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Philosophy and Phenomenology of The Body by Michel Henry
Philosophy and Phenomenology of The Body by Michel Henry
and_PhenomenolQgy - -:-
- - ~otth~ B0tly --_
by
MICHEL HENRY
(ra,,;laled bM
-
GIRARD ETZKORN -
by
MICHEL HENRY
translated by
GIRARD ETZKORN
II
MAR TINUS NIJHOFF - THE HAGUE - 1975
57 7640
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Author's Preface IX
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 investiga-
tions 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 allu-
sions will be made.
2 INTRODUCTION
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:
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 differ-
ent 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 explana-
tions, 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 scien-
tific 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 know-
ledge 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 charac-
teristics; we are deliberately leaving aside this problem of vegetative life.
6 INTRODUcnON
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 limit-
less, 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 ' intro-
spective tendency'. This has co nstituted a serious misco nstruing of his contri-
bution which co uld not but com prom ise in defini tive fashion the understand-
in g of his work. The histori cal dependency which we have indica ted doubt-
less 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 ian-
ism. Such an intuition could not be garnered by the French philosopher
of the nineteenth or twentieth century except at the expense of a misinter-
pretation 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 under-
tak 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 erect-
ed, 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.
~ 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]
12 cr. Michel Henry, The Essence of Manifestation, transl. G . Etzkorn (The Hague:
revelation of the lived experience to itself such as it takes place in a sphere of radical
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 sec-
ond, far more difficult, the art of interior experience, ever truly practised ?"1.
[22]
Consequently, what Biran effects here is the substitution of a transcen-
dental 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 them-
selves. 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 transcen-
dental sense: "The exercise of this sense is to what happens within us as
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 experi-
ence-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 borrow-
ing 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 struc-
ture of the experience to which its content is given in the absolute trans-
parency 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 exclu-
sively 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
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
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 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 metaphy-
sics is a psychology. However, his thought is not tainted with psycholo-
gism,42 because the psychology which it promotes is in reality a transcen-
dental 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 ...
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
they are founded . The ensemble of these intuitive judgments of which the
cogito as the "psychological axiom" is the first, constitutes rational psycho-
logy 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 lan-
guage, spontaneously expresses natural life, "a judgment coeval with our
veryexistence."47
• Ibid. 458-459.
'l We already know that, according to Husserl, this need for a radical return to subjec-
11 Ibid. 32-33.
12 Maine de BiraD, Memoire slIr fa decomposition ... III, 120.
26 B1RANIAN ANALYSIS OF THE BODY
" Maine de Biran, Essai sllr les fondements de la psychologie ... 137-138. [Henry'S
italicsl
18 Ibid. 139 .
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. Expe-
rience 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 intention-
ality. What is here in question is not the idea of the a priori; it is its pheno-
menological 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 suppo-
sition 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 prin-
ciple, 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 treat-
ment of the reduction and rediscovers it in the sphere of immanence under-
stood 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 partic-
ular 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
20Ibid. 63 0.
21Ibid. 218.
" Ibid. 351.
BIRANIAN ANALYSIS OF THE BODY 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 per-
taining 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 cate-
gory 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 imagina-
tion and forever conceals from us its face and its manner of working?"'3
immanent sense- of the very being of the ego, which is hence a transcen-
dental 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 discus-
sions 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 neces-
sity 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
29 Ibid. 243-244.
30 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.
BIRANIAN ANALYSIS OF THE BODY 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 appella-
tion of substance given to the being of the latter, the rejection of substantial-
ism 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 founda-
tion 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 con-
tinuum 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 con-
tinuum, 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
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.
BIRANIAN A ALYSIS OF THE BODY 37
are not the characteristics of the ego or its properties or even the relation-
ships which it can maintain with its biological or social milieu, with its
time or with some other reality which it pleases philosophers, psycholo-
gists, 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 opposi-
tion 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 deter-
mination of the being of the ego by the internal structure of amode of man i-
festation truly has an ontological meanjng; tbe positing whicb it accom-
plisbes 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 sub-
jectivity 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 inter-
venes 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
38 BIRAl\'lAN ANALYSIS OF THE BODY
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 facul-
ties 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
, Ibid. 258.
3 Ibid. 272.
• Ibid. 152.
, Ibid. 97.
• Ibid. 180.
40 BlRANIAN ANALYSIS OF THE BODY
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 tran-
scendental 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 decom-
postition, with respect to the theory of the faculties, directs against Locke
and Descartes, who are accused of having posited these faculties "as per-
manent 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 under-
standing 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 bring-
ing to light of the structure of this ontological knowledge. Philosophy
begi ns with the questioning of such a knowledge without which there would
7Ibid. 222.
8The 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]
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 persona-
lity has an origin." Maine de Biran, Essai sur /es fOlldemellts de /a psychologie ... 219.
[Henry's italics]
BIRANIAN ANALYSIS OF THE BODY 41
be nothing for us. But philosophy does not merit being called a first philo-
sophy 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 know-
ledge, 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 phenomena-
lity-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 representa-
tion; [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
42 BIRAN1AN ANALYSIS OF THE BODY
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 know-
ledge takes on a philosophical meaning. Outside such a context, tbe deter-
mination 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 in-
depth 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 per-
sonal existence. Tbe constitution of the world is not tbe fact of an imper-
sonal 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
BlRANTAN ANALYSIS OF THE BODY 43
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 ter-
minus [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 apper-
ception, 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 surpris-
ing, 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 Ibid. 131.
16 Ibid. 124.
44 BlRANIAN ANALYSIS OF THE BODY
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 tran-
scendent 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 thought-
otherwise 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 Car-
tesianism itself, in its infinite profundity, originally recognized, viz. a being
determined phenomenologically by an appearance whose absolute original-
ity 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 imman-
ence 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
BTRANIAN ANALYSIS OF THE BODY 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 think-
ing thing outside thought. Therefore, I exist substantially."17 We have under-
lined the essential 'absolutely', 'outside thought'. The critique of the Carte-
sian 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 exis-
tence, 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]
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 objec-
tive knowledge of the thinking thing outside thought? This mode of know-
ledge, 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
:!: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 <the soul" 'sub-
stance', <thinking thing' can give rise to a serious confusion, but it is also because thi s
confusion risks being fostered by the fact that, in his critique of the Cartesian cagita,
Biran explicitly appeals to Kant in terms which could lead one to believe that their two
viewpoints are identical. cr. Essai sur les !olldements de la psychologie ... 129, footnote .
48 BIRANIAN ANALYSIS OF THE BODY
to reject the authority of the intimate sense ... Both presuppose faculties or innate ideas
which pre-exist in the soul _._ without [seeing] any need to arrive at the kno wledge of the
soul." Maine de Biran, Memoire sur fa decomposition ... III, 64.
27 Ibid. III, 64 footnote . IHenry's italics]
3 Maine de Biran, Memoire sur la decomposition ... III, 71. [Henry's italics]
56 THE SUBJECTIVE BODY
z nothingness, which has the possibility for carrying out this task of the
::e;ermination of subjectivity without being deterred by the apparent
~. -urdity which consists in giving the name of body to ontological and
.cjginal knowledge. Actually, [79] such is the intuition which is the principle
~ Biranian thought in its ontological development: the recognition of
~ original sphere of existence which is that of subjectivity; a conception
= a phenomenological ontology of the being of this SUbjectivity which
:-e"\"eals itself as' identical to the being of the ego; an understanding of the
;;::-u tures of the ego as structures and as the being of ontological knowledge;
1. eetermination of the being of ontological knowledge which is that of
~e ego, as the very being of the body; finally, an identity of ontological
bowledge and the ontological nature of this body itself.
The solidarity between the theory of the body and Biranian ontology
~:;sidered in its totality now becomes readily apparent. This solidarity
- ~"ise becomes clear to us in the question which constitutes one of the
58 THE SUBJECTIVE BODY
major themes of the Essay which is that of the "origin of the knowledge which
we have of our olVn body.'" The body-i.e., for Maine de Biran, felt movement
as it takes place, the feeling of effort- is given us according to a mode of
knowledge which must still be determined, and this problem of our primor-
dial knowledge of the body is at the same time the problem of the ontological
nature of the body because in a phenomenological ontology being is deter-
mined solely by the manner in which it presents itself to us . The Biranian
response to these two problems, which are but one, is that the body is given
us in an internal transcendental experience, that the knowledge which we
have of it is thus truly an original knowledge, and that, consequently, the
being of the body belongs to the ontological region wherein internal tran-
scendental experiences are possible and take place, i.e. to the sphere of
SUbjectivity. The phenomenological, i.e. original, real, and absolute being
of the body is thus a subjective being. The absolute immanence of the body
is asserted at the same time, an [80J assertion which implies the rejection
of all analyses which are dominated by the presupposition that the body
is, in its original being, something transcendent, a presupposition which
is most often implicit for, among all the assertions which are taken as
self-evident, a place of honor is doubtless given to the one accord ing to
which the body is a thing, a constituted reality and a part of the world.
The belonging of the original body to the sphere of the absolute imma-
nence of transcendental SUbjectivity mea ns that the phenomena relative
to the body, or rather the phenomena of the body, pertain to an order of
facts " in the relationship of immediate knowledge with itself" and, hence-
forth, we are now led to formulate a certain number of decisive results:
I) Movement is known by itself; it is not known by something else, by
the gaze of reflection, for example, or by some intentionality which would
be directed to it. No phenomenological distance intervenes between move-
ment and us; movement is nothing transcendent.
2) Movement is in our possession. Our body is the ensemble of powers
which we have concerning the world. But how are these powers first within
our power? How are they truly our own, how can we effectively put them
to work and, through their mediation, arrive at things, regardless of the
character, whether positive or negative, of this access, according to which
we aim at possessing these objects or turning away from them? The problem
which we encounter here is not a new problem whose solution would
require the elaboration of a new problematic; it is always the same problem,
the central problem of Biranian analysis, viz. that of the original knowledge
4 This was the title given by E. Naville to chapter 3 of section 2 of the first part of the
6 Maine de Biran, Essai sur les fondemen ts de fa psychologle ... 194 footnote.
THE SUBJECTIVE BODY 61
of usage, this something else-i.e. the subject, thought, etc.-which would
utilize the body to serve it would then have to have, by hypothesis, a know-
ledge of this body as of a reality different from it, i.e. as a transcendent
reality. Once it becomes an instrument, the movement of the body is given
to us only in a transcendent experience. The theme of thought would then
be this instrument and not the goal of action or of movement which it
wishes to accomplish, which is absurd, for, presupposing that the subject
can think of both the means and the goal of its action at one and the same
time, this does not mean that it would execute this action, it 1V0uld merely
represent it, it would represent to itself its [84J goal and the means for arriving
at it, but it would not act. This thought of the goal and of the means surely
exists, but the thought of movement is not movement. The latter is an entirely
new phenomenon with respect to this thought and this is precisely the phenom-
enon with which we are dealing. The conception of the body as an instru-
ment of our action is therefore an element of our representation of move-
ment, but it cannot in any way be part of a theory of real movement itself.
Hence, we apperceive more and more clearly that the ontological theory
of subjective movement, far from reducing movement to its idea, rather makes
us arrive at the conception of the only foundation possible for the reality
of movement and the body. To assert that the body is not an intermediary
between the soul and its action on the universe does not amount to denying
the reality of the body, it amounts to saying that the constituted body,
about which we will speak later on, is not our original body, that the being
of the latter necessarily eludes all constitution and is rather identified with
the power of constitution itself, with the milieu wherein the latter takes
place. It is solely on this condition that the body can really act on the uni-
verse', on the condition of not being a transcendent mass-of nerves and
muscles, for example,- and we do not at all see how absolute subjectivity
could set a transcendent mass in motion in order to produce some sort of
a displacement or a modification in the world. To deny that there is an
instrument or an intermediate terminus which intervenes between absolute
subjectivity and its action on the world is to give to the thesis of the absolute
immanence of the body its radical meaning-a thesis which denied us the
right of setting up any separation whatever between the being of this
absolute subjectivity and the being of our original body-it is to under-
stand that it is on the sole condition that the being of movement is "closest
to us" that this movement is possible as real movement and notas movement-
in-idea; it is to understand how [85J it is possible that this movement is
ours, how we can be one with it and enter into its possession, and finally,
how we have an interior knowledge of it which begins and ends with it.
62 THE SUBJECTIVE BODY
We enter into its possession because in reality we"are never separated from
it; we know it while it takes place and thi.s knowledge is perfect because the
being of movement is a phenomenological effectiveness whose total being
is precisely that of being given to us and of being given to us in an internal
transcendental experience; this movement is ours because its being, as we
have defined it, is the very being of the ego whose life is nothing other than
the very life of transcendental subjectivity in all its modalities and in all
its determinations; finally, this movement is real, an absolute reality like
that of subjectivity, and that which makes it opposed to a simply represented
movement is precisely the fact that it does not belong, as the latter does,
to the sphere of transcendent being. This is the total meaning to the saying
that the being of movement is a subjective being.
The assertion of the absolute immanence of the original body constitutes
the main principle in questioning the theses of Hume relative to the principle
of causality. The Biranian critique does not consist in a word by word
refutation of the propositions advanced by Hume; it is a destruction, i.e.
a clarification of the philosophical horizons within which the attempt
made by Hume for determining and grasping the origin of our principle
of causality takes place. This is why this critique is actually an ontological
investigation which will show us on which levels Hume posits his problems
and situates the various elements which intervene in their solution or in
their enunciation, and how the impasse at which he arrives and which
he would present to us as definitive, because in some way it is implied in
the nature of things, actually stems from the inadequacy which exists between
these problems and the ontological levels upon which he cl aims to resolve
them. It is this deficiency in ontological clarification [86J which leads Hume
to maintain, with regard to movement, theses diametrically opposed to
those which Biran formul ates in the Essay.
First of all, for Hume, movement is not known through itself, a thesis
ambiguously expressed in his terminology by the assertion that the effect
could not be foreseen in the energy of its cause. This terminology seems
to take its origin from the description of exterior phenomena. An objective
process is divided into an initial state which is said to be the cause of a
terminal state, but when we consider the latter, we do not find there the first
state which was thought to determine the final state causally, and inversely,
when we analyze the cause, we do not see why it is followed by such an
effect. Therefore, the idea causality must come from some other cause
and Hume is led to envisage an other process for whose description he
unfortunately lacks an ontological horizon within which such a description
can be correctly undertaken. This other process is precisely that of bodily
THE SUBJECTIVE BODY 63
movement which the analysis of Hume, who bears the heavy inheritance
of Cartesian dualism, divides into a first phase which is will or desire to
accomplish movement and a second phase which consists in the corre-
sponding material process. In examining desire or will, H ume fin ds nothing
there which permits us to call it the cause of physical movement which
follows it, such that here again "we would never be able to foresee the effect
in the energy of its cause."7 We truly have the experience of the influence
of our volition on our bodily organs, just as we have the experience of all
natural processes, but this influence which is at the source of the accomplish-
ment of all our movements is mysterious for us: " But the means [81] by
which this is effected, the energy by which the will performs so extraordinary
an operation, of this we are so far from being immediately conscious that
it must forever escape our most diligent inquiry."·
The latter phrase is particularly important for in it we see the solidarity
between the thesis which asserts that we do not have the immediate feeling
of movement with the thesis which states that we are ignorant of all the instru-
ments whereby this movement takes place. Moreover, it becomes apparent
that it is because we have no knowledge of these instruments th at H ume
affirms that the immediate feeling of movement cann ot be given us. Perhaps
we do not see how, in empirical ontology, which knows only the transcen-
dent being of nature, there would be a place for a correct interpretation
of this immediate feeling of movement, i.e. for subjective movement. In
order to do j ustice to the latter and to the power of recogn izing its funda-
mental role, we would have to be in possession of an ontology of subjectivity
and not an empirical conception of interior life, a conception which reduces
the latter to a transcendent milieu peopled with beings united by external
relationships. Nevertheless, it is significant that the argument set forth
by Hume is related to the instruments of our action, i.e. to the body con-
ceived as an ensemble of transcendent masses as an " inward interplay
of nerves and muscles which the will is thought to move to action in the
movement of our members.'" We have shown, however, that no instrument
intervenes in the accomplishment of our movements and that this ignorance
which we have of the body of the anatomist or physiologist is precisely the
condition for our action taking place. The latter takes place as a subjective
? D avid Hume, An Enquiry concerning H uman Understanding, VII, 52, in Great Books
of the Western World, XXXV, ed. Robert M. Hutchins. (Chicago: Encyclopedia Britan-
nica Inc., 1952) 472 b; cf. Maine de Biran, Essaf SIlr les fondements de fa psych%gle ...
229 and Memoire sur la decomposition ... III, 236 footnote.
S David Hume, An Enquiry concerning H uman understanding ." 472 b.
• Ibid. 473 a.
64 THE SUBJECTIVE BODY
12 Ibid. 231-232.
66 THE SUBJECTIVE BODY
body from confusion to confusion as Hume does, but also as almost all
philosophical systems do which have dealt with this problem without having
at their disposal the ontological horizons which alone can allow them to
posit it correctly. Interior to philosophical presuppositions which are never
made explicit and which are steeped in total ontological obscurity, the
analysis of Hume is correct: "With only this representation in view, and by
considering external movement as an effect for which the will is presumed
[91] to be the cause, it is quite true to say that the power cannot be known
in the effect and vice-versa, for these two conceptions are heterogeneous,
the one based solely on an interior sense and the other on an exterior sense."
It is by re-establishing "homogeneity between the two terms of the primitive
relationship of causality," by returning "to the fact of consciousness," that
"the subject of effort perceives himself interiorly as the cause of a move-
ment." And if Hume did not recognize the reality of effort in its immediate
revelation to itself as power of production, it is because he did not have
an ontology of this sphere of existence of subjectivity within which the being
of movement is originally given us: "If he [Hume] refuses to admit the
existence of this cause [the ego who makes effort], it is because he wishes
to conceive of it as an idea which is not his, viz. by some faculty foreign to
him in its proper and prima facie sense wherein such an idea resides."13
The affirmation according to which the original being of movement is
given us in an internal transcendental experience and known of itself,
confers on Biranian thought its original characteristic which likewise situates
it far from empiricism and intellectualism. Actually, in the two latter philo-
sophies, movement is known by something other than itself, by muscular
sensation in one case, by the intellect in the other. However, intellectualism
does not abstract from muscular sensation. Its psychology is an empirical
psychology, it is content to show that this psychology is not complete and,
in the case with which we are concerned, that muscular sensation cannot
take on its meaning, which is to make us know movement, unless it is sub-
mitted to the action of the category. The type of movement which intellec-
tualism attempts to reconstruct is in reality only a representation of move-
ment whereas the being of movement and the problem of its original know-
ledge completely escapes it. [92]
A deeper study of the Biranian interpretation of movement in its opposi-
tion to the conceptions of classical psychology has no chance of being real
unless we first succeed in giving to such conceptions a truly philosophical
meaning. How can we better succeed at this than by looking to J. Lagneau,
1950) 135.
68 THE SUBJECTIVE BODY
duced into France, and wherein there is no room for anything other than
an empirical psychology? This then is the second phase of the analysis
of the Le,on sur la perception, the phase wherein we see the thought of
Lagneau completely discarding the theory of movement as an internal
transcendental experience while attempting to preserve the points which
this theory alone would allow him to retain. After having asserted that
we truly have the feeling of our muscular action, Lagneau declares that there
is nothing to it: "We do not feel ourselves to be active, we judge ourselves
to be such." If muscular sensation cannot account for the feeling which
we have of producing a movement of which we are the cause, this is not
because we have the revelation of thi s movement in an immediate experience,
it is because to the muscular sensation is added a judgment which joins
to this sensation the idea that we are its cause and that the sensation [94]
is truly the effect of our action. "To sense one's activity is to experience
certain modifications while judging that they result from thought, that they
necessarily result therefrom, and that they are its effects, that between
thought and these modifications there exists a relationship of causality,
a necessary relation ship whose conception and affirmation impose them-
selves on thought. The idea of action implies that of causality; the idea
of causality implies that of necessity; but necessity cannot be felt, it is asserted
as having to be."l.
Let us first show that regardless of how remarkable the text which formu-
lates it is, this solution is not truly a solution. For Lagneau as well as for
Maine de Biran, it was a question of understanding why, when we under-
take a movement, the sensations which are thought to transmit modifica-
tions stemming from our muscles are determined as the effects of our action,
and how they can then be distinguished from analogous muscular sensations,
which in this case, however, are no longer the consequences of a willing
of the subject. The answer of Lagneau is that to muscular sensation there
is added in the first instance the idea that it is an effect, the idea which
expresses the fact that this sensation is then bound to our will and to the
determinations of our thought by a relationship of causality. Nevertheless,
why is this idea of causality applied to muscular sensation to make it appear
as an effect of my will in the case where it is truly I who act and not in the
other case when an exterior cause has produced in me the same muscular
sensations as those which would be determined by a voluntary movement?
Since the two elements- muscular sensation and the idea of causality-
which Lagneau has at his disposal are the same in both cases, the first by
This is a serious historical error,for Maine de Biran never called the feeling
of muscular action sensation; his entire philosophy consists precisely in
the affirmation that the feeling of action does not result from a sensation,
that action is known in itself insofar as it pertains to the sphere of subjec-
tivity, insofar as it is a fact of the relationship of immediate knowledge
to itself. That this mode of knowledge cannot be designated by the term
'sensation', this is what Biran explicitly stated in a text which we have al-
ready cited and whose essential proposition we recall here: "We need a
name for this interior knowledge for the word 'sensation' cannot say it
all."l7 However, this error is significant, for if Lagneau was led to commit
it, this is certainly not because of any ignorance or lack of integrity in him,
it is because, in a Kantian perspective, only two sources of knowledge
exist: sensation and judgment. Furthermore, just as Lagneau, who under-
stood that one could not reduce our feelin g of action to a muscular sensa-
tion, was constrained to make of it the product of a judgment, so likewise
he necessarily had to think that Biran, who radically rejected a philosophy
which would see in effort a composite feeling one element of which would
be constituted by an intellectual judgment, could not but reduce the being
of this feeling to that of a sensation.[97]
Henceforth, the analysis of Lagneau gets entangled in a profound con-
tradiction; after having said that "We must not confuse muscular sensation
with the feeling of action," which is actually what Maine de Biran taught
him, he then proceeds to reproach him for having committed such a con-
fusion. However, it is Lagneau who is responsible for it, because it is in
his perspective that muscular sensation remains, if not the only element,
at least a determining element in our feeling of action, an indispensable
element for the arising of this feeling: "This feeling," he says, "is a modifi ca-
tion of ourselves," i.e. for the Kantian which he is, a passive modification
of sensibility, a sensation. However, it is still true to say that this modi-
fication is not sufficient, that it "is bound to the affirmation that we are
its cause"18-and hence muscular sensatioll concerning which we assert
with Maille de Biran that it plays absolutely no role in the original kno wledge
which we have of the movement of our own body in fact rediscovers its 'legal'
rights in the explanation of the feeling of action given us by the Le{:on sur
fa perception. How could it be otherwise, if it is true that in Kantianism
knowledge is always the product of a collaboration between two termini:
the sensible empirical datum and the category? Moreover, such knowledge
is a thematic knowledge of the universe, and it is the transcendent being
17 Maine de Biran. Mbnoire sur lo decomposition ... III, 69 footnote.
18 Jules Lagneau, Celebres le~ons et fragments. (paris: Presses Universitaires de France,
1950) 135.
THE SUBJECTIVE BODY 71
of nature which constitutes it. Where does the. being of the ego find a place
in such an ontology, where is its concrete life, its action, its movement?
Where do we find the origin of the knowledge which I have of my body
if such knowledge cannot find any fulcrum in the world, if it cannot even
arise from an idea? How can I know that it is I who act, whence does feeling,
the immediate knowledge of my effort, come to me? How am I able to
live if my own life is not given to me, if I am not my own life? [98J
In order to be in a position to answer these questions, which are the lot
of first philosophy, we must first reject Kantian ontology and be possessed
of an ontology which is first of all an ontology of life, an ontology of
subjectivity and the ego. Doubtless, I judge that it is I who act; such a
judgment presupposes the intervention within my mind of the idea of causal-
ity, but the transcendental deduction of the categories has shown us that
the latter do not float in air nor do they occupy our mind by accident;
rather they have a foundation which is precisely the concrete life of the ego,
its action and its movement, in a word, its body. Not only do we have to
reverse the deduction of Lagneau and say that the idea of necessity presup-
poses the idea of causality and that the idea of causality presupposes the
idea of action, we must still see that the idea of action presupposes action
itself, that we cannot speak of an idea of action unless, as Lagneau once
understood "action is revealed in itself," and that, consequently, only a
theory of the absolute immanence of movement in its original belonging
to subjectivity can account for the ideas whereby we will thereafter be
able to think of movement. In other words, the causality of the ego which
permits us to feel muscular sensations as the effects of our actions is not
first of all known through the intermediary of an idea, which would be
the idea of causality; this causality, before being an idea, is a power and this
power is revealed to us in the same way as the being of the ego with which
it is fused.
Hence, we have determined the original being of the body as belonging
to the region in which the revelation to self of intentionality at the heart
of the internal transcendental experience takes place. Because it belongs
to this region of original truth, the being of SUbjective movement is an
immediate revelation of the self to itself, without its appearing to itself in
this revelation- through the intermediary of a phenomenological distance-
in the element of [99J transcendent being. For this reason, we have asserted
that movement is known to us immediately and we have denied that muscu-
lar sensation or any other form of mediation plays the smallest role in this
primordial knowledge which is ours and which is less a knowledge of
our body than the phenomenological being of this body itself. But all con-
72 THE SUBJECTIVE BODY
tainly not felt in the [102J sense that it would be known by a sensation,
but all the ideas whereby Lagneau claims to account for our knowledge
of the relationship between movement and a terminus which resists it
rest in fact on this real relationship which I experience. Doubtless, an idea
could not arise from a fact, but if we say that the resisting continuum, while
eluding representation and theoretical knowledge, is nevertheless manifested
to us in the milieu of transcendent being, it is because the transcendence
of movement toward it is an internal transcendental experience and that,
consequently, the datum from which the categories take their origin is in
no way a brute fact, it is a fact in the relationship of immediate knowledge
with itself; and ifit is the foundation for theoretical knowledge, it is precisely
because it is the original truth itself as it takes place immanently. The
transcendental deduction of the categories thus takes on for us a still more
profound meaning: If the categories are founded in our life, it is because
what we think depends on what we are. The idea is not the foundation for
the real, it is rather the opposite which is true and this could not be asserted
except by a philosophy which possesses the means whereby we can conceive
something truly real which is capable of effectively being at the origin of
our ideas, because it is the 'place' where truth is originally realized.
In its determination as the pure and simple correlate of an intentionality
of movement, the transcendent real received the name of "the resisting con-
tinuum." We have tried to show what we must understand by this terminus
which resists and how the originality of Biran consists in accounting for
the fact that it could exist for man at the very heart of his most concrete
experience without being the theme of a theoretical or intellectual know-
ledge. We would now like to complete our commentary on this point by
a remark concerning the meaning of the term "continuum" here used by
the author of the Essay. By "continuum" we must not understand a spatial
continuity. Actually, in Biranianism, space is not a constitutive form [103]
of my experience of the real, it is rather itself constituted by the develop-
ment of this experience. It is in and through the unfolding of movement that
the transcendent correlate, which 'resists' it, acquires this extension which
is thus rather the product than the condition for my first experience. The
resisting element is constantly opposed to my effort, it is the terminus which
my effort always finds as its limit and also as the fulcrum for its own accom-
plishment.
It might occur to us to interpret what is qualitative in the continuum
found in the resisting element as the expression of the temporal form accord-
ing to which the experience which I have of the primitive duality takes place.
The temporal character of this experience, however, does not seem to be a
THE SUBJECTIVE BODY 75
privileged one concerning the constitution of space, it rather seems to be
identified with the very mode according to which this constitution takes place.
The designation of the resisting terminus as 'continuum' actually has a more
original meaning; it refers to the fact that this resisting terminus constitutes
the foundation of the real, the essence of things, and this in principle because
we have here a de jure question, viz. because the determination of the real
as that which resists is an a priori determination, because we are certain
that such a determination will never be absent from our experience of the
real; it will always constitute its foundation. This latter certitude rests in
turn, not on some exigency of our reason, but on the very nature of our
experience of the real, on the fact that movement is the original intention-
ality, a sort of permanent intentionality of the life of the ego, such that
what is given us in experience inevitably exhibits the essential characteristic
of being given to our movement. Our concrete life which constitutes the
internal and transcendental experience of itself as sUbjective movement
constitutes, of itself and at the same time, the experience of the world as
the transcendent terminus of this movement, as the resisting continuum. [104J
It is in the eidetic determination of the correlate of the internal transcen-
dental experience of movement that we find the reason whereby the certitude
of movement is sbared by the terminus which resists it. This is why this
transcendent terminus eludes the grasp of the phenomenological reduction,
because the certitude inherent in the sphere of absolute immanence wherein
our original movement takes place is precisely the certitude of the resisting
terminus which it attains, and it is this meaning, involving the rejection
of all problematic idealism, which is included in the appellation 'conti-
nuum' given to that of which our movement is the experience. The simi-
larity between this Biranian thesis and the Kantian critique-a similarity
which is doubtless at the origin of the beautiful analysis of Lagneau con-
cerning the relationship between the unity of feeling and the unity of the
universe 2o-must not make us forget that the premises for the common
conclusion according to which the existence of the external world is just
as certain as that of our interior life are quite different in the two cases.
In spite of everything the Kantian proof is indirect, it limits itself to vali-
dating the fact that the constitution of our internal life cannot lay claim
to any privilege with respect to the constitution of the external world,
but that it rather presupposes the latter as its condition. The Biranian thesis
is altogether different: It cannot argue from the necessary conditions
for the constitution of our interior life, because for Biranianism the latter
20 Ibid. 136.138.
76 THE SUBJECTIVE BODY
I'
The ontological theory of movement is one with the ontological theory
of the body. The body is not only movement, it is also sensing, but the anal-
ysis [decomposition] of thought insofar as it is here the analysis of the
faculty of sensing, shows precisely that the essence of sensing is constituted
by movement. First of all, the act of sensing is not known by sensation,
rather it is the form er which knows the latter. Biran asserts both the tran-
scendental reality of sensing and the transcendent being of sensation.
The body, insofar as it is the subjecti ve body, is one with the act of sensing;
it is in no way a composite of sensations regardless of the unity, for example
in the correlative variations, which one might discover among such sensa-
tions. Actually, such a unity is a constituted unity, it is the unity of a tran-
scendent mass, and consequently, it is in no way the unity of the original
being of our body. In a text rel ative to the relationship between visual
impression and the ego, Maine de Biran says: "That any visual impression
whatever, whether confused or distinct, uniform or varied, be it in it, i.e.
in the organ, or outside it in space, it is always true that once he [the subject]
perceives it, then it is not he; his ego is not identified with it.'" Torn from
the sphere of immanence, banished to [108] the element of transcendent
being, sensation is not therefore the object of a theoretical representation.
For, if it is not that whereby we know our body and it is not this body itself,
sensation is known by it, not represented, but given to movement with the
unfolding of the subjective process of its effort in sensing.
Because the faculty of sensing, taken in itself, is independent of sensation,
a problematic concerning the being of this faculty must begin by a sort
of reduction which has as its effect the abstracting of our power of sensing,
of grasping it in a pure state by separating it from everything related to
sensation. Strictly speaking, this is an analysis of thought, whose process
of the same order which will activate the vocal instrument; the latter repeats
the exterior sound and echoes it; hearing is affected with two impressions,
the one direct, the other reflected, internal; there are two impressions
which join or rather it is the same impression which is duplicated.'" The
two sonorous impressions are both constituted, the power of constitution
is the same in both cases, it is a reaction or a motor action, it is the original
being of SUbjective movement, it is the body.
The determination of the original being of the body as SUbjective move-
ment furnishes us with the principle of a phenomenology of memory whose
possibility thus rests entirely on the ontological theory of the body. When
a sound is heard, the sonorous impression is constituted, but the subjective
movement in which the power of constitution here at work consists is
originally known as such, because it is given to us in an internal transcen-
dental experience. It is precisely the possession of the interior law of constitu-
tion of the sonorous impression which allows me to repeat this impression,
to reproduce it myself again as many times as I care to, and to recognize
it constantly in the course of this reproducti on, because the knowledge
of the power of constitution is immanent to its exercise and is one with it.
That which repeats the sonorous impression is the body, and consequently,
the ego-which amounts to saying th at the power of constitution of the
sonorous impression is the ego itself. As long as I repeat the sonorous impres-
sion, I know that I have already had the experience of this impression;
I know that now I repeat it, that it is I who repeat it, and that it is the same
impression of which [lI2] I have already had the experience which I now
repeat. Actually, the remembering which is implied in this phenomenon
is divided into a remembering of the power of constitution, a remembering
which is the repetition strictly speaking, and a remembering of the sonorous
impression which is the remembering of the repeated or reproduced ter-
minus. The first remembering takes place on the level of transcendental
immanence, it is produced without the intervention of any constitution
and is known itself as such interiorly and immediately. The second type of
remembering concerns the transcendent level on which the sonorous
impression is constituted before being recognized and repeated there. To
the first sort of remembering Maine de Biran gave the name "personal
remembering," to the second the name "modal remembering."
We should clearly note at this point that this distinction intervenes only
for the sake of the clarity of the analysis, for the modal remembering is
actually based on personal remembering, or rather is one with it. Actually,
s cr. Ibid. IV, 72: "Sounds perceived in their succession each correspond to a particular
movement which, after having effected a complete distinction in the sense. prepares for
th eir exact recall, which follows the same order." [Henry's italjcs]
6 Maine de Biran, Mimoire slir fa decomposition . . IV, 47-48.
layer, of itself indeterminate, which then would have to further receive the
transcendent meaning of being the [114] immediate manifestation of the
real. Since motor touch is a movement, that which manifests itself to it
are the very things in the resistance which they give us, and tactile sensations
which are inserted as it were in this resisting continuum belong to it and
are the sensible determinations of the real being of the world. The meaning
of the transcendent content of our experience of motor touch, a meaning
which is transcendent with respect to the sensible datum properly so-
called, is nevertheless included in it to the extent that it presents itself to
our movement.
But, according to Maine de Biran himself, movement is immanent to the
exercise of each of our senses, and consequently, the privilege of touch must
be shared by all the other senses, it belongs in principle to sensorial activity
in general. There is not one sense which would have us know the real world
and then others which would give us only sensations to which the meaning
of manifesting to us the real world itself could only be added on in virtue
of their constant association with our tactile perceptions. In order to give
a radical meaning to the thesis of the immanence of subjective movement
to senso ri al activity in general, we reject the Biranian privilege of the sense
of toucb, or rather, we extend it to the life of aU the senses in general and
at the same time we assert that the sensible lVorld in general is the realworld.
If it is true to say that the feeling of causality "is associated in various
ways with different impressions, whether by a relationship of derivation
if these impressions stem from the will, or by a simple relationship of co-
existence or of simultaneity if they are passive of their very nature,'" it is
also true (and it must be stated) that our impressions are all constituted by
the original being of subjective movement which, in this movement of
constitution which projects them so to speak onto the basis of the resisting
continuum , confers on them this transcendent meaning-a meaning which
is immanent [11 5] to the meaning of the sensible in general-of being an
immediate manifestation of real being itself. The diversity or even the
contingency of our sensations is only the expression of the infinitely diverse
manner whereby being manifests itself to us, but, regardless of the mode
according to which this takes place, this manifestation is everywhere and
always a manifestation, it is the very unveiling of being which shows itself
to us in its truth.
Consequently, sight does not merely present us with silent images floating
somewhere in air, in the interval which would be spread between the real
• Ibid. [06.
88 MOVEMENT AND SENSING
visual sensations, will furnish us with the foundation for the relationship
between our different senses, a relationship upon which the unity of our
experience rests, we would first like to clarify fully the non-sequiturs of
classical theories, non-sequiturs which stem from the role which they claim
to assign to kinaesthetic sensation. In the analysis of Sartre, this role is
considerable: On the one hand, it is the kinaesthetic sensation which
is the origin of our knowledge of the movement of our body such that it
is only through the intermediary of this sensation that the relationship
between our movements and our images, for example, can be established;
on the other hand, it is this same kinaesthetic sensation which serves,
in the aforementioned example, as defining the present, a present which
strangely resembles the coanaesthetic present of empiricists or the sensory-
motor present of Bergson. The present is not a sensible present, it is an onto-
logical present, but what is important to note here is the fact that the
importance of the role assigned to kinaesthetic sensation does not fit at
all well with the total uncertainty which is prevalent with regard to the exact
nature of this sensation. In a note in his L ' imaginaire, 7 Sartre tells us that
he has explained "the motor basis of the image" by making use of the thesis
of James "concerning the peripheral origin of the feeling of tension;" he
has not taken account of the 'hypothesis'- constructed by certain contem-
poraries, notably by Mourgue-according to which there would exist
certain "roughly outlined, sketched, and retained movements from motor
impressions whose origin is not in muscular contractions"; in the case in which
this hypothesis would be confirmed, adds Sartre, "all we need do is admit
that [123] the imaginative intention holds for these non-peripheral motor
impressions."
What is strange from a phenomenological perspective is the fact that the
kinaesthetic impression, which is thought to constitute the being of the
present, as well as the foundation for the relationship between our images
and our movements, is some thing 'x', totally undetermined and actually
purely hypothetical to the point of becoming the object of hypotheses
for psychologists and scholars. Moreover, this uncertainty with regard
to the being of kinaesthetic sensation, insofar as it is "the motor basis of
the image," must receive its true name; it is actually an absolute uncon-
sciousness. The unconsciousness of the kinaesthetic sensation as the so-
called element of the knowledge of the movement whereby I trace the image
of a circle in space results directly from the ontological thesis according
to which movement, which is immediately present to us insofar as it is
which this act leaves in the "interior" body as the result of the ccnstitution
of kinaesthetic impressions in the form of the movements of our organs),
breaks down into two sorts of elements: those which belong to the imma-
nence of absolute SUbjectivity and, on the other hand, those which are con-
stituted. The theory of subjective movement permits us to understand the
profound unity which traverses [127] all these elements and which is found
in the first as original unity, in the second as a founded unity. The movement
which grasps the curve traced in space is admittedly analyzed into a move-
ment of my hand and a movement of my look, but this analysis takes place
interior to the transcendental sphere and does not lead to any veritable
division; it rather expresses the unity of the concrete life of the ego, who
is immanent to the unfolding of all his powers, because the root of the
latter is precisely the original being of SUbjective movement whose unity
we conceive once we understand its nature, which is that of being given
to us in an internal transcendental experience.
The nature of the transcendent terminus which they attain to permits
us to make more precise this unity of the movements of the look and the
hand, even though this unity is itself based on the first unity which is an
original subjective unity. Actually, it is one and the same curve which I
trace, which I see, and which I could also feel, for example, if I drew it in
a gust of wind which would affect the extremity of my index finger
92 MOVEMENT AND SENSING
After having grasped the principle of the unity of the senses, we can also
understand how this unity is truly one of knowledge and in what the latter
consists.
1) To the extent that it is an internal transcendental experience, our
body is an immediate knowledge of self. It is necessary to see quite clearly
that the immediate experience of our body presents us with nothing other
than itself; the body is not first of all a being and then an experience which
we would have of such a being-a being which would then pre-exist this
experience or which would exist independently of it. Our body does present
itself to us as surpassing the experience which we have of it, but this body
is not the original body of which we are now speaking. When it comes to
the latter, its being is that of the immediate experience which we have of
8 Solely the development of these views could lead, in our opinion, to a satisfactory
theory of symbolism.
MOVEMENT AND SENSING 93
it, it is a being which is an appearing, but as we have seen, an appearing of
a determined type, it is an appearance which presents itself to us in the ab-
sence of all phenomenological distance and is one with this way of presenting
itself. This is the way in which our body is originally a knowledge. Our body
is a power, but this power is an immediate knowledge of self, [129] a know-
ledge which does not presuppose that the horizon of the truth of being is
already open to us, but which is rather the foundation and the origin of this
truth.
2) At the same time that it is an internal transcendental experience,
our body is a transcendent experience. Precisely because the self-knowledge
of the original body is not a thematic knowledge, because the 'self' and the
ipseity of the body are not the terminus but the condition for this knowledge,
the latter is not enclosed within itself, it is not the knowledge of self, but
the knowledge of transcendent being in general. Here we find the being of
absolute subjectivity in its roots and in its most profound structure. Because
such a being is not constituted, it is a power of constitution; because it is
given to itself without, in this act of giving itself to itself, appearing at any I'
moment in the element of transcendent being, this region of transcendent
(
being remains free for it, something can be given to it in the element of
this region. In this original ontological structure of the body as absolu te
SUbjectivity, we find the reason for which our body knows the world without
knowing the "instruments" with which it was thought to know the world
according to classical perspectives; here we likewise find the reason for
which its knowledge of the world takes place without recurring to any sort
of 'means'.
Certainly, our body has the power of knowing its members, as well as
the different organs of sense which are said to compose its being, but what
it then knows is still an element of the world, its knowledge is still in this
case a knowledge of the world, it is in no way a knowledge of the instrument
of its knowledge of the world. If the "instruments" whereby I know the
world, if the powers of my body arose before me in the element of transcen-
dent being, I would no longer know the world, or rather I would know
a new sector thereof, a sector of the transcendent body, whereas the other
sectors would disappear in the shadows. [130] Hence, when I attended to
my kinaesthetic sensations, the curve which the movement of my hand traced
in space was no more than the uncertain and vague object for a marginal
consciousness. The powers of my body do not, therefore, give me the being of
the world except on the condition that they belong to the sphere of absolute
immanence, on the condition of being known in a knowledge where the
concept of the world plays no role whatever. The knowledge of the world
94 MOVEMENT AND SENSING
by the body and the original knowledge of the body by itself are, however,
not two different knowledges because the second is rather the very substance
of the first. The transcendent experience is, in itself, an internal transcen-
dental experience; the original experience is an experience in which the being
of the world as well as the being of the body are present to us, even though
the mode according to which this presence takes place is radically different
in the two cases: The body is present to us in the absolute immanence of
subjectivity, the world in the element of transcendent being.
If we now direct our attention to this knowledge of the world which is
the heritage of the body, it is, as we have said, neither intellectual nor even
representative. For example, when I consider the act whereby I take with
my hand the box of matches which is in my pocket, the knowledge which
I have ofthis box is solely that which belongs to the movement which masters
it and utilizes it. The relationships which intervene within such knowledge,
which in a somewhat less equivocal fashion we can call a process, because it
is totally immanent to this process whose very being is constituted by this
knowledge, these relationships are not objective spatial relationships but
relationships which are the exact replica, the so to speak continuous corre-
late of the movements which I make. Objects are not originally or even
ordinarily contemplated objects, they are the objects of our movements.
In this sense, it is true to say that the original being of things is not a Vor-
handen [131] but a Zuhanden. Moreover, by asserting the original relation-
ship of the being of things to our movements, by saying that objects are
not first represented, but immediately lived by the powers whereby we
are related to them, we do not claim to in augurate any primacy of the hand
over sight, for example; we rather insist that vision is a knowledge of the
same type as manual prehension or motor touch, i.e. a knowledge which
is not an intellectual or theoretical knowledge, which is not a representation,
because it is effected by the body, because it is a bodily knowledge, because
it is the fact of subjective movement, as the analysis of the faculty of sensing
has shown us. We must place ourselves interior to the powers which it
unfolds in order to understand the nature of the world which our body
knows. Indeed, we are truly placed interior to these powers. This is why
bodily knowledge is not a provisional knowledge, a primitive knowledge
perhaps, but one rapidly surpassed by the intelligent man, it is rather a
primordial and irreducible ontological knowledge, the foundation and the
ground of all our knowledge and, in particular, of our intellectual and theo-
retical knowledge.
3) This bodily knowledge of the world is not an actual knowledge. Our
body is not exactly a knowledge, it is rather a power of knowledge, the prin-
MOVEMENT AND SENSING 95
ciple of infinitely various, multiple, and yet coordinated knowledges, of
which it is truly the owner. The being of ontological knowledge has been
identified by Maine de Biran with the being of the ego, but the ego is the
body. This is why ontological knowledge is not an empty possibility, why
its existence is not a virtual existence which would need the concurrence
of a foreign reality in order to move into act, finally, why it is a real being,
because it is the very being of our body, its concrete and infinite life. How
can a pure possibility be a concrete being? What [I23] is the being of the
body if it is precisely the concrete being of pure ontological possibility?
A text from Maine de Biran wiII clarify this point for us: "All movements
executed by the hand, all positions which it has taken in touching the solid,
can be voluntarily repeated in the absence of thi s solid. These movements
are the signs of diverse elementary perceptions, relative to first qualities .. . ;
they can serve to recall ideas, and this recall, executed through the means
of available signs, constitutes the memory properly so-called; hence we
have a veritable memory of tangible forms."1 The hypothesis of the absence
of the solid during the reproduction of the movement of the hand stems
from the general project of the a nalysis of the faculty of sensing, here again
it is only a fiction destined to make evident the essence of the phenomenon
under consideration. Henceforth, as in the case of hearing and the voluntary
reproduction of a sonorous impression, we must first of all distinguish,
in this phenomenon of reproduction of the movement of prehension of
a solid, four sorts of knowledge: I) the original knowledge of movement
by itself; 2) the recognition of this movement as being the same as that
which had already been effected; 3) the knowledge of the transcendent
terminus of movement, viz. the solid; 4) the recognition of this transcendent
terminus as a terminus already attained to by the same movement. To
render more precise the nature of these different knowledges, to under-
stand why they are identical at the very heart of one primordial knowledge,
is to be led to give to Biranian phenomenology of the memory its full
development and at the same time, to go back to the foundation for the
memory, to the being of ontological knowledge as identical to the being
of the body.
If, first of all, we reflect on the knowledge and the recognition of the solid,
we wiII see that the mode according to which [1 33] the latter is given to us
has an absolutely general meaning: Things are never present to the body in
an experience which would bear within it the characteristic of having to
be unique; rather they are always given to us as something which we will
1 Maine de Biran, Essai sur les fondements de la psychologie ... 408. [Henry's italicsl
96 MOVEMENT AND SENSING
see again. The being of an object is that whicb I can attain on condition
of a certain movement. On the other hand, since this movement is a peculiar,
irreducible, inalienable possibility and, to say it all, an ontological possi-
bility of my body, it follows that the being of the world is that which I can
always attain; it is accessible to me in principle. Each time that an object
is given to my body, it is given not so much as an object of a present expe-
rience but as something which my body can attain, something which is sub-
missive to the power which my body has on it. When it seems to us that
things are otherwise, when, for example, we see a panorama or a face which
we will never see again, this new meaning which is attached to our experience
is only a negative determination of the general meaning according to which
the world is given to our body, and this negative determination, far from
excluding the meaning according to which the terminus of my bodily expe-
rience is in principle accessible to me, rather finds in this general meaning
its foundation and is no more than a determination thereof.
It is necessary to make the same remark regard ing the disappearance in
fact of one of the powers of my body, for example, sight, or of their global
disappearance, which it represented to us in the idea of death. This idea is
only a determination of the general meaning of our experience of the world.
Thus, the world is the totality of the contents of all the experiences of my
body, it is the terminus of all my real or possible movements. This terminus
is indefinitely repeatable, these contents are always accessible to me in prin-
ciple, because my movement is not a present and so-called empirical state
of my body, because its being is rather [134J the very being of ontological
knowledge. It is this identity of the original being of movement with that
of ontological knowledge itself that we express by saying that the body
is a power, that its knowledge is not limited to the present instant, but that ·
it is a possibility of knowledge in general, the real and concrete possibility
of a world being given to me. We call 'habit' the real and concrete being of
the ontological possibility and we li kewise express the idea that the body
is a power by saying that it is a habit, the totality of our habits. With regard
to the world, it is the terminus of all our habits, and it is in this sense that
we are truly its inhabitants. To inhabit, to frequent the world, such is the
fact of human reality and such a characteristic of habitation is an ontological
characteristic which also -serves to define the world as well as the body
which inhabits it.
If we now return to the Biranian example which we are discussing and
to the four fundamental types of knowledge which are implied therein
(knowledge and recognition of the movement of the hand and of its transcen-
dent terminus), we see why there is actually no place for distinguishing
MOVEMENT AND SENSING 97
between knowledge and recognition. If all knowledge is likewise recognition,
it is because it is not the fact of an isolated act, but of sUbjectivity itself,
i.e. of a power, or if you prefer, because it is not an empirical knowledge
but an ontological knowledge. That to which the solid is present in the
knowledge which I have of it, is my hand, it is not a single act of grasping,
it is a general possibility of prehension which, in its present, i.e. in the onto-
logical present, also bears within it all past and future prehensions of this
solid and of all solids of the world in general. This is what we mean when we
say that the being of my body is habit, i.e. a general and indefinite possi bility
of knowledges. This possibility is the real being of the ego, it is its ontolo-
gical actuality, it is the identity of the body, [135J it is, furtherm ore, as
Maine de Biran says, the "very durability of our personal individuality.'"
The body is not an instantaneous knowledge, it is this permanent knowledge
which is my very existence, it is memory.
The characteristic of memory inherent in the power of sensing and acting
-the memory of touching and tactile forms are merely one example-con-
stitutes a constant theme for the thought of Maine de Biran. " Only the ego,"
he says, "recalls what he has apperceived or effected by his constitutive
force."3 It is the immanence of this constitutive force to all apperceptions
or operations of the ego which constitute the fact that the knowledge which
these latter bear within themselves is always memory, i.e. it is always a
possibility of knowledge in general. The body which remembers does not
become separated from the first paths which Jed it to things, it keeps within
it the secret of its access to all the objects of its environment, it is the key
to the universe, it extends its power to everything which exists. That which
remains beyond its scope and its grasp receives this meaning of being
inaccessible to it only within a more primitive power of access and of opening
to the world. Thus, because movement belongs to a sphere of absolute
immanence, our knowledge of the universe, which belongs to it, takes on
this characteristic of never being a new knowledge ; it is, if not with regard
to its empirical content, at least with regard to its ontological structure and
its first possibility, a knowledge as old as our own existence.
We have said that the body was habit, we now say that it is memory.
How are we to understand these two affirmations? What relationship do
memory and habit have between them ? Are they not two different names
for designating one and the same phenomenon? In what does this phenom-
enon consist? Is it truly a foundation, and how are the memory and habit
situated with regard to it? [136J
, Ibid. 327; cf. also p. 350.
3 Ibid. 303-304.
98 MOVEMENT AND SE SING
the ego which is the foundation for psychological memory. This is what
the following text shows: "There could not be ... the simplest perception
[which always presupposes a successive plurality of impressions or acts]
if there were not the continuity of the ego or personal reminiscence pre-
served in the succession of the termini or elementary modes: But this
reminiscence preserved in the sensation of a single continuous movement
must be clearly distinguished from the memory properly so-called." 7 Hence,
it is because the body is memory, a memory, it is true, where the idea of
the past does not yet arise, that it can also be a memory which remembers
the past by making it the theme of its thought. The original memory of
our body is habit, our body is, as we have said, the totality of our habits.
Now we must note well that these habits are no more unconscious than
our memories. Once the concept of the unconscious appears, it is the sign
that we are approaching an original region, because the unconscious is
often only a name attributed to absolute subjectivity by philosophies incap-
able of grasping the essence of the foundation other than by projecting
it into the night of a hinter world which we have psychoanalyzed. Habits
are not some ready-to-go mechanisms which would be waiting somewhere
in a region 'x', where a movement of our will or desire would provide
them with the occasion wherein the melodic interplay [141] of their processes
and articulations would be triggered and set into motion. These neatly
structured, little psychological beings could long remain in the dust of a
hidden place where they are truly found for the very good reason that the
idea of our using them and putting them into motion never enters our
mind. Perhaps this idea and this desire are themselves unconscious? We
can probably account for this as follows: It is peculiar to mythologies to
grow without ceasing; each myth, in its indigence, calls for another myth
to account for it, and thus, little by little, the totality of our psychological
life leaves the area where we obviously see it taking place, in order to be
transposed into another region where it will live a new life where crude
and simplistic images will be given it-a life in the milieu of fantastic beings
and absurd concepts.
We have had the opportunity to grasp the original being of habit only
at the end of an ontological investigation which allowed us to surpass the
concept of the individualized and empirical being, as well as the concept
of its milieu and transcendental horizon, in order to rise to the concept of
the original being of SUbjectivity. The reality of the being in question,
therefore, no longer resides in its individuation, nor in the milieu of every
'1 Maine de Biran, Memoire sur la decomposition ... IV, 106 footnote.
102 MOVEMENT AND SENSING
The subjective unity of the body-the unity of our senses and movements,
the unity of their knowledge- allows us in turn to understand the individuality
of human reality insofar as this individuality is a sensible individuality.
It is here time to reject every empirical conception of individuality, a con-
ception which dominates the history of philosophical thought from anti-
quity to our own times. It is precisely by way of recourse to the body and
to the bodily condition of human reality that it had been thought possible
to find the means for relating the individuality of the being of the ego to
the empirical conception of spatio-temporal individuation. Actually, since
man has a body, and since this body was conceived as an empirical object
individuated in time, the existence of this body naturally became the prin-
ciple for applying the general conditions of spatio-temporal individuation
to the being of human reality. Moreover, the body was not only the point
of application to human reality of the general form of individuality, it was
not only the means and the foundation for this application, it was truly
its origin and cause. In other words, it was because man had a body that
he could also be understood as an individual. If one abstracted from this
body, there was nothing left to man except the being of pure spirit, a being
which was not a being properly so-called, because it was no longer individ-
uated, it was a sort of impersonal nous, a homogeneous and undifferentiated
substance. Man then truly became a twofold man; on the one hand, he was
a pure universal consciousness, and on the other hand, an empirical indi-
viduality. Moreover, it was the latter which truly conferred on him the
property of being a man, i.e. an individual. It was thanks to his body that
man came into the world, empirical individuation was truly the principle
for his birth. [143]
MOVEMENT AND SENSING 103
This strange philosophical alchemy constituted and still constitutes
the theme of half-theoretical, half-moral dissertations, because the dualism
of the spirit and empirical characteristics immediately takes on an axiolog-
ical meaning, it is the cadre of an effort which suggests to man that he ought
to elevate himself above these determinations and rejoin his true ego,
which is for all purposes no longer an ego but an Ego, Spirit, or anything
you want to make it. The empirical element is the element to be conquered;
for example, it is the pathological content which duty surmounts, it is some-
thing temporal, handed over to corruption, mortal and contingent remains.
Certainly, it is strange to base the individuality of the human being upon
an element endowed with a pejorative meaning because, henceforth, every
activity of man can consist only in a battle against this element, a battle
which, if it were to succeed, would have no other effect than the annihila-
tion of the principle of our individuality, such that the moral effort of man
would be turned toward the destruction of his own being. However, it is
not the consequences of these fantastic constructs which are of impor-
tance to us at the moment. We wish to understand how individuality,
whose theory we have given elsewhere, 1 is a sensible individuality.
First of all, the ontological theory of the body forbids us to see in it a
principle of empirical individuation. If individuality is not encountered
on the level of absolute subjectivity, if it is not a transcendental individuality,
then the relating of such a subjectivity to the body will not be able to bring
to such subjectivity the principle of individuation of which it is in need,
because the body itself is, in its essence, absolute subjectivity, and conse-
quently, does not bear within it any principle of empirical individuation.
The problem of individuality arises on the level of absolute subjectivity;
therefore, it arises both for the being of the body as well as the being of
[144] the ego; actually, it is only as one and the same problem that the con-
sideration of the body allows us to advance further. The individuality of
absolute subjectivity has found its foundation in the theory according to
which the being of this subjectivity is the very being of the ego. Where the
life of the ego is the concrete life of the body, this individuality becomes
a sensible individuality. Sensible individuality is not some empirical . indi-
viduality, because it is not an individuality of sensation, but an individuality
of sensing. Certainly, sensation is individuated in time, but the power of
sensing and the power of effecting movements in principle escapes empirical
individuation as it escapes time: This power is the absolute being of habit
and this is what makes it truly an Individual.
1 cr. the problematic of ipseity in The Essence of Manifestation, trans!' G. Etzkorn
1950) lSI.
, Ibid. ISO.
, Ibid. ISO-lSI.
, Ibid. IS2.
106 MOVEMENT AND SENSING
The problem of the constitution of the body eludes the field of our investiga-
tions because it is not the theme of the reflection which is concentrated
on the being of absolute subjectivity and the original ego. However, the
need to direct our attention to the being of the constituted body is unavoidable
to the extent that we now have to take into consideration a question which
can no longer be deferred. If, as we have shown, the being of the body is
an originally sUbjective being, if the life of our body is only a modality
of the life of absolute subjectivity, how is it that this, our very own body,
has never been considered by the various philosophical systems, by psychol-
ogy, by scientific reflection as well as by profane thought other than as
an element of transcendent being, regardless of the characteristics which
they have claimed to assign to our body in order to distinguish it, interior
to this region of existence, from other beings which inhabit this region as
the body does and among which it appears with certain determinations
which do not impede the inauguration of a system of relationships of inher-
ent and reciprocal action, but [150J which rather seem to require more ur-
gently its consideration? Actually, it is only to the extent it is a constituted
reality that the body is capable of entertaining with other beings of nature
relationships such as those which the sciences would have us conceive,
relationships whose validity is likewise universally recognized.
Certainly, our body manifests itself in the truth of transcendent being;
any consciousness whatever can discover it there; it appears as a spatial
configuration which is also the milieu wherein a number of objective dis-
placements and movements take place whereby this body enters into contact
with exterior bodies, runs up against them, attracts or repulses them.
How could that which we see be considered as illusory? How could such an
illusion be so universally shared? What is surprising is not this common
opinion which makes us consider our body as an object, an opinion whose
foundation we intend to show, it is rather the omission which seems to
THE TWOFOLD USAGE OF SIGNS 109
be implied in this opinion and which concerns the original being of our body.
Actually, in such a conception, everything takes place as if the body were
nothing other than this object which we see and as if the original being of
the body whose ontological analysis we have given were nothing but a chi-
mera, the trace of which is vainly sought in our real experience. There
is a sort of absorption of the originally subjective being of the body in
this body which manifests itself to us among things, the first becomes inte-
rior to the second and the entire being of our body is reduced to its consti-
tuted being and, beyond this transcendent phenomenon, there is nothing,
unless it be the consciousness which thinks it, the mind or the soul which
surveys it. Whatever might be subjective in OUf body, the element which
we have characterized as immanent, is indeed such, but it is an element
immanent to a transcendent body which belongs to nature. If I consider
the element immanent to my body as the heart or the nucleus of this body,
this element appears to me precisely as the heart or the nucleus of the body-
object which I [151] see or can touch. That which we call immanence has
thus become the very essence of the transcendent. Before clarifying the fun-
damental ontological ambiguity which presides over the occurrence of
such a transformation, we first must show how this transformation is at
the origin of the perception or the knowledge which we have of our body,
of this knowledge as it is expressed by common sense in everyday language.
It will be the philosophical presuppositions of this language which will
then become the theme of a radical ontological clarification.
This language says: The eye sees the panaroma, the hand moves toward
the table and touches it, its ear hears the melody .The eye, the hand, the ear
are elements of the transcendent body, they manifest themselves to con-
sciousness in the truth of being, there they have a place, a spatial configura-
tion and perceived or scientifically determined relationships with all the
objects of nature. It is precisely such transcendent elements which bear
within themselves the nucleus of the body, i.e. this ensemble of powers
whereby the body sees, moves, touches, and hears. Nevertheless, the latter
had been characterized by us as belonging to a sphere of radical immanence,
as constituting the being of a subjective body. What then is the meaning of
this deterioration whereby immanence ceases to define the sphere of our
absolute existence in order to be externalized in a being upon which such a
deterioration confers a sort of intimacy and depth? Do not the latter express
the presence in our transcendent body of sensible and motor powers whose
being we had thought to grasp by determining it as that of subjectivity? What
is truly the status of these powers?
There is no question of our returning to the results of the ontological
110 THE TWOFOLD USAGE OF SIGNS
analysis of the original being of our body, results which are absolutely
certain and which constitute a part of absolute knowledge upon which
phenomenological ontology is built. Moreover, how could we maintain
this absurdity whereby ultimately what we see and touch would also be that
which sees and touches? This body which we [152] see and which we call our
own presupposes, as Biran has shown us, another body which sees and which
touches, which sees and touches all things and among them this body which
is seen and touched. It is this other body which is the original body, whose
being has been determined as belonging to the sphere of absolute subjectivity
outside which it was unable to arise without losing everything which makes
it what it is. This ontological power cannot truly pass into the element
of transcendent being; it cannot be identified or incorporated into an ele-
ment of nature; this identification is a naive representation and actually
an illusion. It is the general theory of this illusion that Maine de Biran pro-
poses to us in the analysis of what he calls "the twofold usage of signs."
Let us consider the experience of seeing: It is an internal transcendental
experience. This experience transcends itself toward a world, but it takes
.,'
place entirely within a sphere of radical immanence. If we now express in
language this experience of vision, we use the word "to see" which is, to
speak as Maine de Biran, the "sign" of seeing. How this sign is related to
the internal experience of seeing, how, in a general way, language is based
on the life of absolute subjectivity which it expresses, this is what cannot
be clarified here. Let us simply say that this task of the foundation of lan-
guage takes place in two quite different ways which give a place, on the one
hand, to natural language which immediately expresses the life of subjec-
tivity and, on the other hand to the language of reflection which rests on
a mediating operation. In the latter case, which we are examining here
because it can provide the occasion for serious confusion, the expression
"I see" is not based on my internal transcendental experience of seeing,
but on a reflection directed toward this experience. Henceforth, the latter
ceases to be an immanent content in order to become the object of a new
experience which is my reflection. The terminus of this reflection, my prim-
itive experience of seeing, has now become a transcendent [153J reality,
and it is here that the ontological analysis must become more exact.
Actually, from the moment that vision is presented as the terminus of
an intentionality, it is ready to be circumscribed in an element of transcen-
dent being, for example, in the body-object which I see and which belongs
to nature. The ontological paralogism which would be implied in admitting
the thesis according to which seeing could be designated, following its
surreptitious entry into the sphere of transcendent being, as the property
THE TWOFOLD USAGE OF SIGNS III
of an element of nature, is the following: seeing, in the reflection which
I direct toward it, has become the simple transcendent correlate of the life
of absolute subjectivity; it is no longer seeing which sees but a simple repre-
sentation thereof; it is no longer the ontological knowledge which discovers
for us the transcendence of a visual world, but the simple exterior manifesta-
tion of this knowledge. Nevertheless, the representation of seeing presup-
poses real seeing as its foundation. Reflection never creates its object but
only the manner in which it presents it. It is because I see that I can reflect
on seeing, it is because the latter is originally mine in a sphere of absolute
immanence, that I can represent it to myself. If, therefore, the word 'see'
refers, in reflective language, to the seeing upon which I reflect, i.e. refers
to an intentional correlate, the transcendent character of the latter cannot
lead us into error. The theme of my reflection is truly a transcendent mani-
festation, but the content of this manifestation, the substance of what it
represents, is borrowed from the subjective life of our absolute body.
The process of foundation of reflective language is ultimately reduced to
that of natural language. Even if we assume that the words 'I see' designate
the representation of my seeing and not my seeing itself, nevertheless,
it is upon the latter, upon its radically immanent experience and upon it
alone, that their meaning ultimately rests. [154J
The entire ontological ambiguity in the phenomenon described by
Maine de Biran under the name of the "twofold usage of signs" resides
in the fact that a relationship is established between the words 'I see' and
a physiological organ, such that the sign 'to see' has a twofold usage and
designates both the eye, or at least a property thereof, as well as the internal
transcendental experience of seeing. We say, 'It is the eye which sees'.
The eye is a being of nature and primarily an extended being. Therefore,
seeing is a natural phenomenon and, moreover, a phenomenon endowed
with spatial extension, and this is the most outlandish absurdity that we
can imagine. If we care to pass beyond this ontological nonsense, we will
discover it again in the form of another difficulty: If seeing IS a phenomenon
localized in space, we do not at all see how this seeing can leave the area
where it is and go beyond, to the hill, to the house which I see, higher and
farther to the edge of the forest, and higher still to the heavens, even to
the stars. Such a seeing would see nothing at all, not even that which is
found in the area where we claim that it is. It is truly a natural phenomenon,
i.e. an element of transcendent being. The latter is that which is precisely
incapable of leaving itself and of knowing itself. It could not leave itself
unless it were first able to know itself; it could not be present to things
unless it were first present to itself. To be present to things interior to its
112 THE TWOFOLD USAGE OF SIGNS
cadre of our analysis of the body take us far from every possible solution
to the problem of the constitution of our own body. The twofold usage
of signs seemed to find its foundation in ontological dualism. However,
does not the latter now appear to us as that which impeded us from under-
standing the unity of this body whose very being-and not simply the appear-
ances under which it presents itself to us-we have sundered? Why?
Because on the one hand, we have asserted the identity of the original revela-
tion of subjective movement with the very being of our body and, on the
other hand, the identity of the transcendent manifestation of this body
with a being which must be that of the body-object. Consequently, we
are in the presence of two beings, and ontological dualism, if it does not
lead to a duality analogous to that which exists between two elements of
the world, still posits a real duality, a radical duality, because the two beings
here in question do not stem from the foundation of a common structure
but differ in their very essence, in their ontological origin which refers to
two absolutely heterogeneous regions of being.
At this juncture when it seems to us that we are in the presence of insur-
mountable difficulties, it is in place to bring to li ght the positiye elements
which ontological dualism and the theory of the subjective body have
established for us. These elements deal precisely with the problem of the
unity of the body and its belonging to the ego. Actually, we have understood
that it is only interior to an ontology of subjectivity that the body receives
an original status upon which its unity and the identity of its being with that
of the ego can rest. Therefore, if it is not at this time, i.e. when we must
finish the theory of this unity and the theory of this identity, that it should
occur to us to question again the [167] ontological presuppositions which
alone can give a foundation to such a theory. Such a theory will be finished
when we have brought to light the conditions which permit the unity of
the original being of the body and its identity with the being of the ego to
extend their reign, so to speak, to the being of the transcendent body, whose
identity with the being of the subjective body would then receive a solid
foundation at the same time. Hence, we have in our hands all the elements
for a solution: The duality of two regions of being, a unity and a belonging
to the ego of the being of the body, where this unity and this belonging
stand interior to the sphere of absolute sUbjectivity and originally deal
only with the subjective being of the body. If the problem we have raised
is one of knowing how these ontological determinations can be extended
to the being of the transcendent body, we will, henceforth, understand that
such an extension will take place only by finding its basis in the original
being of the body, that the unity and the belonging to the ego of the transcen-
THE TWOFOLD USAGE OF SIGNS 121
dent body are constituted on the foundation of the original being of the sub-
jective body, on the foundation of its unity and its belonging to the ego,
i.e. ontological determinations which are originally the exclusive privilege of
a determined ontological region, which is a region of absolute immanence.
This is what we have learned from the lengthy analyses which might seem
sterile but which we now understand as aiming at justifying the ontological
presuppositions within which our analysis of the body takes place, by show-
ing that these presuppositions do not lead the theory of the constitution
of our own body to inextricable difficulties but rather furnish it with the
elements which it needs and without which the problem of the unity of
our body could not even be raised.
We are now left with the task of describing the constitution of our own
body. To this point, the efforts of our analysis were mainly directed toward
the clarification of the subjective being of movement and we were content
to exclude from the sphere of absolute immanence all elements [168] which
did not belong to it and whose consideration would only obscure and alter
the original nature of the being of our body. Nevertheless, at the moment
when, in an attitude of reduction, we stuck to the interior of a sphere of
absolute subjectivity, we were led to consider the terminus toward which
movement immediately transcends itself, viz. the terminus which resists
effort. This terminus manifested itself to us as a resisting continuum which
escaped phenomenological reduction, which had to be considered by us
as the foundation for all transcendent being and hence offered us the
solution to the "big problem of existences."l2 If we now consider this
resisting continuum in itself, we see that its ontological homogeneity never-
theless admits a differentiation which is truly essential, because it allows
us to distinguish interior to this region of the transcendent body in general
a body which is our own among foreign bodies. For lack of such a differen-
tiation, we would be led, as Maine de Biran notes, to a position analogous
to that of the Stoics who saw in the soul the principle of the universe and
made it "the soul of the world." The immediate power of the ego actually
extends only to a particular body which is its own, and it is only in a mediate
way that it acts on the universe, which amounts to saying that interior to
the world, our transcendent body is distinguished from other bodies and
opposed to them in virtue of distinctive properties for which we must
account-it being understood that this is not a question of a represented
difference, or rather of a difference between the representation of our own
body and that of exterior bodies, but a difference between these bodies
such as they are originally lived by us, such as they present themselves
to subjective movement wh ich experiences them.
The differentiation here in question rests in Biranianism on [1 69J the fact
that movement encounters in one case an absolute resistance- and this is
the phenomenological foundatio n for the being of a fo reign body-whereas
this resistance yields to effort when it is a question of the transcendent
being of our own body. Maine de Biran calls the trancendent milieu which
thus yields to the effort of our movement "interior extension". In this
sui gel/eris manner of presenting itself resides, in the eyes of phenomenolog-
ical ontology, the entire being of our transcendent body whose immediate
solidarity with the original being of our body is only the expression of the:
fundamental relationship of the transcendence of movement. Thus it is
that to the original being of our body is bound a sort of organic body from
which, according to the word of Leibniz which Maine de Biran cites,
the soul is never separated. This organic body, which is the point of applica-
tion of effort and bound thereto, is an organic space which is primitively
I I
"vague and unlimited,"13 and whose ontologica[ homogeneity, we should
here repeat, is entirely founded on its original mode of manifestation.
Because it is not represented, because subjective movement and it alone
; , constitutes its proof and experience, thi s organic or interior space has no-
I
thing in common with exterior space. Neither is it an empty and without
depth continuum, a sort of monotonous space without life, as the one given
us in the pure intuition of Cartesian extension or Kantian space. Rather
it is a terminus which resists, it is a real being, a mass which effort moves
and which, even in the state of repose, is always raised above and maintain-
ed, as it were, outside nothingness by a sort of latent tension which is the
very life of absolute subjectivity insofar as thi s life is that of the original
body.
This mass which our life maintains, which our life holds (in much the
same way as we say that we hold our breath) does not remain an undiffer-
entiated and amorphous mass; it allows to appear in it [[ 70J structures to
which we will attribute the names of the different parts of our body, which
will be for us our members, our torso, our neck, our muscles, etc., but
which, originally, are nothing of the sort and present themselves to us
only as phenomeno[ogical systems wh ich express different ways in which
it yields to our effort. In the phenomenon of this structuring to which it
submi ts, the original mass of our transcendent body is divided into different
parts which obey our movements and over which the latter have an
13 Ibid. 211.
THE TWOFOLD USAGE OF SIGNS 123
llnmediate power. Thus our organic body is truly the ensemble of our
organs, but I) these organs are not parts of extension and hence they are
not juxtaposed in space; their original phenomenological bein g has nothing
to do with anatomic or physi ological determinations which science takes
as its object; 2) si nce they are nothing other than the termi ni which imme-
diately obey the original modes of subjective movement we can understand
that these organs present themselves to us as an empire over which we have
power and authority and as a region which we know interior to the power
which we exercise upon them; we understand that this power traverses
this region entirely and goes to its very bottom, because this region is nothing
other than this bottom, than this limit of our power-a limit which must
not be interpreted as a negative determ ination, as a terminus properly
so-called to which the influence of our movement would extend while
leaving behind it something which this movement would not attain. Under
the circumstances, the limit of our power rather means its achievement,
its effect, and the result whereby the subjective being of movement shows
that it is not the wish of a power but a real power.
The being of our organic body cannot be reduced to the being of one
or the other of our organs, but having been determined as the ensemble
in which all of our organs are integrated, we must (l 71J now give an ontolog-
ical interpretation of what we must understand by this "ensemble," an
interpretation which assumes in our eyes a great deal of importance because
it is related to the problem which dominates all our analyses, viz. the pro-
blem of the unity of our body. The interpretation of the organic body as the
ensemble of all our organs, i.e. of the unity of our transcendent body, is
precisely what will show us that this unity is nothing other than the transcen-
dental unity of the original being of the subjective body. Actually, the unity
of the organic body is an essentially practical unity, it is a unity whereby
and in which all our organs are found to be equally at our disposal. The
unity of these organs, i.e. the internal coherence of the phenomenological
systems which yield to our movements by opposing to them this relative
resistance which in turn characterizes, according to Biran, the being of
our transcendent body, is no more than the unity of our movements of
which these organs are the moving termini, a unity which we have shown
to be an originally subjective unity and one which belongs to a sphere of
absolute immanence. Hence, our organs are integrated into a totality and,
in this sense, they have lateral relationships between them. However,
this totality and the ensemble of the relationships which manifest themselves
there and which define this totality have no original character of themselves,
they in no way constitute the unity of our transcendent body but rather
124 THE TWOFOLD USAGE OF SIGNS
rest upon this unity. In other words, we have each of our organs immediately
at our disposal and it is in their common reference to this power which
is that of the subjective body that these different organs find their unity.
The unity of the transcendent body is not a transcendent unity, it is the unity
of the power which moves the different parts of organic space and which
confers upon them their unity and permits them to appear in the coherence
of a structure which contains them all and which we can consider as the
true schema of our body.
This schema is obviously not an image, it is nothing represented or
theoretical, and if we wish to think with some [172J exactitude about its
ontological status, we must say that such a schema implies the existence
of a twofold relationship, viz. on the one hand, the relationship which aU
our organs maintain among themselves and, on the other hand, the imme-
diate relationship which each of them maintains with the original being of
SUbjective movement. The latter relation ship is a modality of the transcen-
dental relationship of being-in-the-world, a specification of the general
, I act of transcendence, a specification in which movement in each case sur-
passes itself toward one or the other of these resisting structures which
yield to its effort and then come to determine the originally homogeneous
mass of the organic body. We must now repeat that these two relationships
which constitute the schema of our body are not on the same level: The
relationship of our organs among themselves, which seems to constitute
the foundation for the internal coherence of the organic body, really rests
on the relationship of each of these organs to the power which moves
them . If all our organs form but one and the same organic body, it is because
the power to which they are subjected is but one and the same power, it is
because it is a subjective unity which is the very unity of our original body,
the unity of the originally subjective being of movement. Hence, the unity
of the organic body is nothing other than the transcendental unity of abso-
lute subjectivity; it is in the unity of the internal transcendental experience
of the power which constitutes the being of our organic body that there
resides the principle of the integration of all our organs with a structure of
the ensemble, i.e. the principle of this schema whereby our organic body
presents itself to us as a coherent and practical totality.
It is not correct to say that the unity of our organs-i.e. the character
in virtue of which they present themselves to us in the power which we
exercise over them as belonging to an "ensemble"- is a transcendent
unity concerning which we need only recognize that it is founded and, hence,
implies the existence of a more original subjective unity ; rather we must
assert that the unity of the organic body is not different from the original
THE TWOFOLD USAGE OF SIG NS 125
body which is the subjective being of the ego. However, our direction has
not been toward such an identification; rather we have shown that the being
of the orga nic body is an abstract being, that of itself it has neither autonomy
nor ontological sufficiency. Actually, it is the unity of this being which con-
stitutes the foundation of the organ ic body and permits it to exist, and
this unity is that of the absolute life of the ego. It is tbe being of the latter
which constitutes the entire being of the organic body even though it does
not become one with it any more than seeing becomes one with tbe ter-
minus which is seen. It is as the terminus of movement that the organic
body exists and presents itself to us as a coherent totality of parts each of
which is the terminus of a movement and the ensemble of which refers to
the virtual totality of all the possible movements of our body. Therefore,
it is movement which maintains the being of the organic body at the sa me
time as it confers upon it its unity and its belonging to the ego. And it is
precisely because it is not sepa rable from this concrete subjective reality
of movement which animates it and bears it along that the organic body-
like the transcendent terminus of movement in general-escapes phenom-
enological reduction. I am the life of my body, the ego is the substance
of its organism, the matter and the principle of its movements, and it is
because it would be nothing without this foundation, which in its case is
the absolute life of SUbjectivity, that our transcendent body, which is but
the border of this life, [l 75J finds in it its unity and the principle of the onto-
logical determinations which make of it the body of the ego.
We could contest the fact that the being of the organic body becomes
a concrete being only through and in the life of the ego which tends toward
it in order to maintain it and bear it along; we might be tempted to reverse
this proposition or at least to establish a symmetry between the two beings
of the ego and the organic body by making their relationship alone some-
thing concrete and absolute, by seeing in each of the two termini of this
relationship only an element, in itself, in itself abstract, which would become
real only in its reference to the other. If there is no being to the organic body
without an act of transcendence of subjective movement, we must recognize
conversely that the being of the original body could not subsist of itself;
rather it exists only in the transcendental relationship which unites it to the
transcendent being of the organic body. Do we not find, in this solidarity of
ontological interiority and the being which appears, the reason for wh ich the
two termini of the relationship, expressed by this solidarity, both escape
reduction and present themselves to us as absolute termini or rather as the
two termini of an absolute relationship?
The fact that the organic body does not fall beneath the blow of reduction
THE TWOFOLD USAGE OF SIGNS 127
in no way signifies that it has the same ontological dignity as the original
being of the subjective body or that the ontological sufficiency of absolute
subjectivity has been usurped and must in some way be displaced in order
to be situated, not in the sphere of immanence, but in an area of exchange
between subjectivity and bei ng, an area of which it would constitute the
essence and the foundation. Such an area of exchange, to which we have
given the name 'phenomenological distance', certainly exists; but we know
that it requires a fou ndation and that this foundation resides precisely in
the essence of the original truth of subjectivity. Consequently, the latter
is not a terminus which would remain of itself [1 76] abstract, and far from
finding its reality and culmination in the transcendent being of the organic
body to which it is immediately bound according to a transcendental
relationship, it is rather the foundation of this being which, as the terminus
toward which it transcends itself, appears to us as its limit, but as a limit
which still belongs to it.
This character in virtue of which subjectivity, from the ontological point
of view, plays the role of a true foundation did not escape Maine de Biran
who, after having shown that the primitive fact is a duality, i.e. consists in
the original relationship which transcendence institutes between subjectivity
and the world and, in the case with which we are now concerned, between
the subjective being of the original body and the organic body, nevertheless,
asserts that "There is a more simple and prior relationship than this one."l4
What can such a relationship- the most original of all-be if it is not a
relationship arising interior to subjectivity itself in virtue of which the latter
reveals itself immediately to itself in the phenomenon of the internal tran-
scendental experience, a relationship which is really no longer a relationship
since it is the very negation (an immediate and not a dialectic negation)
of all mediation, since it is the very being of absolute life? It is this life,
which is that of the original body, which deploys the various parts of the
organic body and which holds them in unity; it is in this life that the principle
of the belonging of the organic body to the ego resides, a belonging which
is nothing other than its belonging to a life which is that of the ego. The
unity and the ipseity of the life of the original body are the unity and the
ipseity of the absolute life of the organic body, because the life of the
latter, the movement which dwells in it and animates it, are precisely the
life and the movement of the original body, i.e. of the subjective and tran-
scendental being of our body.
The completion of the theory of the constitution of our own body [177]
14 Maine de Biran, Memoire sur la decomposition ... IV, 127. [Henry's italics]
128 THE TWOFOLD USAGE OF SIGNS
would call for, parallel to this theory of the constitution of the organic
body, a theory of the constitution of our represented and objective body.
The being of our transcendent body is not reduced to that of our organic
body. We have shown that tbe latter was not the object of a representation
or a theoretical type of knowledge. Nevertheless, it is quite true that we
can represent our body to ourselves and make of it the correlate of a know-
led-ge analogous to that which we have of other objects or even to the explicit
and conceptual knowledge which we sometimes direct toward determined
regions of the world when we wish to make a science of it. Maine de Biran
bas carefully distinguished tbese two modes of knowledge interior to which
we can attain our transcendent body. He gave to the original knowledge
of our organic body the name "immediate knowledge of our own body"
and to the objective or representative knowledge of our transcendent
body the name of "secondary knowledge of our own body." The exterior
experience which I have of my body "stems exclusively from the secondary
knowledge of my own body, as object of intuition or external representation,
• I
and completely ignores this altogether intimate meaning upon which the
knowledge of the body is founded as the terminus for the internal immediate
apperception of the ego." "There is an immediate knowledge of one's
own body, based solely on the response to a willed effort, of an organic
resistance which yields to or obeys the wilL" "Hence, independently of
• the external knowledge of the form and the figure of the parts of our body,
as an object relative to the sense of touch and sight, there is an internal
apperception of the presence or the consistency of this body of ours, totally
relative to a special muscular sense which cannot act and be known except
from within, without its being able to be represented from without."" [178 ]
It is tbe immediate knowledge of our organic body and it alone wbich
permits us to move it, because it is precisely in the possibility of moving
this body and of successively engaging its different parts that this immediate
knowledge entirely consists, a knowledge by subjective movement of the
transcendent terminus which it deploys in its concrete exercise. Therefore,
there is a primacy of the immediate knowledge of our own body over its
representative or objective knowledge, and tbe paralogism of all classical
theories is to have forgotten this immediate knowledge for the sake of objec-
tive knowledge alone which was thought to furnish us with the totality
of tbe knowledge that we have of our body. Thus it is tbat "Condillac in
no way sought to discover ... how the ego could acquire interior knowledge
of the organs directly; he was concerned merely with an objective and second-
Hi Maine de Biran, Essai slir les fondements de la psyclzologie ... 214, 215, 216.
THE TWOFOLD USAGE OF SIGNS 129
ary knowledge of their exterior forms." To oppose, as Biran does, to
the "objective" knowledge of our body a "personal" knowledge l6 which
gives us the being of our body and each of its organs interiorly lived in
movement is to denounce the conceptions which reduce our body to a
represented object, if not a scientific object; the body-object-of-the-world
of objective perception or science implies, as we have seen, another body
which knows it, and , in a general way, the sensible reality of objective appear-
ance is always grasped within a power of knowing which is nothing other
than the original being of the subjective body.
If the objective knowledge of the transcendent body presupposes a more
original knowledge, a primordial knowledge of our body, such an objective
knowledge still exists, and our body is also an objective being which mani-
fests itself to us among all the other objects of the (l79J world. Consequently,
it is not two bodies which we must distinguish but rather three.
I) The original being of the subjective body, i.e. the absolute body
revealed in the internal transcendental experience of movement. The life
of this original body is the absolute life of subjectivity; in it we live, we move,
we sense, it is the alpha and the omega of our experience of the world,
it is through it that being comes to the world, it is in the resistance which
it experiences that the essence of the real is manifested to us and that every-
thing acquires consistency, form, and value. Moreover, this resistance is
not homogeneous, sometimes it is only a relative resistance which yields
to subjective movement and yields to it, so to speak, along permanent lines
which outline fixed structures: These structures are our organs and the
general milieu of this relative resistance is the organic body.
2) The organic body is the immediate and moving terminus of the abso-
lute movement of the subjective body, or rather it is the ensemble of the
termini over which movement has a hold. Because there is a structure to
this organic body, it is divided into various transcendent masses whose
diversity is always maintained in the unity of the absolute life of the original
body. The existence of such structures interior to the organic body is of
great importance relative to the problem of internal sensations, a problem
about which we have not as yet spoken. If the mass of the organic body
were to remain undifferentiated, our internal sensations would float around
interior to this mass without being able to be localized in any way whatever
and hence without being able to be clearly distinguished from one another.
Internal sensibility would be a unity in confusion, a unity without diversity
and, consequently, there would be no sensations properly so-called, but
Ie Maine de Biran, Memoire sur la decomposition ... IV, 9 footnote 1; IV) 10.
130 THE TWOFOLD USAGE OF SIGNS
nal apperception of the co-existence of the body; this is truly the primitive fact . But it could
well exist or have this apperception without yet knowing its body as an object of repre-
sentation or of intuition through the use of [lhe sense of] touch."
It Maine de Biran, Essai sur les /olldemenls de la psych%gie ... 381-382.
THE TWOFOLD USAGE OF SIGNS 133
as having an interior, an interior of a determined nature. In what does
this 'interior' consist which is responsible for tbe fact tbat our objective
body appears to us precisely as a body which is one, which belongs to us and
whichis the sameas the body concerning which we have an interior and imme-
diate experience? What knowled ge do we have of this dimension of sui generis
interiority which distinguishes one such object from all the others?
It is clear tbat the interiority of the objective body rests on ontological
interiority, and that thus it is by way of borrowing from the transcendental
body and the originally subjective being of the ego that the objective body
is what it is and presents itself to us with di stinctive characteristics. That
a natural being (for example, the eye or the ear) which, as a determination
and part of nature, is obviously deprived of every possibility for transcen-
ding itself and knowing, may yet be said to see or hear, this cannot be,
as we have sufficiently shown, unless we are otherwise in possession of what
is meant by the words 'to see', ' to hear', i.e. unless the internal transcendental
experience of the subjective body in general is given us. Therefore, it is
from the content of this original subjective experience of our body that
the objective body draws the meaning inherent to it and determines it
precisely as the body which is ours, which sees, which effects movements,
etc. To provide an explicit answer to the question of how this objective
meaning is in every case based on a corresponding subjective experience
is to take the problem of the constitution of our own body for what it is.
We will limit ourselves here to one remark concerning the unity of the
transcendent objective body and its belonging to the ego.
The unity of the transcendent objective body is a transcendent unity, it
is a founded unity. As such, it must not be confused with the unity of the
organic body which was nothing other than the original SUbjective unity
of the absolute body. It is upon thi s latter unity that the unity of the transcen-
dent body rests in the sense [185] that it is the simple representation of this
unity, the projection in a part of space which the objective body occupies.
With regard to the belonging of this objective body to the ego, it must be
understood in the same way as its unity. In other words, the life of the objec-
tive body is not absolute life but a representation thereof and, consequently,
we must recognize that there is not an absolute identity between our objec-
tive body and our original body, but that there exists between them a true
duality. Because our objective body is only a representation of our original
body, the problems which the duality of these two bodies poses and the unity
of meaning which unites them are altogether anal ogous to the problems
which stern from the relationships between the transcendent ego and the
absolute ego. To the real identity of the original body and our organic
134 THE TWOFOLD USAGE OF SIGNS
body, or rather to the identity of absolute life which constitutes the being
of the original body and maintains in its unity the organic body whose
absolute life is life itself, there is opposed the represented identity of our
objective transcendent body with our absolute body, an identity which
naturally rests on the original identity of the being of the subjective body,
i.e. the ego.
Many other questions arise concerning this problem of the constitution
of our objective body, questions which it was not possible for us to examine
in the cad re of these investigations. We were merely concerned with bringing
to light the ontological horizon within which such a constitution takes
place. It is upon this constitution of the objective body that the twofold
usage of signs rests, a usage which we now see is not totally illegitimate
because the constituted body actually borrows what is essential to its being
from the original body and because, if not the absolute life of this body,
at least the representation of this life is immanent to it. The sign which draws
its entire meaning from the internal transcendental experience of our original
• I, body can, nevertheless, equally refer to the natural being of the objective
body or even to one of its parts, because the [1 86] representation of this
internal transcendental experience intervenes in the constitution of our
body-object, i.e. in the elaboration of the general meaning conferred upon it.
We must be careful not to confuse the image or the images which we
can form of this body of ours with the three phenomena of our body which
"
we have successively studied (subjective, organic, objective). Such images
sur\!ly exist and their description is a task which a phenomenology of the
body sets for itself. Everything we can say regarding this subject is summed
up in the fact that these images require a foundation which is constituted
by the real being of the objective body, and also by the being of our organic
body. The nature of the latter explains the fact that we were able to have
an image of certain parts of our body which our objective perception does
not permit us to attain at least in a direct manner. Actually, to our organic
body helong all our organs including those which we do not perceive objec-
tively and in this way we understand that an image based on the organic
body offers us a representation of our body infinitely more rich and com-
plete" than the one given us by an image which is related only to the being
of our objective body. The latter image, which is the image of an objective
representation, includes, it is true, elements borrowed from the original
20 To the extent that the image of our body rests on the being of our organic body,
it is actually an image of the total being of our body and in DO sense a lacunary image-
which it would be if it had no other foundation than the representati ve knowledge of
our objective body.
THE TWOFOLD USAGE OF SIGNS 135
and organic body, because the constitution of our objective body implies
the intervention of such elements.
A phenomenological description of one's own body, of the organic
body for example, ought not to be duped by the attitude which such a
description has adopted and within which it operates, because such an
attitude is not a natural attitude, but its modification. The [I 87J transcen-
dent body which becomes the theme of thought in the philosophical interro-
gation which the phenomenologist directs toward it is only, in our daily
lives, a marginal phenomenon whose constitution takes place in the shadows.
To be preoccupied with one's own body is not an immediate or habitual
attitude; the latter is an attitude whereby the body is preoccupied with
the world, something altogether different. Certainly, the arising of our body
in the phenomenological field does not take place only when a philosophical
interrogation is directed toward it, but it likewise takes place on many other
occasions which make up daily life, particularly in certain essential modalities
of our affective or bodily life, viz. phenomena in which it happens that we
are acutely aware of our body and its different peculiarities. To avoid a
paralogism whose repercussions concerning the descriptions and the general
theory of the body could be quite serious, we must recognize that such
phenomena can be understood only by starting from the natural attitude
of which they are never more than a variation, no matter how important
this variation may be.
If we make the effort to return to this natural attitude, we will then see
the so-called insoluble problems clarified, problems relative to the relation-
ships between the ego and its body, to "the union of soul and body," and
the inextricable difficulties in which philosophical reflection becomes entan-
gled when it touches upon such problems, which seem to us to be imputable
to the way in which they are posed which has nothing to do with OUf original
experience nor with the spontaneous life of man. The dualism of the soul
and the body, i.e. the original being of the subjective body and the tran-
scendent body, is only a particular case of ontological dualism. The act
whereby subjective movement stretches out the hand as an organic mass
which it knows interiorly, as the terminus toward which, not its intellectual
knowledge, but its motor knowledge transcends itself is no more or less
mysterious than the act whereby my look aims at and attains the tree
standing there on the hill. The dualism which the description [I88J of these
phenomena brings to light is not an ontic dualism; it is a dualism which
does not differ from the one we recognized between original truth and the
truth of transcendent being, and which expresses the relationship fundative
of the unity between these two truths, fundative of the unity of experience-
it is a dualism which has nothing to do with Cartesian dualism. [I89J
CHAPTER V
CARTESIAN DUALISM
the certain from the hypothetical, in other words on the condition of effect-
ing here once more a phenomenological reduction which wiII subscribe
to what is given us in the absolute certitude of subjective experience, but
which wi ll enable us to reject in turn whatever, in the dogmatic content of
Cartesianism, must be considered by us as a pure transcendent hypothesis
whose absurdity would then not be able to claim the so-called characteristic
of being a fact? It is from one and the same movement [1 92] at one and the
same time that phenomenological reflection will bring to li ght the absolute
evidence of the fact and under the blow of reduction abandon the hypothet-
ical (read absurd) element of the theory. The ambiguity of the Cartesian
position will then appear in its full light, because it consists, on the one
hand, in inextricably mixing two points of view, in presenting as a fact
what is only a theory, but above all, and in an infinitely perfidious fashion,
of subreptitiously including the theory in the statement and in the very
definition of the fact. Hence, by recognizing, as we should, the fact, we are
led, unless careful, to admit the implausible theory.
I I What then is this indubitable "fact"? Shall we say that it is the union
of the soul and the body? Rather, how can we fail to see that in the defini-
tion of this fact as the primitive nature of the union of soul and body, the
theory already enters in, viz. the affirmation of the mixture of extended
substance and thinking substance? Is this mixture (permixtio) truly a fact?
What is its phenomenological status? By formulating the latter question,
we do not in any way aim at drawing the problem from its Cartesian context,
positing it, so to speak, interior to our own philosophical horizon. Actually,
it is truly within the cadre of a phenomenological ontology that the essences
of thought and extension were elaborated by Cartesianism itself, and it is
quite obvious that it is in the same fashion that we ought to proceed in
determining the essence of the third primitive nature. What then is the
phenomenological content which allows us to affirm the existence of such
an essence? Is the mixture of soul and body given us in some way? We
should not fail to remark that not only would Descartes admit the legiti-
macy of this question, but he actually answered it in a rather startling
fashion: Did be not declare time and again that in order to correctly con-
ceive the union of the soul and body it was necessary not to reflect on this
phenomenon, but to abandon oneself thereto and to live it? [1 93] Could we
bope to have a more explicit recourse to experience?
We must here make the essential remark that the experience here in ques-
tion is an internal transcendental experience wbose content is itself transcen-
dental: The facts which constitute it belong to the sphere of the cogito, they
are Erlebnisse. Whether it is a question of Erlebnisse relative to sensible
CARTESIAN DUALISM 139
knowledge, to imaginative life, to our feelin gs and our passions, to the
experience of our action in daily life, we are always dealing with facts and
indubitable facts which are so many determinations of the cogito and,
consequently, participate in the absolute certitude which is the privilege
of this region of existence. But how can we avoid the following question:
In what way is the substantial union of soul and body implied ill such internal
transcendental experiences? Why did Descartes invent, alongside the sphere
of the cogito or, as he says, the primitive nature of thought, allother region
of beillg, that of the permixtio, destined to receive facts which are Erlebnisse
and which constantly belong to absolute subjectivity and it alone?
Doubtless, the facts which Descartes applies to the third primitive
nature are Erlebnisse of a particular character: Within the cogito they
define a zone of sui generis existence which seems to be the reign of affec-
tivity and certainly is distinct from the pure thought of the mathematician
occupied, for example, with solving an equation. This specific character
which stamps a determined category of Erlebnisse with his own mark,
Descartes thought to account for by making it appear as the effect of the
union, as a trouble which results from the intervention of the body in the
domain of pure thought, an intervention which is nothing other than an
action of the body on the soul, an action which in turn presupposes union
as the condition for its own possibility. But, in this reasoning, have we not
passed insensibly from a fact to a theory which aims at explaining it and
which is no longer anything more than a transcendent construct whose
status must be carefully distinguished from [I94J that of the Erlebnisse
which it claims to account for? Will we say that this theory can be true?
Nevertheless, did not this theory find acceptance-in spite of its internal
and specifically theoretical difficulties-under the sole pretext that a fact,
even an unintelligible one, could not be denied? But if tbe fact is not tbe
theory, if it really has nothing to do with it, how can such an incredible
theory be given credence?
In this case then we ought to show that it is in the internal structure,
in tbe very essence of certain Erlebllisse, which we could call bodily Erleb-
nisse, that, in a way, substantial union is included. Certainly, bodily Erleb-
nisse exist, but when we speak of a subjective body, we wish to say tbat the
body in question is entirely subjectivity and that it is one in its being with
the very being of this absolute SUbjectivity. This is not the case in Cartesian-
ism, or rather, this is its ambiguity; it is at one time truly a question
of a subjective body concerning which. Descartes certainly had a congenial
presentiment, and at another time-and tbis is the case in the theory of
substantial union-of the union of soul with a body which is truly the body
140 CARTESIAN DUALISM
'in the third person' of physical and mechanical nature, a body whose
essence is extension and which is always subject, if not actually at least
virtually, to the catego ry of partes extra partes which make its so-called
mixture with the essence of thought unintelli gible, Let us examine the
Erlebnisse wherein we have the experience of our own practical action or
our passions. Their consi deration leads Descartes to effect a veritable
scission in the cogilO which actually ends in situating the Erlebnisse outside
the sphere of absolute sUbjectivity to the extent that their essence ceases
to be precisely that of thought in order to become the substantial union
itself. Only on this condition could such Erlebnisse become proof of the
union, on condition that the very substance of which they are made is no
longer that of thought, but precisely the third primitive simple nature.
However, whence [195] does thi s characteristic come to bodily Erlebnisse,
this characteristic which makes them what they are, this characteristic
whereby they present themselves phenomenologically to us as determina-
tions of transcendental subjectivity from which they draw their nature as
absolute, certain, and irrefutable facts? It is always the same ambiguity
which causes Descartes, after having grasped these Erlebnisse where they
'" effectively exist in the absolute sphere of the cogito, to transpose them into
a region which no longer has any authentic ontological character, for this
region is deprived of every phenomenological foundation and is only a
transcendent construct which its unintelligible character renders unaccept-
able even for a philosophy which would nourish itself on theories and hypo-
theses.
Nevertheless, to the extent that Descartes was not content to assert the
union as a hypothesis suitable for explaining the peculiar character of cer-
tain Erlebnisse (whose belonging to thinking substance as its modes would
then not be denied), but sometimes seems, so to speak, to read this union
in the phenomenological structure of these Erlebnisse and in their very stuff,
a more profound destruction of his thesis is in order. This destruction will
bring to light a certain number of specifically Cartesian prejudices which
we ought now to denounce .
Why should he assert the existence of a primitive nature other than thought
as the milieu destined to receive bod ily Erlebnisse, since the latter naturally
find their place in subjectivity and it is even impossible to conceive their
being as different from that of the cogito? Because Descartes made of
thought an idea which ultimately had to exclude such Erlebnisse, at least
as long as such thought is considered in its pure state. The ideal of Descartes
is actually that of theoretical and intellectual knowledge which is a sort of
dispassionate grasp of mathematical being and in which there is no place
CARTESIAN D UALISM 141
either for feelings or passions. Whence this idea, peculiar to all intellectua-
lism, [196J that affectivity in general is so mething inferior and could not
as such belong to the pure essence of thought. Whence, fina lly, the hypothesis
to the effect that the deterioration of pure thought into affectivity, while
it cannot find its principle in the essence of this thought, necessarily stem s
from the interference in it of a foreign element, viz. the body. Moreover,
this body is not the subjective body nor is it the same as the affective tonality
proper to bodily Erlebnisse, it is the extended body, as we discovered in
the essential analysis of the piece of wax. Consequently, the disparity between
the phenomenological aspect and the explanatory aspect of the theory
becomes clearly apparent here, while the ambiguity wh ich dominates ail
the Cartesian analyses disappears; on the one hand, we have the Erlebnis
with its peculiar psychological character, and it is concerning it and it
alone that we can say that it is something so evident that it could not be
denied, and on the other hand, the pure conception of a problematic
intervention of the extended-body in the essence of pure thought.
The thesis of Descartes consists in asserting that the Erlebnis given us
on the level of the cogito would not be what it is unless an action of the
extended substance upon the thinking substance were not produced from
another source. But this is the time to say with Hume that in the effect-
presupposing that the bodily Erlebnis is an effect- we do not any longer
read the energy of its cause! The Erlebnis is what it is, it is a perfect trans-
parency and as such it has an absolute ontological sufficiency. The essence
of thought is a substance. For our part, we do not intend here in any way
to take up again the objections of Arnauld. We will always be at liberty to
assert that these two complete substances could still unite, provided that
we recognize that their union is in no way necessary but simply accidental-
does not human "nature" present itself to us precisely as the product of
an incomprehensible accident? But this is not the place to discuss the nature
and the property [1 97J of substances; actually, what is in question here,
even though it could not be questioned, is the absolute and irreducible
value of the cogito. The being of the Erlebnis is one with its subjective and
transcendental appearance. either the extended body nor its so-called
action on the soul can be enclosed within this appearance. The union of
the soul and body is, therefore, not a fact, nor is it a primitive nature,
if we intend to understand by this an ontological region founded upon
an irrefutable phenomenological datum ; it is a pure assertion which results
from the inability of Descartes- and of many other philosophers-to
understand that affectivity can belong to the essence of pure thought.
However, here there is precisely nothing to understand, there are only
142 CARTESIAN DUALISM
" them that which is precisely the first characteristic of every life and every
experience and which we call, for lack of better terms, an affective tonality.
The dispassion of the Erlebllisse of theoretical knowledge [201J is only
I one determination among others of this tonality, a more subtle determina-
,
tion perhaps in its apparently privative character, but is so little deprived
of what constitutes the essence of affectivity that it is rather in virtue of
a peculiarly affective characteristic that the theoretical life has received
in many systems a frequently exclusive privilege. When all is said and done,
it was not the affective life in general which was depreciated, but only certain
of its modes, wheareas others, those which we live in our theoretical life,
were invested with a positive value for reasons of a precisely affective
order, which reasons reside in the particular affective content of these experi-
ences. Did not Descartes himself recogni ze the transcendental nature
of affectivity when, for example, he said that there are purely intellectual
joys and pleasures? Therefore, as such, affectivity could not result from
the substantial union because affective states exist wherein this so-called
union, by Descartes' admission, plays no role whatever.
Hence, it becomes apparent that if other affective states are devalued
and conceived as resulting from the interference of the body in the sphere
of thought, this cannot be because of their affective character. Consequently,
what is the reason wh ich led Descartes to divide, not the cogito in general,
but the affective cogito itself into pure affective Erlebllisse, on the one hand,
CARTESIAN DUALISM 145
and affective Erlebnisse which stem from the union, on the other? It was
because of the feelin g, borrowed from the peculiar affective contcnt of these
Erlebnisse, that our affective life is at one time the expansion and the very
overflow of our own existence and at other times the experience of our
dependence, of our finitude and our misery. The Cartesian theory of passion
has to do with the problem of existential alienation. Hcnce, it is not difficult
to see that the solution to this problem is subserviant, in Cartesianism,
to a general schema which consists in the attempt to base existential aliena-
tion on an ontological alienation which is presumed to be its cause. But the
difference between these two sorts of alienation' [202J is precisely the one
which separates pure theory from the fact, which in this case is the internal
experience of passion such as we live it in our very existence. It is from such
an experience that we borrow the totality of knowledge that we have of
our feelings; it is this experience alone which gives us their meaning as
well as the principle for distinguishing them.
But here we find Descartes asserting that the reason for our various pas-
sions is found entirely in the movements of animal spirits, blind movements
without any purpose. From this it foIlows, on the one hand, that human
passion is deprived of any species of meaning-and this is the ruin of any
moral science of man- and on the other hand, that man is no longer respon-
sible for his passions any more than he is, for example, for the circulation
of blood in his veins- and this is the ruin of all morality in its reduction
to a sort of'sal'oir faire of the mechanic'. ActuaIly, the progress of conscious-
ness which raises itself above its passion is in no way a progress of this
passion-consciousness itself; it results neither from the experience which
it has of the contradictions which distress its life nor from the movement
which bears this life beyond these contradictions nor from a reflection
on their meaning; in truth, it can be only the product of an external and
mechanical intervention executed on a disposition of itself mechanical.
The Cartesian who is concerned about his passion is like the Freudian who
wants to get rid of a complex: Both seek to act, by means which are assuredly
difficult to find, on a third reali ty = 'x'-a physiological or psychological
unconsciousness- which contains in [203J its mechanism, whose unfolding
eludes both our knowledge and our will, the secret of our affective existence,
of our life and our destiny. The philosophical task of a positive interpreta-
3 The theo ry of this difference could not be given here. We would merely like to note
that the concept of ontological alienation which in this present work designates the deter-
mination 'in the third person' of thought by a reality foreign to its essence, has an altogether
different meaning than the one it received in our work on The Essence of Manifestation.
Nevertheless, the context of the analysis makes it impossible to confuse the two meanings.
146 CARTESIAN DUALISM
tion of the real alienation of man beginning with the clarification of the
experience in which he lives this alienation is completely abandoned.
Because it does not bear within it the principle of its unhappiness, human
existence is no longer the center of the problem of alienation of which it
still seems to be the theatre. The obstinate will to explain everything accord-
ing to the schema of a relationship 'in the third person' between a cause
and an effect conceived as objects results in the fact that the primary con-
ditions (those which give us the phenomenological datum) which such a
theory of alienation must satisfy, are not even taken into consideration.
Can the problem of alienation in fact be posited otherwise than in a philo-
sophy of the first person? Is there any meaning whatever in saying that
a stone is alienated? To reduce the ego to the condition of an effect in the
third person, as the theory of ontological alienation does, is not to resolve
the problem of the real alienation of man, but only to suppress it. Ontologi-
cal alienation could not constitute the foundation for a theory of existential
alienation, it is not an explanation thereof but only a projection, made by
a crudely realist imagination, into the obscure heavens of myth.
Does the Cartesian theory of substantial union do anything more than
\ answer the preoccupation of accounting for the existence of a confused
thought in its opposition to the ideal of the intellectualist conception
of clear and distinct thought? Does it not rather answer another require-
ment to the extent that it deals with an authentically philosophical problem:
the problem of the action of the soul on the body? Such a problem would
surely not elude philosophical reflection, but the pseudo-solution which
Cartesianism gives it, with its theory of substantial union, [204J has as its
sole result the bringing to light of the ontologically incorrect characteristic
of the philosophical horizon within which this problem was posited by
Descartes as it would be by his successors. The ontological theory of the
body, or more precisely, the theory of subjective movement and its relation-
ship to the organic body was in fact nothing more than a theory of action,
of bodily action . Nevertheless, where do we see that it has brought us face
to face with aporia and difficulties similar to those encountered by Cartesi-
anism and, in its wake, practically all philosophical conceptions which have
treated this subject? One of the explicit goals of Biranian reflection was
precisely to show that the problem which is the crux of so many philosophies
does not stem from a mysterious and incomprehensible event, but rather
from a fact which is quite clear and evident of itself provided that we con-
sider it as a phenomenon, by sticking strictly to the datum and reflecting
on it alone, and by abstracting from all transcendent constructs which
render it unintelligible. Our task then is not one of rendering transparent
CARTESIAN DUALISM 147
the action which the soul exercises on the body-the ontological theory
of the body answered this requirement-it is ratber to understand how,
in philosophical tradition, such an action has become incomprehensible.
However, the dogmatic expose of the ontological theory of the body
has already led us to undertake this task. Already the destruction of the
positions of Hume introduced us into the heart of a general critique of
Cartesian dualism and its pbjlosophical offspring. The absurdity of the
skepticism of Hume is here the truth of Cartesianism; throughout the coher-
ence of the doctrine and the exactitude of its deductions, it shows the absur-
dity of the point of departure. Hume proved the absurdity of Cartesian
dualism, an absurdity which was still hidden by tbe verbalism of tbe tbeories
of parallelism, occasionalism, or pre-established harmony in the [205]
great Cartesians.' The pbilosopbical meaning of the Biranian destruction
of the theses of Hume and, consequently, of tbose of Descartes is made
more precise in the critique of the Memoire of Engel at the Berlin Academy,
a memoire dedicated to tbe study of the Origin of the Idea of Force.'
Engel first seems to oppose Hume, he reproaches him for not having discov-
ered the origin of the idea of force because he did not know how to look
for it wbere it could effectively be found, viz. in the "exercise of the muscular
sense." With regard to the latter and the force of which it is the phenomenon,
Engel uses a specific Biranian expression: "Force," he says, "has to be
sensed by way of its own sense." But it becomes quickly apparent that Engel
falls back into classical ruts, and this is why he encounters the same, and
apparently insurmountable, difficulty as Descartes and Hume. After having
recognised that we experience our own force and that it is from this experi-
ence that the idea of force in general draws its origin, Engel declares tbat
we must renounce "the hope of ever being able to conceive how two natures,
tbe one spiritual, the other material, can ever act upon one another."
After having affirmed the immediate cbaracter of our experience of action,
bow did Engel arrive at such a point of view which is strictly Cartesian
and classical? In other words, wbat is the genesis of the false problem of the
action of the soul on the body and its Cartesian pseudo-solution? [206]
4 It is obvious that Spinoz3. for example. made no progress in the Cartesian problem
of the relationship between body and so ul. Spinoza limits himself to resolving in another
way the same problem posed by Descartes rather than posing the problem in another way.
While it is doubtless true that Hume did not modify the statement of this problem either,
but he at least had the merit of showing that, posed in this manner, the problem is absolute·
ly insoluble. Henceforth) there is room for a philosophy such as that of Maine de Biran
who will no longer reflect upon the internal difficulties of this Cartesian problem but
upon the inadequacy of its philosophical horizon.
:i cr. Maine de Biran, Essai sur les fOlldemellts de la psycho!ogie ... 235 if.
148 CARTESIAN D UALISM
Let us consider the original fact of our action, the relati onship of subjective
movement and the organic terminus toward which this organic movement
immediately transcends itself; this relati onship is a transcendental relation-
ship. Hence, it is easy to see that from the Cartesian point of view as from
the viewpoint of every philosophy which sooner of later encounters the
impossibility of conceiving an interaction between thought and extension,
an unperceived but radical modification has intervened in the conception
of the termini in question. On the one hand, the organic body, the terminus
of the internal transcendental experience of subjective movement and it
alone, becomes the extended-body of the essential Cartesian analysis, the
object of an act of pure understanding, and hence what was, according to
the express declarations of Maine de Biran, "interiorly sensed and non-
represented," is taken precisely for something represented. On the other
hand, the absolute subjectivity to which the original being of movement
is immanent, deteriorates; it becomes thought-substance; it loses its authentic
ontological characteristic in order to take its place, purely and simply, in
the general milieu of transcendent being interior to which it now appears
side hy side with intelligible extension or extended-substance. The relation-
ship between these two substances can no longer be anything more than
a relation 'in the third person', analogous to those which we discover in
a world, it can no longer be anything more than a causal relationship.
The problem of the relationship between the soul and the body, henceforth,
presents itself as an insurmountable difficulty; its solution, if not the most
reasonable, at least the most significant, is, doubtless, parallelism, which
at root consists, if we reflect on it, in asserting and denying-both at the
same time- the existence of such a relationship. The position of Engel
illustrates in a particularly striking way this deterioration in the transcen-
dental relationship of action: "We have," he says, "the representation of a
determination of the will in itself; we have it of the movements of the muscles
in themselves; we draw the first from our interior sense, the second from
one of our external senses; the only thing lacking to us [207J is the representa-
tion of the liaison or the complicity of the two."6
The original being of our body, i.e. the being of subjective movement,
was nevertheless nothing other than the experience of this liaison and not
its representation : "It is precisely because this liaison is entirely understood
in the exercise of the sense of effort, and identical to the very fact of the
6 Ibid. 242. [Henry's italics] We believe tha t th is latter tex t, so significan t, brings to
light th e transformati on of the o ri gin ally subjecti ve being of movement into a "representa-
tion of the will in itself," and, in an even clearer way, it brings to light tbe alteration of the
organic body, here confused with a representation furnished by the external senses.
CARTESIAN DUALISM 149
intimate sense, that we cannot help but admit it."7 The critique of the
M emoire of Engel rejoins the one which Biran explicitly directed against
Descartes. Descartes confused the organ ic body with the body represented
or conceived by the understanding; then he confu sed subjective movement
with the simple representation of movement, the latter being reduced to
a displacement in extension; fina lly, he asked himself how he could conceive
a relationship and an action between this pure representation on the one
hand and a body or an extended movement on the other. Nevertheless,
such a problem could not be posed unless one had long si nce departed from
the phenomenological datum, i.e. the internal transcendental experience
of subjective movement and its transcendent correlate; from this original
'fact' he abstracted two termini raised to 'absolute' substances, i.e. trans-
formed into two objective realities. Reasoning then tried in vain to put
them together again, whence "this quite obvious contradiction between
a priori reasoning, based on the absolute nature of substa nces, and the primi-
tive fact of experience, based on the testimony of the intimate sense. "8
The deterioration which allows such a [208J contradiction to appear is
the immediate result of the abandoning of the point of view of absolute
immanence, which is an absolute point of view, the viewpoint of the ego,
from which everything becomes clear and understandable. Cartesian dualism
is the product of such a deterioration.
The nature of the latter can be made more precise if we look to another
text of the Essay where a distinction is made between the " phenomenal
point of view," which is said to be primitive, and the "noumenal point
of view," which is understood as derived. That which presents itself to us
from the phenomenal point of view- i.e. when we stick to the phenomenolog-
ical datum- is, on the one hand, the experience of subjective movement,
the "feeling of effort" and, on the other hand, the organic terminus toward
which this effort tends. In place of the immanent and transcendent content
of this experience, the "noumenal point of view" substitutes the two "abso-
lute" substances of the soul and the body, conceived as two noumena
"hidden beneath the two phenomenal termini." The problem of the rela-
tionships between the soul and body becomes, interior to this noumenal
point of view, the problem of the reciprocal action of two termini, 'x',
about which we yet know the following: The one is extended and the other
is not. Whereas the relationship between the soul and the body was perfectly
clear interior to the cogito and was one with the transcendental relationship
of subjective movement and its transcendent terminus, it is now rather
obvious "that the mind will always be making useless efforts to relate means
of correspondance or of action and reciprocal influence of these noumena
to such clear conceptions.'"
Doubtless, tbe dualism in the presence of which the problem of action
puts us is not inberent to the noumenal point of view as such. Philosophical
reflection which strictly sticks to the pbenomenological datum must itself
distinguish two "phenomenal" termini [209J which are the experience of
subjective movement and the resisting continuum. But the latter dualism
which, interior to the transcendental relationship of tbe being-in-the-world,
distinguishes that whicb, in such a relationship, reveals itself interior
to a sphere of absolute immanence and, on tbe other hand, tbat which
manifests itself in the truth of transcendence, is notbing other, as we
know, tban ontological dualism. If, as Maine de Biran says, the noumenal
point of view is derived with respect to the phenomenological point of view,
\. the two forms of dualism which correspond to these two points of view
cannot be without relationship: Cartesian dualism is precisely a deterioration
of ontological dualism, and we have al ready given the theory of this deteriora-
tion. We have seen that the pseudo-dualism to which the latter leads consists
in fact in rejecting the two termini of the transcendental relationship in
the same ontological region, the region of transcendent being, while this
rejection implies, as far as absolute subjectivity is concerned, the forgetting
of its radically immanent cbaracter, i.e. the destruction of its peculiarly
ontological character. When such a destruction is made, nothing any longer
opposes the inauguration of worldly relationships, of bonds of causality
for example, between two realities made subreptitiously bomogeneous,
extension on the one band and subjectivity on the other, or rather its repre-
sentation, its shadow in the milieu of exteriority. This denaturing of absolute
subjectivity finally opens tbe way to a realist attitude which inserts the ego
into the world.
It is true that Descartes maintains bimself far from such an attitude:
Is not the cog ito with its strict understanding of the ontological character
of subjectivity precisely the negation of this attitude ? Nevertbeless, tbe
breech wbich exists between the doctrine of the cogito and the theory of
dualism which destroys the transcendental relationship of being to the world
• Maine de Biran, Essa; sur les fondemellls de La psych%gie ... 162-163. footnote 2.
CARTESIAN DUALISM 151
and substitutes for it the juxtaposition of two substances, does this not
already measure the extent of tbe fall which could on ly lead to the empirical
'realization ' of the subject as it in fact happens in classical psychology
[210J which is the offspring of Cartesianism? Doubtless, classical psychology
bears other inheritances no less heavy than that of Descartes. If this psychol-
ogy is equally dominated , in particular, by certain master theses of Kant,
how is it not possible to see the profound affinity existing between these and
the Cartesian dualism which we are discuss in g? If we reflect on it, we
will perhaps see that, in spite of very real differences, the Kantian theory of
the interior life which makes of it the product of a constitution parallel
to the constitution of the external world, finally leads to a juxtaposition
very similar to the one which we were led to conceive by Cartesian dualism,
if it is true that in the latter, the radical ontological meaning of the cogito
is already lost.
Hence, once it believes it can leave the absolute viewpoint of subjective
immanence, once it takes flight above original ontological regions, theory is
led to conceive relationships between such regions which are no longer
transcendental relationships, which no longer belong to the structure of our
naIve experience, but which constitute the system in which we represent such
an experience. But it is at this moment, viz. when it ceases to be understood in
its transcendental meaning, that the relationship between the soul and body
becomes unintelligible. The historical importance of Cartesian dualism stems
from the fact that it opened a horizon within which solutions to the problem
of the relationships between soul and body began to multiply for the reason
that such a problem had then become insoluble. And then, as frequently
happens in parallel cases, something which had to result from all the tran-
scendent hypotheses whereby they tried in vain to overcome the obstacle,
there came boredom, a deaf and secretly disco ntented boredom. The parallel-
ism of psychologists, rather than any doctrine properly so-called, is the
expression of this state of mind. The discontent which results from such
impotence easily becomes aggressive: The problem of the soul and body
was no longer anything more than a purely philosophical problem, the
need to ceaselessly debate it could [211J easily be left without harm to the
metaphysicians whose time is not taken up with positive investigations.
The moment when it was stated that the problem of the relationships
between the so ul and body was actually only a pseudo-problem did not,
however, correspond to a re-questioning of its philosophical horizon but
a definitive acceptance of this horizon, i.e. of Cartesian dualism .
It was within this pre-existing dualist horizon that, in Cartesianism, the
lheory of substantial union intervened. Actually, if we reflect on the singular
152 CARTESIAN DUALISM
position of the primitive nature of uni on, we will see that this nature is
nothing primitive at all. Does it not obviously presuppose that the existence
of these two "natures" of which it is thence conceived as the mixture was
already asserted ? The attempt in the Letlers to Elizabeth to found the doc-
trine of the uni on on the cogilO, hencefo rth, appears to us as eminently
suspect. Far from expressing a fact which reaso ning would not be competent
to combat, the doctrine of union is rather the product of a reasoning whose
premises are constituted by the theory of dualism such as Descartes under-
stands it. And when the latter declares that "It is the ordinary course of
life and conversation ... that teaches us how to conceive the union of the
soul and body," when he counsels us to abandon ourselves to "the relaxation
of the senses," J· these fam ous texts cannot furnish the least relief to the
dogmatic content of Cartesianism nor make it theoretically acceptable.
To cease to philosophize in order to live and experience union, this is,
on the part of the philosopher, a strange sort of advice: Should we abandon
the philosophy of the relationships between soul and body or only a certain
philosophy, a certain conception of these relationships ? More precisely: To
return to facts [212J and experience, does this not then imply the rejection
of philosophy?
\ " However, does it not become apparent that there is a need for a philosophy
of fact and experience and, in the present case, for a transcendental phenom-
enology of the ego and the subjective body when speculation is confronted
with such a failure? Does not this failure stem solely from an insufficiency
in the ontological clarification of a problem deemed insoluble ? The return
to a phenomenological point of view will mean, here as elsewhere, a reflec-
tion on the horizon which had outlined the cadre of our investigations
from the beginning. No one more than Maine de Biran understood the
necessity for satisfying such a primary philosophical need. Speaking
of the great metaphysical questions which have remained without answers,
the author of the Essay says that since their object "had never been clearly
circumscribed, no one knew quite what was expected, what was being
sought; and this is a sure way of not finding it." And further on: "It would
be necessary to try to show in what the insolubility of the problem consists,
it would be necessary to say how and why it is insoluble."ll We find an
answer to the latter requirement, at least as far as the problem of the relation-
ships between soul and body is concerned, in the theory of the subjective
body taken in its ensemble, a theory which consists in the last analysis in
10 R. Descartes, Letter f O Elizabeth, in Descartes' Philosophica l writings, trans. Norman
substituting for Ca rtesia n dualism the original reality of which the latter
is nothing but a caricature, a theory which promotes ontological dualism
and the correct philosophical interpretation of the natural life of the ego,
of the absolute immanence of subjectivity when confronted with transcen-
dent being. [213J
CHAPTER VI
man. To the extent that such a life exists in him, side by side with his intel-
lectual and voluntary life, man is a "twofold man" (homo duplex in humani-
tate). To the extent that man is twofold, that hi s nature is a "mixed nature,"
the science of man cannot be completely identified which a transcendental
phenomenology, because there is need to make place, alongside it, for a
"mixed psychology" [216] which no longer moves in the sphere of pure
subjectivity, but "admits tbe mixture and the complexity of heterogeneous
elements, and considers the facts of intelligence only in their point of con-
tact with those of sensibility, the facts of sensation in their relationship to
objects and organs; it considers acts of the will in the sensible affections
which determine them; it considers the passions in their influence on physio-
logical phenomena and vice-versa.'" Hence, "a mixed method of analysis
which is also pbysiological and reflective" will be applied to "the knowledge
of an order of mixed phenomena."3
Nevertheless, ought we to insist on the fundamental ambiguity in the
concept of the organic life which is at the origin of these considerations
which jeopardize the absolute value of phenomenology? Thus it is that we
find organic life at one time defined interior to the cogito and at another
\, time starting from physiological processes in the third person, ones which
'I. are absolutely foreign to the sphere of psychology. He states that "this
duality" constituted by its opposition to the intelligent and organic life
"is itself a fact of the intimate sense,'" while he likewise speaks of "a general
affection which the ego can assume without being aware of it.'" Actually,
·,' Maine de Biran confuses three sorts of very different realities under the terms
of organic or animal life: I) certain Erlebnisse (affections and images for
example); 2) objective physiological movements which for him are also
mechanical; 3) a sort of unconscious psychological life, situated between
the first two orders of reality and to which, more specifically, the term
'organic life' ought to be applied.
Thus understood, organic life is unacceptable in an ontology of sub-
jectivity, and if it is present in Biranianisrn, it is, as we have said, [217]
because a philosophy easily becomes duped by what it opposes. Maine
de Biran finds in Condillac a conception of human reality which essentially
makes the latter appear as a sensible existence. The rejection of Condillac's
sensualism arises by way of the di scovery of the active life of the ego which
the Memoire sur la decomposition then opposes to the sensible life without,
, Ibid. 81.
, Ibid. 108 .
• Ibid.292 .
, Ibid. 301.
A CRITIQUE OF THE THOUGHT OF MAl E DE BIRAN 157
l!i The theses of Rousseau an d de Bonnet are perhaps reduci ble to such a type of oppo-
implied in this other text which deals again with the subjective grasp of
an odor: "If the odor merely comes along to impress itself upon the organ
..i thout being bound to any f eeling of action necessary for producing it,
:he bei ng, which would take it on with each renewal, would then have no
eans for recognizing it as being the sa me, or what amounts to the same
thing, of recognizing in it the identity of its own sensing power," - and a few
. es later on, Biran speaks of the " feeling of the ego" or of " the personal
.ement" which is "enclosed within the first sensation."l. The act which
nstitutes the very essence of sensing is first defined as an activity properly
lied, which could well be, and which actually is at times, a voluntary
_cUvity. Biran calls it "a feeling of action". However, an odor can well
mect a subject who, in a sense, does not expect to perceive it and who has
::ot decided to go out to meet it by an [226) explicit effort of inhaling.
Consequently, that which makes possible the perception of the odor, and
.z:er its recognition, is "the identity of the sensing power" of the subject.
:-- .- is nothing unconscious, but like a voluntary motor action, it is a feelin g,
= better, an internal transcendental experience; for this precise reason
sensing is something for us. Between the effort of deliberate inhalation and
:-=-~ subjective involuntary grasping of an odor there is no essential ontolog-
_~ difference: Activity and passivity are rather two different modalities
_--one and the same fundam ental power which is nothing other than the original
- '.g of the subjective body .
D'd Maine de Biran truly arrive at this conception of a foundation
- =e profound than the existential difference which separates the active
-=::: the passive modes of the concrete life of the ego? Did he arrive at an
~entic ontological grasp of this foundation to the point of identifying
cith the essence of life, with the very structure of the being of the ego,
~ h could, thenceforth, no longer be limited to the active modes of willing?
.... :.ext from the M emoire sur la decomposition declares that the feeling of
::!.'::SaIity identified with the feeling of personality " is associated in diverse
__ - \\~ th the different impressions, either by a derived relationship, if these
. essions stem from the will, Or by a simple relationship of co-existence
simultaneity , if they are passive of their very nature."20 It is upon this
-. 'onally important text (and other comparable ones) that the inter-
~-2. . on which we have given to the analysis of the faculty of sensing rests,
- , a1ysis which is an essential part of the theory of the body. Hence,
,..oject of exposing the ontological theory of the body without taking
• ~fain e de Biran, M emoire sur fa decomposition ... IV, 36. [Henry's italics]
" li>id. IV, 7 footnote. [Henry's italicsl
164 A CRITIQUE OF TI-IE THOUGHT OF MAINE DE BIRAN
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 distinc-
tion "takes place within him."" It is because he has an internal transcenden-
tal 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 priva-
ti 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 admis-
sion 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 some-
where 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 subjec-
tivity is actually present only when it decides to act according to a specific
motor intentionality, then each time such an intentionality becomes blurred
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 origi-
nal 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 determina-
tions. 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 trans-
formed 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 philo-
sopher takes only the sense of sight into consideration, to the exclusion of
" Ibid. IV, 93; the philosophers here alluded to are obviously Hum. and Condillac.
A CRITIQUE OF THE THOUGHT OF MAINE DE BIRAN 169
all others?" Does it not rather tbreaten every pbilosophy which allows
interior experience to flyaway into the transcendent flux of its representa-
tions 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 pre-
serving its peculiar ontological character, its subjective and immanent charac-
ter. Actually, the latter is abolisbed once attention is represented to us as
losing itself in tbe elements toward whicb it surpasses itself, as being ab-
sorbed 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 disappear-
ance 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 destruc-
tion of tbe very concept of sUbjectivity in its peculiar ontological meaning?
Tbe ontological meaning of tbe concept of subjectivity finds its expres-
sion, 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 our-
selves 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
25 If thi s conception of the sense of sight were correct. how could it result in an error?
26 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.
170 A CR lTIQUE OF THE THOUGHT OF MAINE DE BIRAN
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 mean-
ing falsified ; it no longer expresses the essence of subjectivity but a particular
determination of it. The terminus of reflection then receives [236] in Birani-
anism a new acceptance; it no longer designates the immediate subjective
experience nor a return of consciousness to itself, a grasp of reflective con-
sciousness 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
J~ .j and speaking, more precisely starting with the requirements and the internal
difficulties which lead Biranianism to give to this analysis a decisive impor-
tance. 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 conscious-
ness 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 Ibid.
28 Maine de Biran, Essai sur les landemellls de fa psychologie ... 477.
A CRITIQUE OF THE THOUG HT OF MAINE DE BIRAN 171
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 natu-
rally 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 perceiv-
ed 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 swal-
lowed 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 sono-
rous-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 sono-
rous impression whatever is a real moment of our lives, just as the percep-
tion 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 spontane-
r,
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 expe-
rience 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 remember-
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 deter-
mined 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 ques-
tioned 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
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 affir-
mation 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 expe-
rience 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 nothing-
ness 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 mean-
ing. 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 simi-
larity 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.
A CRlTIQUE OF THE THOUGHT OF MAINE DE BIRAN 181
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 abso-
lute 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 corre-
spond 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 confirma-
tion 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 misunder-
standing 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]
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 Biran-
ian 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 Brunsch-
vicg-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-
182 A CRITIQUE OF THE THOUGHT OF MAINE DE BIRAN
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 pre-
sence." 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.
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 sub-
jectivity can no longer be considered as an abstract philosophy, as an intellec-
tualism. Subjectivity is in no wayan impersonal milieu, a simple 'tran-
scendental' 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 nothing-
ness, but a region of perfectly determined and absolutely concrete being.
For us, what merits the name 'nothingness' is not sUbjectivity but its shad-
ow, 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 subjec-
tivity 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
sized, 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
CONCLUSION 195
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 sub-
mitted 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 existen-
tial 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
and 'thing' determinations. Because the latter situation refers to the situation of the ori-
ginal 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 fore-
going 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.
196 CONCLUSION
6 Someone might suggest that it is habit which causes the disappearance of the succession
i.e. into the element of transcendent being. However, what can such a trans-
formation, 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 particu-
larly 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 denoun-
ced. 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 dis-
carded for eidetic reasons, action cannot be understood as such an objec-
tification. 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 modifica-
tions which affect transcendent being. Throughout this process, action
remains intentional, i.e. it maintains itself close to itself in a sphere of imma-
nence, without ever 'leaving' itself in order to go out, so to speak, to mani-
fest itself in person in the world, for, once again, it is not a life which repre-
sents itself to itself, but a life which acts. At the end of the process, this
202 CONCLUSION
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 imper-
sonal 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 distinc-
tion 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
CONCLUSION 203
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. Hence-
forth, ethical analysis discovers in action as its peculiarly human, i.e. sub-
jective, 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 subjec-
tivity for what it is, an intentionality, a sUbjective element which, conse-
quently, 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 onto-
logical 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 abso-
lute 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 nega-
tion 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:
with the original being of the absolute body. In other words, ontology rejects
a priori only the naIve interpretations of the ideas of finitude or contingency.
For such ideas and for the experiences which they translate, it rather seeks
a positive foundation. For it is by way of such an investigation that ontology
exercises its jurisdiction over the cultural patrimony-whether philosophical,
religious, or moral-which humanity has at its disposal, and it manifests
itself to us as the only really positive science capable of eventually giving
a sense to tradition. This task which, insofar as it must be called an ontolog-
ical clarification, is the highest to which philosophy can aspire, and it
becomes all the more imperative in proportion to the fundamental obscurity
of the questions offered to its analysis. When these questions are related
to the body and to finitude, it is not an exaggeration to say that this obscurity
is almost total. [286]
It is certain that tradition establishes a relationship between the corpo-
reity and the finitude of human nature. This relationship is strengthened
in the more specifically Christian thought to the extreme point where the
body receives the meaning of being sin. However, what must we understand
by such a body endowed with such a meaning? This body- it is also called
the flesh-presents itself to the believer as the very symbol of his possible
perdition; actually it may be for him nothing more than anxiety faced with
the possibility of his own perdition. The body is thus felt and thought as
the obstacle which must be overcome and from which one must tear oneself
away it order to arrive at salvation. The latter, considered in its radical
opposition to the life of the body, is called the true life, which is a new
life, a life of the 'spirit'. Insofar as it is related to the possibility of perdition
and the fall, the body designates nothing other than a determined mode of
human existence. This mode is surely understood as essentially bound to
finitude, i.e. to sin, and yet it remains, nonetWess, a mode of our life, a
sui generis mode to which another conceivable and sometimes real mode
is opposed wherein our salvation consists. By 'body' we must in no way
understand this objective body which is thing, what is here meant is a clearly
defined modality of the life of absolute SUbjectivity. For this same reason,
the 'body' as understood in Christian anthropology which likens it to sin,
cannot be confused with our organic body either. The latter, here similar
to the objective body, is actually never more than an existant; therefore,
it has nothing to do with a mode of existence.
Will we then say that the body which belongs to the Christian vision of
the world, such as it is understood in this vision, is the same as the
absolute body, i.e. as this original body concerning which we have shown
that it belongs to the sphere of SUbjective existence? This would cause
CONCLUSION 207
serious confusion, viz. forgetting the difference which must always be
maintained between two [287] absolutely different points of view, the exis-
tential point of view and the ontological point of view. The 'body' in the
Christian sense designates a particular mode of existence, it refers to a specific
intentionality which is offered to us as a possible determination among an
infinity of other existential determinations corresponding to different types.
The body, now seen from the ontological point of view, as absolute body,
refers to no particular intentionality of our bodily life whatever, it designates
nothing other than the common being of all these intentionalities, i.e. the
original ontological milieu to which they all belong. Such intentionalities
are compatible interior to the original being of our absolute body; to de-
scribe them according to their peculiar existential articulations is not the
task of ontology which accomplishes only the preparatory task of such a
description.
Therefore, we must carefully distinguish the 'body' as a definite mode
of our historical existence, a mode in which this existence manifests itself
to religious consciousness as sinful existence and, on the other hand, the
ontological milieu of the absolute body in which are unfolded all the inten-
tionalities of the bodily life and all the forms of existence of which this
determined existence-which Christianity also calls, it is true, the body or
the flesh-is no more than a particular and contingent form. This existence
which is handed over to sin is contingent in the highest degree in the sense
that, among all possible forms of existence offered to it, the determined form
which it takes on is in no way prescribed a priori by the ontological structure
of the absolute body. This absence of any prescription of the eidetic order
which would make sin something necessary is expressed by Christian theology
when it says that this sin is an historical accident and that the bond which
unites it to human 'nature' can in no way be interpreted in the light of
a necessity, comparable to that which belongs to the order of essences.
In other words it is a purely existential meaning [288] which Christian anthro-
pology confers on the word 'body' when it makes it designate a state close
to sin or capable of leading thereto. The body thus understood in no way desig-
nates an ontological reality; it is neither the o~iective body, nor the organic
body, nor the absolute body as such. What it translates is a state of existence
which, doubtless, presupposes the fundamental ontological structure of
the three bodies in the same way as it is implied in any of our intentionalities;
on this same structure there also rests, for example, the determined and
privileged state of existence in which salvation for it consists.
Consequently, neither salvation nor sin can be related as such to ontolog-
ical structures. The 'flesh' and the 'spirit' both designate in Christianity
208 CONCLUSION
the revolution which is thought to be effected does not go beyond the simple
promoting of subjective preferences; rather than questioning the traditional
cadre of philosophical reflection, it implies it and remains taken in by its
apparent novelty.
Now that the original being of our body as a fundamental ontological
reality has received its proper status, we may feel that the moment
has come for determining in a precise way the meaning of this particular
intentionality which Christian dogma likewise designates by the name
'body', where this receives a strictly existential and not an ontological mean-
ing. Concerning this particular intentionality, considered as a determination
of our historical existence, Christianity says that it is sin. By this, we must
understand that consciousness which makes such an intentionality its own
takes on by this very fact and in an essential way a finite mode of existence
which turns it radically away from God, while this finite mode of existence
can no longer mean for it anythi ng more than despair and perdition.
However, in what sense can a determined intentionality, i.e. a mode of the
absolute life of subjectivity, be called finite, such that we can apply to it
the categories of sin and the fall? The task of answering such a question
does not exactly coincide with the task of describing [292J this specific
intentionality which Christian tradition designates as 'the sin of the flesh'.
Such a description, even though it must be of the highest interest from the
speculative as well as from the practical viewpoint, does not really belong
to the more general project of building an ontology of the body. This is
why the problem of the finitude of the intentionality is question does not
lead here to any existential description which would lay claims to validity
of itself, and it will be touched upon only from an ontological point of view.
Considered from such a point of view, this problem is nothing other than
that of a clarification of the idea of finitude, a clarification which of itself
would require a complete study. The remarks which follow constitute
only a brief sketch, designed only to complete the analyses relative to the
general dissociation between the ontological and the existential meanings
of the concept 'body'.
The general assertion that finitude is necessarily sin, an affirmation
borrowed by modern philosophy from Hegel, is no longer sufficient for us.
Once a system has acquired all its prestige, it is again time to recognize
the right of the distinction. For we want to know in a precise way what
we mean by finitude. Before considering the pathetic developments inter-
vening in the case of this concept, it is well to remark here that the concept
of finitude can be understood in a fourfold sense.
CONCLUSION 211
I) To be finite means to be subject to the determination of being-there.
Thus it is that my body is finite insofar as it occupies a determined place
in space and time. We have encountered this meaning of the concept of
finitude and have shown that it is rooted in the transcendence of a horizon
to which the being which it sets free cannot in principle be equal.
2) To be finite means to be subject to the determination of being-there,
this time not in an original way, but only in a derived way. Let us consider
any intentionality whatever; we [293] cannot apply to it the category of
finitude in the sense we have just indicated, because intentionality in princi-
ple eludes the sphere of transcendent being. However, it is not impossible
that we can represent to ourselves this intentionality. The possibility of
such a representation as a radical modification affecting the original ontolog-
ical structure of intentionality is rather included in its status, as a perma-
nent possibility of the eidetic order. The power which 'inhabits' such a
modification is nothing other than that of a destiny which consists in an
objectification through whose mediation that which first revealed itself
to us interior to a sphere of absolute immanence now manifests itself in the
general element of transcendent being. Such a destiny is necessarily tragic,
for in it that which constituted the intimacy of the life of the ego and the
freshness of its experience is dissolved in the drabness of objectivity and
becomes a dead element of representation. Precisely hecause it is a subjec-
tive life, bodily life does not escape this agonizing destiny. Hence, in
love, the gestures in which it consists can be submitted to the hard law
which makes them, not the very substance of our existence, but rather simple
objects of our consciousness such that where previously life was to be found,
we now find only death.8
In the ontological interpretation of this destiny which everyone can experi-
ence for himself, we must not forget that the being of this intentionality
as such cannot in principle become anything transcendent whatever and
that, consequently, the objectification in which this destiny consists can
in no way designate the objectification of the intentionality itself but rather
the substitution of its simple representation for this intentionality. Because
[294] the finitude here in question is bound to such a representation, because
it, furthermore, rests on the transcendence of the element which it deter-
mines, the second meaning of the concept of finitude which we are led to
distinguish does not essentially differ from the first, but only shows us that
that which is now for us a determined and finite being-there could not be
such, at least in its original being. However, the ontological clarification
8 Speaking of the kiss of lovers and its fate, Rilke cries: "Ah! How the drinker then
, Henry Miller, Tropic of Cancer, (New York: Grove Press, 1961, 249 If.).
CONCLUSION 215
encountered by sexual intentionality which answers this description does
not result in the simple suppression of this intentionality, it rather becomes
the principle of its repetition in acts renewed indefinitely. In the solidarity
between this failure and this repetition is found the foundation for the sexual
obsession of humanity.
In what sense can the category of finitude be applied to the human body?
We can respond by comparing the results of the clarification of the concept
of finitude with those of the ontological analysis of the body. First of all,
it is obvious that the original being of our body does not fall beneath the
category of finitude understood in the first sense. The latter is applied solely
to the domain of transcendent being, and hence it cannot in any way deal
with what in principle eludes this domain. With regard to our objective
body, the remarks which we were led to make on numerous occasions
with regard to the essential characteristics which constitute its peculiar
being in opposition to any object whatever, suggest that we reject appear-
ances according to which this first meaning of the concept of finitude would
be suitable to our objective body in a totally adequate way. Insofar as it
finds its foundation in the original being of the absolute body, our [299]
objective transcendent body is in fact 'inhabited' by a subjectivity which
badly accords with determinations belonging to the milieu of objectivity
in general. For assuredly different reasons and still more profound ones,
this remark is likewise applicable to the organic body upon which the
original and sui generis relationship which it maintains with the absolute
body confers an altogether special status.
It is true that, taken in its second meaning, the concept of finitude is applied
to the representation of an intentionality, i.e. to its manifestation in the
element of transcendent being. However, we have sufficiently insisted
on the fact that that which can be thus called finite is in no way the original,
i.e. real, being of intentionality but only its represented-being. That an
intentionality belonging to our bodily life is capable of being thus repre-
sented, that a gesture can so to speak be detached from this existence which
is ours, in order to appear to us as a simple inert element posited in repre-
sentation, this is in fact the most striking confirmation that the theory of
the sUbjective body can receive. For the destiny which befalls the life of
our body in one or the other of its intentionalities, motor intentionalities,
for example, is capable in the same way of attaining any conceivable inten-
tionality; consequently, it menaces the ensemble of our psychological life.
The possibility that a determination of our absolute life may submit to
this radical modification which tears it away from its ontological milieu
of existence and really means death for it is an absolutely general phenom-
216 CONCLUSION
10 Here three remarks are in order: 1) the objective transcendent body which we contin-
ually designate as being 'ours" can obviously be that of anotiter ego, which is what takes
place in normal erotic life. Any somewhat complete study of sexuality is in close solidarity
with a problematic dealing with the existence and the body of the other. Needless to say,
all such questions are beyond the cadre of our investigations, where sexuality intervenes
only as an example.
2) The object toward which sexual intentionality is directed and which exercises upon
the latter a power of fascination can be, notably in certain cases of perversion, an inert
object of nature and not even a living human body. Nevertheless, it is obvious that the
constitution of such an object can be understood only by referring to the constitution
of the transcendent body which belongs to an ego.
3) The solidarity between the fascination exercised by the object and the intentionality
which transcends itself toward it is evident. Doubtless, this object, as we have noted,
finds the condition for its possibility in the ambiguous status of the transcendent body
of the ego, but this body becomes a sexual object properly so-called only when a specific
intentionality is directed toward it. We can only say that such an intentionality exists
in a latent way and, in like fashion, we can say that there is included in the status of the
transcendent body of another, the permanent possibility that such a body may be trans-
formed into what is clearly characterized as a sexual object.
CONCLUSION 217
certain cases, with the mysterious determination of sex and then it exer-
cises its infinite power. The infinite power of the determination is finitude
in the Christian sense. The 'body' of Christian tradition essentially refers
to such a finitude. The latter has such an obviously existential meaning
and it has so little to do with the body understood as an ontological reality
to which it would then be bound by virtue of an eidetic connection that
this body, promised the resurrection, can be the support of radically different
modes of existence. The mode of existence here designated by the words
'body' and 'flesh' is then called finite for the reason that it is oriented toward
a particular determination, in such a way that it dedicates itself to it: It is
this cult of the finite which is sin properly so-called.
Applied to an intentionality exhausted in the determination, the term
'finitude' is perfectly understandable and acceptable on condition that
we see clearly that this is only a manner of speaking, for the mode of exis-
tence which is here called finite is in fact a mode of the absolute life of sub-
jectivity and as such it belongs in essence to a sphere of infinite existence.
This amounts to saying: To the extent that it qualifies not a transcendent
element (meanings one and two of the concept of finitude) but a mode of
existence, i.e. a determination of the life of absolute subjectivity (meaning
number four and also, as we will see, meaning number three of the concept
of finitude), finitude has no ontological meaning but only an existential mean-
ing. Thus, intentionality which is oriented in a decisive way toward the
finite-in such a way that the determination becomes the object of a cult
and, for example, the sensible becomes sensual-insofar as it is an intention-
ality, still remains a mode of the absolute life of subjectivity and as such
an infinite mode. Finitude designates an imperfection of life, but this imper-
fection has only an ethical, existential, or religious meaning; life in fact
remains what it is at the very heart of this imperfection, an absolute life,
a life in a sphere of infinite existence. Finitude is a category of ethics, the
[302] absolute character of existence which (eventually) succumbs to this
finitude is an ontological determination which belongs to it in principle.
The clear consciousness of a strict discrimination between these two levels
is indispensible to one who would attack in depth the problem of evil
with some chance of success, for such a discrimination alone allows us
to understand that something is in fact both finite and infinite-this is
precisely what evil is-and to understand that, as Kierkegaard saw so well
in his critique against Socrates, sin must be thought of by us, in spite of its
finitude, as an absolutely positive qualification of existence." [303]
11 The fact that, in the preceding analyses, sexual intentionality was chosen as an
example for illustrating a certain meaning of the concept of finitude and, for this purpose,
218 CONCLUSION
was described as a 'finite' mode of existence, risks leading to the idea of an equivalence
between sexuality as slIch and finitude. In fact, just as finitude, in a general way. has been
given only an existentiell meaning and consequent1y designates only certain defined modes
of existence, so likewise sexual intentionality. to which a llusion has been made, deals
only with a possible and neatly defined form of our sexual life. The possibility of a love
without anxiety (understanding by this an anxiety in the face of the being-there of the
objective bodily determin ation) is not excluded by the fore-going descriptions; rather it
finds its most fundamental ontological presupposition in the theory of the subjective
body. Actually, such a theory shows that, in its original being at least, the sexual act
is something subjective. As such, it is outside the world; the fact th at sexual intentionality
is oriented toward the objective being-there (and this in a well-determi ned fashion
which we have described) represents a contingent specification of this inten tionality
which in fact, in its freedom, includes the possibility of a radically different orientation
whereby existence will rather be able to free itself from such a determination a nd actual1y
envision something altogether different. There is a love, and what is more, there is a
sexual love from wh ich the 'body' is absent. The great error of the majority of existentiell
descriptions of sexual intentionality stems from the fact that only a determined mode
of this intentionality is almost always taken as an exclusive point of view and then presented
as prescribed by the essence of the sexual life of man in general. This is notably the case
for all descriptions which limit themselves to the consideration of objective sexual deter-
minations. When we have seen that such determinations are such only when a deter-
mined intentionality is directed toward them, we still risk forgetting that to the possibility
of this intentionality (in which, no doubt, impurity consists) there is obviously opposed,
from an eidetic point of view, another possibility whose meaning, at the very heart of
the sexual life, is rather the freeing of man with respect to the finitude of the objective
determination. The distinction between the existential and the ontological points of view
is here more necessary than ever and, in a general way, the entire philosophy of sexual
love has to be re-done beginning with the data of the philosophy of the subjective body.
However, it is to all human gestures, and not merely to sexual gestures, that such a philo-
sophy will eventually be able to give, from an existential point of view, an infinite and free
meaning, to the extent that it previously reveals on the ontological level the subjective
essence of all the original determinations of bodily life. Hence this should lead not only
to a new philosophy of sexuality, but to a new philosophy of all the 'material' acts of man,
to a new philosophy of rites, of work, of cult etc. (Concerning the relationships between
the philosophy of the subjective body and materialism, cf. what is said infra with regard
to 'needs', p. 2I9lf.).
CONCLUSION 219
immanence. The eidetic status of such a milieu confers on the life which
originally reveals itself there the ontological qualification of being an
absolute life and, consequently, a priori removes every ontological meaning
- with regard to such a life-from the concept of finitude.
Doubtless, we can find an ontological foundation for human finitude
to the extent that by its concept we designate the insurmountable bond
between existence and the world. The fact in question, which is nothing
other than the primordial phenomenon of transcendence, has an ontological
scope. But the life which transcends itself [304] is an absolute life and, in
this act of transcending itself, it remains in itself. More original than the
phenomenon of transcendence and so to speak prior to it is that of imma-
nence in which transcendence in fact finds, from the ontological point of
view, its most ultimate condition of possibility. If the act which transcends
can discover a world only to the extent that it is first and constantly present
to itself at the very heart of its auto-affection in immanence, it is because
the thesis which binds finitude to transcendence rests upon the forgetting
of this most original ontological phenomenon. Is it an accident if this comes
to light for the first time in the modern philosphy of Kant, whose ontology
is characterized precisely by the absence of any theory of absolute subjecti-
vity? Only the elaboration of such a theory can destroy the ontological
foundation of the concept of finitude insofar as such a concept can lay claim
to be applied to human existence. Thought of as subjective, this existence
is then recognized as an absolute existence, even when it would be the exis-
tence of our body. Only one philosopher brought together these two funda-
mental teachings: the one which reveals to us the structure of absolute
subjectivity and the one which determines such a structure as being also
one of our body.
That our bodily existence is an absolute existence is a proposition whose
full understanding would doubtless lead us to modify profoundly the
majority of our conceptions relative to the life of the body. We may say that,
in our civilization, these conceptions are dominated, in a general way,
by the implicit presuppositions of naturalism. The latter can be summed
up in the affirmation that need is something natural. Interpreted in the light
of the ontology to which naturalism refers, whether explicitly or not, such
an affirmation means that the principal activities in which our bodily
life expresses itself must be understood as manifestations belonging, [305]
in their essence, to the general being of nature, i.e. as objective and imper-
sonal processes. They are anonymous 'functions' which must be left 'to
play' according to their own rhythm. Any attempt to modify the natural
accomplishment of these functions and to intervene in the so-called autono-
220 CONCLUSION
mous world which they constitute is condemned a priori by the ethic which
depends upon naturalist philosophy. Thus it is with the sexual life of man,
for example. In a general way, it follows that whatever is left of individual
and personal existence is extrinsic to the world of its needs, its exigencies,
as well as to the different acts whereby these latter direct themselves toward
a real or illusory satisfaction. At the same time, the ego refuses all respon-
sibility with regard to its bodily life and its various manifestations. The
soul can remain pure when the body is sullied. This distinction, which im-
plies the objectification of needs, i.e. their strict dissociation from what
constitutes the peculiar and essential-being of the ego and subjectivity,
is the principle of a bad faith which is manifested in striking fashion in
Rousseau and also, in a certain measure, in Maine de Biran, insofar as
the latter remained subject to the influence of the Confessions and, in a
more general way, to traditional dualism.
The theory of the subjective body which shows us that the life of our
body is in no way a life in the third person comparable to one which we
might see expanded throughout the universe forces us to modify this point
of view radically. It is not at the moral level and for peculiarly moral reasons
that the naturalist ethic is to be condemned. Rather our critique must bear
on its philosophical presuppositions which in fact constitute ontological
nonsense. Naturalism prohibits a priori the understanding of all human
needs because it fails to recognize their peculiar essence. It claims to rehabili-
tate the life of the body, but this is precisely its greatest illusion. Believing
to defend the rights [306J of the flesh against the spirit, it reduces the latter
to the condition of a disincarnated subject which can only survey the
concrete determinations of an empirical existence which unfolds itself
in an impersonal mode dominated by objective laws. But as we have just
seen, such a conception is not peculiar to the naturalist who exalts the
objective needs of his body; it is shared in fact by the moralist who despises
these and claims that the soul, in its serene purity, is not touched by the
trouble which such needs communicate to it. Hence, the theses of naturalism
also coincide with those of traditional moralist and intellectualist philo-
sophies as well as those of empiricism in general.
But need is subjective; it has the weight, the gravity of the infinite existence
which it bears, as well as the simplicity and the transparency of the absolute
life at the heart of which it reveals itself. Because need is subjective, it does
not have the innocence of a movement of matter; because it is not a simple
transcendent displacement which one might consider as neutral from a
spiritual point of view, so to speak, it is subject to the categories of ethics.
Our bodies will be judged. When desires are reduced to innate tendencies
CONCLUSION 221
or when they are made the simple correlate of organic modifications,
then we have taken away from human existence both its effective and con-
crete content as well as the peculiar qualification which it assumes in a
definite mode of its intentionality and its life. It is not at the level of abstract
ideas, it is at the level of needs that our existence really takes place. This
is why the satisfaction or the lack of satisfaction of our needs, and more
profoundly, the manner in which this satisfaction takes place or does not
take place, have such great importance in the history of each individual
as well as in the history of human groups.
We generally call the needs of the body material needs. The theory of the
subjective body shows us what we must think of such terminology which
does not merely stern from naIve ontology but also from a certain number
of [307] moral conceptions which, while bound to such an ontology, have
taken on their own value and a considerable development. The designation
of bodily life as a material life frequently purports to be a protest against
intellectualist and idealist philosophy in general: It is rather a consequence
thereof To assert the importance of the 'material' life, as opposed to the
spiritual life of a disincarnated subject and of an abstract SUbjectivity,
is truly to oppose traditional idealism. To call this bodily life 'material'
correctly taken as a decisive element of human existence, is to construct
the same ontological conception of the body as such an idealism does
and, in a general way, as does any philosophy of Hellenic origin. However,
to the extent that it recognizes the primordial importance of 'material'
needs, i.e. of bodily life in general, every materialistic doctrine assumes
a decisive importance in the eyes of the philosophy of the subjective body.
Nevertheless, materialism will be able to receive its full development and,
in particular, it will be able to bring to the human sciences the enormous
contribution which they can legitimately expect from it only when it will
have been interpreted in the light of the results of the ontological analysis
of the body and, in a more general way, of the philosophy of the subjective
body.
The theory of the subjective body which rejects the traditional distinction
between body and spirit obliges us to assume at all levels the consequences
which such a rejection implies.'2 The examination of these consequences
could only be given a brief enumeration here. Such an enumeration merely
allows us to become aware of a vast field of investigations which are open
to the philosophy of the subjective body (and, in a more general way,
12 cr. M. Henry, "Does the Concept 'Sou!' Mean Anything?" trans!. by G. Etzkorn
Alain 144 27(n.), 42f., 46f., 67, 69ff., 75f., 106, 122,
Ampere, A. 178 151, 177f., 181(n.), 219
Arnauld 141 Keats 107
Bacon, F. 15, 26 Kierkegaard, S. 2, 4, 217
Bergson, H. 9, 88 Lachelier, J. 9
Bonnet, C. 155, 161(n.) Lagneau, J. 9, 65-73, 84, 104ff.
Boutroux, E. 9 Leibniz, G. W. 22, 25, 26(n.), 27, 122,
Buffon, G. 159 157, 159
Brunschvicg, L. 181(n.) Locke, J. 14, 16,40, 100
Cabanis 53, 155 Maine de Biran 9, 11f., 19, 35ff., 52-59,
Condillac, E. 14, 25, 59, 128, 158f., 166, 74ff., 96, 110f., 117, 123, 146f., 155, 164,
168(n.) 173, 175, 180ff., 202, 220
Degerando 178 - Essai sur les /ondements de fa psycholo-
Descartes, R. 8, 26(n.), 35, 40, 43-46, gie et sur ses rapports avec l'itude de fa
49, 52-57, 63, 122, 132, 135-153, 155, nature 8, 13-25, 26ff. , 31-34, 38-47,
158, 185, 198f., 202, 205, 209 52f., 60, 64ff., 95-100, 104f. , 112, 114ff.,
De Tracy, D. 35, 53 121f., 128, I 3If., 147-150, 152, I 54ff.,
Dwelshauvers 85-89 160ff., 170, 176, 181
Eckhart, Meister 181(n.) - Examen des lefons de philosophie de
Engel 147-149 M. Laromiguiere 179
Fessard, P. 182(n.) - Journal intime I 74(n.)
Fichte, J. G . 35, 53 - Mhnoire sur fa decomposition de la
Freud, S. 145 pensee 15, 17-20,22-26,40,45,48-51,
Gouhier, H. 174, 178, 182(n.) 55, 59, 70, 73, 77-82, 101, 112ff., 127,
Hegel, G . W. F. 186, 196f., 200ff., 205, 210 129, 156-160, 163, 166-171, 176, 181
Heidegger, M. 12 - Nouveaux essais d'anthrop%gie 179
Henry, Michel ii, I, 14, 15(n.), 36, 84, - Rapport des sciences naturelles avec fa
103, 106, 117, 143, 145, 181(n.), 195(n.) psychologie 176, 178
Hume, D. 24(n.), 62ff., 66, 141, 147 - Temoignage du seils intirne 177
I 68(n.) Malebranche, N. 49, 119
Husser!, E. 8, 24(n.), 35, 39, 85, 105 Miller, H. 214
James, W. 88 Morgue 88
Jaspers, K. 198f. Neo -Kantians 9, 12,43,67
Kant, 1. 7, 12, 18, 20(n.), 23, 26(n.), Nietzsche, F. 209
224 INDEX OF AUTHORS
absolute, 20,23, 27, 37, 44, 119, 149, 174, anatomist 63f.
176-179, 181,214; cf. beginning, body, anatomy 197
certitude, evidence, existence,immanence. animal(s) 6, 136, 208; cf. behavior, body
subjectivity. transparency. anthropology, Chr istian 207ff.
abstract, transcendent 186; cr. ideas. anxiety 32. 205f., 218(n.)
abstraction(s) 24,26,31, 77f., 83,143 apodictic; cf. certitude, evidence
160, 169f., 201 aposteriori 26
absurd ity 7, 87, 1I0f., 147, 170, 189, 198, appearance(s) 6, 19, 37, 44, 55, 85,
201, 203 93, 119, 129, 141 , 178f.
accident(s) 52, 168 apperception 14, 23, 27, 33f., 38ff., 42f.,
action 13, 20, 23, 31, 49, 52ff., 60f., 55f., 97, 157, 160
63ff., 67-71, 77, 79-82, 91, 97f., 104, 108, - immediate 14, 26f., 128, 130, 132
125, 146-148, 150, 159, 161, 163-170, - internal I3f., 21, 23, 43, 128, 130,
I 73ff., 179, 198ff., 202f. 132(n.), 171(n.)
acts 99,185 appetite 186
aestheticism 107 apprehension 162, 173
affection(s) 41(n.), I 56f., 160, 170, 172, a priori 23, 25ff., 28, 30f., 99, 149(n.),
219 187, 197,222
affective, cr. Erlebnis. life, tonality arm 86
affectivity 139, 1411f., 155, 162, 213 asceticism 204f.
affirmations, gratuitous 54 attention I 69ff_
agent 29, 142 attitude, natural 135
agnosticism 177, 179 attributes, of ego 21
air 91 autonomy 158, 174
alchemy, philosophical 103 axiological 142f., 158,204, 218
alertness 166 beginning, absolute 36
alienation 48, 50, 145f., 155, 158, 200 behavior 5f., 118f.
ambiguity 109, III, 137f., 140f., 156 being 12, 15f., 24, 28, 31, 33ff., 37, 39,
analysis 11,15,19,26,37,40, 56,77, 94f.. 40(n.), 41, 42(n.), 43-46, 51, 531f_, 561f.,
110, 156, 187, 192,203 62, 64f., 701f., 78, 82, 87f., 90, 92f.,
- of body 36, 109f., 121, 157, 181, 187f., 95ff., 98-102, 108f., III, 113, 115, 117ff.,
193f., 203, 221 120-123, 126f., 132ff., 134(n.), 140, 159,
- ontological IOf., 37, 109f., 136, 157, 166, 172, 175, I 77ff_, 186f., I 881f., 193,
181, 187, 193, 196, 203, 221 196ff., 2001f., 204, 213ff.
226 INDEX OF TERMS
- Cartesian 63, 135f., 147, 149ff., 153ff., empiricism 24f., 29, 63f., 66, 88, 102f.,
158 105,151,168,178,220
- ontological 15, 116f., 120, 135, 150, emptiness 49
153 ends 198ff.
- traditional 153, 175, 208f., 220 energy, of will 63
duality 35,74,115,117-120, 127,133, 204 engagement 54, 199
ear 109, 112, 133 environment 5, 97, 105
elfect(s) 47f., 60-67, 69, 141, 146 equivocation 46, 195
effectiveness. phenomenological 63 Erlebnis(se) 138, 143, 154, I 561f. , 159,
efforts 31, 33ff., 37f., 53, 55, 65ff., 69, 71, 165, 175f., 178, 186
73f., 77, 81, 100, 104, 114, 122, 128, 130, - affective 142, 144f.,
148f., 157f., 166, 170f., 177, 179, 202 - bodily 139f., 141, 186
- motor 157, 159, 162, 166, 168f., 172, error(s) 18, 69f., 111, 157, 168
174 essence 17, 48, 72, 77, 209
ego 7f., 11-15, 20, 23, 28, 31(n)., 321f., ethical 108
381f., 41, 43, 45, 47f., 50, 52, 55, 62, ethics; cf. morality
65f., 69, 71, 73, 75, 77, 80f., 92f., 95, 97, event(s) 41 , 64f., 146
1001f., 103, 106f., 108, 114ff., 118, 128, evidence 13f., 18, 24, 116, 173, 182(n.),
130, 133f., 146, 150, 154, 157ff., 160ff., 198
164f., 167, 171f., 173(n.), 174, 177, 179f., - absolute 20(n.), 114, 138, 222
187, 197, 201, 216(n.), 220 evil 217
- absolute 118, 133, 185 exactitude, ontological 54
- and body 118, 120f., 125, 127 exigencies, philosophical 56
- as consciousness 53, 172, 179 existence 20, 22, 26, 28f., 32ff., 39f., 43,
- as self-presence 43, 117, 162 51,53,64, 95,97,104,108,121,132,139,
- as subjectivity 32f., 37, 42 145, 157, 161, 157, 173, 175, 183f.,
- being of 34,37,42, 45ff., 51, 57, 60, 69, 195, 197, 2071f., 210, 212f., 215ff., 218ff.,
71,104,126, 162f., 167, 174ff., 177,180, 221
189 - absolute 18,33,46,56, 109,219
- essence of 21, 179, 220 - concrete 42, 54, 106, 184
- existence of 43, 170, 172 - historical 144, 207f., 210, 212
- life of 64, 72, 91, 153, 156, 162f., - human 146,206, 212, 21 8f., 221
169, 196 - modes of 23, 28, 172, 208, 213, 217
- of others 39, 40(n.), 180 - my 53, 97, 145, 168, 215
- phenomenology of 152, 179 - of ego 34,43,170,172
- powers of 34, 91, 121 , 125, 160, 187 - personal 22, 42, 45f., 100, 184, 220
- theory of 36, 38, 42, 158, 177 - sphere of 21, 33f., 57, 192
- transcendent 39, 40(n.), 47, 133 - subjective 66, 206, 209, 216, 219
- transcendental 28, 38f., 57 existential 143, 145, 158, 195
- unity of 81, 99f., 118, 166 existen tialism 7
element(s) 32, 36f., 41 , 48, 53, 57, 64f., experience(s) 5, 17, 23ff., 27ff., 30, 40, 49,
70, 73f., 85, 103, 105, 109f., 121, 141, 53, 73ff., 83f., 88, 92, 95f., 100, 109ff.,
157, 162, 176, 186, 203f., 213f. 115, 128, 133, 135f., 138f., 143f., 145ff.,
- heterogeneous 115, 154, 156, 176, 185 149ff., 152, 154f. , 158f., 164-168, 172ff.,
- of transcendent being 77, 110, 114f., 175, 177ff., 180, 183, 199, 205f., 211, 21 3f.
118 - immediate 4, 68, 92, 99, 133, 170
- transcendent 72, 109, 157, 164 169, - internal 16,31 ,47, 110, 131, 133, 145,
186,202,211ff. 169
INDEX OF TERMS 229
- internal transcendental 15(def.),16(0.) force(s) 13, 19f., 22, 29, 3Iff., 39f., 41(0.),
17, 21, 23, 29, 41, 43f., 54tf., 62, 64, 47f., 49, 52f., 55, 78, 97, 104, 147, 174,
66-69, 71f., 74f., 80, 89, 91f. , 93f., 99, 177, 179, 186
107, 109tf., 114, I 24f., 127, 129, 132f., forgetfulness, self- 171
138f., 148f., 158, 164f., 167, 170, 176, formes) 22(0.), 27, 34, 38, 42, 49, 72, 74,
182(0.), I 87tf., 191, 196 83, 85f., 95, 102, 113, 128f., 168, 187f.,
- my 106, 155, 187, 205 197
- ofworId 47,75,96,117, 129 foundation(s) 2, 4, 7, 17, 20-23, 30, 34tf.,
- original 94, 115, 133, 167f. 38, 4If., 46, 48f., 69, 72, 75, 78, 84, 94.
- sensible 26, 83f., 130f., 160f. 96-101 , 102, 104, 106, 111, 11 5f., 118,
- subjective 63f., 11 6, 133, 138, 158, 170, 120tf., 125tf., 130, 161, 164, 166, 184,
179 187, 195f., 199, 205tf., 222
- transcendent 61, 72, 93f., 128, 191 ~ ontological 104, 161f., 164, 180, 191 ,
- transcendental 113, 171, 177 195f.
explanation 153 - phenomenological 4, 20, 141
extension 3, 42, 55, 57, 76, 111, 122f., freedom 22, 31, 34(n.), 154, 158, 161(n.),
131, 136, 138, 140, 148tf. 218(n.)
exterior (external); cr. knowledge, represen- functions 47, 49, 64, 219
tation, world future 86, 97
exteriority 37,41 , 57,150,188 generalization 25
eye 16,79,109, Il1f., 114, 133 geometry 27
fact(s) 15, 17, 20, 22, 25, 27, 29, 41( n.), gestures 55, 199, 218(n.)
48, 58, 66, 74, 114, 117, 137f., 140ff., goal 61; cf. ends
145f., 149, 152, 156, 175, 178 God 49, 119, 137, 179
- interior 15, 20, 31, 42 grace 173-176, 181, 182(n.)
- primitive 17f., 21, 25, 28, 34(n.), 35, happiness 143
40f., 43, 52, 127, 132(n.), 149, 174ff. harmony 147, 208
faculties 14, 16(n.), 17f., 22f., 25f., 38, 40, hate 142f.
49, 50(n.), 66, 77, 95, 100, 112f., 160, 170 hearing 79f., 83, 112, 133, 164f., 170f.,
faith 39, 182 172(n.), 185
fall 206, 210 heavens 111 ,119,146
false 137 helplessness 154
heritage, cultural 183
fantasy 183
heroes 54
fascinatioo 216(0.)
heterogeneity 83, 87, 204
fate 154
history (historical) 4(n.), 10, 21(n.), 37,
feeling(s) 3, 13, 31, 34(0.), 39, 40(n.), 54, 143, 154, 175,221
41(0.), 43, 45f., 49ff., 53, 58, 63ff., homogeneity, ontological 12 If., 164, 166,
67-71, 75, 83, 88, 91, 99f., 130, 131(0.),
172
139, 149, 161 , 163f., 167, 170, 179 horizon 12, 15,46,93, 181, 189, 198,211
fideism 181 - ontological 5, 62, 66, 68, 134
field, phenomeoological 20, 135; cf. do- - philosophical 62, 137f., 146, 177, 181f.
main, region, sphere 'how' 37; cf. manifestation
finger 84-87, 89, 91 human; cf. body, existence, reality, world
finitude 7, 145, 189, 198f., 203-206, humanism 204, 208f.
21O-215,216ff. hypothesis(es) 18, 25, 45, 48, 69, 88,
fluid 19 113, 138, 140, 151, 167
flesh 183, 204-208, 217, 220 idea(s) 16f., 24f., 27, 29, 30-34, 37, 40
230 INDEX OF TERMS
41(n.), 47, 49f., 52, 57, 61, 66f., 69, 71, intellectualism 66, 104, 125, 141f., 143,
73f., 83, 85, 95, 105, 112ff., 147, I 69f., 146, 186, 198
206 intelligence 26, 156
- abstract 22, 24, 39, 221 intention(s) 86, 88, 200-203
- innate 25, 50(n.) intentionality(ies) 14, 16f., 28, 55, 58,
- original 22f., 35f. 71-75, 87, 99, 110, 162, 165, 167, 169,
idealism 75, 168, 186, 191, 195,200, 221 172f., 185f., 189-196, 201ff., 207f.,
identi ty 19,22,25,31 , 33, 100, 120, 133f., 210-215, 216(n.), 217f. , 221
163f. interior (internal, intimate); cf. appercep-
ideology, subjective 14, 16f., 22, 38 tion, experience, facts, knowledge, life,
illusion(s) 49, 84, 105, 108, 110, 115 observation, sensations, sense
image(s) 13f., 24, 32, 37, 82ff., 85-90, interiority 90, 169
98,101,105,114,125,134,156,158,162, - ontological 98, 126, 133, 162
173(n.), 175, 200; cf. representation(s) interpretation, ontological 57, 123, 166,
imagination 13,16,22,29, ISS, I 57f., 161f. 180, 183, 186f., 195(n.)
immanence 1,16,23,29,34,49,53,61,74, interrogation, philosoj:hical 135
79, 82f., 91, 94, 99, 104, 109, 151, 168, introspection 9, 15
174, 178, 190, 195(n.) intuition 9, IS, 21, 23, 27, 30, 56f., 122,
- absolute I, 17ff., 23, 33, 43, 58, 62, 132(n.), 157, 162, 171, 175f., 181f.
71, 76, 89, 93, 97, 116, ll8, 121, 149, ipseity 37f., 41, 93,127
153, 190 judgment(s) 16, 21f., 26, 28, 31 , 68-71,
- radical 44, 109f., 162, 166, 196 104f., 176
- sphere of absolute 23f., 28, 36, 38ff., - intuitive 2Iff.,28
44f., 54, 65, 73, 75, 77, 102, 109, 111, kinaesthetic; cr. impressions, sensations
116,119,123,125,127, ISO, 162, 166f., knowledge 4, 7, 12ff., 16ff., 23, 25ff., 34,
169,172, 185ff, 196, 198,201,203,211, 43,53,60, 62f., 68f., 77, 80f., 94f., 97-100,
219 105, 128f., 131, 135, 139, 143, 145, 156,
- transcendental 23, 33, 36, 80, 114, 189 166, 177, 179ff., 183, 187f., 198f.
immanent 90,100,106; cr. content, know- - absolute 110, 180, 187f., 194, 199,203
ledge - 'exterior' 12, 46, 128, 132
immediate; cf. apperception, knowledge, - immediate 12, 31, 58, 65ff., 70f., 74,
manifestation , power 92f., 116, 128, 131
impression(s) 69, 77, 79, 8Iff., 85ff., 88, - intellectual 73f., 94, 105, 135, 140,
131f., 159ff., 163, 171 143f., 199
- kinaesthetic 85ff., 88ff., 91 - interior 14,33,61,70
- passive 82, 163, 170 - objective 46, 49, 128f., 132
- sensible 81, 86, 160 - of body 58f., 93f., 109, ll8, 128, 188
- sonorous 80r., 95, 164f., 171 - of movements 54, 58, 88f., 98
incarnation. 3. 6, 50f,. 183f,. 189, 203ff. - of self (self-) 14, 39,42,93, lll, 172,
individual 42f., 105f., 161 , 187 I 79ff.
individuality 83, 97, 102ff., 107, ll6, 130 - of world 93f., 97, 99, 128
individuation 99, 101f. - ontological 40ff., 43, 45, 57, 72, 94f.,
innatism 28, 40(n.) 97ff., 100, 102, 111f.
innocence 203, 220 - original 33, 54, 57ff., 66, 69, 73, 80,
instinct 155 93ff., 96, 112, 128f., 131f.. 165
instrument(s) 59, 61, 63f., 89, 93, ll3, - possibility of 42, 97, 102
125, 132 - primordial 5,46, 58f., 69, 71, 94f., 112,
intellect(ual) 66, 94 129, 131
INDEX OF TERMS 231
- representative 64, 128, 131f., 134(n.), 94, 102f., 130, 135f., 145f., 156, 161(n.),
199 173, 181, 183f., I 88f., 191, 193, 196,
- thematic 55, 70, 73, 89, 93 204f., 206ff., 206ff., 212, 215
- theoretical 72, 74, 94, 105, 128, 131, manifestation 41, 82, 90, 111, 119f., 188
140, 143f., 199 - immediate 82, 84
- types of 16(n.), 46, 54, 58, 95, 99, - modes of 37,44, 11 8f., 122; cf. appea-
118,128,143,180 rance, revelation
- unity of 83, 92, 102, 165 mass(es) 122, 125, 131, 135
language 12,22,25,32, 109ff., 113, 171(n.) - transcendent 61, 63, 77, 129
1evel(s) 19, 34, 62, 80, 99, 103 materialism 11,51, 178, 218(n.), 221
life 5, 3If., 39, 42f., 50, 53, 55, 63, 71, 74, matter 28, 50, 83, 116, 220
78, 82, 92, 104ff., 107, 112, 133ff., meaning 27, 56, 61, 64, 82, 86f., 95-99,
139, 143f., 151, 154ff., 159, 16Iff., 103f., 111f., 143ff., 151, 167, 178, 189,
165, 167f., 171 , 173-176, 181, 183f., 187f., 208, 217
191, 196ff., 201, 203, 206f., 213, 219, 221 - existential 143f., 209, 218(n.)
- absolute 112, 115f., 127, I 29f., 134, - ontological 37, 104, 151 , 158f., 169,
174f., 190, 192, 196, 215., 217, 219f., 181 , 188, 209f., 212, 215, 217
- active 156, 16If., 167, I 69(n.), 202 - philosophical 42, 66, 175, 208
- affective 135, 143f., 154f., 157ff., 173 means 17, 60f., 64, 93, 198ff.
- bodily (of body) 92, 106, 108, 123, mechanism(s) 57, 100, 145, 158, 198, 209
126f., 129f., 133ff., 164, 168, 183, 186, memory 16, 22, 80f., 92, 95, 97ff., 99ff.,
191f., 205ff., 213, 215, 219, 221 155,162,I72f.
- concrete 65, 71, 75, 91, 95, 99, 103, metaphysicians 25, 51, 113, 151, 178
105f., 143, 163 metaphysics 14,20,27,49, 51, 157
- immanent 176,191,197, 203 methodes) 15, 19, 26f.
- interior 9,63, 75f., 151, 157f.,
milieu 17, 36f., 52, 56f., 61, 104, 106,
- natural 22, 32, 85, 153
116,131 , 186ff., 207
- of consciousness 52, 105, 143, 197
- of existence 45, 104, 215
- of ego 62, 64f., 73, 75, 92, 126, 130,
- transcendent 59, 63, 74, 131, 166; cf.
153, 162, 169, 196,211
domain, region, sphere
- of subjectivity 62, 72, 106, 108, 11 Of.,
mode(s) 41, 52, 56; cf. existence, manifes-
118, 122, 126, 158, 162, 169, 173, 210,
tation, revelation, sensibility
217
modification(s) 18, 24, 48, 52, 67ff., 70,
- our 55, 107,166,178, 196, 212
16Of., 165, 221
- psychological 101, 156f., 160,202,215
monads 157
- sensible 78, 105f., 112f., 156f., 159,
173, 175, 205 monism, ontological 14, 16(n.), 24, 46,
- sexual 213, 218(n.), 221 178,188
- subjective 111, 115, 125, 158,211 morality 103, 145, 184f., 198f., 202f.,
- theoretical 72, 105, 144, 202 213, 217, 220
- unity of 91 , 117, 166, 175; cf. body movement(s) 13, 52f., 55-74, 77, 79, 81 -
light 43, 50 85, 89-96,99,101-104,106,108,114,116,
look 89, 186 12If., 127, 129, 136, 145, 148f., 156, 164,
love 143, 211 , 218(n.) 166, 172(n.), 185, 188
lying 39 - being of 54,66,76,97, 104, 148
m achines, animal 136 - bodily 63, 86ff., 89, 121f.
magic 29, 33, 119, 202 - original 59, 75, 78, 91, 96, 104, 148
man 2ff., 6f., 11, 32, 41, 54, 59f., 76, - real 57, 59, 6If., 73, 79, 96
232 INDEX OF TERMS
- subjective 57, 59, 61 , 63, 65, 69, 71, ontology If., 6, II, 15, 30 57, 63, 66,
73, 75f., 78ff., 82f., 87, 89-92, 94, 98, 71,76, 157, 179, 184f., 205ff., 219, 221f.
118, 120ff., 123ff., 126, 128f., 131, - of subjectivi ty 16f., 23, 25, 51, 71,
135, 148ff., 173, 175, 187, 199, 202 120, 156f., 176, 178, 180f., 182(n.), 222
muscles 63f., 67f., 88, 122, 130, 148 - phenomenological 7r., 11, 20, 28, 44,
mystery 85, 165, 189 57f., 110, 115, 122, 138, 154, 176, 178
myth (mythology) 51, 101, 146 operation(s) 13, 17, 162, 170
nalvet., philosophical 54 opposition(s) 37, 54, 167
naturalism 204,219f. organs, bodily 49f., 59, 63f., 76ff., 86, 91,
nature(s) 15, 24, 40, 45, 57f., 63, 65, 71 , 93, 112ff., 116f., 123f., 128f., 134, 156f.
76, 106, 109ff., 115, 136, 140, 147, 156 organic; cr. body
- human 54, 141, 188 origin(s) 27f., 30f., 34, 38, 40, 120
- primitive 136f., 140f., 152 original; cr. being, body, experience, ideas,
necessity 34ff., 68, 71, 106, 143, 154, 177, knowledge, movement, region, relation-
184, 194 ship, revelation, truth, unity
need(s) 51, 152, 219ff. other ('the other') 8, 38, 118,216
negativity 197, 200 parallelism 147f., 151
nerves 49, 63f., paralogism(s) 46, 100, 128, 135
night 50,60, IOlf., 116 passion(s) 139-143, 145, 155f., 158, 174
non-ego 161 ; cf. 'other' passivity 36(n.), 154, 157, 161-167, 173-
nonsense, ontological III , 157,220. 176
nothingness 32, 38, 42, 44, 48, 51, 57, - ontological theory of 131,159,167,169,
60,73,162, 168ff., 180, 186, 189, 197 172f.
notion(s) 20, 22, 25; cf. ideas past 86,97-102
noumena 149f., 177-180 perception(s) 6, 17, 19, 46, 82, 85ff., 95,
object(s) 5, 16, 20, 33, 38, 40, 42, 54, 59, 101, l 04f., 109, 129, 132, 134, 161, 171,
65,78,89,94,96,109, Ill, 129, 132(n.), 196
133, 136, 143, 156, 169, 171, 177, 179f., person 22
185,190, 192f., 195,198, 202,211, 213f., - 'in the first person' 8, 146, 196, 202
216(n.) - 'in the third person' 6, 55, 64f., 85,
objective; cf. body 140, 145(n.), 146, 148, 156, 159, 190,
objectification 13, 201, 214, 220 202f., 220
objectivity 200,215 perspective(s) 19, 54, 70, 88, 93, 177f.,
obscurity, ontological 36, 66, 112, 157, I 94f.
160,206 phenomenon(a) 7, 13, 29, 32, 39, 42, 44,
observation, exterior and interior 15f., 18, 48,50,58, 61f., 65, 81, 84, 90f., 95, 97f.,
27,37,48 102, 109, 11 Iff., 115, 118f., 134f., 146,
occasionalism 147 156, 164ff., 17If., 176, 177ff., 191, 215,
odor 79, 157, 160f., 163 219
on tic 37, 116 - natural 24, 64, 111, 177f.
ontological 20; cr. analysis, characteristic, - original 89, 188, 195(n.), 219
clarification, consequence, deficiency, de- phenomenological 76; cf. appearances,
terminations, difference, dualism, homo - being, content, data, distance, effective-
geneity, horizon, interiority. interpre- ness, field, foundation, ontology, reduc-
tation, knowledge, meaning, monism, tion, status, viewpoint
nonsense, obscurity, passivity, possibi- phenomenology 8, 15,46,80,95, 119(def.),
lity, power, problem, proof, region, 134, 155f., 172, 178f.
status, sufficiency. viewpoint - transcendental 16f., 20, 26f., 45, 67,
INDEX OF TERMS 233
113, 152, 156 - philosophical 47, 66, 109
philosophers 9, 17, 21, 35, 37, 48f., 53, primitive (primordial); cr. fact, knowledge
55f., 104, 130, 152, 168 principle(s) 22, 49f., 176, 178
philosophical; cr. exigencies, horizon, mean- problem, ontological 6, 30, 65
ing, naivete, presuppositions, reflection, problematic, 8, 4If., 46,58
tradition process(es) 62f., 73, 94, 101, 157f., 160
philosophy 8, 19, 20(n.), 22, 24, 29, 34, - physiological 73, 85, 156
36, 39f., 43, 51 , 52, 54, 57, 64, 67, 101, production, power of 53, 55, 66
108, J 15, 132, 140, 146, 152, 155ft·., proof, 'ontological' 35
159, 162, 168f., 174lf., 178f., 195f., protentions 85f., 100
199, 202f., 218, 220f. proximity 117
- Biranian 14f., 19,45,155,173, 175f., psychoanalysis 50, 101
179,181f. psychological 100f.; cf. life
- first 6f., 9f., 19, 41, 54,71 psychologism 20(n.), 188
- of body 185, 194(n.), 218, 221f. psychologists 16,22,37,84,88, 130
- of subjectivity 158, 170, 177, 186, 202, psychology 9, 15, 20lf., 23, 39, 47, 67,
221 109,156, 173f., 178, 181f.
physiologists 51, 63f., 113, 155 - classical 16,66, 151, 194
physiology 13, 49f., 113f. - empirical 16,66,68, 181f.
positivism 29, 32 - rational 22f., 28, 46
possession, self- 36, 54, 61f., 64, 78, 133, quaHties, sensible 24
165, 196 questions, met aphysical 152
possible(s) 20, 26, 30, 61, 175 radical; cr. immanence
possibility 25,27, 29lf., 96lf., 99, 102, 107, rationalism 24f.
113,116,185 real 20,31, 73lf., 81lf.
- ontological 29, 95f., 11 7, 159, 172, realism 44,51, 146, 150
187, 189 reality 25, 62, 76, 77, 126, 129, 149, 158,
- permanent 98, 211, 216 174,182, 187f., 200, 208, 210
- pure 95,98, 100; cf. knowledge - constituted 58, 108,115
power(s) 24, 38, 53lf., 59f., 65f., 71f., - human 7f., 19, 47,50,96, 102
78lf., 94, 96f., 98f., 103, 109, 116f., - transcendent 61, 1l0, 182(n.)
123, 131, 162lf., 169, 173(n.), 175, 187 reason 16, 22f., 33
- immediate 116, 121, 123 reduction 19ff., 22ff., 28f., 31, 36, 56,
- of body 58,93,96, 109, 116, 124, 166 76, 77, 89
- of ego 91,125,160, 174f., 187 - phenomenological 5, 18, 26, 29, 35,
- of sensing 78, 81, 90, 97, 103f., 109, 45,56,75,121,126,138
112f., 163f., 173 reflection 13, 15, 46, 55f., 58, 108, IlOlf.,
- ontological 99, 1l0, 160, 166; cf. 113, 138, 169lf.
constitution, faculties, forces, produc- - Biranian 12,14,17,112,146
tion - philosophical 3, 108, 135, 137, 146,
praxis 55 ISO, 175, 188, 210
prejudice 140, 142, 144 region 3, 6f., 23f., 27, 33, 46, 56, 71, 121,
presence 37,72, 84lf., 89, 93f., I11f., 118f., 123
162, 166, 182, 187,202,214 - ontological 3, 8, 24f., 46, 52, 58, 117,
- self- 37f., 42,112,117, 162 121,141, 150f., 189, 216
presentation, auto- 42 - original 25,90, 101, 106, 151
presupposition(s) 11, 45, 56, 58, 106, - transcendent 93,115,150; cr. domain,
120r., 205 milieu, sphere
234 INDEX OF TERMS
relationship(s) 2f., 32, 63, 65f., 74, 78, self, as auto-presentation 42, 90, 200;
88,94,97, 108,11 I, I13f., 126, 133, 135f., cf. ego
144,148,150,164,I92f. sensation(s) 14, 24, 39, 59, 74, 77ff.,
- body 4, 115, I 23f., 126, 148, 150ff., 81·84,92,103,105,107,113, 129f., 156,
191, 193, 195(n.) 160, 162f., 168, !7l (n.), 173
- ego 4, 17, 39f., 79, 126, 133, 193, - internal 84, 129ff.
195(n.) - kinaesthetic 86f., 88f., 91, 93
- movement 74, 85. 88f., 94, 149 - muscular 66·71
- original 4, 94, 106 127 - visual 86ff., 91, 168
- transcendental 32,124,127,148, 150f., sense(s) 16f., 42, 66, 79, 81·84, 88, 92f.,
159, 190, 193, 195(n.), 199,202 95,102,112,116, 128f., 131, 147ff., 152,
relative 20, 179 166
religion 183f. - common 4, 6,109, 184, 195
reminiscence, personal 100f. - intimate 17, 20, 66, 100, 114, 148f.,
representation(s) 15, 29,40,42,53,6 1,66, 154,156,159,176
72ff., 77, 85, 94, 104, 11 If., 125, 132(n.), sensible 87, 217; cf. content, data, ex-
133f., 148ff., 157, 169, 183f., 19Iff., perience, life, qualities, world
195, 199(n.), 201, 211, 215 sensibility 18,35, 41(n.), 106f., 113, 129ff.,
- external 13,41, 128 155·158, 160f.
- naive 110, 191, 193 sensing 77f., 106f., 159ff., I 62f., 172(n.),
- of body 121, 125, 134 185, 187f.
reproduction 33f., 38, 80, 95, 99, 165 - power of 77,97,113, 164
resistance 31 ,82, 122f., 125, 128f. sensual(ism) 156, 158, 161, 178, 217
resisting; cf. continuum, terminus servitude 158
resolution 198f. sexuality 4(n.), 213ff., 216(n.), 217
responsibility 220 shame 2
resurrection, of body 208f., 2 I 7 sign(s) 21,25,46, 49, 114,116, 171(n.)
retention(s) 85f., 100 - twofold usage of 108, I 10f., I 13, I 15f.,
revelation 66f., 68f., 72, 117ff., 176ff., 185, 120, 134, 157
203 sin 204, 206f., 209f.
- original 15(n.), 44, 116, 120,172, 176, situation 7, 190·1 94, 195(n.), 198, 203
179f., 187f. skepticism, Humian 147
- self· 71,117,172, 179f. sleep 100
risk 55, 199 smell 79
rite 218(n.) solid(ity) 59, 95, 97ff.
romanticism 53 soul I I, 18, 25ff., 36, 43ff., 46ff., 49ff.,
rose 157, 160f. 60f., 109, 121f., 132, 177,208, 220,22I(n.)
sacrilege 181 - and body 135, 137ff., 141, 146, I 49f.,
sanctions 26 152, 155, I 74ff., 193
salvation 206f., 212 sound(s) 79ff., 83, 164, 172
schema(ta) 105, 124f., 155, 194, 198 space 59, 74f., 77f., 122ff., 130f., 133,
science(s) 4ff., 8, 13, 15, 18·22, 26f., 32, 189, 211
47ff., 108, 123, 128f., 132, 145, 178, 183f., speaking 165, 170, 171(n.), 172(n.)
222 sphere; cf. certitude, existence, immanence,
- of man 10, 14, 18f., 45, 47, 156; cf. subjectivity
biology, ontology, psychology spirit 7, 10,28, 44f., 102f., 145, 174, 183,
seeing 17,82,86, 90f., 94, 96, 109·112, 114, 196f., 200, 204, 206f., 208, 220
109· 112,114,126,128,133,161, 168ff., 185 spontaneity 106
INDEX OF TERMS 235
stars III - extended 137f., 141, 148
statue 157, 160ff., 167 - idea of 25, 40(n.), 73, 83
state(s) 62, 64, 96, 113, 144 - thinking 138, 141, 148
status - of categories 25, 42. 49, 120, substantial(ism) 20, 43
143, 191, 193, 197 suffering 159
- ontological 16(n.), 29, 49, 56, 92, 100, sufficiency, ontological 127, 141
124, 142, 166, 178, 191, 194, 199,214 symbol(ism) 92(n.), 114
- phenomenological 28, 138, 142f., 194 synthesis, passive 164, 167f., 172, 187
structure(s) system(s) 18, 27, 122f., 130f.
- dialectical 2, 5ff., 55, 57, 97f., 106, tautology 49,92, 104
1l6f., 130, 140, 157, 170, 185 tegument, sensible 83
- of body 93, 99, 115, 122, 191 temporal 74, 85
- of ego 57, 172, 180 tendencies, innate 220
- of manifestation 27,41, 119 tension, latent 88, 122 166, 168,202
- of organs 116, 124f. , 129 term(s) 17,25,39,119
- of subjectivity 84,92, 143, 175, 180[., terminology 12, 14, 19f., 100
187
terminus(i) 6,49,61,75,78,93,96,110,
subject 21, 23, 42, 46, 61, 68, 160, 170,
1l7, 1l9, 123, 127, I 29f., 135, 148ff.,
220f.
170,196,198,202,208,214
- logical 38, 42, 46, 57, 92
- of movement 95, 125f., 131
subjective; cf. being, body, ideology, move-
- resisting 35,73-76, 121f.
ment
- transcendent 25, 26f., 43, 47f., 50f.,
subjectivity 1, 3, 9, II, 14, 16f., 22f.,
72f., 75, 79, 83, 9If., 95f., 98, 102, 125f.,
29, 37-40, 43, 45, 48, 51, 54ff., 56ff.,
128, 150, 199; cf. continuum
60,73,76,78,84,97, 104, 127, 140, 143,
155, 161 , 165, 167ff., 170f., 180, I 84f., theology 49, 181,207
theory(ies)
186ff., 193, 195(n.), 197f., 200, 202, 209,
215,220f. - Cartesian 137-142
- Kantian 23
- absolute 8, 44, 61, 89f., 93f., 99ff.,
- of affectivity 142f., 145, 159, 162
102f., 106, 108, 1l0ff., 1l4f., 117f.,
- of belief I 76ff.
124f., 127, 139, 142f., 148, 150, 158,
162, 165, 175, 180ff., I 85f., I 87f., - of body 36, 56f., 67, 69, 80, 103,
154f., 163f., 176, 179, 186, 188,220
191, 201, 206, 208, 219
- as immanence 89, 91, 93f., 178 - of categories 18, 23, 25, 32ff.
- being of 31,76, 101, 187 - of ego 36,38,42,45,158,177, 179
- life of 1l0f., 122, 126, 129, 173, 197, - of existence 33
210,217 - offaculties 18, 22
- ontology of 17, 23, 25, 27f., 30f., - of knowledge 18, 59
33,42,46, 51, 56, 63f., 67, 69, 71, 120, - of movements 54, 61, 67ff., 77
156f., 178, 180f., 182(n.) - of passivity 131, 145, 159, 167, 169,
- philosophy of 158,170, 186, 191,203 172
- sphere of 19, 26, 33ff., 52, 58, 66, 70, - of sensibility 131
120f., 140, 189 - of subjectivity 33, 56
- transcendental 7, 55, 58, 62, 65, 72, - of world 14, 18
140, 143 things 14, 29, 31, 34, 37,41,44, 58f., 81,
substance 22, 27, 34ff., 41 (n.), 44f., 47, 83, 94f., 97, 105, 109, Ill, 117, 189
52f., 73, 81, 102, 137, 149, 151, 159, - essence of 75, 119
168,177 - transcendent 189f., 192-195
236 INDEX OF TERMS
thought 21 , 24,32,37, 43ff., 46, 48, 52ff., - of senses 83,92, 102, 164
55f., 60f., 68, 77, 91, 99, 137ff., I 42ff., - of wo rld 34, 75, 79, 92
148, 157f., 162, 175, 177, 183, 186, 198, - ontological 89, 158, 165
204,206 - original 33, 91 , 98, 100, 123ff.
- essence of 141, 143 - soul-body 132, 135, 137ff., 141, 151f.,
- pure 44, 53, 140f., 143, 158, 200 175f.
time 37,81,87, 98ff., 211 - subjective 81,91,98, 123f.
tonality, affective 130, 141, 143f., 154, - substantial 139f., 142, 144, 146, 151
161 - transcendent 84, 98, 124f., 133
touch 81ff., 94f., 97, 109f., 112, 128, 132 - transcendental 99, 123f.; cf. ego, world
tradition(s) 204ff., 208f., 217 universe 7, 50f., 53, 61, 70, 75, 79, 97,
- philosophical 132, 147, 193, 204, 206 107, 116f.
transcendence 14, 38, 74, 113, 116[., 122, value(s) 42, 86, 129, 141,208
126f., 150, 196, 201, 203, 214, 219 viewpoint(s) 19(n.), 26, 32, 65, 149ff.,
transcendent 45, 50, 58, 74, 78, 83, 109, 166f., 176, 179, 186,207,210, 218(n.)
186, 190, 211, 214; cf. being, constructs, - ontological 3f., 127, 175, 198, 201,
content, ego, element, experience, mass, 207, 218(n.), 219
milieu, terminus, unity - phenomenological 87, 149, 151, 175,
transcendenta123, 186; cf. body. categories, 178
content, ego, experience, immanence, vitalism, romantic 209
phenomenology, relationship. subjec- voice 79tf., 164
tivity Vorhanden 94
transparency, absolute 39, 60, 102, 119, will 16f., 50, 55, 60, 63, 66ff., 82,10 1,112,
165,220 128, 130, 145, 148, 154, 156-159, 161ff.,
truth 17f., 19(n.), 22, 34, 44, 76, 89, 93, 168, 172, 175
104ff., 115f., 142, 144, 147, 150, 167,213 work 218(n.)
- of transcendent being 72f. , 76, 109, world 7, 14,24,26,29-32, 34f., 38, 40-43,
116 48, 53tf., 58, 60f., 64f., 7Itf., 76, 83, 90,
- original 17, 22, 26, 29, 34, 42f., 55, 93f., 96f., 101f., 104f., 110, 115, 120f.,
57, 72ff., 76, 119, 127 124., 127f., 135, 148, 150, 159, 171,
uDconscious(ness) 49, 55, 70, 85, 88f., 184, 186, 190f., 193, 195, 21Of., 204,
101f., 145, 163, 199 214ff., 218ff.
understanding 22f., 33, 149, 186 - external 39,75, 106, 151, 172
unity 43, 48, 72, 75, 77ff., 84, 100, 117, - human 20f., 33, 40
123, 141, 165 - of ego 32f., 106
- category of 22, 31, 34, 38 - of experience 30, 47, 83, 117
- constituted 77f., 84, 99 - real 26, 30, 40, 73, 82f., 87,92
- idea of 25,32, 41(n.) - sensible 35,79, 82ff., 87, 92, 104, 204f.
- of body 77,84,92, 99f., 115, 118, 120f., - unity of 84, 92, 99, 118
123ff., 127, 129, 133, 164, 166,209 - visual 78, 83, III
- of ego 34, 81, 91, 99f., 126, 130, 161, 'x' - as undetermined thing 26, 38, 44,
165f., 172, 180 47f., 84, 88, 101, 145
- of experience 88, 118f., 124, 135 - as transcenden t terminus 25, 27, 43,
- of knowledge 83,99, 102, 165 45, 47f., 50f., 149
- oflife 91f., 117, 129f., 164, 166, 180 zones, affective 130
- of movement 79,91, 102, 164 Zuhanden 94
- -
-
Under the guise of de
Biran, Michel Henry has philos-
ophy of the person
nence, of life and of
Philosophy Jlnd
of his major work The
interpreted in dose
After centuries of narcissism and the whining COfl-
fiteors of uIl.Iversal relativism, it is encouraging to learn
again that "the is after all possessed of absolute truth and
certitude regarding his personal experiences which are predicated on
the immanence and unity of the self. By careful analyses, Henry shows
that transcendence is 'within', not within some pure Platonic ()r Car-
tesian soul, but within fhe body as well Consequenily, the tmnscendent
'outside' is not the pnvileged locus of troth. By this Ifenry does not.
intend to denigrate- l bjectivity or the findings of science, he merely
- wishes to remind scientists and philosophers that the human subject
is. absolutely indispensible to meaning and trmh. .
The student of troth will find no ma~.£: methodology in the philos-
ophy ()f Michel Heury. Language is-the tool of man Vlha is .:onslantly
blifdened with making it meaningful by l'elating it to his experience
while striving to rid it of ambiguities where this is germaioe to hIS
pUQ2oses. Michel Henry is his own man and hcnce his phenomenol()gy
is not one of a clisembodied, dispassionate and disinterested
spectator who is content to inventory the world -of exferniil facts. Life
m the world, its events and experiences do not hqpen to some 'it'
and the unobserved universe will have to Temain the postulate of
sciencC" or the6logy:, By the sam~ token, Henry is no mystic Who is"
unable or unwilling to accoun t for his experiellces, be is rather a
philosopher who is dedicated to giVjh!! au essantiaJ analysis of funda-
mental phHosopbical problems.
- -
- -•
-
Girard Etzl::om bas his Ph.D. in pl1ihlSOl'hy from the University of LOllvain. -
He has contnouted a numher of articles to. the Encyclopedia of Pfrilosop!ry anet
the New Cmholfc Encyclopedia. He has likewise translated Michel H omy's
Essence of Manifestalion. (MartitIUs Nijhoff, 191'3). In tlie field of mediaeval
texts, Professor Etzk&rn bas _ made a critical _edition of Ro.ger Marston:s,
Qllodlibeta Qna/uor. 'He. is presently a rcs",arcn associate at the Franciscan
Institute, St. Bonaventure Ubj'/ersily, where ne is comp!eting critical e<liUons of
John PechamOs, Quodlibeta Quctuor and WiUh m=Qf Ockham'" Commentary on
Lombard's Selue.lJCes.