From Ontology to History

1
From Ontology to History
Jean-Paul Sartre and Maurice Merleau-Ponty
2
Timeline

• 1943 Publication of Being and Nothingness.
• 1945 Liberation. Publication of Phenomenology
  of Perception. Les Temps Modernes founded.
• 1947 Publication of Humanism and Terror.
• 1949 News begins to reach Western Europe
  regarding the scale of Soviet labour camps
• 1950 M-P writes The USSR and the Camps to
  which Sartre gives his signature. Publication of
  The Communists and Peace. N. Korea invades S.
  Korea. M-P imposes political silence on LTM.
• 1952 Show trial and execution of Rudolf
  Slánský. Sartre attends Stalin-backed World Peace
  Conference in Vienna.
• 1955 Publication of The Adventures of the
  Dialectic
• 1956 Soviet invasion of Hungary.
• 1958 Algerian Crisis.

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Merleau-Pontys Political Shift

• Humanism and Terror (1947) deeply Marxist and
  deeply sympathetic to the USSRConsidered
  closely, Marxism is not just any hypothesis which
  can be replaced tomorrow by some other. It is the
  simple statement of those conditions without
  which there would be neither humanism, in the
  sense of a reciprocal relation between men, nor
  any rationality in history. In this sense it is
  not a philosophy of history it is the philosophy
  of history, and to give it up completely would be
  to strike out historical reason. After that there
  are no dreams or experiences.
• Adventures of the Dialectic (1955) liberal,
  non-communist. Attacks Sartre and his
  ultrabolshevismHistory is not an external
  god, a hidden reason of which we need only record
  our conclusions. One historical solution of
  the human problem, one end of history could be
  conceived only if humanity were a thing to be
  knownHistorical epochs become ordered around a
  question of human possibilities rather than
  around an immanent solution of which history will
  be the result.Are you or are you not a
  Cartesian? The question does not make much sense
  since those who reject this or that in Descartes
  do so only in terms of reason which owe a lot to
  Descartes. We say that Marx is in the process of
  becoming such a secondary truth. (Signs)

4
Two Ontologies of Freedom Sartre

• Human existence must be understood purely in
  terms of negation. The human subject is
  fundamentally a lack of being. It identifies
  itself insofar as it is not the objects of its
  experiences. It is not a self. It is
  être-pour-soi.
• Meanwhile, the material world and its objects are
  understood as an absolute plenum of being, a
  completely ossified être-en-soi. The pour-soi
  and the en-soi are thus in complete opposition.
  There is a fundamental bifurcation of being.
• We can equate human freedom with this
  nothingness. Thus the fundamental truth of human
  existence is that we are absolute freedom. We
  exist beyond any situation in which we find
  ourselves and beyond any description of ourselves
  which involves the ascription of determinate
  properties. There is no meaning in the world
  which we did not put there in an act of free
  choice. Thus we are famously condemned to be
  free.

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Two Ontologies of Freedom Merleau-Ponty

• Bifurcation of being into the for-itself and the
  in-itself is both unworkable and shown to be
  erroneous via phenomenological enquiry.
• Appropriates Heideggers concept of
  being-in-the-world (or existence) as the truth
  of human life.
• We are of and in the world rather than being
  completely alien to it. Sinngebung is both
  centrifugal and centripetal.
• Sartrean account in fact makes freedom
  unintelligible. If every instance of action is
  equally free, there is no background upon which
  the free act can be distinguished. The slave is
  as free in chains as in liberty.
• There must be obstacles which we do not choose if
  there is to be something to do - there must be a
  situation or field. A kind of sedimentation of
  life. In contradistinction with Sartre, we are
  condemned to meaning.

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Intersubjectivity

• BN derives human relationships as intrinsically
  antagonistic as a consequence of the gaze as
  the original form of experiencing the Other.

• PhP argues that such relationships only occur on
  the basis of a pre-existent community between
  individuals.

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Class consciousness

• Objectivist definition An individuals class
  is constituted by the obtaining of certain facts
  about his life. Defined from without.
• Sartrean/Rationalist definition An individuals
  class is the result of an absolutely free choice
  which is capable of transcending his situation.

• Merleau-Pontys third way becoming aware of
  oneself as belonging to a certain class is to
  understand the style of ones being-in-the-world
  

8
Reconciling ourselves with History

• Merleau-Pontys commitment to Marxism lasted only
  so long as Marxist thought seemed to conform with
  his own understanding of the ontology of human
  existence. His politics was inescapably connected
  with his Phenomenological philosophy.
• World events revealed Marxism as inherently
  impaled on the same dualisms as more abstract
  philosophies, leaving its advocates into
  increasingly absurd positions of historical
  determinism (PCF) or utopian revolutionary
  fantasies in which each individual chooses his
  own principles (Sartre).
• Merleau-Ponty was always opposed to both sides of
  such a dualism, as we can see in his conception
  of history and the past as an ambiguous
  presence, a structure of intersubjective
  experienceThe true Waterloo resides neither in
  what Fabrice nor the Emperor nor the historian
  sees, it is not a determinable object, it is what
  comes about on the fringes of all perspectives.
  (PhP)
• The failure of Marxism pushes this understanding
  of history further, to a rejection of any kind of
  teleology in history no end of history. This is
  arguably more a rejection of Hegel than Marx.
  Regardless, he no longer understands Marxist
  theory as separable from Marxist practice.
• Thus he takes up a Weberian, noncommunist
  understanding of history as a staggeringly
  complex nexushistory does not have a direction
  like a river, but a meaning (AD).