forbids us any naive or 'realist' representation of being-in-situation or, if you prefer, of the phenomenon of the 'hie'. In the situation peculiar to it, the body does not abandon its subjective characteristic because, as we have seen, it is in virtue of this characteristic that such a situation is possible for it. It is because it is an intentionality that the body is oriented in a determined way, it is because this intentionality is an [265J internal transcendental experience that the orientation of the absolute body in no way changes its original ontological status. The body maintains itself close to itself in its relationship to the world or to itself. Nothing is changed in the latter case of the fundamental situation which we are describing, for the transcendent body toward which our original body surpasses itself is in no way this original and absolute body. When the body is related to itself, its subjective status is, therefore, not modified; it is only in the content of its transcendent experience that a change intervenes, a characteristic change, it is true, because the object in this case seems to be the body itself. However, the peculiar essence of life does not belong to this transcendent body; life goes on 'outside' such a body just as it generally goes on 'outside' the world, for it is the life which is and remains immanent. It is true that the analysis of the phenomenon of situation is not exhausted in the foregoing considerations which led to the affirmation of its subjective character. Being-in-situation also deals with our objective transcendent body, it would seem. It is in this sense that we frequently say of our body that it is 'here', in the room, in the garden, etc. But, in spite of appearances, the situation of our objective body does not constitute an autonomous phenomenon for which we could easily account by comparing this situation to that of any other object whatever immersed in the transcendent milieu of the world. Our objective body is not at all any object whatever; its situation gives us, in the same way as any other of its ontological properties, a peculiar characteristic which it actually borrowed from the situation of the absolute body. For even in our representation, our body does not pre-

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sent itself as a pure being-there, posited in a simple relationship of juxtaposition with other transcendent things surrounding it, the room, the chair, etc. So little is it in such a relationship of juxtaposition with things of this sort that it actually uses the chair, it goes to the dresser, turns [266J the key, leaves the room, and in order to do this opens the door. However, if it is obvious that it is through the mediation of determinations of this sort (such as 'opening', 'turning', 'going toward', 'leaving', etc.) that the situation of our objective transcendent body is defined, it is no less evident that such determinations do not originally belong to the milieu of transcendent being from which we, nonetheless, seek to define the situation of our bodyobject: These are determinations which stem from an altogether different sphere of existence for they correspond to different intentionalities in which the absolute life of our subjective body expresses itself. The task of a strict phenomenological analysis of the situation of the transcendent objective body would then be to distinguish among the characteristics constitutive of this situation those which refer to the general milieu of transcendent being and refer us to its content according to relationships 'in the third person' expressed by propositions and statements such as 'alongside', 'above', 'at such a distance from', etc., and on the other hand, those which while being equally present in the representation, nevertheless, can be there for us ooly because they are borrowed from another region of being, viz. from the intentional sphere of the subjective body. Among the latter characteristics, we list those whereby my objective body presents itself to me as an object which moves toward another object, which turns the doorknob, etc. Hence, it is not difficult to see that it is the latter characteristics which merit being considered as essential because they pertain exclusively to this well-determined object which is our objective transcendent body whereas the first characteristics define any object of the world in general. A more profound analysis would likewise show that these characteristics which deal in principle with any object whatever (the book can be 'alongside' the inkwell in the same way my hand is) in fact submit to a radical modification in value when they are qualities of my [267] objective body. To say that my hand is alongside the inkwell is to say that it can take hold of it at any moment; its relationship to the inkwell becomes interior to the hand as it where, whereas the relationship of the book to the same inkwell is extrinsic and, so to speak, indifferent to it. This is because, as we have explained, our objective transcendent body is a magic object which is never situated in a static fashion as a stone at the base of a wall. All the determinations which stem from its situation are related in the last analysis

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to the first group of characteristics in virtue of which this objective body is in fact situated in the world, not as an inert being-there but as a moving object, secretly inhabited by a subject. However, we have seen that these essential characteristics which refer to the being-in-situation of our bodyobject-and not to that of any object whatever in general-must be understood as founded and non-original. Actually, this is because our objective body borrows them from the absolute body whose objectification it represents in the general milieu of transcendent being. If we can say that, in our representation, our body-object is related to the things surrounding it in different ways (by directing itself toward them, by moving away from them, etc.), it is because in fact we have an absolute body in which these various intentionalities take place in an original way before being represented through the mediation of our objective transcendent body. Hence, it becomes apparent that the relationship of the situation of our objective transcendent body to that of our absolute body is strictly parallel to the relationship which in general unites the objective transcendent body of the ego and its absolute body, a relationship which we have previously studied. Hence, we are in a position to formulate the following essential remark: It is not because our body is also a transcendent body, a body such as philosophy understood it before the discovery of the subjective body, that the being of man is a situated being. On the contrary, our objective transcendent body is situated in a strictly determined sense peculiar to it only because our absolute body is once and for all [268) situated as subjectivity in a transcendental relationship with the world. This ontological analysis destroys the naive representations which dominate philosophical tradition and according to which the metaphysical being of man understood as a pure consciousness and as an abstract subjectivity would be situated, determined, viz. individualized,' only by its being put into relationship, an otherwise mysterious one (as the myths relative to the 'fall' of the soul into the body show) with an objective body. Far from the characteristic of being-in-situation being communicated, so to speak, from the body-object to the absolute body, it is in fact from the opposite direction that this 'communication' takes place. Consequently, it is important not to interpret the being-in-situation of the absolute body starting from the situation of our objective body nor, a fortiori, starting from that of ordinary objects which people the world. The nature of the original body is in no way similar to that of the transcendent thing whose eidetic status prescribes that it necessarily presents itself , On this, cf. supra, chapter III, 102·107.

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to US in a multiplicity of infinitely variable aspects. It is quite true that the way in which our objective transcendent body presents itself cannot be totally reduced to that which characterizes the transcendent thing in general; the exception here is that we are not free to adopt the perspective we wish with regard to our own body. Nevertheless, it is of considerable importance that this is the only difference which exists between the mode of appearance of our body and that of any transcendent thing whatever. Classical psychology could not arrive at this because, in its poverty, its analysis of the body stopped solely with the consideration of the objective transcendent body. But neither the absolute body, nor the organic body, present us with an ontological status which would authorize us to characterize them relative to the transcendent thing by a simple limitation in the free variation of our perspectives. This is evident in the case of the [269] absolute body which presents us with no 'aspect', because it is nothing transcendent and because no phenomenological distance of any sort separates us from it. With regard to the organic body, we must formulate this paradoxical and yet phenomenologically evident proposition in its regard: The transcendent being of the organic body does not present itself to us either in a multiplicity of infinitely variable aspects or by way of a determined aspect or a series of determined aspects, i.e. which escape the free variation of our perspectives. Even though its phenomenological status is radically different from that of our original body, our organic body, nevertheless, presents itself to us in a sort of absolute knowledge. Because it is the strict non-represented correlate of the intentionalities of our absolute body, it is always entirely present to us and we possess it in a knowledge which excludes all limitation and all possibility of error. If it is situated with respect to our absolute body, this situation is a sort of absolute situation; the idea of any change coming from the organic body and altering this state of immediate disposition in which it is found with respect to the intentionalities of our absolute body is in principle unacceptable. The systematic clarification of the characteristics which we have just enumerated, together with the clarification of their eidetic necessity, would lead us to a theory of the organic body which could only be outlined within the cadre of these investigations.' At least our investigations have succeeded 3 It is important for us to insist strongly on a point we have already previously emphasized, viz. the schema of our body- if by this we mean our organic body-is a complete and total schema and not a lacunary representation. It is precisely because it is not a representation that it presents us with this characteristic of completeness and that we can say that our knowledge of it is, in a certain way, an absolute knowledge. We can likewise see how far the philosophy of the absolute body and the organic body is removed from

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in discarding all equivocation [270] with regard to the original being of the absolute body which is not a transcendent thing but that with respect to which all such transcendent things are outlined in a series of detennined aspects. Because this determination of aspects which presents things to us takes place starting with the absolute body, the latter must be considered by us, not as something situated, but that which originally situates, as that which situates everything with respect to us. Our original body is an absolute center and, consequently, far from it being able to be freely submitted to the general category of situation, it is rather in situation and that in the very determined sense whereby it must ultimately be described as the ontological foundation of every possible situation. 4 That the original body is not situated in the sense that it is nothing transcendent leads to rejecting a good number of existential theses relative to the problem of the body as well as the so-called taking of a position of existence with regard to it. In such a taking of a position, existence would be led to 'assuming' its body and this in such or such a way. Minute existential descriptions would be necessary to account for the different ways accord ing to which existence is related to its body, accepts it, rejects it, etc. However, it is obvious that the presupposition which remains at the basis of these descriptions consists in the fact that our body is considered as something transcendent. Such a presupposition, [271] as we see, only takes up again in turn the unc1arified conceptions of traditional philosophy and common sense, conceptions in conformity with which our body would be nothing other than an object (regardless of the peculiar characteristics which one seeks to recognize in such an object in order to distinguish it from other objects in the world). Certainly, intentionalities exist in which we direct ourselves toward our own body. But in spite of the complexity of the phenomenon here under consideration, it is obvious that the original Idealism which reduces everything to representations. The original phenomenon of our body is not a representation; the same remark holds for the fundamental relationship which un ites the absolute body to the organic body. 4 Nevertheless, our original body founds only the situation of intramundane, 'tool' and 'thing' determinations. Because the latter situation refers to the situation of the original body and is defined with respect to it, the problem of the situation of this body, which constitutes the absolute cenler of all our perspectives. is not resolved by the foregoing considerations, it is rather posed with all the more urgency. What situates our original body itself is subjectivity, understood not as the transcendental relationship of being-in-the-world, but in its internal structure, as immanence. Concerning the ontological interpretation of the internal structure of immanence as the ultimate foundation of every possible situation in general, cf. M. Henry, The Essence of Manifestation, tr. G. Etzkorn, chaps. 41-44 (The Hague; Martinus Nijhoff, 1973) 335-378.

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being of the body is to be sought in these intentionalities which are directed toward, against, etc., and not in the transcendent body toward which they are directed, the latter always being only a founded body, i.e. as we have seen, constituted upon the foundation of our absolute body. Hence, we should replace the affirmation 'I have a body' for the more original one 'I am my body'. Even this statement risks remaining ambiguous as long as we prefer the subtleties or the verbalism of a philosophy of ambiguity over the strictness of ontological analysis. 'I am my body' does not mean that 'I am my body at the same time as I am not', 'I have to be it in the mode of not being it', etc., propositions which all in fact rest on the presupposition which we have just denounced and whereby the body originally arises in transcendence as a terminus with respect to which we can then, and only then, behave in various ways. ' I am my body,' this means quite precisely: The original being of my body is an internal transcendental experience and; consequently, the life of this body is a mode of the absolute life of the ego. 'I have a body', this means: A transcendent body manifests itself for me also and presents itself to me as subject to, by a relationship of dependence, the absolute body which, as the theory of the constititution of our own body has shown, also gives basis to this objective body as well as to the relationship of possession which binds it to the ego. [272] The preceding remarks will serve as an introduction to a new philosophy of life. We have seen that the concept of life can designate either the object of a determined science, viz. biology, and then it is a scientific concept, or the object of a perception, an object which is the bearer of a certain number of phenomenological characteristics which make it appear in our eyes as something living. Nevertheless, when it is attributed to a human being, the concept of life acquires its original sense only if it comes to designate for us a life in the first person, i.e. the absolute life of the ego. Such a life no longer manifests itself to us by determined characteristics affecting an element of transcendent being, it reveals itself in a sphere of radical immanence such that it is no longer anything for us other than the very life of our original body. If, in its peculiar ontological nature, such is this life which we call our own, then it is clear that the opposition passed off as fundamental by so many philosophies as well as tradition in general, between life and consciousness, or self-consciousness, must again be questioned. This opposition receives a decisive meaning in Hegel where it represents a moment of fundamental opposition between the positivity of being and the negativity of the spirit. Doubtless, life is already of itself, in a certain sense, the negative spirit, i.e. the concept. Thus it is that, as a process which

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cannot be fixed and which traverses the various parts of the organism, life is opposed to the physiognomy which anatomy describes and which is never anything more than the abstract and dead profile of existence. Nevertheless, the true concept is not life but rather self-consciousness. In self-consciousness, the concept manifests its profound and authentic negativity, its lack of parity with respect to life which is then designated as a 'natural position', as the positivity of vital being. The negation of life as positivity is then the essential mediation for the position of the ego. The latter, as an authentic concept, is thus not life but rather its [273] contrary. If life, as "subsistant independence"5 and as positive expansion, was the immediate mode in which self-consciousness first manifested itself, it then becomes apparent that self-consciousness is not life. This is why, in order to put our own being to the test and in order to recognize it in its truth, consciousness must show that it is not identical to this life which is an element in being, such that consciousness is ready to sacrifice life and confront death. The two elements opposed in the battle of consciousnesses are not two or more particular consciousnesses but rather, interior to each consciousness, the positivity of life and pure negativity as an authentic operation of the concept. The fundamental opposition remains an opposition between consciousness and the living thing. Life is then viewed by Hegelian philosophy as an object which consciousness denies and surpasses in order to conquer itself as self-consciousness and authentic ego. To say that life is an element that must be transcended amounts to saying that it is a transcendent thing, extrinsic to the profound nature of subjectivity, to the pure negativity of the spirit. In such a perspective, existence is qualified according to the way in which it transcends this life, i.e. in conformity to the way in which it is related to it, denies it, assumes it, etc. We are here very close to the contemporary theses previously criticized. If we remain faithful to the teaching of the ontological theory of the body and if we conceive its life as a radically immanent life, we then can understand that the possibility of its ever being transcended is discarded a priori by the very eidetic status of such a life. At the same time, human life becomes a serious [heavy] thing which no pure spirit will ever have the leisure of surveying. Subjectivity is not this pure spirit enclosed in its own nothingness and incapable of descending to the determination of life, it is this [274] life itself. Subjectivity is life, this is the seriousness of existence. Existence is not the pure negativity of the concept, i.e. an abstract and empty form incapable of equaling anything whatever and, hence, always condemned & G. W. F. Hegel, The Phenomenology of Mind, tr. J. B. Baillie. (New York: Humani· ties Press Inc., 1966) 219.

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to leaving outside it what constitutes the effectiveness of being. Insofar as it is life, subjectivity certainly does not possess the power of equaling transcendent being; but the very project of such a parity, from the ontological point of view, is only an absurdity. Nevertheless, life possesses true equality to the extent that it is a life in a sphere of absolute immanence. Actually, in such a sphere, sUbjectivity originally reveals itself to itself, it has a content which is nothing transcendent, but which is its effective and real being. For subjectivity to experience this being, there is no need that this being be recognized or that a life with which is it but one be denied. For life is equal to itself, it is its equality with self, an equality which, far from being destroyed, is rather prescribed by reasons of the eidetic order. Analogous remarks would be valid for the problem of action. The difficulties generally encountered in the case of action stem from the fact that the horizon within which the problem is debated is never clarified. Nevertheless, if we were to reflect seriously on the presuppositions constitutive of this horizon, we would perhaps note that they stem essentially from two general schemata which dominate the interpretations, even the traditional descriptions, of our practical life. The first schema, that of the intellecualist philosophies, consists in thinking this life in the light of the concepts of 'means' and 'ends'. In such a perspective, when it comes to acting, means and ends make up the theme of determined thoughts whose complexity is parallel to that of their objects and reflects, for example, the succession and the hierarchy of procedures which ought to be employed in their correlation to the concrete situations which are themselves infinitely complex. Rational action would imply a perfect knowledge [275] of the various termini. This is to say that for man there is no perfectly rational action. The data which we ought to consider for deciding with some exactitude the opportune action actually go on ad infinitum. Likewise, in most cases we cannot wait until the examination of the situation and the means which we must employ to face it are finished. Urgency forbids that the systematic and definitive clarification of a determined situation be first completed, a clarification which is otherwise in principle impossible because this situation changes ceaselessly and, on the other hand, we frequently have only a rudimentary knowledge of the means which we employ, as is the case, for example, in the body whose mechanism, they say, escapes us. This is why Jaspers asserts that human action is impossible without a "force of resolution" which makes up for the finitude of our knowledge incapable of raising itself, in the presence of practical life and its tasks, to the certitude of compelling and indubitable evidence. He praises Descartes for having insisted on the always provisional characteristic of morality, i.e. of having

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perceived the inevitable lag which exists between our action and our knowledge. The ontological theory of the subjective body allows us to understand how these various conceptions are in fact deprived of all philosophical foundation. Actually, we have seen that in action, and primarily in bodily action, the means do not constitute the theme of an intellectual knowledge and the goal itself is never anything represented but only the transcendent terminus toward which subjective movement (and not a theoretical intentionality) immediately surpasses itself. It follows, as we have likewise seen, that knowledge which arises in this original phenomenon constituted by the transcendental relationship of the being of our absolute body as movement, toward the terminus toward which action transcends itself, is in no wayan imperfect knowledge but that it is rather an absolute knowledge [276J whose possibility rests on the ontological status of the original body insofar as it is a subjective body, i.e. an absolute knowledge. There is no lag between our knowledge and our action because our action is itself, in its peculiar essence, a knowledge. The assertion of an inadequacy between our knowledge and our action -an inadequacy denied by the daily experience of even our most humble gestures (washing, doing manual work, practising a sport, driving a car, etc.)6- in fact stems from the insufficiency of the concept of knowledge at our disposal, where it is reduced to a mere theoretical or representative knowledge. To the thesis which posits the finitude of our knowledge in action is invariably joined the assertion of its irrational character insofar as it is necessarily, henceforth, an action which surpasses our knowledge. Here we see the true origin of the contemporary philosophical conceptions which make much of a 'resolution' peculiar to the human being to the extent that he hurls himself into action in keeping with an 'engagement' concerning which he 'assumes' the risk. Far from leading to a veritable renewal of ethics and its fundamental notions, these romantic themes must be considered by us in their close solidarity with the presuppositions of classical and intellectualist philosophy as we are led to believe, for example, in the admiration of Jaspers for the ethics of Descartes. 6 Someone might suggest that it is habit which causes the disappearance of the succession and connection of representations necessary to action by rendering them unconscious. However, it is obvious that the theories concerning habit and the unconscious here appeaL:d to imply, as their presupposition, the intellectualist theory of action whose absurdities they seek to attenuate since tbey could not be used as a foundation. Surely the phenomenon of action can be accompanied by various representations (such as those of means and end) which must become the object of their own phenomenological description~ but we must be careful not to confuse this with the original phenomenon of action.

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The traditional interpretation of action does not merely appeal to the ideas of means and ends, it also works through the mediation [277] of a no less important concept, viz. the concept of intention. We are now in a position to denounce the second general schema of interpretation of which we have spoken. The latter prescribes that action is the realization of an intention, this realization in turn being understood as an objectification. Such an interpretation of action whose origin goes back to the Hellenic conceptions relative to creation, itself conceived starting with the model exclusive to artistic creation in which a certain subjective image holds sway as the directive ideal to the making of the corresponding concrete work, implies a certain number of presuppositions whose ontological destruction would now burden us with a particularly heavy task if the ontological theory of the body had not already accomplished it to some extent. These presuppositions are the following: I) The intention is a subjective state which as such leaves beyond it what constitutes the effective being of real presence; 2) The realization of the intention thus implies the passage of it into the sole element wherein real being can effectively be present, i.e. into objectivity. Action consists precisely in such a realization of the intention. This general schema is followed notably by the Hegelian dialectic of action which, far from re-questioning traditional conceptions, only emphasizes them by presenting them in a systematic way. It is precisely because in Hegelianism subjectivity is conceived as being of itself deprived of all reality that action is imposed on it as the task of transforming its pure thought into being and of making something of itself. The sUbjectivity which does not assume such a task, i.e. which does not alienate itself in the element of being by thereby confiding itself to the absolute difference, is no more than the unreal subjectivity of subjective idealism, it is, for example, "the beautiful soul." For the latter, not to act means not to recognize the value of reality, i.e. of objective nature, it means to flee such a reality by refusing to alienate itself in it. Action is precisely an alienation of this sort. This means that it [278] is necessarily finite, for when the Self, who has accepted proof of being, again finds itself in the form of a determined element in the general milieu of effectiveness, it becomes aware of itself as a finite and contingent determination to which the spirit, as absolute negativity, is obviously not equal, whence the necessity for new dialectics in which the Self seeks to surmount its alienation and to re-discover its equality with itself. It is obvious that the Hegelian conception depends on the presuppositions which we have denounced, on the idea that action must be essentially understood as an objectification, as a passage and transformation of subjectivity, of itself deprived of reality, into the sole element wherein reality exists,

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i.e. into the element of transcendent being. However, what can such a transformation, what can such a passage mean from the ontological point of view? We are here in the presence of a fundamental ontological absurdity, an absurdity upon which the entire Hegelian edifice rests. Expressions such as "the subject objectifies himself," "the ego objectifies itself," are particularly incorrect. Moreover, they mean to say that the representation but not the being of the ego or of subjectivity manifests itself to us in the milieu of transcendence, for, what is subjective is precisely that which cannot manifest itself in such a milieu; it is an eidetic prescription of its ontological structure that it can reveal itself originally only in a sphere of absolute immanence. To objectify itself for the ego is, therefore, only to represent itself to itself. But to acquire such a representation of self is not to act, it would rather be to live a contemplative life. Hegel in fact fails to account for human action and this because, too much in a hurry to discover the meaning of the mUltiple experiences and activities in which the history 01 men becomes reality, he neglected the essential, viz. the philosophical, clarification of the ontological status of action itself. It is through such a clarification that we must begin [279J if we do not wish to be taken in by the schemas of interpretation which we have denounced. To pursue this ontological clarification of the phenomenon of action is to be led to recognize 1) that subjectivity has no need to objectify itself to be real and this, on the one hand, because in itself it is already an absolute reality and not an abstraction or a simple desire of being, and, on the other hand, because to objectify itself is in principle impossible for it; 2) that, precisely because the idea of an objectification of subjectivity has been discarded for eidetic reasons, action cannot be understood as such an objectification. The phenomenological analysis of action likewise manifests with perfect evidence what it is: a subjective essence. Certainly action is not the same as intention, action is separate insofar as it implies the intervention of the body, but the body which acts is neither the represented body nor the organic body; it is the absolute body and, consequently, action is nothing other than a modality of the life of absolute subjectivity. Even though it is not intention, action is nonetheless intentional. In the process of action, intentionalities are unified in a synthetic fashion while correlatively intentional unities become organized whose linkage is one of the modifications which affect transcendent being. Throughout this process, action remains intentional, i.e. it maintains itself close to itself in a sphere of immanence, without ever 'leaving' itself in order to go out, so to speak, to manifest itself in person in the world, for, once again, it is not a life which represents itself to itself, but a life which acts. At the end of the process, this

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action remains in the milieu peculiar to it, in the form of a final intentionality synthetically bound to all which preceded it and whose totality constitutes the phenomenon which we call a determined action- naturally, the totality of the phenomenon must be related to the essence of the active life and not to that of the theoretical life, i.e. it must be [280J understood starting from the transcendental relationship of subjective mo vement and from the non-represented terminus toward which action immediately transcends itself in this movement. Nevertheless, we cannot recognize the ontological status peculiar to action unless we have at our disposal an ontological interpretation of it parallel to that of the original being of the absolute body. For if the body is considered only as an object in the world, the action which comes about through its mediation itself belongs to this world, it is no more, in the view of subjectivity now reduced to a pure intention leaving outside itself all effective being, than a process in the third person. Need we point out the close bond which unites the Hegelian dialectic of action to the Cartesian conception previously criticized according to which the subjective element represents, in the total phenomenon of action, only a simple desire whose realization implies the otherwise mysterious intervention of the extended body and the material movements of which it is the seat? The theory of the SUbjective body allows us to raise ourselves to a philosophy of action in the first person, i.e. in fact, to a philosophy of human activity. Action would not truly be an action of an ego if the part which the latter plays therein were limited to the simple formulation of a desire to which impersonal processes would correspond as by a miracle. Action is not magic; rather it is, as Maine de Biran teaches us, effort, subjective tension, the battle against the transcendent element. The simple philosophical awareness of the necessity for accounting for the phenomenologically obvious distinction which intervenes in our psychological lives between the simple desire of action and effective action which we accomplish in effort suffices to reject all the traditional conceptions relative to the problem of action, conceptions whose previously-cited Cartesian and Hegelian theories are only two examples among many. The rejection of these speculative theses implies important consequences [281J relative to moral conceptions which deal with the same problem. More specifically, the critique of a morality of intention can no longer be confused with a general critique of the philosophy of SUbjectivity nor serve as a pretext for the latter. Rather it is from the philosophy ofsubjectivity and from it alone that a valid critique of the morality of intention can come. Actually, in every other philosophy, the intention is the only subjective

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element of action, and this results in the fact that the essential being of action can no longer be anything more than a represented (objective) element which is no longer understood as being in the immanent sphere of life, a sphere to which, however, the essence of morality belongs. Henceforth, ethical analysis discovers in action as its peculiarly human, i.e. subjective, and moral element, only the intention to which it subsequently feels itself obliged to cling, even though it senses that the essential is eluding it. This essential, i.e. action itself, is recognized by the philosophy of subjectivity for what it is, an intentionality, a sUbjective element which, consequently, depends upon the categories of ethics, whereas actions considered as an objective process in the third person can never have anything more than the innocence of a stone. The philosophy of subjectivity and it alone can submit the very element of action to the evaluation of ethics; the ontological analysis of the sUbjective body and it alone can give meaning to the following unheard of affirmation: Our bodies will be judged.' The determination of the original being of our body as pure subjectivity, the bringing to light of the absolute character of the knowledge which is related to this original body insofar as it is not a knowledge receptive of a transcendent being but a revelation in a sphere of radical immanence, the idea of an [282J absolute- and not a contingent-content peculiar to such knowledge, the ontological interpretation of the being-in-situation of the body, and an interpretation which causes the latter to appear as an absolute center and as the foundation for the category of situation insofar as it is applied to transcendent elements, the rejection of all theses which rest on the implicit presupposition of the transcendence of the original being of our body and, correlatively, the introduction of a new philosophy of life understood as an absolute life and not as a determination susceptible of being denied or transcended, the introduction of a new philosophy of action correctly interpreted, not as an objectification and a passage into the milieu of difference but as a subjective essence bearing within it its own knowledge, all these elements which pertain to the ontological analysis of the body or which immediately result therefrom likewise lead to the negation of the bond so often found to be established between the phenomenon of incarnation on the one hand and finitude, contingency, viz. absurdity, as characteristics inherent in human reality insofar as it is subject to such a phenomenon, on the other. The recognition of a bond between our corporeity and our finitude is not the privilege of contemporary reflection, rather it dominates the 7 A. Rimbaud, Une saison en en/er, Adieu, in Oeuvres d'Arthure Rimbaud. (paris: Mercure de France, 1949) 236.

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general idea of man and of human nature expressed by a tradition, one of the dominant traditions of Western thought. This idea is that man must be considered as a twofold being, as a synthesis of two opposed terms, body and spirit. The relationship which these two heterogeneous elements maintain between themselves can only be a paradoxical relationship. To the view of the pure spirit, incarnation manifests itself as a contingent phenomenon which stamps human reality with a characteristic of insurmountable finitude. In reacting to certain forms of religious thought, humanist or even naturalist tendencies can attempt to rehabilitate the body; however, in their eyes the latter remains what it seems to be for the [283] beliefs to which they are opposed : the inferior element which they can desire to rehabilitate only because they have actually not ceased to consider it as inferior. He who says mens sana in corpore sano in any case continues to think of these two elements in the light of the idea of a radical heterogeneity; the evaluation of an axiological order which he formulates may well dissociate itself from its correlative religious evaluation, but actually it rests on the same foundation. The latter is nothing other than the idea of the duality of human nature, an idea which dominates not only the entire Western philosophical tradition, but which also impregnates popular conceptions and, in this regard, can be considered as one of the commonplace conceptions of the cultural world to which we belong. With regard to the religious~nc~tions ~bidLarise in_tbiLcul1l!.!:!!L won