(Vol. 10.1163 - 9789004301917) Kontos, Pavlos - Cimino, Antonio - Phenomenology and The Metaphysics of Sight - (2015, BRILL)

Phenomenology and the Metaphysics of Sight
Studies in Contemporary
Phenomenology
Editorial Board
Chris Bremmers (Radboud University, Nijmegen, Editor in Chief)

Gert-Jan van der Heiden (Radboud University, Nijmegen)
Peter Reynaert (University of Antwerp)
Advisory Board
Jos de Mul (Erasmus University, Rotterdam)

John Sallis (Boston College)
Hans-Rainer Sepp (Charles University, Prague)
Laszlo Tengelyi† (Bergische Universität, Wuppertal)
VOLUME 13
The titles published in this series are listed at brill.com/scp

Phenomenology and the
Metaphysics of Sight
Edited by
Antonio Cimino and Pavlos Kontos
LEIDEN | BOSTON
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Phenomenology and the metaphysics of sight/edited by Antonio Cimino and Pavlos Kontos.
pages cm. — (Studies in contemporary phenomenology, ISSN 1875-2470; VOLUME 13)
Includes index.
ISBN 978-90-04-30190-0 (hardback) — ISBN 978-90-04-30191-7 (e-book) 1. Phenomenology 2. Vision.
I. Cimino, Antonio, editor. II. Kontos, Pavlos, editor.
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Contents
Contributors vii
Introduction 1
Part 1
Plato, Aristotle, and Vision
1 Towards a Genealogy of the Metaphysics of Sight: Seeing, Hearing, and

Thinking in Heraclitus and Parmenides 11
Jussi Backman
2 The Extent of Visibility 35

John Sallis
3 Seeing and Being Seen in Plato: The Logic of Image and Original and the
Platonic Phenomenology Behind It 49
Burt C. Hopkins
4 On Touch and Life in the De Anima 69

Christopher P. Long
Part 2
Visual Perception and Beyond
5 Beyond the Innocence of the Painter’s Eye 97

Pavlos Kontos
6 Voyance: On Merleau-Ponty’s Processual Conception of Vision 121

Luca Vanzago
7 Seeing the Invisible: Jean-Luc Marion’s Path from Husserl to

Saint Paul 142
Claudio Tarditi
vi contents
Part 3
Rival Paradigms
8 The Use and Abuse of Vision 165

Michael Inwood
9 In the Shadow of Light: Listening, the Practical Turn of

Phenomenology, and Metaphysics of Sight 184
David Espinet
10 Seeing the Truth and Living in the Truth: Optical Paradigms of Truth
and Pauline Countermodels 208
Antonio Cimino
11 Self-touch and the Perception of the Other 224

James Mensch
Index 239
Contributors
Jussi Backman
is University Lecturer at the University of Jyväskylä, Finland. His books include
Omaisuus ja elämä: Heidegger ja Aristoteles kreikkalaisen ontologian rajalla
(Tampere, 2005) and Complicated Presence: Heidegger and the Postmetaphysical
Unity of Being (Albany, NY, 2015).
Antonio Cimino
is Senior Postdoctoral Researcher at Radboud University Nijmegen, the
Netherlands. His books include Ontologia, storia, temporalità. Heidegger,
Platone e l’essenza della filosofia (Pisa, 2005) and Phänomenologie und Vollzug.
Heideggers performative Philosophie des faktischen Lebens (Frankfurt am Main,
2013).
David Espinet
is Assistant Professor at the University of Freiburg, Germany. His publications
include Phänomenologie des Hörens. Eine Untersuchung im Ausgang von Martin
Heidegger (Tübingen, 2009) and “Read thyself! Hobbes, Kant und Husserl über
die Grenzen der Selbsterfahrung,” International Yearbook for Hermeneutics 12
(2013), 126–146.
Burt C. Hopkins
is Professor at the Department of Philosophy, Seattle University. He is the
author of The Philosophy of Husserl (Durham, 2011) and The Origin of the Logic
of Symbolic Mathematics: Edmund Husserl and Jacob Klein (Bloomington,
2011). He is founding co-editor of The New Yearbook for Phenomenology and
Phenomenological Philosophy.
Michael Inwood
is Fellow and Tutor (emeritus) in philosophy, Trinity College, Oxford. He is
the author of Heidegger: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford, 1997, 2000), Hegel
(London, 1983, 2002), Hegel’s Philosophy of Mind (a revised translation with
commentary; Oxford, 2007).
Pavlos Kontos
is Associate Professor at the Department of Philosophy, Patras. He is the
author of D’une phénoménologie de la perception chez Heidegger (Dordrecht,
1996), L’action morale chez Aristote (Paris, 2002), and Aristotle’s Moral Realism
Reconsidered (New York, 2011, 20132).
viii contributors
Christopher P. Long
is Associate Dean for Graduate and Undergraduate Education and Professor of
Philosophy and Classics in the College of the Liberal Arts at the Pennsylvania
State University. He is author of The Ethics of Ontology: Rethinking an Aristotelian
Legacy (Albany, NY, 2004), Aristotle On the Nature of Truth (Cambridge,
2010), and an enhanced digital book entitled, Socratic and Platonic Political
Philosophy: Practicing a Politics of Reading (Cambridge, 2014).
James Mensch
is Professor at the Faculty of Humanities, Charles University in Prague. He is
the author of numerous books, including Intersubjectivity and Transcendental
Idealism (Albany, NY, 1988), Ethics and Selfhood (Albany, NY, 2003), Husserl’s
Account of our Consciousness of Time (Milwaukee, 2010).
John Sallis
is Frederick J. Adelmann Professor of Philosophy at Boston College. He is the
author of numerous books, including Delimitations: Phenomenology and the
End of Metaphysics (Bloomington, 1986), Chorology: On Beginning in
Plato’s Timaeus (Bloomington, 1999), Platonic Legacies (Albany, 2004),
Transfigurements: On the True Sense of Art (Chicago, 2008), Logic of Imagination:
The Expanse of the Elemental (Bloomington, 2012).
Claudio Tarditi
is Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Turin, Italy. His publications include
Con e oltre la fenomenologia (Genoa, 2008) and Abitare la soglia. Percorsi di
fenomenologia francese (Turin, 2013).
Luca Vanzago
is Associate Professor at the University of Pavia, Italy. His books include Breve
storia dell’anima (Bologna, 2009) and Merleau-Ponty (Rome, 2012).
Introduction
Antonio Cimino and Pavlos Kontos
It is not an exaggeration to say that the development of the phenomenological

tradition can be traced through phenomenology’s wrestling with the paradigm
of sight. The signs of this permanent struggle are easily detectable, for example,
in Husserl’s self-criticism after Ideas I, in the objections raised by Heidegger
against the privilege accorded to vision and presence by Plato and Aristotle, as
well as in the various ways in which the ensuing generations of phenomenolo-
gists cast doubt on the sufficiency and the radicality of Husserl’s, Heidegger’s,
and Merleau-Ponty’s dissention from the paradigm of sight. This interest has
resulted in extremely influential and important work in all the areas of phe-
nomenological research. Whether phenomenology addresses the issue of
mirror neurons in conjunction with neuroscience, the question of the self in
attempting to refute the Cartesian ego, or the problem of icons from within
the framework of the so-called French theological turn, it is haunted by the
dominance of vision. And it is worthwhile to notice that, despite their being
conceived as reactions to the traditional visual paradigm, phenomenological
principles are inseparable from optical metaphors. Such an ambiguous stance
is epitomized in Merleau-Ponty’s The Visible and the Invisible, an emblematic,
albeit unaccomplished, text.
Our objective is to investigate the uses and resonances of the paradigm of
sight across the phenomenological tradition. We aim to do this by following
two paths that merge at key junctures. We will investigate, on one hand, how
the appropriation and the repudiation of the paradigm of sight permeate the
whole range of phenomenological research and, on the other hand, consider
phenomenologically inspired interpretations of Plato, Aristotle, Kant, and
Nietzsche.1 Thereby we mean to do justice to what we take to be the two main
1 Notwithstanding its specific objectives and point of view, the present volume overlaps with
a number of studies on the same topic. One should mention, for example, Modernity and the
Hegemony of Vision (Berkeley/Los Angeles/London 1993), edited by D. M. Levin, and M. Jay’s
Downcast Eyes. The Denigration of Vision in Twentieth-Century French Thought (Berkeley/Los
Angeles/London 1993). In comparison to these books, our collection has different research
objectives. First, the scope of what we are proposing is more comprehensive and thus not
confined to a specific philosophical approach (e.g. contemporary French philosophy in the
case of M. Jay’s book). Second, we lay more emphasis on the seminal role of ancient thought
in defining the optical paradigm (in contrast to the volume edited by Levin). Third, our proj-
ect does not adhere to any preconceived (whether Heideggerian or Derridean) criticism of
© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, ��5 | doi ��.��63/9789004301917_002

2 Cimino and Kontos
virtues of phenomenology: its descriptive pertinence and its sensitivity to the

historicity that is inherent in philosophical discourse.
The volume has three parts that are organized topically rather than by major
figures. The first part (Plato, Aristotle, and Vision) aims to refute the commonly
accepted view that the Greeks endorse the predominance of sight without
qualification. Generalizations of this sort overlook a broad range of evidence
to the contrary, such as the role ascribed to hearing in the context of rhetoric.
At any rate, one should not lose sight of the fact that, already for the Greeks,
the omnipotence of vision is critically impoverished if not abandoned. Even
though the focus here is on ancient Greek philosophy, the reader can hardly
miss the phenomenological background of the interpretations put forward.
Jussi Backman outlines a tentative genealogy of Plato’s metaphysics of sight
by thematizing pre-Platonic thought, particularly Heraclitus and Parmenides.
By “metaphysics of sight” he understands, in the wake of Heidegger, the
“visual” features of the Platonic-Aristotelian metaphysics of constant pres-
ence. Backman argues that we can realize the ambivalence of the role of sight
in Plato once we regard it as the result of a synthesis of the Heraclitean and
Parmenidean approaches. In pre-Platonic thought, the visual paradigm is still
marginal. According to Heraclitus, the basic structure of being is its discur-
sive articulation into conceptual pairs of binary opposites, which at the same
time binds differences together into a tensional unity. The fundamental grasp-
ing of this ultimate unity-in-difference is conceived as a non-sensory “hear-
ing.” According to Parmenides, the ultimate unity of contraries is based on the
capacity of thinking to intend anything as present, while the exclusive rela-
tionship of thinking to intelligible presence is visualized in terms of seeing or
looking. In this sense, the historical “origin” of the metaphysics of sight is in
Parmenides.
The same ambivalence is tangible in Plato’s works themselves. It is true that
in Plato’s dialogues we encounter passages that constitute the most paradig-
matic examples of the power of vision found in ancient texts. Nevertheless,
John Sallis attempts to complicate this first naive impression. To do so, he pro-
poses a meticulous reading of three critical passages from Theaetetus, Phaedo,
and Republic Book 7. He shows how Plato establishes the extreme limitation of
sense perception and, in particular, of sight as regards the possibility of truth.
the optical paradigm. Instead, we mean to offer a critical exposition of the paradigm of sight
that will prove resourceful to any researcher, both inside and outside the phenomenological
tradition. Finally, it takes into consideration the diverse philosophical streams intersecting
with recent phenomenological research.
Introduction 3
This is because beyond perceptible things there is a scale of non-perceptible

forms and mathematical entities and, finally, the absolute origin that enables
all other sorts of visibility. Sallis highlights the significance of the fact that
human vision is always denied access to this origin.
Burt Hopkins visits Plato’s dialogues from a different perspective, since
his starting point is the shortcomings of Husserl’s and Heidegger’s reading of
Greek philosophy. It appears that Husserl cannot come to terms with Plato’s
tenet that it is impossible to directly see the εἴδη. Heidegger, for his part, can
hardly incorporate into his ontology the beyond-being status of the unity of
the multitudes. Hopkins argues that the metaphors of sight in Plato’s dialogues
are misleading, if by sight we understand sense perception. This is because the
source of vision and of its objects is eidetic, that is, it originates in the com-
munity of εἴδη. Hence, the metaphors of images and likeness point to the onto-
logical priority of the original over the image, not to their continuity. Hopkins
develops his argument by clarifying the limits of Socrates’ account of dialectic
in Meno’s myth of recollection and, thereafter, by disentangling Plato’s new
approach of dialectic in his “investigation of the five greatest kinds that are
responsible for the ‘being’ of images and therefore the ‘being’ of ‘non-being’.”
The final paper of this part turns to Aristotle, since the opening lines of
Aristotle’s Metaphysics seem to establish the paradigm of sight in its strongest
moment. Christopher Long, however, shows that, in the De anima, Aristotle
locates touch as the root of all the other senses. A close reading of the De
anima—focusing not only on the particularities of touch as such but also on
the connections between the senses as well as on the metaphors Aristotle uses
to describe sense perception in general—reveals that the analysis of touch
undermines the primacy of sight. Long argues that touch enjoys a privileged
place thanks to its presence throughout nutritive and animal life, its distin-
guished access to contraries discerned by perception, and its being presup-
posed within the function of seeing itself. It proves that the primacy accorded
to touch amounts to ensuring that philosophy does justice to both the continu-
ity between animal life and human life and the congruity between the natural
world and human perceivers.
The second part of the volume (Visual Perception and Beyond) scrutinizes three
ways in which the phenomenological description of vision leads us beyond the
primacy of sight as it is exemplified in the tenet of a sovereign spectator having
direct and unmistakable access to the world and to the self. It is hardly aston-
ishing that such a project starts with a critical reading of Merleau-Ponty, for it
seems that, in contradistinction to the widespread tendency of phenomenolo-
gists to deconstruct and struggle against the privilege of sight, Merleau-Ponty
4 Cimino and Kontos
tends to strengthen it. Needless to say, the same ambiguous role of sight as our
privileged medium to face the world and the self is noticeable in Husserl and
Heidegger alike, all the more once we approach them from the point of view of
contemporary philosophy.
Pavlos Kontos questions the assumptions lurking in the paradigm of sight
by visiting Merleau-Ponty’s analysis of painting in his Eye and Mind. Painting
is relevant here because Merleau-Ponty conceives of phenomenological reduc-
tion in terms of vision and of the painter as a distinguished viewer and thinker.
It is also relevant insofar as Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenology of painting lets
us unveil the limits and the shortcomings of his tenacious defense of visibil-
ity. Kontos argues that to remain faithful to Merleau-Ponty’s programmatic
claim that “reversibility is the ultimate truth,” it is not mandatory to withdraw
the privilege ascribed to sight. One should, however, be on guard against any
notion of vision and reversibility that is inimical to transcendences. To illus-
trate this point, Kontos introduces two guiding examples of such transcen-
dences: Byzantine icons as entailing invisibility beyond the boundaries of our
carnal condition, and theatre as implying reversibility outside the territory of
sight. As a result, he questions the tenability of the view that painting and the
ontology of the visible constitute, by themselves, the most appropriate means
for demystifying the enigma of flesh.
Likewise, Luca Vanzago examines the evolution of Merleau-Ponty’s notion
of vision and suggests that his conception of perception entails, already in his
Phenomenology of Perception, an ontology emancipated from the metaphysi-
cal predominance of sight. Vanzago reads through Merleau-Ponty’s ontology of
nature, as it is developed in the lecture courses held at the Collège de France in
the 1950s, in order to re-evaluate both “his metaphorical and elliptical remarks
concerning vision” and his critical stance against Husserl, Heidegger, and Hegel.
He brings to the fore Merleau-Ponty’s understanding of perception in terms of
expression and praxis—instead of contemplation—in conjunction with the
ontological importance movement is credited with. Vanzago concludes that
the notion of “voyance” represents Merleau-Ponty’s most elaborated pattern
of sight in that it requires “a dynamic and processual concept” of being, that is,
the primacy of processes and transformations.
In his contribution, Claudio Tarditi examines the question of visibility in
Marion’s phenomenology of givenness. In showing that Marion conceives of
givenness as a paradoxical manifestation of visibility, Tarditi argues that this
conception has been deeply influenced by Marion’s reading of the Pauline
Letters. This seminal influence of Saint Paul on Marion cannot be dismissed
as a mere theological or religiously biased account of phenomenological
philosophy. Instead, Saint Paul constitutes a decisive source of inspiration
Introduction 5
for Marion’s attempt to philosophically rethink the question of visibility and

invisibility. Within this context, Tarditi pays special attention to the differ-
ence between icon and idol. In providing a careful analysis of these notions in
Marion’s thought, he comes to the conclusion that the specific phenomenality
of the idol can be traced back to an object experienced by the intentional gaze,
whereas the icon involves an excess or saturation of phenomenality that can-
not be objectified.
The third part (Rival Paradigms) investigates the rivalry between sight and the
other senses and, in particular, those of touch and hearing. It has been already
stressed that, for Aristotle, touch jeopardizes the predominance of vision. The
same holds true in the case of Husserl and becomes particularly tangible in
his analysis of intersubjectivity. The appeal to hearing, on the other hand,
exhorts us to move from ancient Greek thought to Kant and Nietzsche, and to
philosophical discourses indebted to Christianity, in particular those involving
Saint Paul.
Michael Inwood attempts to bring this cluster of ideas into a more manage-
able picture by considering the differences between our sense modalities. In
the wake of Hans Jonas’ well-known study The Nobility of Sight,2 Inwood inves-
tigates the ubiquity of the visible and its connection with change, time, causal-
ity, and freedom by alluding to a number of telling examples and to the various
uses, literal and metaphorical, of our sensory language. He navigates a broad
range of phenomenological approaches to vision: from Husserl and Heidegger
to Sartre and Levinas, and back to Nietzsche. Inwood’s objective is not to opt
for one paradigm over the others, but to clarify whether such a priority, as is
given to vision, has deleterious consequences for philosophy. He concludes by
alleviating our worries. A number of different philosophical methods, which
commit different errors for different reasons, invoke vision as the guiding para-
digm; to lay the blame on vision for these errors would amount to a simple-
minded reductionism.
David Espinet shows to what extent the primacy of sight as a defining fea-
ture of traditional thinking, from Parmenides to Husserl, implicates a sub-
stantial oblivion of listening. Espinet argues that in traditional philosophy
listening and its related conceptual frameworks do not play any decisive role
and remain at a secondary and operational level. This circumstance is remark-
able, especially if one considers that hearing and listening allow for the most
direct experience of language and logos. Espinet develops his analysis in three
2 Hans Jonas, “The Nobility of Sight: A Study in the Phenomenology of the Senses,” Philosophy
and Phenomenological Research 14/4 (1954), 507–519.
6 Cimino and Kontos
steps. First, he provides a short historical overview of the primacy of vision

and the subordinate role of listening. Second, he clarifies the link between
the metaphysics of sight and Aristotelian ontology of substance. Third,
Espinet provides an account of Heidegger’s practical turn in phenomenology
towards a definition of thinking in terms of listening. In doing so, the essay
decodes Heidegger’s hermeneutical phenomenology against the background
of Aristotelian and Kantian ethics and emphasizes the critical importance of
listening for theoretical and practical reason.
In his contribution, Antonio Cimino analyzes how Heidegger, Badiou, and
Agamben criticize the ancient metaphysics of sight by questioning its opti-
cal conceptions of truth. In addressing those three variations of such a cri-
tique, Cimino highlights an interesting circumstance that has gone unnoticed,
namely their common Pauline background. In fact, although Heidegger,
Badiou, and Agamben—in elaborating their respective accounts of truth—
develop different readings of the Pauline Letters, all of them draw their inspi-
ration from Saint Paul and share the conclusion that experiencing truth is not
a transitive sight-based experience, as is the case with the metaphysics of sight,
but an intransitive process. Heidegger defines this process as existential truth,
which is lived in the form of authentic existence and enables one to overcome
presence-oriented comportments such as intuition and observation. Badiou’s
Pauline conception of truth is developed in terms of a truth procedure that
consists in declaring the event and in being faithful to such an evental declara-
tion. As for Agamben, he addresses the question of truth by underscoring the
peculiar performativity underlying Saint Paul’s experience of the word of faith.
James Mensch attempts to demonstrate that Husserl’s considered account
of intersubjective recognition does not suffer from the difficulties one com-
monly points out in his Cartesian Meditations. The reason is that Husserl real-
ized that touch, and not vision, is foundational for both our self-awareness and
our access to the world, and, hence, for our encountering other egos too. The
key point is that by using the pattern of touch we can properly describe a num-
ber of “pairings” between my body in the “here” and the “there,” between the
self that is aware and the self that it is aware of, and, finally, between me and
the other. Furthemore, and even more unexpectedly, being grounded in the
analysis of touch, Husserl’s analysis of intersubjectivity is in a position to repu-
diate the accusation of being formal. To show why it is so, Mensch exploits psy-
chological research that explains how infants become progressively familiar
with the dichotomy between sensing subject and sensed object. For the infant
as the subject of touch experience, as the object of its own touching, and as the
object of its caregiver’s touching constitute three intertwining aspects of one
and the same phenomenon.
Introduction 7
We have drawn attention largely to the thematic umbrellas under which the
essays in this volume cluster. But it would be unjust not to also mention their
diversity of approach, method, and manner, which, in itself, is a mirror image
of the polyphony of phenomenological voices. In any case, it should be clear by
now that the editors of the present volume have no illusion about the possibil-
ity of covering each and every aspect of the broad subject, “Phenomenology
and the Metaphysics of Sight.” One might, for example, object that the vol-
ume should include a study on Levinas instead of being content with having
only a sideways glance on his philosophical project. To rebut objections of this
sort, we can only clarify how the three sections of the volume satisfy its objec-
tives. By addressing the issue of how phenomenology comes to terms with the
paradigm of sight and tries to destabilize its dominance, we have three main
goals: to highlight what is distinctive in the phenomenological readings of the
history of philosophy from the Greeks to Nietzsche, to provide room for an
explanation of the development of phenomenology itself from Husserl up
until today, and, finally, to demonstrate that this paradigm pervades phenome-
nological research. These intertwined perspectives have dictated the selection
of the eleven chapters of the volume. It is our hope that they will bring to light
aspects of phenomenology that one tends to disregard or downplay and will
also trigger further discussion between phenomenology and its contemporary
interlocutors.
Part 1
Plato, Aristotle, and Vision
∵
Chapter 1
Towards a Genealogy of the Metaphysics of Sight:

Seeing, Hearing, and Thinking in Heraclitus
and Parmenides
Jussi Backman
Among modern interpreters, it has become a commonplace to regard the clas-

sical Greeks as a “people of the eye”1 with a general predilection for the visual
sense. One of the most prominent facets of this alleged Greek visuality is the
predominance of optical terms and metaphors in the Greek language and par-
ticularly in its philosophical terminology, extending to its most fundamental
concepts such as ἰδέα ‘aspect,’ ‘look,’ or ‘visible figure,’ οἶδα ‘to know’ (= ‘to have
seen’), and θεωρία ‘contemplation’ (the disinterested look of the spectator).2
Undoubtedly the most influential interpretations of Greek thought as a meta-
physics of vision and visibility, and of the implicit understanding of being
underlying this imagery, are those of Martin Heidegger, who develops his
readings into a critical account of the foundations of the Western metaphysi-
cal tradition as a whole. In his most important texts, Heidegger accordingly
seeks alternative images and terms in order to contribute to a genuinely post-
metaphysical approach to intelligibility and its correlation with the human
being’s capacity to encounter and constitute meaning.3
Heidegger’s narrative of Greek metaphysics is focused on Plato and
Aristotle and retains a sharp distinction between pre-Platonic and post-
Platonic philosophy. While the pre-Platonic thinkers of the “first beginning”
of philosophy—first and foremost, Anaximander of Miletus (flourished
ca. 600 BC), Parmenides of Elea (fl. ca. 500 BC), and Heraclitus of Ephesus
1 A prominent characterization of the ancient Greeks as Augenmenschen, “eye-people,” can

be found in Bruno Snell, Die Ausdrücke für den Begriff des Wissens in der vorplatonischen
Philosophie, (Philologische Untersuchungen) 29 (Berlin, 1924), p. 69.
2 For a comprehensive list of Greek optical terms, see Charles Mugler, Dictionnaire historique
de la terminologie optique des Grecs: douze siècles de dialogues avec la lumière (Paris, 1964).
3 For studies of Heidegger’s reappropriation and critique of Greek optical metaphysics,
see David Michael Levin, The Opening of Vision: Nihilism and the Postmodern Situation
(London, 1988); “Decline and Fall: Ocularcentrism in Heidegger’s Reading of the History of
Metaphysics,” in Modernity and the Hegemony of Vision, ed. David Michael Levin (Berkeley,
CA, 1993), pp. 186–217; William McNeill, The Glance of the Eye: Heidegger, Aristotle, and the
Ends of Theory (Albany, NY, 1999).

12 Backman
(fl. ca. 500 BC)4—were not yet “metaphysical” thinkers in Heidegger’s sense,
they prefigured the Platonic and Aristotelian hierarchical and system-
atic ontologies (described by Heidegger as the “first completion of the first
beginning”)5 in important ways and can therefore be designated as “pre-” or
“protometaphysical.” Nonetheless, some of the key elements that Heidegger
singles out as emblematic of Platonism are largely absent from the pre-
Platonics. Notably, the understanding of the intuitive intellect, νοῦς, as a kind
of immediate nonsensory vision, as well as the associated use of optical and
ocular terminology to characterize thinking and intelligibility, are primarily
Platonic innovations that emerge together with the Platonic Idea as a funda-
mental philosophical concept.
In this essay, we will first take a look at the background and the key theses
of the Heideggerian account of Greek “metaphysics of sight” as it is manifested
in Platonic thought; we will use the Heideggerian readings as a guideline and
source of inspiration without concurring with all of their interpretive theses.6
On this basis, we can proceed to investigate the extent to which this account
applies to the pre-Platonic texts, particularly to the fragments of Heraclitus
and Parmenides. Is there a primacy of vision and the visual, or of any of the
other senses, before Plato? What is the relationship between thinking and the
senses in pre-Platonic philosophy? Considering these questions will enable us
to trace the initial context and function of the visualization of thinking and to
thus draft a provisional genealogy of ocular metaphysics.
4 I make no attempt here to order Heraclitus and Parmenides chronologically; it seems most
probable that they were roughly contemporaries and unaware of each other. Heraclitus is
often regarded as the older of the two, but their standard birth dates are based on Diogenes
Laertius’s biographies, the sources of which Hermann Diels has shown to have been conven-
tional and unreliable, and on the obviously fictitious description of Parmenides in Plato’s
Parmenides. See Plato, Parmenides, in Platonis opera, ed. John Burnet, 2 (Oxford, 1901), 127b1–
c5; Diogenes Laertius, Vitae philosophorum, 2 vols., ed. Herbert S. Long (Oxford, 1964), 9.1.2–3;
Hermann Diels, “Chronologische Untersuchungen über Apollodors Chronika,” Rheinisches
Museum für Philologie 31 (1876), 33–36. See also John Burnet, Early Greek Philosophy, 4th ed.
(London, 1948), pp. 169–170.
5 Martin Heidegger, Besinnung, ed. Friedrich-Wilhelm von Herrmann (Frankfurt am Main,
1997), p. 383; Mindfulness, trans. Parvis Emad and Thomas Kalary (London, 2006), p. 339.
6 One particularly problematic facet of Heidegger’s readings of Heraclitus and Parmenides,
and one that we will not discuss here, is his notion of φύσις, in the sense of “appearing” and
“emerging into presence,” as their basic word, even though the term is very sparsely attested
in either thinker. Martin Heidegger, Metaphysik und Nihilismus, ed. Hans-Joachim Friedrich
(Frankfurt am Main, 1999), p. 89: “[T]he thinking of Heraclitus and Parmenides is a ‘physics’
in the sense of a conceiving of the essence of φύσις as the being of beings.”
Towards a Genealogy of the Metaphysics of Sight 13
1 In an Ideal Light: Heidegger and the Platonic Metaphysics of Sight
One of the first modern thinkers to explicitly regard Greek philosophy as a

“metaphysics of sight”—and to attack it for precisely that reason—was Martin
Luther, whose largely implicit but decisive influence on the young Heidegger
has been studied by John van Buren and other scholars.7 In his quest to release
Christian theology from the yoke of Aristotelian scholasticism, accompanied
by his well-known diatribes against “the blind pagan master” Aristotle,8 Luther
contrasted the metaphysical concentration on immediate “visibility,” in the
sense of intelligible presence to immediate intuitive apprehension, with the
Pauline emphasis that the Christian “goes about by faith [πίστεως], not by sight
[εἴδους].”9 For Luther, “the kingdom of Christ is a hearing kingdom [hoer Reich],
not a seeing kingdom [sehe Reich]. For the eyes do not guide and lead us to
discover Christ and to learn to know him, but this is a task for the ears [. . .].”10
In his 1515–16 lectures on Paul’s epistle to the Romans, Luther notes that while
“philosophers and metaphysicians [. . .] so immerse their eye [oculum] in the
present state of things [praesentiam rerum] that they speculate [speculentur]
only on their quiddities and qualities,” the apostle Paul “turns our eyes away
from beholding [intuitu] things as they are now [. . .] and directs us to regard
them in terms of what they will be.”11 This contrast was relevant for Luther’s dis-
tinction, in his 1518 Heidelberg Disputation, between the intellectual “theology
7 See John van Buren, The Young Heidegger: Rumor of the Hidden King (Bloomington, IN,
1994), pp. 157–202; “Martin Heidegger, Martin Luther,” in Reading Heidegger from the Start:
Essays in His Earliest Thought, eds. Theodore Kisiel and John van Buren (Albany, NY, 1994),
pp. 159–174, 439–442. See also Christian Sommer, Heidegger, Aristote, Luther: les sources
aristotéliciennes et néo-testamentaires d’Être et Temps (Paris, 2005); Benjamin D. Crowe,
Heidegger’s Religious Origins: Destruction and Authenticity (Bloomington, IN, 2006).
8 See Luther’s 1520 open letter “To the Christian Nobility of the German Nation”; Martin
Luther, Werke: Kritische Gesamtausgabe, 6 (Weimar, 1888), p. 457; Three Treatises
(Philadelphia, 1970), pp. 92–93 (trans. Charles M. Jacobs, revised by James Atkinson). See
also van Buren, The Young Heidegger, p. 163; “Martin Heidegger, Martin Luther,” p. 171.
9 2 Cor. 5:7; Novum Testamentum Graece, ed. Eberhard Nestle et al., 27th ed. (Stuttgart, 1993).
10 In a sermon at Merseburg on August 6, 1545; Martin Luther, Werke: Kritische
Gesamtausgabe, 51 (Weimar, 1914), p. 11. See R. Konersmann, C. Wilson, and A. von der
Lühe, “Sehen,” in Historisches Wörterbuch der Philosophie, ed. Joachim Ritter and Karlfried
Gründer, 9 (Darmstadt, 1995), p. 123.
11 Martin Luther, Werke: Kritische Gesamtausgabe, 56: Die Vorlesung über den Römerbrief
(Weimar, 1938), p. 371; Lectures on Romans, trans. Wilhelm Pauck (Louisville, KY, 2006),
p. 235. Translation modified. See van Buren, The Young Heidegger, p. 198; “Martin
Heidegger, Martin Luther,” p. 168; Thomas Sheehan, “Heidegger’s ‘Introduction to the
Phenomenology of Religion,’ 1920–21,” The Personalist 60 (1979), 322.
14 Backman
of glory” that considers the “invisible things” of the revelation to be intelligible

and manifest in the inherent qualities of actual things and works, and the “the-
ology of the cross,” which regards even visible things in terms of faith in “the
cross,” that is, in the transcendent activity of divine grace.12
In the post-Hegelian era, the Lutheran critique of Greek metaphysics was
reappropriated by Count Paul Yorck von Wartenburg, Wilhelm Dilthey’s friend
and collaborator and one of the founding figures of philosophical hermeneu-
tics. In the historical and hermeneutical “psychology of life” outlined in his
Bewusstseinsstellung und Geschichte (State of consciousness and history, 1892–
97), Count Yorck describes “ocularity” as a key feature of Greek philosophy:
Making the totality of givenness [Gesamtgegebenheit] visible and evi-

dent is the manner and motif of the Greek way of thought; its historicity
consists in this adjudication of self-consciousness that liberates ocularity
[Okularität] and grants it independence in order to thus acquire an organ
for mastering givenness.13
Yorck argues that the very foundations of Platonic and Aristotelian thought—
the category of “substance” (οὐσία), the notion of theoretical contemplation
as the supreme aim of human activity, as well as the Platonic Idea as such—
are rooted in a “liberation of ocularity from all other sensuality” and in the
notion of beholding (Schauung) as the fundamental intellectual activity.14 Like
Luther, Yorck sees in the emergence of Christianity a decisive break with the
optical imagery of Greek metaphysics, leading to the breakthrough of a radical
new sense of temporality and historicity.15
Heidegger was familiar with Yorck’s work only through the latter’s cor-
respondence with Dilthey (first published in 1923), but the ideas expressed
there had an immediate impact on Heidegger’s Being and Time,16 which
12 Martin Luther, Werke: Kritische Gesamtausgabe, 1 (Weimar, 1883), pp. 353–365; Martin
Luther’s Basic Theological Writings, ed. Timothy F. Lull and William R. Russell, 3rd ed.
(Minneapolis, MN, 2012), pp. 14–25. See van Buren, The Young Heidegger, pp. 157–168;
“Martin Heidegger, Martin Luther,” pp. 161, 167.
13 Paul Yorck von Wartenburg, Bewusstseinsstellung und Geschichte, ed. Iring Fetscher,
(Philosophische Bibliothek) 442 (Hamburg, 1991), p. 85.
14 Yorck, Bewusstseinsstellung, pp. 61–62, 67. Cf. Ingo Farin, “Count Paul Yorck von
Wartenburg,” in The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Winter 2014 Edition), ed. Edward
N. Zalta <http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/win2014/entries/yorck/>.
15 Yorck, Bewusstseinsstellung, pp. 43–44.
16 See the section dedicated to Count Yorck in Martin Heidegger, Sein und Zeit, 18th ed.
(Tübingen, 2001), pp. 397–404; Being and Time, trans. Joan Stambaugh, revised by Dennis
e mphatically quotes a passage where Yorck notes the provenance of metaphys-

ical words from ocularity and the need to seek alternative expressions.17 On
the basis of his readings of Augustine’s notion of concupiscentia oculorum, “the
desire of the eyes,”18 and Aristotle’s description of the human being’s constitu-
tive urge to know (εἰδέναι, literally, ‘to have seen’), evidenced by the privilege of
the sense of vision,19 Heidegger develops his existential account of “curiosity”
(Neugier) as the desire to see more.20 This analysis involves the historical the-
sis that the Western philosophical tradition has basically understood being in
terms of that which shows itself to immediate intellectual vision or intuition:
Being is what shows itself in pure, intuitive perception [Vernehmen], and

only this seeing [Sehen] discovers being. Primordial and genuine truth
lies in pure intuition [Anschauung]. This thesis henceforth remains the
foundation of Western philosophy.21
This notion is an aspect of Heidegger’s more general claim that the tradition
has understood being in terms of the model of constant presence (bestän-
dige Anwesenheit) which posits as a standard of being that which most
constantly shows itself to pure apprehending or encountering-as-present
Schmidt (Albany, NY, 2010), pp. 377–384. See also Martin Heidegger, Der Begriff der Zeit
(Frankfurt am Main, 2004), pp. 3–15; The Concept of Time: The First Draft of Being and
Time, trans. Ingo Farin (London, 2011), pp. 1–10.
17 Heidegger, Sein und Zeit, pp. 402–403; Being and Time, p. 382. The quotation is from
Briefwechsel zwischen Wilhelm Dilthey und dem Grafen Paul Yorck von Wartenburg
1877–1897, ed. Erich Rothacker, (Philosophie und Geisteswissenschaften) 1 (Halle, 1923),
pp. 70–71.
18 Augustine, Confessions, in Patrologia Latina, ed. Jacques Paul Migne, 32 (Paris, 1845),
10.35.54–57; see Martin Heidegger, Phänomenologie des religiösen Lebens, ed. Matthias
Jung, Thomas Regehly, and Claudius Strube (Frankfurt am Main, 1995), pp. 218–227;
The Phenomenology of Religious Life, trans. Matthias Fritsch and Jennifer Anna Gosetti-
Ferencei (Bloomington, IN, 2004), pp. 162–169.
19 Aristotle, Metaphysics, ed. W. D. Ross (Oxford, 1924), 980a21–27; see Martin Heidegger,
Phänomenologische Interpretationen ausgewählter Abhandlungen des Aristoteles zur
Ontologie und Logik, ed. Günther Neumann (Frankfurt am Main, 2005), pp. 56–113,
387–390.
20 Heidegger, Sein und Zeit, pp. 170–173; Being and Time, pp. 164–167. See Martin Heidegger,
Prolegomena zur Geschichte des Zeitbegriffs, ed. Petra Jaeger, 3rd ed. (Frankfurt am Main,
1994), pp. 378–384; History of the Concept of Time: Prolegomena, trans. Theodore Kisiel
(Bloomington, IN, 1992), pp. 274–277.
21 Heidegger, Sein und Zeit, p. 171; Being and Time, p. 165.
16 Backman
(Gegenwärtigen).22 In this account, the Western metaphysics of sight is rooted

in a metaphysics of presence. As Heidegger explains in his 1940 lecture course
on European Nihilism, the classical Greeks were a “visual” people, a people “of
the eye” (Augenmenschen), not by virtue of some contingent psychological or
cultural peculiarity but because of their fundamental metaphysical outlook for
which the fundamental criterion of “to be” was presence, in the sense of acces-
sibility to immediate apprehending:
Because being [Sein] means presence [Anwesenheit] and constancy

[Beständigkeit], “seeing” is especially apt to serve as an elucidation for the
grasping of what is present and what is permanent. In seeing, we have the
perceived “over against” [gegenüber] us in an emphatic sense, provided
that an interpretation of beings [Seienden] does not already underlie our
seeing. The Greeks did not explain relations with beings through seeing
because they were “visual people” [Augenmenschen]; they were “visual
people,” so to speak, because they experienced the being of beings as
presence and constancy.23
Seeing is the paradigmatic metaphysical sense because it is affords a particular

kind of access to beings as present. What is it that distinguishes visual access
from that provided by the other senses? Vision is not the most immediate
form of sensory access; as Aristotle emphasizes in De anima, vision precisely
requires distance, a transparent medium of visibility between the visual organ
and the visual object.24 Touch is more immediate in the sense that there is no
spatial gap and no clearly defined limit between that which touches and that
which is touched. Somewhat problematically, Aristotle takes the bodily flesh
itself to be the medium of touching, conjecturing that the actual organ of the
tactile sense must be something internal to the body,25 but in Metaphysics 9.10,
describing the simple intuitive apprehending of nondiscursive truths as the
most immediate form of access, he takes recourse precisely to a tactile meta-
phor (θιγεῖν or θιγγάνειν ‘to touch upon’).26 Hearing, on the other hand, is the
proper vehicle of learning and understanding;27 as the linguistic sense, it gives
22 Heidegger, Sein und Zeit, p. 26; Being and Time, pp. 24–25.
23 Martin Heidegger, Nietzsche, 6th ed., 2 (Stuttgart, 1998), p. 199; Nietzsche, trans. Frank A.
Capuzzi, ed. David Farrell Krell, 4 (San Francisco, 1991), p. 167. Tr. mod.
24 Aristotle, De anima, ed. W. D. Ross (Oxford, 1961), 419a12–21.
25 Aristotle, De anima, 422b17–423b26.
26 Aristotle, Metaphysics, 1051b22–25.
27 Aristotle, Metaphysics, 980b21–25.
us access not only to particular sounds but also to universal λόγος in the form
of general discourses, concepts, rules, and narratives. What, for Plato, distin-
guishes vision from the other senses is its “sharpness” (ὀξύτης),28 that is, its
determinacy: vision gives us a privileged kind of access to the limits of things,
their colors, contours, and shapes, and thus discloses them as distinct, definite,
and delimited. As Heidegger puts it:
The ancients considered that things are given most completely in

seeing, namely in their immediate presentness [Gegenwart], indeed in
such a way that the present being has the character which, for the Greeks,
belongs to every being: πέρας, that is, it is limited [begrenzt] by its firmly
circumscribed look [Aussehen], its figure [Gestalt].29
Aristotle accordingly notes that vision is the source of a great number of dis-
tinctions (διαφοραί):30 our visual field is more clearly and intricately differenti-
ated than our auditory or tactile fields. Unlike touching, seeing also makes a
clear distinction between that which senses and that which is sensed. Vision
is the “objectifying” sense par excellence since, as Heidegger puts it, it discloses
what is seen as “over against” or “opposite” (gegenüber) the one who sees—as
something separate, at a distance.
As the path of access to things as distinct, definite, and separate, vision is
the sensory paradigm of the Platonic Idea in the sense of the determinate and
distinct identity, the “what it is,” of each kind of thing, as the figure or form that
sets things of the type P apart from other things as being P and not Q:
The word ἰδέα means that which is seen [das Gesichtete] in the visible
[Sichtbaren], the view [Anblick] that something offers. What is offered is
the respective look [Aussehen] or εἶδος of whatever is encountered. The
look of a thing is that within which, as we say, it presents [präsentiert]
itself to us, re-presents itself [sich vor-stellt] and as such stands before
us. The look is that within which and as which the thing presences [an-
west]—that is, in the Greek sense, is. [. . .] In the look, that which is pres-
ent [Anwesende], that which is [Seiende], stands there in its whatness
[Was] and its howness [Wie]. It is perceived and taken, it is possessed
28 Plato, Phaedrus, in Platonis opera, 2, 250d3–4.

29 Martin Heidegger, Vom Wesen der Wahrheit: Zu Platons Höhlengleichnis und Theätet, ed.
Hermann Mörchen, 2nd ed. (Frankfurt am Main, 1997), p. 102; The Essence of Truth: On
Plato’s Cave Allegory and Theaetetus, trans. Ted Sadler (London, 2004), p. 74. Tr. mod.
30 Aristotle, Metaphysics, 980a26–27.
18 Backman
and had by an accepting [Hinnehmens], it is the disposable presencing

[Anwesende] of what is present: οὐσία.31
As the whatness that makes a being visible as the specific and distinct being
that it is, the ἰδέα provides the delimiting outline of the being, the limit that
identifies this being as what it is and differentiates it from what it is not.
However, in the Platonic approach, this differentiating identity is at the same
time essentially discursive and conceptual. As Socrates puts it in Book 6 of
the Republic, even though beauty is spoken of in the plural in the sense that we
attribute it to many numerically different things, the “what it is” (ὃ ἔστιν) thus
predicated—the beautiful itself—is in each case one and the same. The many
beautiful things can be seen with the eyes (ὁρᾶσθαι); beauty as such can only be
intuitively grasped (νοεῖσθαι).32 The “what it is” is what lets every particular thing
be seen as a distinct and particular kind of thing, but in order to do this, it must
be a specific kind, a generic conceptual identity named by a single predicate.33
In order to become noetic vision, sensory vision must therefore be penetrated
by the generality of conceptual discourse, which properly belongs to the realm
of hearing; by itself, the visual sense is incapable of discovering the conceptual
articulation underlying visual articulation. Socrates tells us in the Phaedo that it
was this very discovery that discouraged him from pursuing the purely empiri-
cal study of nature: for fear that his soul might be “blinded” by the attempt
to grasp things solely through the eyes and the other senses, he decided to
continue his investigation into the truth of beings (τῶν ὄντων τὴν ἀλήθειαν) by
means of conceptual discourse (ἐν λόγοις).34 As Charles Kahn notes, “[t]he fun-
damental conception of the [Platonic] Forms is, from the beginning, linguistic
rather than visual in its orientation [. . .]. [T]his conception is dominated not
by the metaphor of seeing [. . .] but rather by the notion of essential Being as
specified by the what-is-X? question.”35 Nonetheless, it would be hasty to con-
clude from this, with Kahn, that “[i]t is a mistake [. . .] to suppose [. . .] that
the etymological connections of the terms idea and eidos with the verb idein,
31 Martin Heidegger, Einführung in die Metaphysik, 6th ed. (Tübingen, 1998), p. 138;
Introduction to Metaphysics, trans. Gregory Fried and Richard Polt (New Haven, CT, 2000),
pp. 192–193. Tr. mod.
32 Plato, Republic, in Platonis opera, ed. John Burnet, 4 (Oxford, 1902), 507b2–10.
33 Plato, Republic, 596a6–7.
34 Plato, Phaedo, in Platonis opera, ed. John Burnet, 1 (Oxford, 1900), 99e2–100a2.
35 Charles H. Kahn, Plato and the Socratic Dialogue: The Philosophical Use of a Literary Form
(Cambridge, 1996), p. 355.
‘to see,’ are in any way essential or decisive for Plato’s conception of the Forms.”36
Rather, the Platonic approach presupposes that vision, the access to beings as
delimited and articulate, is discursively and conceptually structured. Seeing
takes place through a conceptual framework and is thus permeated by hearing;
vision and λόγος are inextricably intertwined. In Kant’s words, “thoughts with-
out content are empty, intuitions without concepts are blind.”37
A fundamental reason for the generic nature of the Idea can be found in the
way in which Plato often describes conceptual identities as functional identi-
ties, as particular functions or purposes in terms of which beings are ultimately
identified as belonging to a particular kind of beings. These functions can obvi-
ously be fulfilled by several numerically distinct particular things.38 The type
of looking involved in the ἰδέα or εἶδος as a “look” is thereby linked to a very
specific context—that of production, ποίησις. The ἰδέα becomes the norma-
tive model, the paradigmatic example to which the craftsman looks for guid-
ance in the process of implementing a specific kind of utensil in a particular
material, and this looking is, of course, not a sensory one, but rather a “looking
away” (ἀποβλέπειν) from the material at hand towards the ideal and immate-
rial function.39 This view of Platonic metaphysics as a “production ontology” is
brought up by Heidegger in his 1949 Bremen lecture on The Thing:
In the process of production [Herstellens], of course, the jug [Heidegger’s

example in the lecture; J.B.] must first show its look [Aussehen] to the
producer. But what shows itself here, the look (the εἶδος, the ἰδέα), charac-
terizes the jug solely in the respect in which the vessel stands over against
the producer as something to be produced. [. . .] Plato, who conceives
of the presence of what is present in terms of the look, [. . .] experienced
(decisively, indeed, for the sequel) [. . .] everything present as an object
of producing.40
36 Kahn, Plato and the Socratic Dialogue, pp. 354–355.

37 Immanuel Kant, Kritik der reinen Vernunft, ed. Jens Timmermann (Hamburg, 1998), A 51,
B 75; Critique of Pure Reason, trans. Paul Guyer and Allen W. Wood (Cambridge, 1998),
pp. 193–194.
38 See, e.g., Plato, Cratylus, in Platonis opera, 1, 389a5–390d6; Republic, 596a5–602b10.
39 Plato, Cratylus, 390e1–4.
40 Martin Heidegger, Vorträge und Aufsätze, 9th ed. (Stuttgart, 2000), p. 160; Poetry, Language,
Thought, trans. Albert Hofstadter (New York, 2001), p. 166. Tr. mod. See also Bremer und
Freiburger Vorträge, ed. Petra Jaeger (Frankfurt am Main, 1994), p. 7; Bremen and Freiburg
Lectures, trans. Andrew J. Mitchell (Bloomington, IN, 2012), pp. 7–8; Holzwege, ed.
Friedrich-Wilhelm von Herrmann, 8th ed. (Frankfurt am Main, 2003), pp. 13–14; Off the
Beaten Track, trans. Julian Young and Kenneth Haynes (Cambridge, 2002), p. 10.
20 Backman
The attribute constant in Heidegger’s reading of the Greek understanding of

being as constant presence must therefore be emphasized. Constancy requires
a degree of determinacy; sensory visual access to the material world of con-
tinuous change must be complemented by a noetic “looking away” towards
the ideally permanent (functional) identity in terms of which a being can be
identified in its “what it is.” In the Republic, Socrates shows that it is precisely
the specific mediated character of vision that makes it the paradigmatic sense,
structurally analogous to the intuitive intellect.41 In order to function, seeing,
unlike the other senses, requires the presence of a third factor in addition to
the eye and the object of sight: light, which, as Aristotle formulates it, is the
actuality of the transparent medium of visibility as transparent.42 In an analo-
gous manner, noetic insight into the ideal identities of things is possible only
in terms of a third factor: the Idea of the Good (τὸ ἀγαθόν), that is, ideality as
such. Just as the sun is the source of visibility, the Idea of ideality, that is, the
inherent teleological structure through which beings are disclosed in terms of
their p
urpose—of an ontological ideal of goodness in the sense of appropri-
ateness or aptness—is the source of intelligibility that makes individual Ideas,
individual purposes, intelligible. The sun is thus to be regarded as an offspring
(ἔκγονος) and counterpart (ἀνάλογον) of the Good. Just as the Good stands to
the intellect (νοῦς) and its objects (τὰ νοούμενα) in the purely intelligible sphere
of intellectual vision (νοητός), the sun stands to sensory vision (ὄψις) and its
objects (ὁρώμενα) in the sphere of sensuous visibility (ὁρατός):43
In Greek thought τὸ ἀγαθόν means that which is fit for [taugt] something
and enables another to be fit for [tauglich] something. [. . .] [T]he “Ideas”
make something fit to appear in its whatness and thus to be present in
its constancy [in seinem Beständigen]. [. . .] [W]hat makes every Idea
fit to be an Idea—in a Platonic expression, the Idea of all Ideas—con-
sists in making possible the appearing, in all its visibility, of everything
present. [. . .] Therefore the Idea of Ideas is that which makes fit [das
Tauglichmachende] as such, τὸ ἀγαθόν.44
41 Plato, Republic, 507c6–509c2.

42 Aristotle, De anima, 418b4–20.
43 Plato, Republic, 508b12–c2.
44 Martin Heidegger, Wegmarken, ed. Friedrich-Wilhelm von Herrmann, 3rd ed. (Frankfurt
am Main, 1996), pp. 227–228; Pathmarks, ed. William McNeill (Cambridge, 1998), pp. 174–
175 (trans. Thomas Sheehan). Tr. mod.
However, the sensuous and the intelligible are not simply two separate realms;
rather, they are two intertwining components, two possible poles of orienta-
tion, of discursive vision. A central purpose of the Platonic analogy between
the sun and the Idea of the Good is to liken discursive vision primarily ori-
ented to the sensible to seeing in the dark: due to the absence of sufficient
(intelligible or sensible) light, both are deficient modes of vision that fail to
grasp the true determinate identity of what is seen and capture only perspec-
tives or impressions (δόξαι).45 Seeing correctly (ὀρθῶς), that is, directing one’s
vision to that which is more (constant; μᾶλλον ὄν),46 presupposes that that
which sees and that which is seen are connected under the “yoke” (ζυγόν) of
proper illumination.47 The Platonic metaphysics of sight is thus a metaphysics
of light, more precisely, a “solar” metaphysics of the ideal source of light—an
“ontotheological” approach in the Heideggerian sense that all vision, all access
to the presence of beings, is constantly referred back to an supreme and ideal
“source” or “cause”:
This highest and first cause [i.e., the Idea of the Good; J.B.] is named by
Plato and correspondingly by Aristotle τὸ θεῖον, the divine. Ever since
being [Sein] was interpreted as ἰδέα, thinking about the being of beings
[Seienden] has been metaphysical, and metaphysics has been theological.
In this case theology means the interpretation of the “cause” [Ursache] of
beings as God and the transposition of being onto this cause, which con-
tains being in itself and dispenses being from out of itself, because it is
the most beingful [Seiendste] of beings.48
2 Hearkening to the Voiceless Voice: Heraclitus’s Protometaphysics

of Hearing
In the light of Heidegger’s account of the profound complicity between the

Platonic notion of Ideas and the paradigmatic status of vision, it is not surpris-
ing that traces of a metaphysics of sight are hard to find in pre-Platonic philos-
ophy. Andrea Wilson Nightingale has shown that “in the pre-Platonic thinkers,
there is little if any evidence that knowledge takes the form of ‘seeing’ truth. [. . .]
45 Plato, Republic, 508d4–9.

46 Plato, Republic, 515d2–4.
47 Plato, Republic, 507e6–508a2.
48 Heidegger, Wegmarken, pp. 235–236; Pathmarks, pp. 180–181 (trans. Thomas Sheehan). Tr.
mod.
22 Backman
The emphasis is on discourse and hearing rather than spectating or seeing.”49

A “physics” of sight did exist very early on; Empedocles and Democritus were
among the first philosophers to develop optical and physiological accounts
of the phenomenon of vision, described in detail in Theophrastus’s De
sensibus.50 However, the use of optical metaphors in philosophical terminol-
ogy was scarce, and there is no sign of any particular ontological primacy of
seeing as a privileged mode of access to beings.
The Heraclitus fragments tend to treat seeing and hearing as equally
important senses. In his fragment B 55, Heraclitus tells us that he prefers
(προτιμέω) things accessible to sight (ὄψις), hearing (ἀκοή), and learning
(μάθησις)51—presumably to things that are not thus accessible. Fragment B 101a
does suggest a certain primacy of sight: “For the eyes [ὀφθαλμοί] are more pre-
cise [ἀκριβέστεροι] witnesses than ears.”52 The quotation is by the Hellenistic
historian Polybius, who comments: “Among our organs there are by nature two
through which we learn all things and through which we are active in multiple
ways, {hearing and sight}, and according to Heraclitus, sight is by far more
truthful [ἀληθινώτερας].”53 It seems, however, that “truthful” is Polybius’s own
interpretation of the greater precision attributed to sight by Heraclitus. The
parallel status of seeing and hearing, as well as their subordination to λόγος,
conceptual and discursive articulation, is evident from B 107, “The eyes and
ears of those possessing barbaric [βαρβάρους] souls are poor witnesses for
human beings,”54 which Sextus Empiricus interprets convincingly:
In terms of the knowledge [γνῶσιν] of truth, the human being seems to

be arranged into two faculties: sensory perception and discursive articu-
lation [λόγῳ]. Heraclitus considered sensory perception [. . .] to be unre-
liable and posited discursive articulation as a standard [κριτήριον]. But
he rejected sensory perception, saying, as the phrase goes: “The eyes and
49 Andrea Wilson Nightingale, Spectacles of Truth in Classical Greek Philosophy: Theoria in Its
Cultural Context (Cambridge, 2004), pp. 32–33.
50 Theophrastus, De sensibus, in Doxographi Graeci, ed. Hermann Diels (Berlin, 1879),
pp. 500–506, 513–524.
51 Heraclitus, 22 B 55, in Die Fragmente der Vorsokratiker: Griechisch und deutsch, ed.
Hermann Diels and Walther Kranz, 6th ed., 1 (Berlin, 1951) [hereafter cited as DK].
52 Heraclitus, DK 22 B 101a.
53 Polybius, Historiae, ed. Theodor Büttner-Wobst, 3 (Leipzig, 1893), 12.27.1. The words
“hearing and sight” are a clarifying addition to the manuscript text by Alfred Fleckeisen.
54 Heraclitus, DK 22 B 107.
ears . . . [B 107],” which amounts to saying that barbaric souls tend to trust
inarticulate [ἀλόγοις] sensory perceptions.55
As the onomatopoetic term indicates, the foreign speech of “barbarians”

was regarded by the Greeks as inarticulate and garbled, and one can sup-
pose that “barbaric souls” are “irrational” (ἄλογος) precisely in their inability
to grasp the fundamental articulation of things in accordance with λόγος, the
basic discursive structure of intelligibility. This lack of discursive and con-
ceptual articulation—the lack of concordance with the “unapparent frame-
work” (ἁρμονίη ἀφανής)56 that structures the “manifest” framework of sensory
experience—impairs even their seeing and hearing, more precisely, their abil-
ity to make sense of their particular sensations by placing them into a wider
discursive framework.
Λόγος, discursive “reason,” articulates beings into basic pairs of binary con-
ceptual opposites, such as freeman/slave, war/peace, divine/mortal, male/
female, day/night, winter/summer, or living/dead.57 In these binaries, each
term is conceptually dependent on its opposite: being free only makes sense in
contrast to being a slave and vice versa, being male is meaningful only in dis-
tinction to being female, and so on. In this sense, λόγος is also the fundamental
unity of discursive meaning: in their interdependency, all opposed terms inex-
tricably belong together and intertwine with their opposites in a differential
interplay. Λόγος lets all things belong together as differentiated. As the most
perfect framework (καλλίστη ἁρμονία) it is an internally tensional (παλίντροπος)
unity, like that of a bow or a lyre, that is, one emerging from the reciprocal
agreement (ὁμολογεῖν) of differences or oppositions (διαφέροντα).58 As such,
λόγος is universal and common (ξυνός) to all,59 the divine law or norm (νόμος)
governing all things.60 Interestingly, Heraclitus seems to compare λόγος to a
“light” of intelligibility in fragment B 16: “How could one conceal oneself [λάθοι]
from that which at no time sets [τὸ μὴ δῦνόν ποτε]?”61 Clement of Alexandria
interprets this from a Platonic or Neoplatonic perspective: while one can
55 Sextus Empiricus, Adversus mathematicos, in Sexti Empirici opera, ed. Hermann
Mutschmann, 2 (Leipzig, 1914), 7.126–127.
57 Heraclitus, DK 22 B 53, 57, 60, 62, 67, 88, 111.
58 Heraclitus, DK 22 B 8, 51.
24 Backman
possibly remain concealed from sensuous [αἰσθητόν] light, in the case of purely
intelligible, noetic [νοητόν] light, this is impossible.62
However, in their normal and unreflected everyday mode of experiencing,
human beings ignore this universal and law-like character of λόγος and pre-
tend to possess a private and individual discursive capacity of their own.63 Just
as in sleep one leaves the shared world for the private world of one’s dreams,
humans turn their back to the common structure of rational thought even
when awake;64 they are “absent even in their presence.”65 To have a barbaric
soul is to ignore the universality of conceptual discourse, to be deceptively
focused on the contents of one’s private experience without placing them into
a shared framework of rationality. This is what the problematic fragment B 46
seems to suggest: “[Heraclitus] called presumption [οἴησιν] the sacred disease
[ἱερὰν νόσον] and said that vision [or: visible appearance, ὅρασιν] is deceptive.”66
Οἴησις ‘presumption’ has the double sense of ‘conjectural belief’ and ‘inflated
self-confidence’; “the sacred disease” presumably refers here, as in later usage,
to epileptic seizures, characterized by a temporary insensibility to external
sounds or sights and compared by Aristotle to sleep.67 In sticking to one’s pri-
vate experience, one is in a dreamlike state, cut off from the common world of
logical organization and conceptual articulation, and one’s visual impressions
become random, superficial, and deceptive.
It seems that for Heraclitus, the value of visual perception as the most “pre-
cise witness” among human sensory faculties is entirely subordinate to logical
and conceptual structure. “Precision” seems to refer to the superior capacity of
sight to make distinctions and to differentiate its field, emphasized, as we saw,
by Aristotle. However, B 7 appears to point out that this superiority is contin-
gent upon the factual physical structure of the sensuous world: “If all beings
were to turn to smoke, noses would make the distinctions [διαγνοῖεν],”68 that is,
if the material world were different, some other sense, such as smell, could just
as well be the most relevant source of differentiation. Thus, B 98 remarks, in the
darkness of the nether world, the souls of the departed would have to orient
62 Clement of Alexandria, Paedagogus, in Clementis Alexandrini opera, ed. Wilhelm Dindorf,
1 (Oxford, 1869), 2.10.99.
64 Heraclitus, DK 22 B 1, 26, 73, 89.
67 Aristotle, De somno et vigilia, in Parva naturalia, ed. W. D. Ross (Oxford, 1955), 457a7–9. See
also Emmanouil Magiorkinis, Kalliopi Sidiropoulou, and Aristidis Diamantis, “Hallmarks
in the History of Epilepsy: Epilepsy in Antiquity,” Epilepsy & Behaviour 17 (2010), 103–108.
themselves with the help of the sense of smell.69 The image of the world going
up in smoke seems to be connected to Heraclitus’s use of fire as the elemental
image of the fundamental unity and interchangeability of all things in λόγος.
The sensuous world order, the κόσμος, is ultimately an ever-living fire70 in the
sense that just as gold is the universal medium of exchange for goods, fire as
the all-consuming element is a medium of exchange for all things.71 Clement
tells us that as the fundamental element, the Heraclitean fire is organized
by the λόγος that administers (διοικέω) the totality of beings;72 Hippolytus of
Rome explains that everlasting fire is, for Heraclitus, the cause of the internal
administration or “economy” (διοίκησις) of the totality of beings, and is itself
capable of thought (φρόνιμον).73 Just as λόγος unites all things by differentiating
them, fire distinguishes (κρινεῖ) and comprehends (καταλήψεται) all things.74 In
this sense, the ever-living fire that always was, is, and will be, is the “never-setting
light” that illuminates the world order as a structured and measured totality.75
Heraclitean “rationalism” thus leaves the bodily senses in a secondary and
subordinate position. However, it is important to note that since λόγος is a dis-
cursive structure—and thus, in the Greek “phonocentric” perspective, primarily
oral and spoken discourse—, there is a clear metaphorical primacy of hearing.
Aristotle tells us that Heraclitus’s book began with these words: “For human
beings are always unable to gather [ἀξύνετοι] the discursive articulation of
being [τοῦ λόγου τοῦ ὄντος], before hearing [ἀκοῦσαι] it and even after they have
first heard it [. . .].”76 In their normal unreflective ignorance of λόγος, humans

72 Heraclitus, DK 22 B 31; Clement of Alexandria, Stromata, in Clementis Alexandrini opera,
ed. Wilhelm Dindorf, 3 (Oxford, 1869), 5.104.
73 Heraclitus, DK 22 B 64; Hippolytus of Rome, Refutatio omnium haeresium (Philosophumena),
ed. Miroslav Marcovich, (Patristische Texte und Studien) 25 (Berlin, 1986), 9.10.7.
74 Heraclitus, DK 22 B 66. This quotation is from Hippolytus, who seems to read Heraclitus
as a prophet of the final conflagration at the Biblical last judgment and therefore uses the
future tense. However, there is no reason to suspect that these verbs are not identical to,
or equivalent with, the ones actually used by Heraclitus.
75 Heraclitus, DK 22 B 16, 30. Heidegger, in his commentary, suggests reading these frag-
ments together, even though he himself reads the “never-setting light” in the sense of
φύσις as constant “emergence-into-presence”; see Martin Heidegger, Heraklit, ed. Manfred
S. Frings, 3rd ed. (Frankfurt am Main, 1994), p. 90.
76 Heraclitus, DK 22 B 1; first lines quoted and commented in Aristotle, Rhetoric, ed. W. D. Ross
(Oxford, 1959), 1407b14–18. The main manuscripts of Aristotle have τοῦ ὄντος, “(the λόγος)
of being”; a later variant, adopted by Diels and Kranz, is τοῦδ’ ἐόντος, “the present λόγος,”
which would make the passage refer to Heraclitus’s own discourse.
26 Backman
are “inept at hearing [ἀκοῦσαι] as well as saying [εἰπεῖν]”;77 even though they
are constantly faced with λόγος, they are “deaf” (κωφοί) to it.78 And yet λόγος
is not a voice, not the audible voice of a human being such as Heraclitus him-
self, but the voice, the voiceless voice of the discursive structure of being, the
fundamental discursiveness that makes all rational discourse possible. “Having
heard [ἀκούσαντας] not me but discursive articulation itself, it is well-advised
to articulate in agreement [ὁμολογεῖν] with it: All is One [ἓν πάντα εἶναι].”79
We find then, in Heraclitus, not a metaphysics of sight, not a noetic seeing
of supersensible identities with the Platonic “eyes of the soul,”80 but rather a
strangely analogous protometaphysics of hearing, characterized by an empha-
sis on listening to the “unapparent harmony,” the soundless discursive articula-
tion of being that makes all merely human vocalization and speaking possible.
In his Heraclitus lectures, Heidegger describes this hearing as an “authentic
hearing”81 that he calls “hearkening” (Horchen):
As auditory sensing [Empfinden], hearing [Hören] constantly takes place

in terms of a listening [Hören auf] to something in the sense of hearkening
[Horchens]. However, our hearkening is, in each case, already in itself in a
certain way attentive [horchsam] to what is to be heard, prepared for it or
unprepared as well—in some way, an obedience [Gehorsam]. Obedience
is the ear required for proper hearing. The audible [das Hörbare], that
which can be attentively perceived [Vernehmbare], need not be anything
phonetic or noisy. [. . .] From Heraclitus’s saying we gather only that
knowledge [Wissen] arises in attentive listening to the Λόγος, which, in
contrast to the human discourse [Rede] of the thinker, is indeed not a
vocalization [Verlautung] [. . .].82
3 The Vision of Pure Presence: Parmenides’ Insight
For a first indication of a metaphysics of sight, we will have to look at

Parmenides. As Nightingale rightly points out, even the outset of Parmenides’
Poem is dominated by discourse and hearing, and by a general deprecation

80 The expression is used, e.g., in Plato, Republic, 533d2.
81 Heidegger, Heraklit, p. 246.
82 Heidegger, Heraklit, p. 260.
of the senses.83 In the opening of the Poem, which frames it in the imagery of
Homeric and Hesiodic epic poetry, the narrator-thinker is carried in a divine
carriage upon a “daimonic” path, that is, a mediating way between the mor-
tal and the divine realms.84 In Sextus Empiricus’s highly interesting and not
altogether implausible reading of the passage as an allegorical departure
from sensory evidence, the screeching wheels on either side of the carriage
are likened to the ears, while the “maidens of Sun” leading the way represent
the eyes.85 In any case, the daimonic way leads the thinker beyond the “gates
of the paths of Night and Day,” that is, beyond the most basic binary opposi-
tions that constitute the discursively articulated and sensuous world of mortal
experience, into the divine realm of fundamental unity.86 Here, the thinker is
greeted by an anonymous goddess, who is rather unexpectedly not angered by
the thinker’s transgression beyond the mortal realm but welcomes him and
goes on to disclose her teaching, divided into two main parts: one concerning
the fundamental truth, unconcealedness, or evidence (ἀλήθεια)87 regarding
being, the other concerning the views, impressions, or “acceptances” (δόξαι)88
of “mortals,” that is, of humans in their everyday, unreflective attitude, regard-
ing being. Specifically, the purpose of the teaching is to show how the mortal
acceptances inevitably arise and gain their relative justification or acceptabil-
ity in terms of the “divine” level of evidence.89 The learning (πυθέσθαι) required
of the thinker is of an explicitly acoustic nature: it consists in hearing (ἀκούσαι)
83 Nightingale, Spectacles of Truth, p. 33.

84 Parmenides, DK 28 B 1.1–3, reading, with the manuscripts and Diels, δαίμονος ‘of a deity’
rather than δαίμονες ‘deities,’ preferred by Kranz.
85 Sextus Empiricus, Adversus mathematicos, 7.112–113.
86 Parmenides, DK 28 B 1.11–21. I follow here, in outline, the interpretation of Mitchell
Miller, “Parmenides and the Disclosure of Being,” Apeiron 13 (1978), 12–35; “Ambiguity
and Transport: Reflections on the Proem to Parmenides’ Poem,” Oxford Studies in Ancient
Philosophy 30 (2006), 1–47.
87 On ἀλήθεια as “evidence,” see Ernst Heitsch, Parmenides: Die Fragmente: Griechisch und
deutsch, 3rd ed. (Zürich, 1995), pp. 90–98.
88 On the δόξαι as “acceptances,” see Alexander P. D. Mourelatos, The Route of Parmenides: A
Study of Word, Image, and Argument in the Fragments (New Haven, CT, 1970), pp. 194–221.
89 Parmenides, DK 28 B 1.22–32. The relationship between the Δόξαι and Ἀλήθεια has, of
course, always been a highly disputed point. I follow here essentially the reading pro-
posed by Hans Schwabl, “Sein und Doxa bei Parmenides,” Wiener Studien 66 (1953), 50–75,
heavily influenced by Karl Reinhardt, Parmenides und die Geschichte der griechischen
Philosophie (Bonn, 1916), pp. 5–10. Reinhardt, who introduced the “phenomenological”
reading that does not see Parmenides as simply rejecting the δόξαι but as inquiring into
their necessary origin, was praised by Heidegger as the first one to properly grasp the cor-
relation between the two parts of the Poem; see Heidegger, Sein und Zeit, p. 223n1; Being
and Time, p. 214n39.
28 Backman
the tale or narrative (μῦθος) related by the goddess,90 and the part on Truth, the
source of all true conviction and persuasion (πίστις, Πειθώ),91 is also referred to
as a “convincing account” (πιστὸς λόγος).92
Parmenides’ goddess is even more explicit than Heraclitus in her censure of
reliance on the senses in the quest for fundamental evidence. The “mortals,”
that is, human beings in their ordinary dealings with the world, are without
insight in any respect (εἰδότες οὐδέν)93 regarding Ἀλήθεια; they are “deaf [κωφοί]
as well as blind [τυφλοί]”94 precisely in that their scope is restricted to the situ-
ated and relative perspective of the senses in which things are either contin-
gently there or not, are identical with themselves but different from all other
things. They wander about “double-headed” (δίκρανοι)95 in the sense that they
are constantly looking “in two directions,” at being (being-there, being-x) and
at nonbeing (not-being-there, not-being-y). For them, “ ‘to be there’ [πέλειν]
and ‘not to be there’ [οὐκ εἶναι] are established as the same [ταὐτόν], and not
the same.”96 Their thinking or awareness (νόος) of being is “errant” (πλακτός),
directed by the “want of resources” (ἀμηχανίη) characteristic of bare sense
perception. Because of this, they are “undecided” (ἄκριτα), that is, unable to
make the crucial decision (κρίσις) between being and nonbeing.97 This is pre-
cisely what makes the mortal path oppositional and differential, “internally
tensional” (παλίντροπος, which some scholars have read as a direct reference
to Heraclitus’s παλίντροπος ἁρμονίη).98 Therefore, the goddess admonishes the
thinker, it is essential not to let oneself be forced by habit (ἔθος) on the “path of
much experience” (πολύπειρος ὁδός) upon which one “observes the unwatchful
eye [ἄσκοπον ὄμμα] and the roaring hearing [ἠχήεσσαν ἀκουήν], and the tongue
90 Parmenides, DK 28 B 2.1, 8.1.

91 Parmenides, DK 28 B 1.30, 2.4.
92 Parmenides, DK 28 B 8.50.
96 Parmenides, DK 28 B 6.8–9.
97 Parmenides, DK 28 B 6.5–7. On Parmenides’ decision or “crisis,” see Jussi Backman, “Unity
in Crisis: Protometaphysical and Postmetaphysical Decisions,” in Politics of the One:
Concepts of the One and the Many in Contemporary Thought, ed. Artemy Magun (New
York, 2013), pp. 87–112.
98 Parmenides, DK 28 B 6.8–9. On παλίντροπος as a reference to Heraclitus, DK 22 B 51, see
Alois Patin, Parmenides im Kampfe gegen Heraklit, (Jahrbücher für classische Philologie,
Suppl.) 25 (Leipzig, 1899), pp. 524–527.
[γλῶσσαν].” Rather, the fundamental decision is to be made by purely concep-

tual and discursive means (κρῖναι λόγῳ).99
However natural and meaningful the “internally tensional” mortal experi-
ence of “is and is not” may be, the goddess’s central teaching on ἀλήθεια aims
to show that it must be reduced to a fundamental unity of being. This thesis is
essentially based on the “purification” of thinking awareness from its “errant”
mortal character, which entails its release from the “errancy” of the senses.
From the point of view of Parmenides’ epistemology, the enigmatic fragment
B 16 is particularly interesting:
For in whatever way [the human being] is, in each case, disposed as to the
compound of much-erring limbs [μελέων πολυπλάγκτων],
thinking [νόος] becomes available to humans accordingly. For it is the
same [τὸ γὰρ αὐτό],
that which the nature [φύσις] of the limbs precisely minds [φρονέει],
for humans,
for all and each. For a thought [νόημα] is what goes over and above this
[or: what is fulfilled, τὸ πλέον].100
Aristotle quotes this passage to support his claim that Parmenides and many of
the other Presocratics failed to make the Platonic distinction between the sen-
suous and the intelligible, considering all awareness to be sensory in nature.101
The original context of the passage is left obscure. Aristotle’s pupil Theophrastus
quotes the same passage in his treatise on sensation, reading it as a part of
an elaborate physiological theory of sensation he attributes to Parmenides.102
However, he does not really interpret the passage, and its connection to the
theory he describes, allegedly found in the Δόξαι part of the Poem, remains
somewhat obscure.103 While the majority of scholars—Heidegger among

100 Parmenides, DK 28 B 16, interpreting the notoriously ambiguous lines 16.2–3 with Tarán
and Mourelatos; see Leonardo Tarán, Parmenides: A Text with Translation, Commentary,
and Critical Essays (Princeton, NJ, 1965), pp. 253–256; Mourelatos, The Route of Parmenides,
pp. 253–259.
101 Aristotle, Metaphysics, 1009b12–1010a15; see also De anima, 427a17–b6.
102 Theophrastus, De sensibus (Doxographi Graeci, pp. 499–500).
103 On the problems in Theophrastus’s readings of Presocratic philosophy, the question-
ability of his source material and his dependence on Aristotle, see Ian McDiarmid,
“Theophrastus on the Presocratic Causes,” Harvard Studies in Classical Philology 61 (1953),
85–156; Hermann Fränkel, Wege und Formen frühgriechischen Denkens: Literarische
und philosophiegeschichtliche Studien (Munich, 1955), pp. 175–176; Jackson P. Hershbell,
30 Backman
them104—have followed Theophrastus’s interpretation and placed B 16 among

the Δόξαι fragments, it is possible to read it instead as part of the goddess’s main
argument:105 it seems that she is here explaining how mortal awareness can
be “errant,” that is, oriented to the shifting circumstances of particular situa-
tions. For the human being, all awareness is fundamentally embodied and thus
bound to the particular disposition of the body; humans therefore first and
foremost apprehend the situated and contingent objects of the bodily senses.
But regardless of these particular objects of sensation, what is fundamentally
“minded” and grasped in each situation is the one and the same reality (τὸ γὰρ
αὐτό)—that is, the “being there” of the things as such. This basic “thereness”
is the dimension that, in an actual act of awareness (νόημα), goes “over and
above” all situated perceiving (or: “fulfills” all situated apprehending).
Even though thinking awareness, νόος, is not, for Parmenides, a faculty sepa-
rate from the bodily senses but always embodied and situated, it is capable of
looking away from particular things and of becoming aware of the fundamen-
tal identity of all things in their “thereness,” their givenness to awareness as
such—that is, their presence. For thinking in the sense of immediate aware-
ness of things, there is ultimately only presence. This is what fragment B 4
explicitly states:
See [λεῦσσε], all alike, absent things [ἀπεόντα] as firmly present [παρεόντα]
to thinking [νόῳ];
for it [thinking] will not cut off being [τὸ ἐόν] from holding to being,
neither as dispersed in every way and entirely, along a world order
[κόσμον],
nor as assembled.106
“Parmenides’ Way of Truth and B 16,” Apeiron 4 (1970), 3–9; Barbara Cassin and Michel
Narcy, “Parménide sophiste: la citation aristotélicienne du fr. XVI,” in Études sur Parménide,
2: Problèmes d’interprétation, ed. Pierre Aubenque (Paris, 1987), pp. 280–281.
104 Heidegger, Der Anfang der abendländischen Philosophie: Auslegung des Anaximander und
Parmenides, ed. Peter Trawny (Frankfurt am Main, 2012), pp. 192–194.
105 It is noteworthy that unlike the other preserved Δόξαι fragments, B 16 is not focused on any
binary opposition of the natural world. We should also note that Aristotle (Metaphysics,
1009b33–1010a3) explicitly associates the passage with ἀλήθεια; cf. Cassin and Narcy,
“Parménide sophiste,” pp. 277–293. For readings of B 16 in the context of the Ἀλήθεια part,
see, e.g., Hershbell, “Parmenides’ Way of Truth and B 16,” 1–23; David Gallop, Parmenides of
Elea: Fragments: A Text and Translation with an Introduction, (Phoenix Suppl.) 18 (Toronto,
1984), pp. 22, 37, 87.
106 Parmenides, DK 28 B 4.
What is “absent” in the ordinary sense of the spatial or temporal absence of a

particular thing is present insofar as it can be meaningfully thought, that is,
intended in thinking and named in discourse—in other words, insofar as it
is intelligible. As Guido Calogero puts it: “[F]or Parmenides, it is in reality one
single concept: if the possibility of being is for him, unwittingly, its intelligibil-
ity [pensabilità], its intelligibility, in turn, is its expressibility.”107 Unlike Plato,
Parmenides does not separate intelligibility into a realm of its own, apart from
its particular spatiotemporal instances. Rather, he regards all particular intel-
ligible things as modifications of intelligibility as such.
We should pay close attention to the first word of this fragment: λεῦσσε ‘look,’
‘gaze,’ ‘behold.’ This is one of the very rare instances in pre-Platonic texts of an
explicitly visual metaphor for an intellectual act of apprehending; it is there-
fore rather surprising that Heidegger does not pay very much attention to this
passage or to B 4 in general.108 The context is highly significant. The primary
task of the learning thinker is to listen to the goddess’s narrative account about
ἀλήθεια, δόξαι, and their mutual relationship; however, in order to convey her
central argument for the transition from mortal δόξαι to the pure intelligible
evidence of ἀλήθεια, the goddess resorts to the language of vision, exhorting
her hearer to look upon or spectate the pure and absolute presence of all intel-
ligible things to thinking in the sense of meaningful intending, as opposed to
the relative presence and relative absence encountered by the “erring” senses.
Significantly, the verb λεύσσω is defined by R. A. Prier as a “clear” kind of seeing
or beholding that often “describes how a mortal views immortal phenomena”
and implies a special, transformative experience.109
With this visual insight, the internally tensional path of the mortals breaks
apart. Pure thinking awareness will not tolerate the internal tension of “there
is and there is not,” but leaves the thinker only two alternative ways: the way
of the absolute “there is” (absolute presence, absolute intelligibility) or the
107 Guido Calogero, Studi sull’eleatismo (Rome, 1932), p. 18. Barrington Jones notes that for
Parmenides “ ‘things that are’ and ‘objects of thought’ are co-extensive” and argues that the
whole argument of B 4 “applies [. . .] to all those mental phenomena which admit, to one
degree or another, of a characterization in terms of ‘intensional inexistence’ [. . .].” Jones,
“Parmenides’ ‘The Way of Truth’,” Journal of the History of Philosophy 11 (1973), 291, 294.
108 For Heidegger’s references to Parmenides, DK 28 B 4, see Heidegger, Phänomenologische
Interpretationen ausgewählter Abhandlungen des Aristoteles zur Ontologie und Logik, pp.
220–221; Der Anfang der abendländischen Philosophie, pp. 174–180; Die Grundbegriffe der
antiken Philosophie, ed. Franz-Karl Blust (Frankfurt am Main, 1993), pp. 65–66; The Basic
Concepts of Ancient Philosophy, trans. Richard Rojcewicz (Bloomington, IN, 2008), pp. 54–55.
109 Raymond Adolph Prier, Thauma Idesthai: The Phenomenology of Sight and Appearance in
Archaic Greek (Tallahassee, FL, 1989), pp. 68–71.
32 Backman
way of the absolute “there is not” (absolute nonpresence, absolute non-

intelligibility).110 But the choice between these is no true choice. The insight
developed in B 16 and B 4 is that thinking as such is simply reception of intel-
ligible presence and that being-there as such is simply the givenness of intel-
ligible presence to awareness. Thinking and being-there thus coincide. As the
two key aspects of one and the same intelligibility, as receptivity and given-
ness, thinking (νοεῖν) and being (εἶναι) are one and the same (τὸ γὰρ αὐτό).111
Thinking is defined by being exclusively bound to presence and excluded from
non-presence. What can be articulated in discourse (λέγειν) and apprehended
in thinking (νοεῖν) is simply the “thereness” of intelligible presence; what is not
is simply and absolutely nothing, not even one (μηδέν), beyond any kind of
intellectual grasping or verbal expression.112
The “decision” between “there is” and “there is not” has thus always
already been decided (κέκριται): “there is not” is to be left alone as unintel-
ligible (ἀνόητον) and nameless (ἀνώνυμον).113 “Only one account of a way still
remains: how there is [ὡς ἔστιν].”114 This way is then articulated by the goddess
in the long fragment B 8, the heart of the Ἀλήθεια part of the Poem, yielding
the famous “indications” (σήματα) of being as intelligible presence: absolutely
identical with itself, absolutely devoid of any internal or external differentia-
tion or opposition, absolutely simple, self-sufficient, self-contained, homoge-
neous, and unique. In a word, presence as such is one in all the central senses
of the term, and as such, it is pure temporal presence. In the absolute sense,
one can never say “there was” or “there will be”; rather, there simply is now
(νῦν ἔστιν), “all at once [ὁμοῦ πᾶν], unitarily [ἕν], constantly [συνεχές].”115 At
the end of the fragment, the goddess makes the transition from Ἀλήθεια
to the Δόξαι in the form of a brief genealogy of the mortal acceptances. The
acceptances arise together with discourse and conceptuality when mortals
“establish” the binary oppositions, attaching names to notions of which one
can never function without the other, thus differentiating the unity of being
into a basic duality.116 On the basis of the few remaining Δόξαι fragments, it
seems clear that this “cosmological” part of the Poem was concerned purely
with the fundamental binary opposites of sensuous nature: light/night, warm/

111 Parmenides, DK 28 B 3; 8.34–36.
112 Parmenides, DK 28 B 6.1–2; 2.7–8.
cold, right/left, and male/female.117 Like the Heraclitus fragments, the Poem of
Parmenides fundamentally seeks to unfold the ultimate unity of these oppo-
sites; however, this unity is not discovered in the differentiating-unifying struc-
ture of λόγος, of “the voiceless voice” that thinking must hearken to, but in the
prediscursive intendability and intelligibility of things, in the very meaningful
accessibility of being that puts it within the reach of discursive articulation.
This basic level of evidence is best glimpsed, as we have seen, through a vision
of pure presence that is to guide the hearing of the goddess’s oral account.
4 Conclusion
Let us conclude our tentative genealogy. We can see that both Heraclitus and
Parmenides seek a way out of the duality of the discursive binary oppositions
that, according to Aristotle, dominated the early philosophy of nature;118 they
look for an ultimate unity beyond the contrarieties of discursively articulated
being. As Heidegger shows, both are essentially thinkers of ἕν, of the unifying
one.119 However, we have seen that they locate this fundamental unity differ-
ently. Heraclitus discovers it in the differentiating structure of discursive and
conceptual articulation itself—as differentiating, discursiveness also precisely
unifies in making the opposites interdependent moments of the “internally
tensional” framework that is a perfect “harmony” or concord precisely because
of this tension or difference. The insight into this unity-in-difference of intel-
ligibility is thus brought about by hearing, by listening to the articulated unity
of this discursive intelligibility as such. For Parmenides, however, the unity of
intelligibility is one that precedes all differences and oppositions. It is found in
the capacity of thinking to intend all things as equally intelligible, and since
such intending can only encounter pure presence without absence, it is most
fruitfully “visualized” in terms of looking: it is just as impossible to look at
something absent as it is to think the unintelligible.
The Platonic metaphysics of sight thus turns out, in a sense, to be a syn-
thesis of the Heraclitean protometaphysics of hearing and the Parmenidean
protometaphysics of looking. Platonic noetic vision is no longer the look of
Parmenides, which encounters presence prior to its articulation, but rather
a looking permeated by the audible λόγος, one that sees precisely the deter-
minate identities conferred to things by concepts and names, and sees things
117 Parmenides, DK 28 B 9–15, 17–18.

118 Aristotle, Physics, ed. W. D. Ross (Oxford, 1936), 188a19–30.
119 Heidegger, Einführung in die Metaphysik, p. 104; Introduction to Metaphysics, p. 145.
34 Backman
in the light of these identities. The “names” which, as the apparent conclu-
sion of the Δόξαι part of Parmenides’ Poem puts it, were conferred by human
beings upon being in order to distinguish one being from another and which
thus produce the ordered world of discursive “acceptances,”120 become the
Heraclitean “divine law” of λόγος—the mediating “audible” structure through
which “visible” presence can gain determinacy and constancy.121
120 Parmenides, DK 28 B 19.

121 This is well formulated by Uvo Hölscher, Parmenides: Vom Wesen des Seienden:
Die Fragmente: Griechisch und deutsch, ed. Uvo Hölscher and Alfons Reckermann,
(Philosophische Bibliothek) 645 (Hamburg, 2014), pp. 119–120: “Plato’s progress beyond
Parmenides [. . .] consists [. . .] in the retrieval of the linguistic character of things and in
their ontological hypostatization. All of the essential features of Plato’s metaphysics of
Ideas are based on the Parmenidean doxa: the plurality of ‘forms,’ their self-identity and
difference [. . .].”
Chapter 2
The Extent of Visibility

John Sallis
Although there are many ways in which the visibility of things is limited, there
are also multiple paths along which vision can exceed these limits. The vision-
ary course on which humans find their way is compounded from these limits
and the lines—or circles or spirals—along which the limits are exceeded and
visibility extended.
Every particular field of vision is bounded by a horizon of things that,
though unseen, are implicated by what is directly displayed to vision. Vision
has only to follow the lead of these implications in order to shift the horizon
and render visible the things previously unseen. Visibility is thus extended to
these things through an exchange in which, simultaneously, it is withdrawn
from other things.
Even the visibility of things actually seen has its limits, for at any moment
these things reveal themselves only as they appear to a particular perspec-
tive: the sides that are turned away remain hidden, and those that are turned
obliquely show themselves in distorted shapes that are not true to the
things themselves. Yet, just as the field of vision can be extended or changed
entirely, any particular perspective can be exchanged for another. Sides pre-
viously unseen or seen only distortedly can thus be brought to appear as they
truly are, but only through an exchange in which the previously frontal sides
are displaced and the limit is reconfigured.
Things display other aspects that lie beyond the limit of visibility in ways
that do not allow such direct exchanges to take place. For instance, in order
to render visible the interior of a densely solid object, it may be necessary to
shatter the object and thus to destroy it as such. Among those aspects that
lie beyond the limit of visibility in such a way as to preclude exchange, most
prominent are those that are directly displayed only to senses other than
vision. The warmth of a sunbaked boulder, will never be seen, even though
the sight of the intense illumination on its surface will come, by way of synes-
thetic implication, to supplement the touch to which alone the stone’s warmth
is directly revealed. The fruitiness of a fine Riesling is not to be apprehended
visually, even though the wine’s appearance in the glass (its color, its viscosity,
etc.) communicates across the senses with its taste. The aroma of freshly baked
bread may arouse one’s appetite and prompt a search for its source, but the sight

36 Sallis
of even the most perfectly formed loaf will never reveal the aroma. Listening
to the second movement of Beethoven’s Sixth Symphony may well evoke an
imaginative vision of a pastoral scene, and this vision may indeed supplement
the music and lend a certain fulfillment to the experience. Reading the printed
score of the symphony may also, for the musically trained eye, promote a more
astute listening. But listening is imperative if the sublime tones that constitute
the music itself are to be revealed.
All such aspects, reserved for senses other than vision, lie beyond the limit
of vision; there is no means by which they can be brought within its scope
and rendered visible as such. Any yet, vision extends toward them by bring-
ing a certain visible aspect to bear on them. Through its synesthetic blendings
vision supplements the disclosures afforded by the other senses; on what they
directly disclose, it bestows a certain disjunctive visibility. Its bearing may be
compounded insofar as the rich metaphorics of vision comes into play to com-
pensate for the paucity of descriptive language geared to the other senses. In
these connections vision both endures its limits and yet also exceeds them,
extending the scope of visibility.
Thus, within visual comportment as such there are operative movements
by which variously posed limits are exceeded while also in a certain respect
remaining intact and providing the measure of this very excess. Through such
movement the visibility of things is, in various dimensions, extended beyond
what is simply and actually displaced before vision.
A new stage in this extension of visibility is inaugurated in the birth of mod-
ern science. When Galileo turned the newly invented telescope to the heaven,
the sight he beheld revealed that the limit of visibility to natural vision was
much narrower than had hitherto been supposed; the narrowness of the limit
was revealed precisely through the exceeding of this limit that became possible
by means of the telescope. Through his discovery that the number of stars is
more than ten times greater than could be seen by unaided vision, Galileo both
marked the limit of visibility to such vision—marked it precisely as a limit—
and extended the visibility of the heaven on beyond the limit. The sphere of the
so-called fixed stars, previously taken as the outer boundary of all that is, thus
came to be dismantled; the indefinite space that proved to extend on beyond
opened the possibility of hitherto inconceivable extensions of vision to astral
phenomena that lay ever farther beyond the limit of what is visible to natural
vision. The progressive enhancement of instrumentation, leading eventually
to such things as fields of radio telescopes and telescopes that, like the Hubble,
are no longer earthbound, has made it possible to carry out such extensions of
vision, such expansions of visibility, to an extent so enormous that it becomes
ever more difficult to envisage what is revealed.
The Extent Of Visibility 37
For Galileo, as for the ancients, it was self-evident that the cosmos beyond is
revealed to vision and to vision alone. Though fancies were indeed entertained
about a music of the heavenly spheres, the hearing of such music could never
quite be detached from the visual observation of the orderly movement of the
stars; neither could it quite be identified with the audition of actual sounds.
With the Galilean dismantling of the Ptolemaic spheres, these fancies were
put to rest once and for all. Even today it remains self-evident that, in prin-
ciple, the cosmos is revealed only to vision, since the modern enhancements
of astronomical instrumentation serve either to provide more distinct visual
images of distant phenomena or to extend reception to a range of the electro-
magnetic spectrum much broader than that of light. Vision of the heaven has
never ceased to be celebrated for its power to open the human spirit beyond
itself and beyond the confines of the earthly environment to which, until very
recently, humans have been bound. One can hardly imagine what the result
would have been, had humans been denied vision of the stars; they would
most certainly have found their way in the world quite differently and would
have been bound to orientations quite other than those that actually came to
govern human comportment.
Among the ancient celebrations of the power of vision, there is one that has
remained both paradigmatic and a continual source of wonder. It is found in
Plato’s Timaeus, at a crucial juncture in the dialogue where the discourse on the
formation of the cosmos is about to be interrupted for the sake of an entirely
new beginning. The passage is one in which the discourse turns upon itself so
as to account for the possibility of the very account of the cosmos that has just
been given by Timaeus. Having spoken of the power of the eyes, Timaeus con-
tinues: “Now according to my account, vision [the power of sight—ὄψις] has
come to be the cause of the greatest benefit for us, since none of the accounts
we are now giving about the all [περὶ τοῦ παντός] would ever have been pro-
claimed if we had seen neither the stars nor the sun nor the heaven [οὐρανός].”
He goes on to explain that the vision of the heaven and of the alternations and
circulations that it brings has taught us about number and about time and
has made possible our inquiry into the nature of the all. Thus it has given us
philosophy, than which there is no greater, god-given gift. He concludes: “Now
this, I say, is the greatest good of eyes.”1
Yet now there is still more cause to celebrate, now that vision can be
extended to what seem the farthest reaches of the cosmos. Through what they
have revealed, these extensions of visibility have aided in the formation of
more comprehensive concepts of space and time and of the basic formations
1 Plato, Timaeus, 47a–b. Translations are by the author.

38 Sallis
and processes operative in the cosmos. They have both prompted and made
it possible to confirm theoretical formulations that would otherwise not have
been ventured or that, at best, would have remained thoroughly problematic.
Hence, the modern extension of visibility has served to enhance the gifts of
vision to an extent hitherto hardly conceivable. Yet it bears also on what the
Platonic text designates as the greatest of these gifts, not, however, by supply-
ing results that would constitute philosophy anew but, rather, by offering prov-
ocations that require of philosophy that it return to its own beginning.
In its beginning philosophy measures and extends the range of visibility. At

least in the beginning inscribed in the Platonic dialogues—which is already
another beginning, a new beginning, a second sailing—the visibility of natural
things is marked by way of differentiation from other visibilities. The extension
thus traced beyond the visibility that natural things display to unaided vision
reaches, however, into an entirely different order. The visibility that this exten-
sion opens upon is fundamentally other than both those operative in natu-
ral vision and those effected by instrumentation—indeed so fundamentally
other that it comes to define the very sense of fundament. It is a visibility in
the emergence of which the natural visibility of things tends in a sense to be
effaced. In this respect it is not unlike the visibility of a phantasy image that one
brings before one’s inner, imaginative vision and with which one can become
so enthralled as to become oblivious to the surrounding natural appearances.
That the fundament or origin or cause of things—of their being as they
are—has the character of an emergent visibility is marked by the designa-
tions εἶδος and ἰδέα. Both words are derived from εἴδω (obsolete in the present
active, replaced by ὁράω), which means to see, to behold, to look: an εἶδος or
ἰδέα is simply the look that something presents when one looks at it. It is that
which, under certain conditions, for a certain kind of looking, comes to appear
to vision, gains a certain visibility.
In the philosophical extension of visibility, three stages can be identified
and outlined by reference to particular passages in three Platonic dialogues. In
extracting these passages from their dialogical context, the utmost precaution
is required; for each dialogue is a unique blend of discursive, mythical, and dra-
matic elements that inform every segment of the dialogue. Thus, it is only with
extreme reservations that one can justify separating particular passages from
the context woven by these elements. In orienting consideration of a particu-
lar passage to a specific theme such as visibility, one cannot but interrupt the
bearing that by virtue of its context the passage has on a host of other thematic
and dramatic concerns.
The first of the three passages occurs near the center of Book 7 of the
Republic. This Book begins with the story of the cave, of the prisoner’s escape
from its obscurity and of his ascent into the light above. In a sense the story
of the cave not only opens Book 7 but also constitutes it as a whole. For what
follows the opening narration of the story and runs on to the end of the Book
is a series of seven repetitions of the story in various guises.2 The passage to be
considered occurs in the fourth repetition and hence, structurally, at the cen-
ter. Preceded by a segment in which Socrates and Glaucon discuss the neces-
sity of κατάβασις—that the philosopher must go back down into the cave—the
central repetition of the story tell of the ἀνάβασις, of the means, the disciplines,
by which the philosopher-to-be would be led upward from attachment to vis-
ible things toward the vision of what truly is.
The first such discipline is described initially as “learning about the one
[περὶ τὸ ἓν μάθησις]”; such learning is then identified as calculation (λογιστική)
and arithmetic (ἀριθμητική). It is significant that from the outset this learning
is linked to vision: Socrates declares that this discipline is among those most
apt to lead “toward a looking at that which is [or: toward the vision of being—
ἐπὶ τὴν τοῦ ὄντος θέαν].”3
The passage proper extends this discussion. Socrates says that such learning
“leads the soul powerfully upward and compels it to discuss numbers them-
selves.” He continues: “It will not at all permit anyone to put forth in discussion
numbers that are attached to visible or tangible bodies.”4 Socrates explains
the necessity of such detachment by referring to the requirement rigorously
adhered to in Greek mathematics: that the one be regarded strictly as one.
More specifically, since all numbers are composed of ones, each number being
precisely a number of ones, no one can be considered different from any other
one; and being strictly one, it cannot be cut so as to become two or broken up
so as to become many. Thus, Socrates states the axiom of those who know of
such things: “each one equal to every other one, without the slightest differ-
ence between them, and containing no parts within itself.”5 This requirement
is what guarantees the distinctive determinacy of numbers and of counting.
It is because of this requirement that the arithmetician will not admit num-
bers that are attached to visible or tangible bodies; no such body is capable
of being a one in the sense that arithmetic requires, but rather in every case
2 See my discussion in John Sallis, The Verge of Philosophy (Chicago, 2008), pp. 38–40.
3 Plato, Republic, 525a.
4 Plato, Republic, 525d.
40 Sallis
such bodies are different from one another and are subject to being cut in two
or broken into a multitude of parts. Yet, if numbers are not attached to vis-
ible things, then they are not to be apprehended in the same manner as such
things; they will have no share in the visibility of such things and will not be
grasped by means of sense (αἴσθησις). Indeed this is the conclusion Socrates
draws: these numbers (the ones recognized by those who know of such mat-
ters) “admit only of being thought [διανοηθῆναι] and can be grasped in no other
way.”6 And yet, what is decisive is that in escaping sense in the direction of
thought, numbers are not entirely deprived of visibility. Socrates puts forth
an imperative for those who are genuinely to learn about numbers: they are
“to engage in” this learning “until they come to a vision of the nature of num-
bers [ἐπὶ θέαν τῆς τῶν ἀριθμῶν ϕύσεως] with thought itself [τῇ νοήσει αὐτῇ].”7
To grasp numbers by way of thought is to come to have a vision of them; it is to
apprehend them in their distinctive visibility, in the visibility that is extended
to them precisely as they are detached from things visible simply through
sense. Their visibility is a dianoetic visibility compounded with invisibility to
sense, their apprehension a seeing compounded with not seeing.
Much the same can be said of the subsequent discipline that Socrates intro-
duces, geometry, and indeed, in varying connections, of all such disciplines.
Geometry does not have to do with what “comes to be and passes away,”8 nor
with deeds (such as squaring and adding) applied to such things. Rather, in
Socrates’ words, geometry “compels one to look [θεάσασθαι] at being.”9 The tri-
angle that is the subject of geometry is not the figure drawn in the sand but,
rather, a figure detached from sense, one that, invisible to sense, is to be appre-
hended only through dianoetic vision. Such visibility is of another order than
that of sense; it is a visibility extended beyond sense and compounded with
invisibility to sense.
The second of the three passages also addresses such an extension beyond
the visibility of sense, yet it does so in a way that moves beyond mathematics
toward the more strictly philosophical. It is found in the Theaetetus, at the
very end of the long first part of the dialogue devoted to Theaetetus’ thesis
that knowledge (ἐπιστήμη) is perception (αἴσθησις). Just prior to the passage
Socrates has stressed the ascensional orientation of the philosopher, illustrat-
ing it by way of the story of Thales, the oft-cited story of how he was so pre
occupied with studying the heaven above that he fell into a well and became
6 Plato, Republic, 526a

7 Plato, Republic, 525c.
8 Plato, Republic, 527b.
9 Plato, Republic, 526e.
an object of jest for a servant girl. Socrates then consolidates the protracted cri-
tique that has preceded by now focusing on the alleged view of the Heracliteans
that all is motion, that there is only the flow of what passes before sense. The
import of what he says is that to speak is to determine something as some-
thing, to fix it, hence to halt the flow; thus the thesis that all is motion has the
effect of rendering λόγος impossible. As Socrates puts it ironically: “But those
who speak this speech must set down another voice, since now at least they
do not have the words for their own hypothesis.”10 Their view, dissolving all
determinacy into the flow, reduces them to silence.
As the passage proper opens, Socrates has just compared their situation to
that of people who, in a gymnasium, play at a tug-of-war in which they stand
in the middle between two opposing teams, represented by the Heracliteans
and the Eleatics. They are pulled, in turn, in both directions, now toward
those who set everything flowing, now toward those who arrest all things. It is
between these, between limitless flow and static determinacy, that the conver-
sation in the passage is stretched.
In the passage Socrates examines the comportment by means of which we
come to apprehend things. His intent is to distinguish a moment that while
exceeding mere perception, is essential to the apprehension—indeed to the
knowledge—of things. The result is, on the one hand, that Theaetetus’ thesis
identifying knowledge and perception is definitively refuted; but, on the other
hand, it is shown precisely what must be brought to supplement perception so
as to yield knowledge.
In a sense the result is already implied by the very first step. Setting aside
Theaetetus’ initial supposition that it is by our eyes that we see white and black
things (and correspondingly for hearing), Socrates’ induces his interlocutor to
acknowledge the basic distinction that the entire remainder of the passage
will only elaborate: the eyes are that through which we see (δι᾽ οὗ ὁρῶμεν), not
that by which we see (ᾧ ὁρῶμεν). In other words, the eyes and the other senses
are merely instruments (ὄργανα) by which various perceptions come to us. But
the mere presence of manifold perceptions gained through the senses does
not suffice for us to see or hear something. Socrates explains: “For it’s surely
strange [or: dreadful, marvelous—δεινόν], my boy, if many perceptions sit in
us as if in wooden horses, but all these do not stretch together [συντείνει] into
some one look [ἰδέα], whether soul or whatever it must be called, by which we
perceive through these, as if with instruments, all perceptible things.”11 The ini-
tial distinction between that through which and that by which we see is thus
10 Plato, Theaetetus, 183b.

11 Plato, Theaetetus, 184d.
42 Sallis
elaborated on the side of that which is yielded by each. Through the senses
various perceptions (αἰσθήσεις) come to be present in us, like Achaian soldiers
in a wooden horse waiting to be drawn through the gate of Troy. Yet these per-
ceptions alone do not suffice for the perception of perceptible things; rather,
they must stretch together toward and into a look that is otherwise apart
from them. It is only by way of this look toward which the perceptions stretch
together that we—that is, the soul or whatever it must be called—come to
perceive perceptible things. Thus—almost paradoxically—perceptions alone
do not yield perception; rather, perception occurs only in and as the stretching
together of perceptions into one look. Perception of things occurs only in the
advance from what is seen through the eyes to a look that belongs to another
order of visibility. Perception of visible things requires that there be operative
an extension of visibility beyond that of perceptions.
Socrates proceeds to determine the character of the look, contrasting it
with the perceptions that stretch toward it. Ascertaining that what is per-
ceived through one sense-instrument (through one power [δύναμις], as he now
terms it) cannot be perceived through a different power, he turns first of all to
a question concerning numbers, to a question of ones and of two. Referring
to sound and color, he declares that both are two and that each of the two is
one. His question to Theaetetus concerns the numbers that different percep-
tions (through different powers) can have in common, as well as other deter-
minations such as the same and the other, being and not-being, any of which
can be had in common by different perceptions. Specifically, the question
concerns that through which such commons are apprehended, granted that
they cannot be apprehended through any power of sense. He asks: “So through
what do you think [διανοεῖ] all this about them? For it is possible neither
through hearing nor through sight to grasp what is common to them [τὸ κοινὸν
λαμβάνειν περὶ αὐτῶν].”12 Theaetetus answers that there is no instrument of the
sort they have discussed that would be capable of grasping the commons—
“but,” he concludes, “the soul itself through itself, it appears to me, looks upon
[ἐπισκοπεῖν] what is common to them all.”13
The look toward and into which the manifold perceptions stretch together
thus has the character of the common (τὸ κοινόν); and, to take—as Socrates
does—the cases most remote from the perceptions, it may assume the form of
number, of same and other, of being and not-being. Asked specifically about
being, Theaetetus places it among those kinds “which the soul by itself stretches
12 Plato, Theaetetus, 185b.

13 Plato, Theaetetus, 185d–e.
itself toward.”14 His answer serves to establish a primary connection: the mani-
fold perceptions stretch together toward the common look because the soul
by itself stretches itself toward the look, drawing the perceptions along—as if
they were Achaian soldiers in a wooden horse being drawn through the gate
of Troy. In stretching itself toward the look and drawing the perceptions into
it, the soul comes to look upon the common look, and it is through all that
belongs with this dianoetic vision that perception of visible things is achieved.
It is through a visibility extended beyond what is visible to the eyes that appre-
hension of visible things in their visibility is made possible.
The third of the passages also addresses such extended visibility, yet it does
so in such a way that, rather than turning back to visible things so as to dem-
onstrate how such visibility bears on their perception, it turns toward their
origin and the distinctive, indeed blinding, visibility of the origin.
The passage is found in what forms the thematic and dramatic center
of the Phaedo. This center is framed—and thus marked as such—by two brief
reversions to the conversation between Phaedo and Echecrates, the conversa-
tion that frames the entire account that Phaedo gives of the words and deeds
of Socrates’ last day. Since the conversation and the account within it occur
in the remote city of Phlius some time after Socrates’ death, the reversions
serve as a reminder of the distance of Phaedo’s account from the event itself.
The form thus mirrors the content of the central discourse, which concerns
precisely the taking of distance that is effected by having recourse to λόγος.
The central discourse, set off by the framing reversions, culminates in an
account to which Socrates gives the form of autobiography. Referring to the sit-
uation in which, plagued by doubts and objections regarding the deathlessness
of the soul, Socrates finds himself in the most dire straits. Phaedo reports that
he “paused for a long time and looked to himself.”15 Looking back into his past,
into his own philosophical genesis, Socrates proceeds to tell how he became
who he is. He tells of the inquiry into nature (περὶ ϕύσεως ἱστορία) that he ven-
tured by seeking to explain certain natural things by identifying other natural
things as their cause (αἴτιον). He tells of how these inquiries were plagued by
aporias, especially by those having to do with ones, with their resistance to all
explanations geared to natural—that is, visible—things. He tells also of the
disappointment he suffered in engaging Anaxagoras’ thesis regarding νοῦς.
The passage proper is set against this background. It begins with Socrates
asking Cebes: “Do you want me to make a display [ἐπίδειξις], Cebes, of the
way by which I have busied myself with a second sailing [δεύτερος πλοῦς] in
14 Plato, Theaetetus, 186a.

15 Plato, Phaedo, 95e.
44 Sallis
search of the cause.”16 Like sailors who, in the absence of wind, take to the
oars, Socrates abandoned the sort of inquiries he had pursued and ventured a
second sailing.
The passage as a whole is devoted to describing how Socrates came to ven-
ture the second sailing and to identifying the distinctive turn by which it is
launched:
Well then after these, since I had renounced this looking into beings, it
seemed to me I had to be on my guard so as not to suffer the very thing
those people do who behold and look at the sun during an eclipse. For
surely some of them have their eyes destroyed unless they look at the
sun’s image [εἰκών] in water or in some other such thing. I thought this
sort of thing over and feared my soul would be blinded if I looked at
things [τὰ πράγματα] with my eyes and attempted to grasp them by each
of the senses [αἴσθησις]. So it seemed to me that I should have recourse
to λόγοι and look in them for the truth of beings [σκοπεῖν τῶν ὄντων τὴν
ἀλήθειαν].17
The passage begins elliptically. Yet the first words “After these [μετὰ ταῦτα],”
clearly refer to Socrates’ previous inquiries, especially to those that attempted
to account for natural things by finding their cause in other such things,
accounting—to cite Socrates’ example—for the stability of the earth by sup-
posing it to be propped up on a pedestal of air. Such inquiries had led Socrates
into aporias that made him doubt even what he previously thought he knew.
Thus he gave up on these failed inquiries, as he goes on to say: “since I had
renounced this looking into beings, I had”—then, subsequently—“to be on
my guard” against a certain danger. The danger was, then, one that became
threatening only after Socrates had given up looking into beings in the manner
of inquiry into nature. It was not a danger incurred by looking into things in
this manner but a danger that threatened only after he had renounced such
inquiry and moved on toward something else. But toward what did he move
on? Instead of looking for the cause among things, he would have sought it
beyond things; his search would have been directed toward a cause that would
also be an origin (ἀρχή) and that, from beyond things, would let things come
forth in the double sense of being illuminated and being generated. Yet that
which, from beyond all things, is primarily responsible for their emergence
both into the light and as such is the sun. Thus it is that the passage begins by
16 Plato, Phaedo, 99d.

17 Plato, Phaedo, 99d–e.
referring to those who look at the sun and to the need to be on guard against
the danger of blindness that accompanies such looking.
And yet, strictly speaking, one cannot really look at the sun—not, that is, if
looking requires more than a momentary glance. To be sure, one can see things
in the sunlight, and in a certain way one can even see the light itself as it comes
to illuminate things. But one cannot, for more than a moment, look directly
at the sun. One cannot look into the very origin of light—except during an
eclipse. Only then can one gaze directly at it—but then only by incurring the
danger of blinding oneself, of having one’s eyes destroyed. Yet even then, since
in an eclipse the sun is covered over, one would not really have beheld it; or, at
most, one would have beheld it only as it was withdrawn from vision. Hence,
the blindness that would result could not even claim the compensation of a
preceding vision of the origin of all visibility.
In the figure of looking at the sun, an ἀναλογία is implicitly operative (as at
numerous other junctures in the Phaedo). For it is a matter not only of things
being illuminated but also of their being visible as what they are, that is, of
their showing themselves in and through their proper look. Beyond the com-
mon looks would lie the self-concealing origin of the determinate visibility of
all things.
The visibility of the origin thus belongs to still another order than that either
of visible things or of the common looks that, distinct from sense, render the
vision of visible things possible. The origin would enable all other visibilities,
and yet its visibility would be precisely such as to be always withdrawn, would
be of such intensity that it would always be eclipsed for human vision.
Having marked the danger of blindness that threatens any attempt to
look directly into the origin, Socrates turns again to the danger incurred by
the attempt to grasp things by sense alone: “I thought this sort of thing over
and feared my soul would be blinded if I looked at things with my eyes and
attempted to grasp them by each of the senses.” The blindness now referred
to is that of which he spoke earlier: it is represented by the aporias that inter-
rupted his inquiry into nature and blinded him to what previously he thought
he knew. Thus, there is a double threat of blindness. The danger lurks on both
sides: both in looking to things and in looking away from things to their origin.
Consequently, the turn, the reorientation, that constitutes the second sail-
ing is more complex than it might have seemed at first glance. It is a turn away
from things, a renunciation of inquiry into nature; and it is a turn that, at the
same time, holds back from venturing a direct look into the origin of things.
Rather than turning from sensible things to their origin (thus dying away
from the sensible in the sense repeatedly submitted to comedic treatment
in the Phaedo), the second sailing turns from things to λόγοι. Its course—or
46 Sallis
recourse—is like that of those who protect their eyes by looking “at the sun’s
image in water or in some other such thing.” In Socrates’ words: “So it seemed to
me that I should have recourse to λόγοι and look in them for the truth of beings.”
The second sailing is constituted by having recourse to λόγοι. The word
καταϕεύγω also means to flee for refuge, in this case refuge from the double
threat of blindness. Yet, by taking refuge in λόγοι, one also has recourse to
these λόγοι as a means of looking for the truth of beings, as a means that is
not exposed to the threat. The search for the truth of beings aims at disclos-
ing things as what they truly are, and this means to reveal the common look
proper to such beings. Yet the look is nothing other than what the Phaedo has
repeatedly designated as being (τὸ ὄν) in the most proper sense, that is, as the
selfsame being that in each case determines things so that they are called by
the same name as the determining one.
On the basis of Socrates’ statement, it might be supposed that the λόγοι to
which recourse is to be had are images of the beings themselves like the images
of the sun that can be seen in water. However, Socrates immediately excludes
such a supposition: “Now perhaps in a certain way it is not quite like what I
am likening it to. For I do not at all concede that someone who looks at beings
in λόγοι looks at them in images any more than someone who looks at them
in deeds.”18 Thus, the λόγοι are not merely images of beings that one would
behold in the absence of the beings themselves or as a way of securing one’s
distance from them. Rather, the λόγοι serve to open up a way of access to beings,
a way appropriate to human knowing, a raft of human λόγοι, as Simmias earlier
called it.19 Socrates’ comparison suggests that λόγοι let beings become manifest
in something like the way that a deed makes manifest something about the
character of the person who performs the deed.
Yet how is it that λόγοι allow beings to be made manifest? How is it that
by holding back from the look into the origin and having recourse instead to
λόγοι the second sailing advances toward the manifestness of beings? Socrates
is explicit about how, in particular, the second sailing commences: “In any
case, this is how I begin: on each occasion I put down as hypothesis what-
ever λόγος I judge to be the most vigorous.”20 In other words, he begins by tak-
ing up a certain comportment to λόγος, a new, additional comportment and
a new beginning, since humans always already live within a comportment to
λόγος. This new comportment consists in hypothesizing in the precise sense
of the word ὑπόθεσις, that is, laying down or setting out a λόγος so as to place it
18 Plato, Phaedo, 99e–100a.

19 See Plato, Phaedo, 85c–d.
20 Plato, Phaedo, 100a.
under something. In this setting out of a certain λόγος, Socrates sets out explic-
itly what is said in the λόγος, what is intended—or, in the modern phrase,
what is meant—in and through the words that are spoken. More specifically,
he sets out the one beings that are always already meant when one says, for
instance, beautiful or good or large. As he explains, he sets out the “beautiful
itself by itself and the good and the large and all the others.”21 He sets out the
beings themselves as they are said, as they are already operative and manifest
in speech. Indeed Socrates identifies what is set out as “the very thing I have
never stopped talking about.”22 Ostensibly he is referring to the earlier conver-
sations in the Phaedo, which return repeatedly to discussion of the one beings.
Yet, these are always the very things one will have been talking about; they are
what talk is about as such.
It is only at this point that Socrates finally introduces the word εἶδος, refer-
ring specifically to the look of the cause (τῆς αἰτίας τὸ εἶδος). Thus he fashions
the connection: the one beings that are operative in λόγος and that can be set
out from λόγος in a certain manifestness are nothing other than the looks, the
common looks, that are the true causes of things. And yet, there is no more
enigmatic connection: for the one beings are said and are set out as said,
whereas the common looks are manifest in their distinctive visibility. There is
perhaps no saying just how the visibility of the looks comes—or can come—to
be extended to the one beings that are said.
There are, then, two distinct lines along which visibility is extended beyond
that of things visible to ordinary vision. The first might be pictured as hori-
zontal; it runs from the exchanges of horizons and of perspectives that are
operative in natural vision to the vast extensions made possible by modern
astronomical instrumentation. The other line, distinctively philosophical and
more vertical, runs from the visibility of natural things to the common looks,
which through their distinctive visibility render things truly visible; the line
extends on toward the origin but in such a way that it also turns back and,
by way of λόγος, renders the looks manifest, manifest as said if less definitely
as visible.
The question is whether these two lines, seemingly diverging from a sin-
gle origin, also curve in such a way as to intersect at some distant point; or
whether, at least, they attain sufficient proximity to allow some mutual effect.
The question is most pressing in view of the very remarkable phenomena that
the instrumentation of modern astronomy has made it possible to discover.
21 Plato, Phaedo, 100b.

22 Plato, Phaedo, 100b.
48 Sallis
For among these phenomena there are some, such as black holes and dark
matter, that seemingly are incapable of any visibility whatsoever. While there
are necessarily certain effects that allow such phenomena to be detected—
those around the event horizon of black holes and those having to do with the
gravitation operative in the movement of galaxies—these phenomena are by
nature—if in this connection the very concept of nature can remain intact—
absolutely resistant to visibility. No enhancement of instrumentation can ren-
der them visible, and any visibility projected upon them as one seeks somehow
to envisage them will prove entirely inappropriate, completely unfounded.23
Such phenomena, violating the very sense of phenomenon, have—and can
have—no look whatsoever. Even more insistently than the blinding origin,
they withdraw from every look.
With the acknowledgment that there are beings that lie absolutely beyond
the limits of visibility, that there are beings to which no extension of visibil-
ity can reach, another beginning would seem to be imperative, one in which
being would at such extremes be detached from visibility and from presence
to vision. It is perhaps only in this respect that we can at present discern the
shape that this beginning must take.
23
See my discussion in John Sallis, “The Cosmological Turn,” Journal of Speculative
Philosophy 26 (2012), 152–162.
Chapter 3
Seeing and Being Seen in Plato: The Logic of Image

and Original and the Platonic Phenomenology
Behind It
Burt C. Hopkins
Our theme is the metaphysics of sight and phenomenology. Our topic is seeing
and being seen in Plato. Our thesis: properly understood, there are no meta-
phors of sight in Plato’s dialogues, if by sight is understood vision putatively
determined and limited by so-called sense perception. Our argument: in Plato
the origin of all vision and therefore the seeing of that which is seen (and thus
its being seen) is eidetic, in the sense of having its source in the community
of εἴδη together with their generic ἀρχαί. This means, among other things, that
the likening of images in the dialogues to visible things (e.g., the sun) and the
body’s organ of sight (the eyes) functions not to induce a comparison with
invisible referents designed to draw our attention to qualities of the invisible
shared by those belonging to the more accessible visible ones, but actually the
reverse. That is, the likeness of these images to visible things draws our atten-
tion to the “ontological” priority of the original over the image in all domains,
and thus, in the two most encompassing domains, the εἴδη of the “visible” and
“invisible.” Our phenomenology is implicit, taking its departure from what we
have tried to establish elsewhere,1 namely, the interpretive necessity of eliding
the modern priority accorded to mind and symbolically formalized concepts
in investigating that which appears and the conditions for its appearance in
ancient Greek thought. But its results are anything but implicit, as following
the elision of these two modern presuppositions the phenomenological logic
of image and original in Plato’s thought becomes manifest and indeed patent.
The author’s conviction of the irrefutability of this logic will not be argued for
here in deference to our presentation of the indispensible propaedeutic for
that argument: the Platonic “phenomenology” that composes its basis.
1 Burt C. Hopkins, The Origin of the Logic of Symbolic Mathematics. Edmund Husserl and Jacob
Klein (Bloomington, 2011).

50 Hopkins
1 Λόγος as Image of εἶδος
Plato’s Socrates’ response to the impossibility that he himself establishes of

direct knowledge of the εἴδη contains the key to the dialogues’ first account
of them. The response has two interrelated parts. The first is the methodical
necessity of abandoning the “investigation of nature” and “taking refuge in
speaking [εἰς τοὺς λόγους] to investigate the truth of the things that are in spo-
ken words [ἐν τοῖς λόγοις].”2 Socrates explicitly situates this necessity within the
context of his “next best try” to find the answer why “each thing comes to be,
why it ceases to be, and why it is.” He articulates the reason for this necessity in
his failure to grasp these answers by looking at things directly with his eyes and
trying to touch them with one of his senses. The attempt to answer in this way
the questions “why?” about the generation and being of things, and to name
as their “cause” (αἰτία) sensible qualities (such as air, water, muscles, bones),
threatens to blind his soul, like those who look directly at the sun during an
eclipse instead of at its image in some reflective medium.
By giving the name “cause” to what is seen through the eyes or touched with
the senses, the soul is exposed to the danger of losing sight of that which it
“sees” and gets in “touch” with through λόγος when, in speaking, it communi-
cates what it understands. What the soul sees when it understands why some-
thing comes to be or why it is are not the sensible qualities of things, with which
it is undeniably in touch when these things are perceived, but the εἴδη that are
responsible for these things being seen in the first place. Socrates is therefore
quick to qualify his reference to “image” when he compares his taking refuge
in λόγος with the safe way to perceive the sun during an eclipse, by stressing he
does “not admit at all that he who looks at the things that are in spoken words
sees them as images to a greater degree than he who sees those existing things
actually.”3 Seeing the things that are in λόγος therefore sees them no more as
images than seeing sensible things through the eyes. This can only mean that
for Plato the soul’s seeing the things that are through their “reflection” in the
“medium” of λόγος is unlike seeing them through their reflection in some natu-
ral medium. The clear difference between directly and indirectly seeing the
things that are through the eyes thus does not hold in the case of seeing them
through λόγος. If the “next best try’s” seeing things by looking at them in λόγος
were exactly like looking at the sun in its reflected image, seeing the things that
2 Plato, Phaedo, 99e. I follow Jacob Klein’s translation of this crucial passage, “Aristotle (I),” ed.
Burt C. Hopkins, The New Yearbook for Phenomenology and Phenomenological Philosophy 3
(2003), 295–313, here 300.
3 Plato, Phaedo, 100a. Here and elsewhere when no translation is cited the translation is my own.
Seeing and Being Seen in Plato 51
are through λόγος would be just as indirect as seeing the sun’s image. But in the
case of λόγος Socrates refuses to admit just this, that the one who looks at the
things that are in discourse sees them as images (and not, therefore, as they are
originally are) to the same extent that one who sees the sun through its image
does not see the sun as it is originally.
Unlike the natural image, then, which presents an image of something that
is capable of being seen independently of, and more originally than, its reflec-
tion by an image, λόγος functions to present things that are—the εἴδη—that
cannot be seen any more originally than by the soul’s looking at them as they
are “reflected” through it (λόγος). Thus it is not as if λόγος functions to mediate
what otherwise is capable of being seen directly. Rather, there can be no seeing
and therefore there can be no apprehension of an εἶδος without its “reflection”
in λόγος. In precisely this sense, then, λόγος and εἶδος are the same—without,
however, being identical. They are the “same” insofar as the εἶδος is that which
is responsible for λόγος being what it is, that is, speech that is understand-
able. Notwithstanding their sameness in this respect they are not “identical,”
because the appearance of the εἶδος functions as both the origin and the goal
of λόγος. The εἶδος’ appearance is the origin of λόγος insofar as it that which
is referred to when λόγος makes sense and is therefore understandable. And
this appearance is the goal of λόγος insofar as rendering it more apparent
and thus clarifying the εἶδος is the aim of all λόγος. The εἶδος is thus something
“seen.” Its original Greek meaning is derived from the root (ἲδω) that yields both
“to see” and “to know.” Its Latin translation as species is derived from specio, to
look at, and thus means originally “look” or “looks.” “Looks” is therefore the best
English translation of εἶδος, followed by “shape” (since the looks of something
overlaps its shape), then “form” (from the Latin word for shape, forma), and,
finally, species (defined as kind or class). Because, however, for Plato the εἶδος
that is seen through λόγος is not something visible to the eyes, “invisible looks”
is perhaps the best translation of its original Platonic meaning.
2 Socratic Dialectic
The second interrelated part of Plato’s Socrates’ response to the impossibility

of directly knowing an εἶδος through perception or thought concerns the way
Socrates investigates the answer to the questions “why” the things that come
to be come to be and why the things that are have being. Rather than try to find
these answers in the thing’s direct perception, Socrates relates that he assumes
some statement as the “presupposition” (ὑπόϑεσις) that seems to him the most
reliable and therefore safest way to understand the answer to the question
52 Hopkins
“why” in “each case” (ἑκάστοτε). His most basic and therefore safest presuppo-
sition is the statement that each of the intelligible objects (νοητά εἴδη) “imaged”
by the silent and audible words that compose the elements of λόγος has being.
Two additional presuppositions follow from this: (1) that all other things derive
their names by sharing or participating (μέϑεξις) in the εἴδη; (2) that the shar-
ing in the εἴδη by things is the cause (αἰτία) of their being as they are. To these
presuppositions Socrates adds two methodical stipulations. The first: the com-
patibility or incompatibility of the consequences that (case by case) follow
from any one of the safe presuppositions about the cause of something’s being
must be examined. The second: the safe presupposition itself must be exam-
ined on the basis of the appeal to “higher” presuppositions, each one chosen as
the “best,” until something “adequate” (τι ἱκανόν) is arrived at.
Both the downward movement of thought (διάνοια) toward the conse-
quences of presuppositions and its upward movement toward their origin
articulated in Socrates’ “second best try” have their source in the “power
of dialectic.” But it is the upward movement, which comprises the “mode of
passage”4 most properly called “dialectic,” that has the greatest significance for
clarifying Plato’s original institution of “pure” philosophy in the Western tra-
dition. It is characterized as the undertaking, by means of dialectic, without
any of the senses and without any visible images, to push on through λόγος to
each thing itself that is, in a manner that goes from presupposition to (better)
presuppositions to an origin free of presuppositions. Arriving at the presup-
positionless origin, it then makes its investigation into the εἴδη themselves by
means of them, until it arrives at the end of the intelligible realm, the good
itself “immediately taken in as a whole” (νόησις).5
3 The Divided Line as Image of Presuppositionless Eidetic Originals
Socrates’ account of the dialectical “push” to being and its end, while eschew-
ing the senses and therefore the visible images cast by sensible things, is not
entirely imageless, however, as is commonly thought. He employs something
visible to the senses (a divided line drawn in a sensible medium) as an image

5 Plato, Republic, 510b, 532a–b. Traditional translations of “νόησις” as “insight,” “intellection,” or
“intuition” fail to capture its proper Platonic signification, which is to apprehend a νοητόν—a
being only capable of being thought—without the mediation of either sensible or intelligible
images. Such unmediated apprehension grasps its object in “itself” [αὐτό], which is what I
attempt to capture with my translation of νόησις here.
by relating it to a source that is invisible to the senses (the mathematical pre-

supposition of a dimensionless line), in order to “reflect” the “two εἴδη, visible
and intelligible.”6 In other words, the visible image of an intelligible object is
employed in a manner that reflects not the proximate source of its origin as an
image (the geometrical presupposition of an intelligible line) but that which
is presupposed when mathematicians employ sensible things as images to inves-
tigate mathematical “objects”: namely, that sensible things are related to intel-
ligible things.
Three unavoidable conclusions follow from Socrates’ manner of employing
images here. One, the visible realm (and, therefore, the things in this realm) is
in some sense an image of the intelligible realm (and, therefore, the things in
this realm). Two, the ultimate source of the things in the visible realm (visible
images and their sensible originals) are the originals in the intelligible realm—
the εἴδη. Three, the εἴδη and not the other denizens of the intelligible realm, the
so-called “mathematical objects,” are the true originals of the things in the visi-
ble realm. The last is the case because the “seeing” of a visible divided line as an
image of an intelligible geometrical line is only understandable on the basis of
a presupposition that is capable of relating what is seen through the senses
to what is “seen” through the understanding (διά-νοια). The presupposition
of mathematical objects is not capable of establishing this relation, because
it implies that the relation between the visible (things) and the intelligible
(things) is already in place. That is, the mathematical presupposition does not
establish but presupposes that what is seen through the senses is something
that can reflect something that is only truly “seen” through the understand-
ing. Only the presupposition that the manner of being of intelligible things is
separate from what can be seen through the senses is able to allow the soul to
see what is visible to the eyes of the body as a thing with an invisible source in
what is “visible” only to thought.
In addition to employing a geometrical object as an image in his account
of the power and passage of dialectic, Socrates also uses mathematical
proportion (ἀναλογία) as an image. Proportion is employed to reflect the
image-original relationship that holds between (i) sensible images and their
sensible originals in the visible realm and (ii) presuppositions (ὑποϑέσεις)
and their intelligible originals in the intelligible realm. Within the context of
ancient Greek mathematics, a proportion is composed of two ratios that are
the same, where a ratio is a sort of relation of size between two magnitudes
or multitudes. By stipulating that the two segments of the divided line be cut
using the same but unspecified ratio, Socrates’ parameters for its cutting stipu-
6 Plato, Republic, 509d. All references to the Republic are to Joe Sachs’ translation (Newburyport, 2007).
54 Hopkins
late the proportional relation between the two segments. This means that the
two segments of the lower half of the divided line are related proportionately
to the two segments of its upper half. It is also means that the εἶδος of the vis-
ible realm is related analogically to the εἶδος of the intelligible realm. Thus the
relationship between visible images and their visible originals that composes
the εἶδος of the visible region is analogous to the relationship between presup-
positions and εἴδη that composes the εἶδος of the intelligible region.7 The ana-
logical relation of the εἴδη of the visible and intelligible regions is therefore
what is reflected in Socrates’ employing as an image the proportional relation
belonging to the ratios of the segments of the divided line. That is, the propor-
tion characteristic of Socrates’ divided line is an image of the relation between
the visible and invisible regions, which means that this relation is the origi-
nal that is reflected by the same mathematical ratios that compose Socrates’
image of the divided line. Hence the analogical relation between visible and
intelligible εἴδη looks like this: visible images are related to sensible originals
in the visible realm as mathematical and eidetic presuppositions are related
to εἴδη in the intelligible realm. Thus, while the spatial, i.e., geometrical image
of the divided line points to the image-original relationship between things in
the sensible realm and things in the intelligible realm, the non-spatial image,
i.e., the same general ratio or proportional relations between its segments
points to an image-original relationship between the things in the intelli-
gible realm itself (mathematical and eidetic presuppositions and the εἴδη
themselves).
4 The Opposition of Number and the One Draw and Redirect the
Soul toward Being
Plato’s Socrates steadfastly refuses to relate to his interlocutors “what manner

of power dialectic has, and exactly what εἴδη it’s divided into, and what paths
they take,”8 because to do so requires going beyond any image of the intelligi-
ble, and thus beyond λόγος, to the truth itself as it is apparent to him. Socrates
does not quibble over whether this truth appears to him in its very being or
not, since this is undeserving of confident assertion, but he does maintain
“that there is some such thing to see is something I must affirm.”9 Rather than
endeavor at this point to leave the realm of images entirely behind (which,
7 Recall Republic 509d, just quoted, which explicitly states that two εἴδη are at issue here.
8 Plato, Republic, 532d–e.
it should be stressed, there is no lack of willingness in principle on Socrates

part to do), the first (“Socratic”) account of the εἴδη in the dialogues limits itself
to the “prelude to the song” (of the “mode of passage” most proper to dialectic).
The Socratic prelude focuses on the “know-how” (τέχνη) requisite for “turning
around” (μεταστροφή) and “redirecting” (περιαγωγή)10 the whole soul from the
things that are becoming to what truly is. Plato’s Socrates identifies this know-
how with the lowly τέχνη of counting and calculation used by all who count
things and reckon with the resulting sums to solve problems (whether practi-
cal or theoretical) of multiplication and division. Socrates stresses, however,
that “no one uses it rightly, as something suited in every way to draw someone
toward being.”11
Counting and calculation, used rightly, “draw” and “redirect” the soul toward
being and the truth itself by forcing it to exercise its highest power of thinking,
νοῦς, first to clarify opposite sensations that strike the senses and then to con-
template and study the nature of the “pure” numbers employed by those who
are formidable in arithmetic (mathematicians).
Opposing sensations (for instance, large and small) reported by the same
sense (sight in this case) in the same thing (for instance, in the perception of
the ring finger in comparison with the fingers on either side of it) awaken in the
soul the “activity of νοῦς” (νόησις) and counting, in order “to examine whether
each of the things passed on to it [large and small] is one or two”; and, if “they
appear to be two,” to grasp that each “appear as something distinct and one.”
In the case at hand, νοῦς will grasp that “each is one and both together are two,”
and thus “be grasping the two as separate, because it wouldn’t grasp insepara-
ble things as two but as one.”12 Sight sees large and small mixed together while
νοῦς achieves clarity about this by grasping each as one and both as two, and
what sight sees is called “visible” and what νοῦς grasps is called “intelligible.”
All number and its source (ἀρχή), the one,13 also appear to sight with some-
thing opposite to them, and therefore they, too, lead to the contemplation of
what is and redirect the soul to that. Not only does sight see the same thing

12 Plato, Republic, 524b–c.
13 Number (ἀριθμός) in the ancient Greek context is a multitude of perceptible or intelligible
“ones.” Two is therefore the first number and “one,” which (when originally combined
in counting) composes the parts of each number, is not a number (because it is not a
multitude) but the ἀρχή (source) of number. Because each single number is composed
of an exact amount of “ones,” it appears to the soul as both one and many, and, thus, as a
mixture of opposites.
56 Hopkins
at the same time as one and unlimitedly many, but even more so does this
happen with number. For instance, in the case of one thing, a line is both one
and infinitely divisible; in the case of number not only is each number both
one number and a multitude of units, but, also, there are unlimitedly many
instances of each single number (for example: the number six is one number,
but the amount of sixes has no limit). Indeed, the contemplation of the nature
of numbers is touted by Socrates for its “ease of redirecting the soul itself from
becoming to truth and being,”14 especially when the numbers studied are not
those “that have visible or tangible bodies,”15 but the sort that are made of parts
in which “each and every one is equal to every one without even a tiny differ-
ence, and with none having any part within itself.”16 The study of these num-
bers “obviously forces the soul to use νόησις itself directed at the truth itself,”17
because they are “things that only admit of being thought.”
Plato’s first, “Socratic” account of the εἴδη in the dialogues stops here,
at the “prelude” to the song of dialectic and its mode of passage to and beyond
the εἴδη. The Socratic endeavor to use dialectic’s “power” to redirect the soul
toward being and the truth itself therefore remains shrouded in a darkness that
is ultimately mythical. Regarding the answer to the question “why” the sharing
in an εἶδος of things is the cause for the being of each one of them, Socrates is
not ready, “as yet”18 to state with confidence whether this occurs on account of
an εἶδος’ “presence” (παρουσία) in them or on account of its bringing about a
“community” (κοινωνία) among them. His identification of sharing or partici-
pating (μέϑεξις) with “imitation” (μίμησις) does not clarify this matter, either,
because Socrates’ account of the image-original relationship makes it clear
that the εἴδη that function as the originals cannot (like sensible originals) be
perceived independently of the images in the λόγος that reflect them. Thus,
at the very least, the Socratic account of the image-original relationship in
“imitation” is paradoxical, because both the image’s likeness to its original and
14 Plato, Republic, 525c.

16 Plato, Republic, 526a. Socrates’ distinction here between numbers with “visible or tan-
gible bodies” and the sort that “only admit of being thought” illustrates a peculiarity of
the ancient Greek concept of number most likely introduced by Plato, namely, that the
nature of the things that compose a number’s multitude can be things perceived through
the senses or things that cannot be sensibly perceived but only apprehended in thought.
Hence, the numbers that number sensible things are understood in the passage here to
be composed of visible and tangible beings, while those that can only be thought are
understood to be composed of intelligible beings.
17 Plato, Republic, 526a–b.
18 Plato, Phaedo, 100d.
the original’s greater degree of “beinghood” (οὐσία) cannot be established by

perception and, therefore, by the “investigation of nature.” And, at the very
most, the account is (as Aristotle will argue) “without content,”19 as it speaks
in “poetic metaphors.”20
Plato’s Socrates therefore does not follow the “push” of his own λόγος to pur-
sue the dialectical mode of passage to its end beyond images in accordance
with his own stipulations regarding the “right use” of the study of numbers’
nature to lead the soul to being itself and truth. Nowhere is this more apparent
than in the myth of recollection’s account of the origin of learning and, there-
fore, of the origin of the soul’s λόγος about the εἴδη.
5 Socratic Recollection and Dialectical Presuppositionlessness:

The Employment of Images to Investigate εἴδη
The problem that occasions Socrates’ most extensive account of the myth of
recollection is the articulation of Meno’s paradox. The paradox issues from
the presupposition of the rule in technical mathematical thinking that pro-
hibits “unknown” terms from being used in a cognitive investigation, which
stipulates that the use of all words in a cognitive inquiry must be “agreed upon
[ὁμολογία]”21 in advance by its inquirers. A straight line runs from the presup-
position of this rule to the eristic paradox that Meno recites, to the effect that
the movement of the soul from ignorance to knowledge is impossible.22 Such
movement is impossible because ignorance, as the condition of not know-
ing, precludes any relation to what is unknown. Ignorance, therefore, rules
out a relation to what must presumably (and impossibly) already be “known”
in the ignorant soul in order for it to learn: knowing where to seek and what
to look for in order to secure the unknown’s acquisition. In Socrates’ restate-
ment of this paradox the impossibility of inquiry into the known is added to
Meno’s statement of the impossibility of inquiring into the unknown (the for-
mer because it is already known and the latter because it is unknown).23 The
myth of learning that Socrates tells in response to both Meno’s statement of
this paradox and his own restatement of it, however, never addresses the main
point raised by Meno’s formulation of the paradox: how knowledge that is not
19 Aristotle, Metaphysics, 991a 22. All references to the Metaphysics are to Joe Sachs’ transla-
tion (New Mexico, 1999).
20 Aristotle, Metaphysics, 991a 23.
21 Plato, Meno, 75c.
22 Plato, Meno, 80d.
23 Plato, Meno, 80e.
58 Hopkins
c urrently in the soul was able to get there in the first place. Thus the myth’s
three major images, (1) the soul’s deathless nature responsible for its seeing
and having learned all things in both this and the netherworld, (2) the kin-
ship of all generated things, and (3) the “recollection” in time of the knowledge
of a single thing being able to lead, because of this kinship, to recollecting—
learning—them all,24 not only do not address this point but they presuppose
that the learning has already occurred. Moreover, the obvious comparison
and indeed confusion of mythical recollection with psychological recollection
invited by Socrates’ telling of the myth raises the apparently insuperable prob-
lem of how to reconcile the orientation to the future of learning, as the acquisi-
tion of knowledge, with recollection’s relation to the past, that is, to knowledge
already in the soul, but forgotten. In other words, the absence of an account
of the soul’s original acquisition of the knowledge already in it in Socrates’
tale of mythical recollection leaves unresolved the conflict between the
directedness to the future of non-mythological learning and the directedness
to the past of mythological learning.
The myth of recollection’s tale about learning, which relates the soul’s
acquisition of knowledge in time to its remembrance of pieces of knowledge
(ἐπιστήμας) somehow already in it before this time, together with the only pos-
sible conclusion that can be drawn from this, that ignorance is tantamount to the
loss of knowledge and therefore to forgetting, represent mythic images whose
originals are not mythical. The original of the image of mythical remembrance
is the mysterious awareness of having forgotten something, not being able to
remember what it is, and searching for and then finding it that characterizes
psychological (non-mythical) recollection. This awareness is what distinguishes
recollection from memory, because in memory the remembered is precisely not
forgotten. And the original of the image of mythical knowledge is the “unknown
knowledge” that is appealed to by thinking when it inquires into the difference
between true opinion and knowledge. The very point of departure of this inquiry,
the ignorance of the difference between true opinion and knowledge, must nev-
ertheless presuppose that knowledge is something different from true opinion
in order for its inquiry into their difference even to begin. Therefore, pending
the acquisition of the knowledge of the difference between true opinion and
knowledge, the “knowledge” that the inquiry posits as different from opinion is
necessarily something that is and must remain “unknown.”
Plato’s Socrates’ unprecedented connection of learning to the mysterious
psychological awareness of having forgotten something that was previously in
memory is the presupposition that transports Platonic recollection into the
24 Plato, Meno, 81c–d.

domain of myth. In psychological recollection, it is the soul’s awareness of

having forgotten something that was previously in memory that initiates its
searching forth from this awareness toward its memorial images, in order to
test them—somehow—against a “standard” of recognition that remains for-
gotten until the recollection is successful. The standard must be something less
than memory but more than complete forgetfulness, and therefore uncannily
in between these two psychological extremes. The movement of the soul that is
inseparable from psychological recollection is the original that is reflected and
mythically amplified by the image of recollection as that recovery of pieces
of knowledge called learning. The mysterious standard of recognition that is
a crucial aspect of psychological recollection is the original that is reflected
and amplified in the mythical image of knowledge, as that which guides its
own recovery in the lifetime of the soul from its mythical place in the nowhere
“outside” heaven.25 Thus what makes the standard of recognition in psycho-
logical recollection “mysterious,” its seeming direction of the soul to the sought
after but forgotten memorial image while remaining itself unknown until rec-
ollection has occurred, is precisely what is transposed into the realm of myth
in Socrates’ claim that “learning is nothing but recollection.” And no doubt
because the original of this mythic image is psychological, Socrates’ “demon-
stration” of the truth of this claim with Meno’s slave lends itself to the mixing
of image and original, as when, for instance, the uneducated slave’s ability to
answer correctly questions about the line of a square is explained by Socrates
in terms of his soul being for all time in a condition of having learned.
The mythical image of knowledge invites being likened to the power of dia-
lectic, which can only be awakened with the violation of inquiry’s technical
rule of ὁμολογία. The recognition of opinion’s power to cloak the unknown in
the guise of the known that initiates dialectical inquiry must therefore posit as
known something other than opinion, namely, knowledge. That is, dialectic’s
investigation of the knowledge sought by the soul but currently not in its pos-
session employs presuppositions that treat opinions about what is unknown
as if they were knowledge and, therefore, treats the unknown itself as if it were
something known. The soul’s acquisition of knowledge in Plato’s Socrates’ dia-
lectical account of knowledge is therefore only accessible through a kind of
opinion, true or right opinion.26 Hence the knowledge sought by dialectic must
remain inaccessible to such opinion, and thus forever be beyond the scope of
the power of opinion’s truth, although the dialectical mode of passage posits
knowledge as something other than opinion at every step of its ascension. In
25 Plato, Phaedrus, 247c.

26 Plato, Meno, 97e–98b.
60 Hopkins
other words, the dialectical power to recognize the difference between true
opinion and knowledge does not have its source in the soul’s acquisition and
therefore possession of the knowledge that is posited by dialectic as being dif-
ferent from true opinion. The recognition of this difference stems rather from
the soul’s mysterious awareness that the knowledge that it does not possess
must be something other than that of the true opinion that it alone is capable
of possessing.
Nor does Socrates’ conviction that there is a difference between true opin-
ion and knowledge (ἐπιστήμη) have its basis in the criterion of the superior
reliability of knowledge, as is commonly thought. Socrates says that he does
not know the difference between true or right opinion and knowledge, that
he therefore just gropes for the truth about this difference using images, even
though he is convinced that their difference is not a matter of imagery—and
he then adds that this conviction is among the few things he would claim to
know (εἰδέναι).27 Socrates’ attempt, nevertheless, to convince Meno that it
is precisely the criterion of reliability that distinguishes right opinion from
knowledge28 does not contradict his claim not to know their difference, but
rather illustrates it. “Knowledge,” no less than right or true opinion, is unreli-
able, in the sense that our memory, as the repository of knowledge, is prone
to “ ‘outgoing of knowledge’ [ἐπιστήμης ἔξοδος],”29 that is, to forgetting. Thus to
“know” the difference between opinion and knowledge (and not just that
they are different) would entail having an unforgettable piece of knowledge.
Socrates does not know the difference in question because neither he nor any
other mortal is in possession of the unforgettable criterion that would per-
mit thought to “calculate” (λογισμός), in the case of λόγος’ imagery of its eidetic
originals, the difference between image and original. Acquisition of knowledge
of this difference, that is, learning it, would have to take place in a learning
whose object is capable of being “stored” in memory beyond all forgetting and
therefore beyond r ecollecting, and, thus, beyond the play of image and origi-
nal. In other words, the difference between the object of opinion (δόξα) and
being (ὄν), between the unknown treated as known that characterizes opin-
ion and the true being of that unknown, unmediated by opinion and there-
fore untouched by images, remains unaccounted for in the Socratic account
of the εἴδη. The inquiry into the unknowable “nature” of this difference is
what the myth of recollection is intended to initiate, and it is for this reason
that it is the prototype for all the other Platonic-Socratic myths.
27 Plato, Meno, 98b.

28 Plato, Meno, 97e–98a.
29 Plato, Symposium, 208a.
The Socratic account of the εἴδη nonetheless understands them to be the

“invisible looks” that render both sensible and thought things understandable
in λόγος’ spoken and silent speech. The proper answer to the question “what
is it” addressed to any thing is precisely what it looks like. Because, however,
the looks that it looks like are not seen through the eyes but through λόγος’
understanding, which “reflects” them through its invisible word images, the
soul’s access to the invisible looks of any thing must be “pure,” in the precise
sense that it must turn away from sensible things and their qualities in order
to “behold” them. The disanalogy between the invisible images that reflect the
εἴδη in λόγος and the visible images that reflect sensible things in some sensible
medium, however, renders paradoxical the purity of the soul’s initial behold-
ing of the εἴδη. On the one hand, it uses the same name to refer to both the sin-
gular εἶδος and the many things that derive their name and being from it. Both
what these many things are and their denomination is based on their “looks.”
On the other hand, unlike a visible original, which can be perceived directly by
the soul without the mediation of any image that it casts, the eidetic original
reflected in λόγος’ imagery cannot be directly perceived by the soul.
These two paradoxical aspects of the soul’s sensibly “pure” beholding of the
εἴδη are behind the Socratic account of the need for further methodical “puri-
fication” of the soul in order for it to investigate them more originally. To do so,
the soul must (i) turn away from the many things that somehow share in an
εἶδος in order to investigate unambiguously what is originally named by λόγος
when it denominates many things with the same name and (ii) dialectically
examine the presuppositions proper to λόγος that reflect and thus “image” the
eidetic originals. The first presupposition examined in the Socratic account of
the dialectically more original investigation of the εἴδη is that what is originally
named in answer to the question “what is it” of any thing is not the thing but its
εἶδος. Socrates articulates the need for the dialectical examination of this pre-
supposition by still “better” presuppositions, in order to serve the end of arriv-
ing at the most original investigation of the εἴδη, one that is presuppositionless.
As presuppositionless, the original investigation of the εἴδη is imageless and for
this reason it is outside the proper ambit of λόγος. And, as thus outside λόγος’
play of “image and original,” it leads to that which is “beyond being,”30 in the
precise sense that dialectic’s investigation of the λόγος (themselves by means
of themselves) leads to νοῦς’ taking in as a whole—without the mediation of
any kind of image—the end (τέλος) that is the source (ἀρχή) of their being,
that is, the idea of the Good.

62 Hopkins
The employment of images to account for the “imageless” dialectical inves-

tigation of the εἴδη and the source of their being in the idea of the Good defines
the limit of the most apparent, “Socratic,” account of the εἴδη in Plato’s dia-
logues. The crowning image of this account, the myth of recollection, does the
double duty of awakening the non-philosopher’s soul to the dialectical power
that lies slumbering in it and of attuning the philosopher’s soul to the defin-
ing question and hence to the problem of its very existence: whence the τέλος
of the “unknown” knowledge that also provides the presupposition indispens-
able to the ἀρχή of the philosophical life, namely that opinion and knowledge
are different things? This Socratic “limit” is exceeded in Plato’s non-Socratic
account of dialectic, most pointedly in the philosophical Stranger and mathe-
matician Theaetetus’ dialectical investigation of the five greatest kinds that are
responsible for the “being” of images and therefore the “being” of “non-being.”
However, that which is awakened and attuned in the soul by the myth of rec-
ollection is not only not exceeded by the non-Socratic account of dialectic in
that dialogue, but its very awakening and attunement is what is behind the
joint power of the souls of the philosopher and mathematician, both together,
to “see” beyond images—and therefore beyond the λόγος—the difference
between ‘image’ and ‘original’.
6 Beyond the Limit of Plato’s Socratic Account of Seeing εἴδη
Λόγος, however, notwithstanding its power to manifest and therefore make

appear the appearance belonging to the οὐσία (beinghood) of something, is no
more responsible for the appearance being as it is than it is for its being as it is
not. Rather, it is responsible for the manifestation of these appearances when,
in conjunction with opinion, things about something or someone are asserted
or denied. Likewise, it is neither responsible for the judgment that affirms as
true the asserted or denied (as the case may be) appearance of the beinghood
of something made manifest by its speaking nor the judgment that affirms as
false its apparition. That the doing told in speech is as it is in the thing done,
or, in other words, that the community (κοινωνία) that arises from the proper
fitting together of a multitude of names and verbs uttered by someone makes
manifest the thing done (πρᾶγμα) itself of the something (τινός) that the com-
munity of these words is itself in community with, is therefore not a matter
of speech but of opinion. What appears in the Stranger and Theaetetus’ inter-
locution about speech is its manner of being as a “community,” first of the
properly fitting verbs and names that manifest the doings of actions (πράξεις)
and things done (πράγματα), then of speech itself together with the Being and
Not-Being of that which it is about, and, finally, of the “qualified” telling (via
assertion and denial) of the doing with the thing done itself of that which it
is about. The “common thing [κοινόν]” brought about by each of these com-
munities is speech in its wholeness, which encompasses and therefore exceeds
the elements that in “community” composes its parts. Hence, the commu-
nity of properly fitting verbs and names brings about the common thing of
speech proper, namely the making manifest of the beinghood of something.
This “making manifest” cannot be reduced to what is made manifest by either
the names or verbs taken singly, and it is therefore a whole whose wholeness
exceeds that of these, its parts. The community of the common thing charac-
teristic of speech with Being and Not-Being brings about, respectively, the com-
mon things of the appearances of that which is and that which is not. Either
appearance, as the “common thing” that emerges from the respective commu-
nities of speech and Being and Not-Being, cannot be reduced to the “elements”
belonging to these communities, namely speech and Being and speech and
Not-Being. And, finally, the common thing that emerges from the commu-
nity of speech’s qualified telling of the doing with the thing done itself of that
which it is about, namely its assertion or denial, likewise cannot be reduced
to either this telling or the doing of the thing done. Determining the quality
of this last common thing—that is, of what is asserted or denied of the thing
done in the telling of the doing—as either true or false is also a matter of
speech being in community with opinion. Its judgment discerns whether the
combination of the doing and the thing done that arises in speech manifests
the beinghood of the thing done as it appears from itself or as an apparition
that only seems to manifest its beinghood. Plato’s most developed account
of true and false speech, however, only addresses it as it appears in the Stranger
and Theaetetus’ interlocutionary observation (κατανόησις) of the appearance
that appears in φαντασία’s mixture of sensing with opinion; namely, in sense
perception. Plato therefore limits the discussion of true and false speech to
speech’s power to manifest the beinghood of what appears through the senses,
a power that is in community with the opinion that attempts to make a judg-
ment about what is “common” to beinghood’s appearance, e.g., likeness and
unlikeness, what’s the same and other, what is and what is not, and also one
and the number two having to do with them. The reason that opinion’s judg-
ment through the senses comes up short in its attempt to make a judgment
about what is common to the beinghood of the appearance has already been
shown in the Socratic account of the εἴδη. The “looks” that characterize the
εἴδη are not seen through the eyes but through speech’s understanding, which
reflects them through its invisible word images. The opinion that attempts to
make a judgment about the εἴδη that is confined to sense perception therefore
64 Hopkins
does not distinguish the intelligible being (νοητόν) of the εἶδος from what
appears through the senses. The result of this is that the sensible appearance
only seems to be what is truly responsible (the εἶδος) for its appearing, and
therefore this appearance is an apparition (φάντασμα), not a likeness, of the
looks that are truly responsible for it.
The Stranger and Theaetetus’ interlocution manifests precisely how speech’s
understanding “reflects” and therefore has the power to make appear that
which it is about, albeit only in the case of a thing done that appears through
the senses (Theaetetus sitting; Theaetetus flying). That which is responsible
for the appearing of the sensible appearance, and, more precisely, that which
is responsible for its beinghood, therefore does not appear through their inter-
locution about what speech is and its community with Being and Not-Being.
The γένος of Being (the community of the γένη of Rest and Motion), along with
that which is responsible for the εἶδος of Not-Being (the γένος Other) and that
of Being (the γένος Same)—in short, the five greatest kinds—therefore do not
appear in Plato’s most focused and advanced account of λόγος as a being.
7 The Limit of λόγος’ Power of Manifestation: Appearances of the

Greatest Kinds as Likenesses
This is no accident. The greatest kinds have already appeared through the
Stranger and Theaetetus’ interlocutionary investigation of Not-Being and
Being, and their manner of appearing emerged at the exact moment it became
apparent that the source of the mathematician’s speech about numbers, the
“one,” was no match for the philosopher’s speech about Being and Not-Being.
It appeared as no match for the former, because the “units” of Being—Rest
and Motion—do not lend themselves to being counted as homogeneous
mathematical ones. And it appeared as no match for the latter, because when-
ever anyone says “something [τι]” they “must say some one thing.”31 The word
“something” “is in fact a mark [σημεῖον] of one”32 and, because one and number
are among the things that are, it appeared impossible “to utter or think Not-
Being all by itself”33—that is, without Being. Thus, once it appears through
their dialogue about speech’s being that speech’s most basic necessity is that
it be “about something,” it becomes apparent why the “doing” of the “thing
done” that is combined by and told in speech cannot speak with complete
31 Plato, Sophist, 237d.

32 Plato, Sophist, 237d.
33 Plato, Sophist, 238c.
clarity about the beinghood of the greatest kinds: by necessarily being about
something, that “which is spoken about in speech” (λεγόμενον) is marked as
“one,” and the manner of being of each of the greatest kinds has appeared to be
precisely that which—according to the greatest necessity—cannot be appre-
hended as “one.”
Plato’s criterion for making the distinction between “likeness” and “appa-
rition” therefore appears when the λόγοι of the philosopher and mathemati-
cian’s interlocutions about (i) the greatest kinds and (ii) the being of λόγος
are brought together. The criterion appears, on the one hand, with respect
to φαντασία (sense perception). That which appears through the community
proper to speech’s spoken images (names and verbs) is a likeness when what
is the same as the appearance through the senses of what is spoken about
(the doing of the thing done) is made manifest by a speaking that tells things
about this appearance that are the same as it is. That which appears through
speech is an apparition when what is the same as the appearance through the
senses of what is spoken about is made manifest by a speaking that—unwit-
tingly—tells about it things that are other and therefore are not the same as it
is. Apparition (φάντασμα) is therefore a falsehood (ψεῦδος) that appears as a
deception (ἀπάτη): the soul to which it appears does not observe (κατανοεῖν)
that the appearance of the beinghood that it judges to be is not as it judges it
to be and therefore only seems to be. Because the soul that is in the condition
of being deceived does not know it is in this condition, its acquisition of the
knowledge that the appearance determinative of this condition is an appari-
tion and therefore a falsehood is something that presupposes this soul’s dialec-
tical movement beyond its deception.
On the other hand, the criterion for the distinction between “likeness” and
“apparition” also appears with respect to the εἴδη. That which appears through
speech’s spoken images is an apparition when the common things that appear
through sense perception—the εἴδη—are spoken about as the same as the
appearance of what appears through the senses. Seeing through this appari-
tion, by speaking about the appearances of the εἴδη as other than the same
as what appears through the senses, yields spoken images that are likenesses
of the appearing proper to the εἴδη but not of their appearances themselves,
that is, of their “looks.” That is, λόγοι that combine the doing of the thing done
in the case of the appearances of the εἴδη, and that do so by distinguishing
these appearances from what appears through the senses, do not disclose the
eidetic appearances themselves but only that their appearing is different from
that of sensible appearances. Because that about which speech must be about
in order to speak is something and therefore one (in the sense of the homoge-
neous unit presupposed in counting and therefore by number), speech’s power
66 Hopkins
to manifest the “looks” proper to the εἴδη is limited by its presupposition that
these “looks” must be “one” in order to be spoken about. That is, speech in
its beinghood is inseparable from the presupposition that the “about which”
that it names in order to make it manifest is something that appears as one,
while the beinghood of the εἴδη can only appear when it is presupposed that
they do not appear as one but as a multitude of uncountable but nevertheless
limited beings.
The “name” and the “about which” of speech therefore do not correspond
when the beinghood of the εἴδη is spoken about and for this reason there is an
insuperable limit to speech’s power to manifest spoken images that are like-
nesses proper to the appearances of the εἴδη. In other words, in order for the
beinghood of the εἴδη to appear through speech, speaking must presuppose
that the something that it is necessarily about is not some one thing at all but
many things. And it must presuppose that their beinghood as “things” is both
“one” and “many” at once—and, therefore, that they are at once the same and
other. Moreover, it must presuppose that the “units” that compose the multi-
tude of the many εἴδη are incomparable and therefore uncountable. Speech
that attempts to tell the doing of this thing done, namely, of an appearance
that is one and many, the same and other, and uncountable, however, will
necessarily appear to speak against itself and therefore be contradictory. It is
for this reason that the “likeness” not only of the appearing of the εἴδη but of
their appearances themselves can only become manifest in a speech that has
employed the power of dialectic to push through both the philosopher’s pre-
supposition that speech is necessarily about something (and, therefore, about
“one” thing) and the mathematician’s presupposition that the units that com-
pose a multitude are identical. The “likeness” of the εἴδη that appears through
a λόγος that no longer employs these presuppositions manifests appearances
that are therefore manifestly not images of originals but rather the origi-
nals’ appearances themselves. What appears, then, are the invisible looks
that, originally, are responsible for the appearance of any sensible or intelli-
gible thing that appears. Hence philosophical dialogue makes manifest that
the appearing of words as invisible spoken images necessarily presupposes the
original “looks” of the εἴδη without the words’ appearances as images being
their likenesses. That is, the precise manner of being of an image, which is
not-to be what it appears like, precludes its being a complete “likeness” of the
appearance proper to the Being of what it is like, for otherwise it would cease to
be what it is—an image of this original—and be the original itself. The differ-
ence between the Not-Being of the image and the Being of the original there-
fore remains beyond the power of any image’s appearance to make manifest,
and, therefore, beyond the power of speech to do so.
Making apparent speech’s weakness in the face of the appearing of the

appearances proper to Being and Not-Being, Plato’s written word images of
spoken dialectical speech make partially manifest the sources that are respon-
sible for the beinghood of what speech—according to its own beinghood—
is shown to make manifest (the doing of the thing done that it is necessarily
about). That which dialectic makes partially manifest is “beyond opinion” in
the precise sense that “knowledge [ἐπιστήμη]” of it cannot be defined as an
“account” (λόγος) added to a true opinion. Because opinion is already in com-
munity with λόγος, this definition of knowledge takes what is the same—(i)
true opinion and (ii) true opinion plus λόγος—for what is other, namely knowl-
edge, and is therefore rooted in a tautology. And because the original appear-
ances of the εἴδη that are made partially manifest by dialectic are beyond
the scope of what speech’s word images are able to manifest as likenesses, the
original appearances of εἴδη are beyond opinion’s power of assertion and
denial, its power to qualify as true or false the things that speech tells about
what it is about.
Finally, Plato’s answer to the question about the sources that are, in turn,
responsible for the most comprehensive sources responsible for being-
hood, the Same and the Other, seems to be that the source of the Same is the
Independent One (also referred to as the Idea of the Good) and the source of
the Other is the Indeterminate Dyad (also referred to as the source of motion34
and what is bad35). Plato’s reasoning for assigning ultimate sources to the
Same and the Other seems to be the following. The “itself by itself” (ἀυτὸ
καϑʹαὑτό) unity (as the Same) that composes the “beinghood” of each εἶδος
cannot appear as what it is and also appear as mixed with its opposite, that is,
mixed with something that in its being is related to what is other than itself.
The unity of each εἶδος, therefore, must have its source in the unity of some-
thing that appears as a unity or as one completely “itself by itself,” and, thus,
independent of any mixture with such a one’s opposite, namely, with not being
one—which is to say—with a multitude. The “being an other of an other” (as
the Other) that composes the difference of each εἶδος in the community of εἴδη
likewise cannot appear as what it is and also be mixed with its opposite, that
is, mixed with the unity proper to what is “itself by itself.”36 The otherness that
relates the εἴδη, therefore, must have its source in something that is completely
other than the one, that is, in a multitude that, because the one is not pres-
ent in it, is unlimited and therefore “indeterminately” other than what is one.
34 Aristotle, Metaphysics, 1084a34–35.

35 Aristotle, Metaphysics, 988a14.
36 Plato, Sophist, 255c–d.
68 Hopkins
These ultimate sources of intelligibility, despite their inability to mix with each
other, nevertheless only appear in community with one another. As such, they
are the ultimate sources not only of that which is always already “seen” when
anything at all appears, but also they are the ultimate sources of the “seeing” of
those who for Plato are capable of recognizing the eidetic origin of the intel-
ligibility of all things (the philosopher) as well as those who are incapable of
this recognition (the non-philosopher).
If by “phenomenology” is understood the λόγος of the φαινόμενον, and, if,
further, that which appears most fundamentally are the εἴδη, the implicit
phenomenology of the entire preceding analysis will come into view. So,
too, however, will its departure from the 20th century phenomenologies of
Husserl and Heidegger, albeit for different reasons. In the case of Husserl, the
impossibility of direct cognition of the εἴδη in Platonic philosophy, rooted in
the fundamentally different sources behind the unity inseparable from λόγος
and that inseparable from εἶδος, rules out the Husserlian presupposition of
philosophy’s cognitive capacity to apprehend adequately εἴδη. In Heidegger’s
case, the “beyond being” status of the unity of the multitudes through which
all φαινόμενα show themselves, rules out the Heideggerian supposition of the
fundamentality of ontology for phenomenology and indeed philosophy.
Chapter 4
On Touch and Life in the De Anima

Christopher P. Long
Remember that you, dependent on your sight,

do not realize how many things are tangible.
Helen Keller, The World I Live In1
Between the beautiful things with which the De Anima begins and the tongue
with which it ends, we come into contact with an account of touch in which
the very nature of perceiving is felt. “Of beautiful things” the De Anima begins
as it embarks upon an inquiry into the soul that concludes with a gesture to
the tongue and its capacity to “signify something to another.”2 A certain way of
knowing is the beautiful thing with which the De Anima, like the Physics and
the Metaphysics, begins; and as with those texts, so with this, vision seems to
be the focus of it. Where the De Anima says “τὴν εἴδησιν” and goes on to suggest
that insight into the nature of the soul is beautiful because it is both precise and
wondrous, the Physics and the Metaphysics say “τὸ εἰδέναι” and speak in turn of
a path of inquiry from what is more familiar to us to what is first by nature,
and of the delight we take in our capacity to see which “of all the powers of
perceiving, makes us recognize things and brings to light many differences.”3
Yet between the “beautiful things” with which the De Anima begins and the
tongue with which it ends, we encounter the aporia of touch that threatens to
subvert the primacy of sight. The tongue appears here in the middle as well,
though not as the organ of speech, but as the very flesh by which we enter into
1 Helen Keller, The World I Live in (New York, 1908), p. 7.

2 Aristotle, De Anima, 402a1, 435b24–25. All translations from the Greek are my own. The ques-
tion of the unity of the De Anima is not insignificant here, but not much depends on whether
the book was fully complete for publication in Aristotle’s time. Rather, what is of interest is
the text that has been inherited and the form in which it has been handed down. Martha
Nussbaum challenges the best argument for the disunity of the De Anima, though she insists
that the third book is “internally a mess.” See Martha C. Nussbaum and Amélie O. Rorty, eds.,
Essays on Aristotle’s De Anima (Oxford, 1995), p. 6. Ross recognizes that “[t]he plan of the De
Anima is to a large extent a clear and well thought-out one.” He goes on to point out that
the manuscript of Book III is “less carefully prepared for publication than that of the earlier
books.” See Aristotle, De Anima, ed. W.D. Ross (Oxford, 1961), pp. 12 and 14.
3 See Aristotle, Physics, 184a10–18. See too Aristotle, Metaphysics, 980a21–7.

70 Long
intimate connection with the world. If at the beginning and in the end, the
De Anima articulates a path of inquiry that takes its bearings from the beauti-
ful things said concerning the soul and finds its voice in the eloquence of the
human tongue, in the middle, we are made to feel the poignant aporia of touch
and to experience the possibility that our inquiry might ultimately lose its way.
This inquiry into the nature of the soul, which itself is said to “contribute
greatly toward all truth, and especially toward the truth concerning nature,”
proceeds along a familiar peripatetic path. Aristotle points to it in the De
Anima when he writes:
While inquiring concerning the soul it is at the same time [ἅμα] neces-
sary, while going through the impasses through which we must pass if
we are going to move forward, to take along with us [συμπαραλαμβάνειν]
the opinions of all our predecessors who declared something concern-
ing the soul, so that we might take hold of the things that have been said
beautifully while, if something was not said beautifully, we might beware
of these.4
Already here, as at the end, the tongue, with its capacity to signify something
to another, is felt to bear upon the well-being of the inquiry itself. This peri-
patetic path unfolds as legomenology in its most familiar guise: the attempt
to articulate the truth by attending carefully to the things said well by those
who came before.5 Book I of the De Anima is thus no prologue preceding but
fundamentally divorced from the inquiry itself; rather, it is a prolegomenon
in the more literal sense in which the inquiry itself proceeds as a collabora-
tive endeavor between those who came before and we who continue to seek
the truth concerning the nature of the soul. Thus, Aristotle’s own peripatetic
legomenology opens a determinate path for us into the received text; for if his
inquiry proceeds in collaboration with his predecessors, ours ought also to pro-
ceed by attending carefully to the things Aristotle himself said beautifully even
if we too must beware when something is not so said. The adverb, “καλῶς,” here
as throughout the De Anima, modifies a particular way of speaking, which is
said to be beautiful precisely because it articulates something of the truth. The
adverb itself appears most often in the De Anima in contexts in which Aristotle
4 Aristotle, De Anima, 403b20–24.

5 For a more detailed discussion of legomenology as a peripatetic methodology, see
Christopher P. Long, Aristotle on the Nature of Truth (New York, 2011), pp. 6–11.
On Touch And Life In The De Anima 71
is concerned to determine the truth of the things his predecessors said.6

The intimate connection between the nature of truth toward which the inquiry
into the soul contributes and the beauty of speech is amplified when Aristotle,
rehearsing the opinions of those who came before at the end of the first book,
suggests that “from the things having been said, it is clear that . . . the soul is
not beautifully [καλῶς] or truly [ἀληθῶς] said to move itself.”7 Articulating the
identity of the beautiful and the true here, Aristotle gives voice to the man-
ner in which truth appears as something beautifully signified by the tongue.
The beauty of truth and the truth of beauty animate the inquiry that is the
De Anima.
But if the truth of this text may be felt by attending to what it articulates
beautifully, then to find a way forward through the aporia of touch that appears
in the middle of the text, we will need to pursue a peripatetic legomenology
of our own in relation to the things we have inherited from Aristotle. Such a
path will require a certain way of attending to the text, one caught up as much
in a tangible as in an auditory metaphor of inquiry; for legomenological atten-
tion is rooted in the etymology of the Latin ad-tenděre, to stretch toward, and
points in this way as much to a gesture of touch as to a way of listening. We have
already heard the manner in which the opening lines of the Metaphysics spoke
of knowing in visual terms, but its first sentence also articulates beautifully the
way the intentionality even of the visual practice of “τὸ εἰδέναι” is rooted in a
gesture of touch. That most famous text speaks of a kind of stretching out that,
when expressed as it is there in the middle voice, becomes the very articula-
tion of desire: “All human beings by nature stretch themselves out [ὀρέγονται]
6 See, for example, Aristotle De Anima, 407a3, where the Timaeus is criticized for calling the
soul a magnitude; 414a19, where those who think the soul is neither without body nor is
a body speak beautifully; 415b28 and 416a2, where Empedocles is criticized for failing to
speak beautifully of the “up” and the “down”; 417b8; 419a15, where Democritus is criticized
for saying that what is between the eye and the thing seen is empty; 426a20, where earlier
φυσιολόγοι are criticized for supposing that there is no color without seeing, or flavor without
tasting. The use of καλῶς in close connection with verbs of saying in these contexts is often
covered over by translations that emphasize correctness. Barnes regularly translates such for-
mulations as “misrepresents” (419a15) and “mistaken” (426a20); while even Sachs falls into it
at 407a3, 417b10 and 419a15, translating καλῶς, as “right” in the first two instances and “rightly”
in the last. See Jonathan Barnes, The Complete Works of Aristotle (Princeton, NJ, 1984), vol. 1.
Joe Sachs, Aristotle’s On the Soul and On Memory and Recollection (Santa Fe, 2001). Such trans-
lations are not strictly wrong; they simply fail to articulate beautifully the manner in which
Aristotle writes of beauty in relation to articulation.
7 Aristotle, De Anima, 411a24–26.
72 Long
toward knowing.”8 The middle voice of the Greek ὀρέγεσθαι, “to stretch
out toward something,” comes to mean “to desire,” and thus already beautifully,
if implicitly, articulates the intimate connection between touch and desire that
will, in the De Anima, be said to differentiate the perceptive powers of animal
life from all other living things.9
The intentionality of the peripatetic legomenology we must then here pur-
sue is more tangible and auditory than it is visual; for it involves stretching
ourselves out toward the phenomenon of touch as it is said in the text so that
we might come to feel the contours of the aporia of touch in the middle. There
Aristotle finds his way forward blocked by the phenomenon of touch which
seems itself out of touch with those powers of perceiving that operate at a
distance and through a proper medium. Attending thus to the ways touch is
said in the De Anima leads first to the boundary between the nutritive and
perceptive soul which, marked as it is by the presence of touch, suggests the
intimacy of our connection with the nutritive dimensions of life and the very
elements of things. As the primal power of perceiving, touch continues to make
its presence felt as Aristotle speaks in turn of the distal powers of perceiving,
first of seeing, then of hearing and smelling, before turning, in the middle, to
those powers of perceiving that operate by touch. With taste and touch we
come into contact with an aporia that threatens the unity of Aristotle’s account
of perceiving itself. By attending carefully to these texts, and specifically, to
the things Aristotle says concerning the nature of touch, its organ, the flesh,
and the ambiguity of its medium, we are returned to the things Aristotle says
about the nature of perceiving itself and made to feel the intimate connec-
tion we have with the world in and with which we live. And so in the end, by
attending to the ways Aristotle speaks beautifully about touch, we arrive at
an account of life and death itself in terms of the presence of our capacity
to touch; for if by touch we first feel our way into life, it is by touch that life
slips ultimately away from us. By following the itinerary of touch, we come into
more intimate contact with the contours of animal life itself.
1 Living Said in Many Ways
In a text aptly titled On Touching—Jean-Luc Nancy, Jacques Derrida gives voice

to the peculiar manner in which touch is at once set apart from the other

9 Aristotle, De Anima, 413b1–414a3.
owers of perceiving in the De Anima and yet also remains intimately con-
p
nected with the most primordial elements of life:
While Peri psuchēs is thus a treatise on the pure life of the living, it recur-
rently accords to touch a status that sets it apart. Touch may well exist
apart from the other senses, but Aristotle stresses that without it, no
other sense would exist. As has been noted, all animals possess this sense,
which is also the sense of nutrition.10
Aristotle’s attempt to articulate the nature of the soul, itself “a sort of principle
of living beings,” at once throws the phenomenon of touch into sharp relief
and sets it into intimate connection with the nutritive capacity of the soul that
characterizes the most basic forms of life.11 Touch appears thematically for the
first time in the De Anima in II.2, as Aristotle seeks to articulate the nature of
life itself by distinguishing ensouled from soulless beings.12 Thus he begins:
πλεοναχῶς δὲ τοῦ ζῆν λεγομένου—
Living is said in many ways, and if any one of the following is present in
something, we say that it lives, for example thought, the power to per-
ceive, motion and stand still with respect to place, in addition motion
according to nourishment, and wasting away as well as growth.13
10 Jacques Derrida, On Touching—Jean-Luc Nancy (Stanford, 2005), p. 24.

11 Aristotle, De Anima, 402a6–7. Aristotle writes of the soul: ἔστι γὰρ οἷον ἀρχὴ τῶν ζῴων.
Commenting on this phrase, Polansky writes “[i]n saying that soul is principle τῶν
ζῴων, Aristotle’s usual term for animals (see 403b18 and subsequently) where we might
expect him to say living things, Aristotle leaves us in some perplexity regarding his mean-
ing.” He goes on to suggest: “Thus the use of the term ζῴoν [sic] may highlight the impreci-
sion of the understanding of soul preceding Aristotle. Whether animals or living beings
generally are at issue, soul as a principle will be the nature of the ensouled being and have
special dignity.” See Ronald Polansky, Aristotle’s De Anima (New York, 2007), p. 37. Above
the term is translated “living being” to hold something of the ambiguity between living
things and animals, the distinction between which is based upon the capacity to touch.
12 There is a brief mention of touching already in Aristotle, De Anima, 403a10–16, where
Aristotle rehearses the aporiai associated with the embodiment of the soul and sug-
gests that although a straight line touches a sphere at a point, no separated straight line
will touch a bronze sphere in this way. Ross suggests that passage means to emphasize
that a perceptible line “would touch the sphere not at a point but over a small area.” See
Aristotle, De Anima, ed. Ross, p. 168.
74 Long
In delineating the nature of life, Aristotle attends to the ways living is said. The
principle of the inquiry, the point from which it begins, is legomenological: the
many ways living is said puts us in touch with the contours of life itself.
The way living is said here articulates a definitive movement toward the roots
of life. Beginning with the life of the mind, Aristotle touches upon perceiving
and locomotion in order ultimately to arrive at a discussion of nourishment,
where the boundary between ensouled and soulless beings is encountered.
Plants and other vegetative life grow and die here where they are said to live
precisely because they have the fundamental capacity for nourishment, τροφή.
Thus the passage locates the very roots of life in the capacity to take in food.14
Having thus marked the boundary between living and non-living things,
Aristotle articulates a difference between those beings that simply live, and
animals, which “live first [πρώτως] through the power to perceive [αἴσθησις].”15
This distinction between living things and animals, however, is marked not
by a general ability to perceive, but by the specific capacity to touch. Again,
Aristotle relies upon the ways we speak about the things we encounter:
For even the things that don’t move or alter their place, if they have the
power to perceive, we say they are animals [ζῷα] and not only that they
live [ζῆν]. But of the powers of perceiving, touch first [πρῶτον] inheres in
them all, and just as the capacity for nourishment is able to be separated
from touch and the other powers of perceiving, so too is touch [able to be
separated] from the other powers of perceiving.16
The passage first draws the distinction between animal life and other living
things by attending to the ways living is said; and it then goes on to articu-
late the nature of touch in striking parallel to the capacity for nourishment. As
nourishment marks the boundary between living and non-living beings, touch
marks the boundary between animals and all other living beings. Aristotle’s
repeated iterations of “πρῶτος” in this context suggest that the primacy of
touch is primal because, as Jean-Louis Chrétien suggests, “it is through and
through primal for life.”17 But touch here is also heard to be primal because it
14 Aristotle, De Anima, 413a31–2. Aristotle here says that this capacity to take in food can be
separated from the other capacities of life, although they cannot be separated in mortals
from the capacity for nourishment.
15 Aristotle, De Anima, 413b2.
17 The entire quotation from Jean-Louis Chrétien is: “Touch is not primitive because sup-
posedly coarse and required as a basis for the higher senses, but because it is through and
is the power of perceiving most intimately connected to the capacity for nour-
ishment. This intimacy sets it apart from the more distal powers of perceiving
endemic to animal life—the powers of seeing, hearing and smelling, though it
brings it yet closer to the power of tasting, which itself is said to be “a certain
sort of touch.”18 Here again the importance of the tongue makes itself felt.
The intimate connection between touch and nutritive life finds further
articulation in II.3, where Aristotle emphasizes the manner in which touch is
bound intimately up with appetite, the most rudimentary expression of desire.
Where II.2 spoke of locomotion, growth and decay, II.3, begins with nutrition,
perceiving and the capacity to desire.19 Touch, it seems, awakens animal life to
desire. Aristotle puts it this way:
If there is the power to perceive, so too is there the power to desire; for
desire [ὄρεξις] is longing [ἐπιθυμία] and spiritedness [θυμός] and wish
[βούλησις], while all animals have at least one of the powers of perceiv-
ing, that of touch, and in that in which the power of perceiving inheres,
there are also pleasure and pain and the sense of the pleasant and the
through primal for life.” See Jean-Louis Chrétien, The Call and the Response (New York,
2004), p. 98. Perhaps the formulation could be slightly qualified to suggest that touch is
primal for animal life, as nourishment is for vegetative life. In a beautiful essay on the sci-
ence of touch, Frederick Sachs articulates the primal nature of touch this way: “Touch, in
short, is the core of sentience, the foundation for communication with the world around
us, and probably the single sense that is as old as life itself.” See Frederick Sachs, “The
Intimate Sense: Understanding the Mechanics of Touch,” Sciences 28/1 (1988), 28–34,
here: p. 28.
18 Aristotle, De Anima, 422a8. In his discussion of intemperance in the Nicomachean Ethics,
Aristotle calls the pleasures associated with touch “slavish” and “bestial” because it “is
present in us not insofar as we are human, but insofar as we are animals.” See Aristotle,
Nicomachean Ethics, 1118a23–b3. See Pavlos Kontos, “Akolasia as Radical Ethical Vice: The
Evidence of NE 1140b11–21,” Ancient Philosophy 29/2 (2009), 337–347, here: p. 339.
19 Aristotle, De Anima, 414a31–2. The manner in which the discussion of desire unfolds is
significant. Delineating the powers of the soul, Aristotle says: “The powers we are say-
ing are the capacity for nutrition, perceiving, desiring, motion with respect to place and
thinking things through.” The passage mirrors that in 413a23–5, although there he moved
from thinking to the various kinds of κίνησις, emphasizing particularly those motions—
locomotion, growth and decay—associated with life processes. Here Aristotle includes
the capacity to desire and, instead of speaking simply of νοῦς, he emphasizes a specific
kind of thinking, διανοητικόν. The shift in direction and the introduction of desire and the
capacity to think things through introduce the shift in focus from life to animal life.
76 Long
painful; and where these are, there also is longing [ἐπιθυμία], which is the
desire [ὄρεξις] for the pleasant.20
Desire, itself a certain way of reaching out to the world, is animated by our
capacity to touch. The world first appears as pleasant or painful by way of
touch. Thus, it is also in this context that the phenomenon of being appeared
to, or φαντασία, becomes an issue of explicit concern.21 Already in II.2, Aristotle
had said that with the power of perceiving comes φαντασία and ὄρεξις.22
However, here in II.3, Aristotle’s thinking concerning the connection between
φαντασία and perceiving appears itself to be in transition; for here although he
says that “living beings having touch also have desire,” he goes on to say “it is
unclear whether they must also have φαντασία” and by the time II.3 is brought
to a conclusion, Aristotle simply asserts that some animals “do not even have
φαντασία.”23 In the end, of course, Aristotle navigates a safe passage concerning
the relationship between animal life, perception and φαντασία, when, in III.10–
11, he articulates the difference between perceptive and deliberative φαντασία,
seeming thus to reaffirm his original intuition that all animal life is informed
by a certain φαντασία.24 This original intuition comes to language already De
Anima II.2–3, where our capacity to be appeared to is said to be animated by
our capacity for touch.
The world presents itself to us as something of value for us by way of
touch. The connection is visceral and elemental, for it involves our deepest
desire to sustain ourselves in existence, to seek from the world what might
permit us to remain in and of the world. Our intimate relationship with the
world unfolds at this most primal and even pre-elemental level. If, for Aristotle,
the elements are four—fire, air, water and earth—these elements themselves
are said to be composed of opposing principles: fire, of the dry and hot; air,
of the hot and moist; water, of the moist and cold; earth of the cold and dry.25

21 For a discussion of how best to translate φαντασία in Aristotle, see Long, Aristotle on the
Nature of Truth, pp. 82, 131–137. The locution of “being appeared to” is inspired by K. Lycos,
“Aristotle and Plato on ‘Appearing’,” Mind 73 (1964), 496–514.
23 See Aristotle, De Anima, 414b15–6; 415a11, respectively.
24 Aristotle, De Anima, 433b29–434a10. For a good discussion of the difference between
perceptive and deliberative φαντασία, see C. D. C. Reeve, Action, Contemplation, and
Happiness (Cambridge Mass., 2012), pp. 181–186. See too Long, Aristotle on the Nature of
Truth, pp. 86–92.
25 See Montgomery Furth, Substance, Form and Psyche: An Aristotelian Metaphysics
(Cambridge, 1988), p. 77. See too De Generatione et Corruptione, 330b22. The order in
The world itself unfolds as these pre-elemental principles play in relation to

one another; fire becoming air as it moistens, air becoming water as it cools,
and water becoming earth as it dries. We are nourished by the playful unfolding
of the world, participating with it at this pre-elemental level by way of touch.26
Thus, Aristotle says “touch is the power to perceive food, for all animals are
nourished by what is dry or moist and hot or cold, of which the power to per-
ceive is touch, whereas of the other things it is incidentally.”27 This passage
reinforces the intimate connection between animal life and the pre-elemental
unfolding of the world, anticipating already what will be emphasized at the
end of the De Anima, namely, that “it is necessary for the body of the animal to
be capable of touch, if the animal is going to preserve itself.”28
Here also, however, something of the aporia of touch that will be poignantly
felt in the middle of the De Anima is suggested, for the proper objects of touch
seem to put it in touch with an overabundance of contraries. This, its excessive
nature, sets touch apart from the other proper powers of perceiving, as Aristotle
says explicitly when he turns his full attention to touch in De Anima II.11:
For every power of perceiving seems to have one pair of contraries; for
example, sight is of white and black, hearing is of high and deep pitch
and taste of bitter and sweet, but there are many pairs of contraries in
what is tangible: hot/cold, dry/moist, hard/soft, and how ever many oth-
ers there are of this sort.29
In reaching out to the world, touch, the power of desire itself, exposes us to an
excessive plurality of contraries that give us an intimate feel for things even as
which these contraries are articulated is designed to illustrate the manner in which
the elements are able to change into one another by virtue of a change in one of their
contraries so long as the other contrary remains stable as the underlying middle term
of the transition. So, for example, earth can become fire when it is heated because they
share the dimension of dryness.
26 Karen Barad takes this idea a step yet further when she speaks of touching as what matter
itself does: “In an important sense, in a breathtakingly intimate sense, touching, sensing,
is what matter does, or rather, what matter is: matter is condensations of response-ability.
Touching is a matter of response.” See Karen Barad, “On Touching—The Inhuman That
Therefore I Am,” Differences: A Journal of Feminist Cultural Studies 23/3 (2012), 206–223,
here: p. 215. For a discussion of truth as response-ability in Aristotle, see Long, Aristotle on
the Nature of Truth, pp. 14–15.
78 Long
they refuse to consolidate into a proper object. Touch, it seems, never easily
offers us something to grasp; its surplus, rooted in a desire to stretch out toward
the world, ensures at once that the world in relinquishing itself to us remains
also always elusive.30
Thus, by touch we come to experience the recalcitrance of things that belies
the delusion that the world is simply at our disposal. Touch exposes us to a sur-
plus we cannot grasp. It opens us to the supposition that our intimate connec-
tion with the world puts us at its disposal. If by touch the world presents itself
as something of value for us, by touch too we come to experience ourselves as
something of value for the world. The reciprocal nature of touch awakens us to
our deepest ecological responsibilities. This will be felt more acutely as we tra-
verse further along the itinerary of touch Aristotle charts in the De Anima, for
the peculiar reciprocity of touch, what Merleau-Ponty has called its “reversibil-
ity,” puts us in touch with a dimension of perceiving that is eclipsed by the dis-
tal powers of perception.31 Before turning, however, to the heuristics of touch
itself, it is necessary to turn first, as Aristotle does, to those distal powers of per-
ceiving that lend determination to the nature and function of perceiving itself.
2 Touch and Other Proper Powers of Perceiving
Once Aristotle has located the difference between animals and other liv-
ing things in the capacity to perceive, and more specifically, in the capacity
to touch, he outlines the basic contours of the power of perceiving itself. He
begins, strangely enough, by making a kind of retreat; for although the inquiry
to this point has focused on the powers of the soul, Aristotle insists that it is
necessary to say what the activities and the actions themselves are first, and
prior to this even, to examine their objects.32 Here, however, the power of
touch recedes below the surface, for as mentioned, the nature of its activity and
30 Throughout his article on touch and thought in Aristotle, Stanley Rosen slips too easily
between touch and grasp as he appeals to the touch of the hand to understand the power
of touch in Aristotle. See Stanley Rosen, “Thought and Touch, a Note on Aristotle’s De
Anima,” Phronesis 6 (1961), 127–137. A good account of the elusive nature of touch itself,
which is “distinctive in its degree of heterogeneity,” can be found in Matthew Ratcliffe,
“What Is Touch?,” Australasian Journal of Philosophy 90/3 (2011), 413–432, here: pp. 16–17.
31 Maurice Merleau-Ponty, The Visible and the Invisible, ed. Claude Lefort (Evanston, 1968),
p. 141. For a good discussion of Aristotle’s understanding of touch in relation to the idea of
chiasmic intertwining in Merleau-Ponty, see Rebecca Steiner Goldner, “Touch and Flesh
in Aristotle’s De Anima,” Epoché 15/2 (2011), 439–440.
the objects with which it operates are less obvious than are those of the other
powers of the soul. Even so, however, in the chapters leading to his explicit
accounts of taste and touch, the power of touch refuses to remain submerged,
for it appears again first when Aristotle speaks of the impossibility for pow-
ers of perceiving to be deceived by their proper objects and then again in the
discussion of hearing, when metaphors of touch lend texture to the nature of
hearing itself.33 Further, when Aristotle speaks of the inferior nature of smell
in humans as opposed to other animals, touch comes again to the surface as
the power of perceiving in which human beings excel. Even in the chapter on
seeing, the power of touch makes itself felt.
The connection between seeing and touch comes most poignantly to lan-
guage when Aristotle seeks to uncover the medium through which the power
of seeing necessarily operates. Although he speaks neither of touch nor of
contact here, Aristotle insists that “if one puts something having color up
against the eye itself, it will not be seen.”34 This is offered, indeed, as a “clear
sign [σημεῖον . . . φανερόν]” that color, the proper object of the power to see,
is in fact only seen through a transparent medium. Aristotle thus criticizes
Democritus, who he says “does not speak beautifully [οὐ γὰρ καλῶς . . . λέγει]”
when he supposes that what is between, τὸ μεταξύ, is empty.35 The very capac-
ity to see can be destroyed by touch; and yet, the medium through which vision
encounters the visible is itself a matter of touch. Seeing is a kind of touching
and being touched.
Thus Aristotle speaks of vision in terms first of continuous motion, then
of a certain passion. He begins by saying, “color moves that which is transpar-
ent [τὸ διαφανές], such as air, and by this, if it is continuous [συνεχοῦς ὄντος],
the sense organ is moved.”36 Continuity, in the Metaphysics, is said to occur
“whenever the limit of two things that are touching and held together become
one and the same.”37 The medium seems, thus, to be of decisive importance
for Aristotle’s account of the distal powers of perceiving precisely because it
puts the perceived object in touch with the perceiving organ in a way that does
33 Aristotle, De Anima, 418a13–4 and 420b1–4.

37 Aristotle, Metaphysics, 1068b26–1069a18. For a discussion of this passage, see Christopher
P. Long, “The Ontological Reappropriation of Phronesis,” Continental Philosophy Review
35/1 (2002), 35–60, here: p. 59 (n36). The language used there of a kind of touching that
“reduces difference to the same” lacked a certain nuance that might here be gained by a
more sophisticated account of touch and the nature of the medium.
80 Long
not destroy the organ itself. The medium ensures a gentle touch. The touching
endemic to seeing is further articulated as a kind of being-acted upon. Already
in De Anima II.5, where he seeks to articulate “what is common to all perceiv-
ing,” Aristotle had offered an important and nuanced account of perceiving
as a certain way of being acted upon that does not involve alteration, or as
Aristotle’s Greek expresses more adequately, “ἀλλοίωσις,” “becoming-other.”38
Being acted upon in its most familiar sense involves becoming-other inso-
far as it makes what is acted upon different from what it was prior to being
affected. Aristotle goes to some lengths to delineate a different sort of affec-
tion to describe the passion of perceiving, for when a perceiving organ is
acted upon by its object, it does not become other, but rather, it settles into
what it most characteristically is.39 The encounter between the visible object
and the organ of vision is said to involve a kind of “συνεχής,” a way of “hold-
ing together,” because the activity of perceiving is itself an active condition
of the soul, a ἕξις, that involves a power of the soul “holding together” with
its object. Aristotle calls this activity of “holding together,” “τὸ αἰσθάνεσθαι,” to
be perceived to. The awkward English here is designed to suggest the man-
ner in which the articular infinitive in Greek expresses itself in the middle
voice. The activity of perceiving is middle voiced in a definitive way, for it
involves the activity and receptivity of the power of perceiving and the per-
ceived object both.40 Perceiving points to a dynamic and reciprocal way of
being together with the perceived world.
For the power of seeing, what Aristotle calls the medium, τὸ μεταξύ, accom-
plishes the middle voiced activity that is perceiving itself by enabling the
proper object of vision to touch the organ of vision without destroying it.
Aristotle thus responds to Democritus’s insistence that there is a void between
vision and the visible this way:
For seeing comes into being when what is capable of perceiving is acted
upon by something, and because it is not possible for it to be acted upon
38 See Aristotle, De Anima, 416b32–3 and 417b5–7, respectively. For a discussion of this, see
Long, Aristotle on the Nature of Truth, pp. 121–127.
39 For a discussion of ἕξις as a kind of settling into itself, καθίστασθαι, see Long, Aristotle on
the Nature of Truth, pp. 123–127. See too Aristotle, Physics, 247b17–18.
40 The legomenology of τὸ αἰσθάνεσθαι found in De Anima II.5 is rooted in the articulation
of perceiving in the middle voice. See Long, Aristotle on the Nature of Truth, p. 122. Welsch
does a nice job of emphasizing the importance of the expression “τὸ αἰσθάνεσθαι,” see
Wolfgang Welsch, Aisthesis: Grundzüge und Perspektiven der Aristotelischen Sinneslehre
(Stuttgart, 1987), pp. 103–104.
by the color itself that is seen, what remains is that it is acted upon by
the medium [τὸ μεταξύ], so that it is necessary that there be something
between [ὥστ᾽ ἀναγκαῖόν τι εἶναι μεταξύ]. And if what is in between were
to become empty, it is not that nothing would be seen with precision, but
nothing would be seen at all.41
The very possibility of seeing depends upon the medium through which the
organ of seeing can be acted upon, indeed, touched, in a way that enables
the “holding together” that is perceiving. The things Democritus had said are
not beautiful because they fail to account for the possibility of perceiving.
Aristotle thus articulates his own position both in response to the things previ-
ously said and in an effort to more beautifully account for the phenomenon of
perceiving itself. His account is designed to apply to all powers of perceiving
in common, yet the need for a medium, so decisive for the distal powers, is
less clear with regard to taste and touch. Here again the aporia of touch makes
itself felt; for Aristotle insists that “the same account [ὁ δ᾽αὐτὸς λόγος] exists
for sound and smell, for no sound or smell produces perception when touch-
ing the sense organ, but by the motion of sound and smell, the medium is set
in motion, and by this the sense organs of each are moved.”42 Turning then,
however, to touch and taste, Aristotle modifies his language slightly, speaking
no longer of the “same” account, but saying rather, “[c]oncerning touch and
taste it holds similarly [ὁμοίως], but this is not apparent; the reason for this
will be clear later.”43 The aporia of touch comes to language in the shift from
“the same” to “the similar.” Aristotle sees it. He recognizes too that it will con-
cern the nature and meaning of “τὸ μεταξύ,” the medium. But here he simply
touches upon it only to set it quickly aside so that his attempt to articulate a
common account of the powers of perceiving oriented primarily by the experi-
ence of sight is not derailed.
Yet in delineating the manner in which touch is already at work in the
account of seeing, we are able to see, or perhaps better, to hear, the manner
in which touch itself is integrated into the common account of perceiving.
Although, as Golluber has suggested (see footnote 65), the De Anima is the
“battleground” for the supremacy disputed by sight and touch, this apparent
battle itself appears only on the surface of Aristotle’s account, for the deeper
truth is that seeing is sublime because it always involves a kind of touching.
There is no battle here, only the intimate cooperation of the powers of the soul

82 Long
and the objects that appear to them. The manner in which touch makes itself
felt in the things Aristotle says about the other proper powers of perceiving
suggests this intimate connection.
If touch has already been seen to be integrated into Aristotle’s account of
seeing, metaphors of touch are heard as Aristotle seeks to articulate the nature
of hearing itself. Here again, Aristotle speaks of a certain “holding together,”
a “συνέχεια,” by way of which hearing is accomplished, for “what is capable of
sounding is that which is able to move air that is one in continuity [συνεχείᾳ]
until it reaches that which hears.”44 Yet with hearing, Aristotle amplifies the
connection with touch yet further, suggesting explicitly that we may under-
stand the way differences in sound operate on the ear by appealing to meta-
phors of touch:
These [differences] are spoken of according to metaphors from tan-

gible things [λέγεται κατὰ μεταφορὰν ἀπὸ τῶν ἁπτῶν], for the sharp tone
moves the perceiving organ much in little time, while the flat tone moves
it a little in much time [. . .] this seems to have an analogy to the sharp and
the blunt that concern touch, for the sharp is the sort of thing that stabs,
but the blunt is the sort that presses.45
Attending to the metaphors of tangible things allows Aristotle to sharpen

his account of how sharp and flat tones are heard. The metaphors carry the
things said of touch over to hearing, further accentuating the manner in
which the power of hearing involves certain motions of the medium of air
as it touches the ear, settling it into its own activity: the hearing of “sharp”
and “flat” tones. The words themselves hint at this connection; and Aristotle
draws upon them as he himself seeks to bring the nature of hearing to
language.46
Touch manifests itself in Aristotle’s account of smell as well, for there it is
said to be analogous to taste, which itself is called “a certain type of touch.”47
But the analogy with taste is mentioned as a way of connecting smell, which

45 Aristotle, De Anima, 420a29–b2.
46 The tongue too plays an important role in this chapter on hearing, for Aristotle here
addresses the nature of voice, which is said to involve making a noise with the tongue,
though one that is said to “have soul in it and some sort of φαντασία” (Aristotle, De Anima,
420b26–421a1).
47 Aristotle, De Anima, 421a19.
Aristotle considers to be the most imprecise power of human perceiving, with

touch, which he considers our most precise perceptive capacity. Thus, he says:
For with respect to the other powers of perceiving, the human-being is

left behind by many of the animals, but with respect to touch, the human
is precise in a way that greatly surpasses other animals, and this is why
the human is the most practically wise [φρονιμώτατον] of the animals.48
The suggestion that human-beings are most practically wise because of our
excellent capacity to touch opens the possibility that a more nuanced account
of touch itself might teach us something about the nature of our ethical and
political practices.49 Yet it also suggests that Aristotle’s account of φρόνησις
might teach us something about the nature of touch. This avenue of inves-
tigation becomes yet more promising when it is recalled that the power of
perceiving itself is understood to be a kind of ἕξις, or active condition of the

49 It is remarkable that Aristotle would associate touch, the most animalistic of our powers
of perceiving, with a superlative capacity for φρόνησις, an intellectual virtue that seems
quintessentially human. As Jaeger has suggested in some detail, the term “φρόνησις” had
with Socrates been associated with ethical reasoning, while in Plato it took on a more
theoretical meaning. See Werner W. Jaeger, Aristotle: Fundamentals of the History of His
Development (Oxford, 1948), pp. 81–84. Without endorsing his developmental theory,
we can agree that in Aristotle, the valence of the term vacillates, pointing sometimes to
a general capacity for intellection and sometimes to the more technical, ethico-politi-
cal meaning developed in the Nicomachean Ethics. Whatever its specific valence here,
the formulation “φρονιμώτατόν ἐστι τῶν ζῴων,” suggests that non-human animals share
in a certain kind of φρόνησις. This idea is not unprecedented in Aristotle; for in the
Nicomachean Ethics, where the term clearly has an ethico-political meaning, Aristotle
notes that people “also say that some animals are practically wise [φρόνιμα], however
many appear to be able to have foresight about their own lives” (Aristotle, Nicomachean
Ethics, 1141a26–8). Lennox suggests that the difference between human character and the
character of other animals lies in the fact that the “other animals do not need to integrate
practical intelligence with natural virtues to achieve excellence of character.” See James
G. Lennox, “Aristotle on the Biological Roots of Virtue,” in Biology and the Foundation of
Ethics, eds. Jane Maienschein and Michael Ruse (Cambridge/New York, 1999), pp. 10–31,
here: p. 13. Nothing in the argument developed here depends on ascribing a certain kind
of φρόνησις to non-human animals. Rather, what is important from a legomenological per-
spective is the way the appearance of this word φρονιμώτατον in this context invites us to
consider what Aristotle’s account of φρόνησις might teach us about touch and vice versa.
84 Long
soul analogous to φρόνησις and the other intellectual and ethical excellences.50
Further, in the Nicomachean Ethics, ethical virtue is said to be “an active
condition for the ability to choose, being in a mean condition [μεσότητι] in
relation to us, determined by a ratio [λόγος] and by the means by which a
practically wise person would determine it.”51 Virtue here involves a certain
feel for the right thing as discerned by the person with φρόνησις. As a “mean
condition relative to us,” ethical excellence is conditioned at once by the sit-
uation encountered and by the nature of the one encountering it. Practical
wisdom is a cultivated ability to discern what is good and bad in a given con-
text, and the person with practical wisdom must be well disposed toward the
mean between vices on the extremes. Thus, in a sense, the person with practi-
cal wisdom is like someone with a healthy, well functioning capacity to taste.
As Charles de Konnick has suggested, taste “is the sense of wisdom, the sense
of ‘sapientia’ [from ‘sapere,’ to savour].”52 Thus, when Aristotle turns his atten-
tion to taste, as he does immediately after his discussion of smell where the
question of practical wisdom first emerges, he intimates that the tongue must
be in a kind of mean condition between the dry and the moist if it is to be
capable of tasting. Although he does not yet use the vocabulary of the mean,
τὸ μέσον, he points out that with taste, “there is nothing that is the medium [τὸ
μεταξύ],” and suggests that “. . . the tongue does not perceive when it is dried
out or too moist.”53 The implication that the tongue itself must be in a kind of
mean condition to perceive well seems confirmed when Aristotle appeals to
the example of a sick person whose ability to taste is compromised: “all things
appear bitter to sick people because they perceive them with a tongue full of
that sort of moisture.”54 To be capable of discerning well the taste of things, the
tongue must be in a healthy mean condition, just as the person with practical
wisdom, in order to choose well, must have cultivated a sense for virtue; for as
Aristotle puts it in the Nicomachean Ethics, ethical virtue is “a certain kind of
mean condition [μεσότης], since it is, at any rate, something that makes one
apt to hit the mean [τοῦ μέσου].”55 Here, however, a decisive but subtle shift
50 For an account of why the intellectual and ethical habits in Aristotle must be understood
in relation to one another, see James G. Lennox, “Aristotle on the Biological Roots of
Virtue,” p. 13.
51 Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, 1106b36–1107a2.
52 Charles de Konnick, “ ‘Sedeo Ergo Sum’ Considerations on the Touchstone of Certitude,”
Laval Theologique et Philosophique VI/2 (1950), 343–348, here: p. 348.
53 Aristotle, De Anima, 422a15–16 and 422b5–6.
55 Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, 1106b27–28. Aristotle emphasizes that virtue, ἀρετή, has a
double function, for it not only brings the person with it into a good condition, but also
is already intimated, one that will find more explicit articulation as Aristotle
turns his attention to the power of touch and its enigmatic medium, τὸ μεταξύ,
which has to this point failed adequately to appear.
3 The Power of Touch
Here in the middle, the inquiry into the nature of the soul confronts the aporia
of touch that threatens to disperse the experience of perceiving, rendering it
different for each power. Though it has taken him time to come to it, when
Aristotle turns his full attention to touch, he does not turn away from its apo-
retic nature. Here the question of the medium gains in urgency as Aristotle
rehearses what Derrida has called “the manifold aporia of touch.”56 “There is
an impasse [ἀπορίαν],” Aristotle says, “as to whether [touch is] many or one,
and what indeed is the perceptual organ of the ability to touch, whether it
is flesh [σάρξ] or something analogous to this in other animals, or not, but the
flesh is the medium [τὸ μεταξύ], while the first perceptual organ is something
other inside.”57 Already here, the proper boundary between the touching ani-
mal and the touchable world begins to feel porous; and this permeability also
seems to introduce a deeper cleavage between the distal and the contact pow-
ers of perceiving; for not only is the medium aporetic, but touch seems to have
neither a proper organ nor a proper object.
To illustrate the difficulty in identifying a proper organ of touch, Aristotle
shrouds the flesh itself in an imaginary membrane so as to suggest that even
so shrouded the animate body would immediately feel itself being touched.58
The organ of touch thus seems to recede into the body itself, while its medium,
makes the person capable of acting well. Thus, Aristotle writes: “It is necessary to say that
every virtue both brings that of which it is the virtue into completion and a good condi-
tion and also renders the work it does well done, as the excellence of the eye makes both
the eye and its work excellent [σπουδαῖος], since by means of the excellence of the eye we
see well.” See Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, 1106a15–19. Chrétien recognizes the tight con-
nection between tangible perceiving and the ethical mean: “The mean that we are is the
measure of extremes, discerning extremes and differentiating them: the hot is always hot-
ter than us, the cold what is colder than our flesh, and similarly for the hard and the soft
(De anima, II, 11, and Meteorology, IV, 4, 382A 17–21 [. . .]). What is like us is not perceived;
we feel only what exceeds us . . . Here as in ethics, the mean is a form of excellence.” See
Chrétien, The Call and the Response, pp. 99–100.
56 Derrida, On Touching—Jean-Luc Nancy, pp. 4–5.
86 Long
τὸ μεταξύ, is said to “grow organically upon” the body.59 This intimacy of the
medium seems also to blur the boundaries between taste and touch; for
the tongue “perceives everything tangible with the same part that perceives
flavor.”60 The tongue, organ of taste, is also, as flesh, the medium of touch.61
Thus, the power of touch threatens to subvert a coherent and unified account
of the powers of perceiving in which the organ, the medium and the object are
each properly delineated and mapped onto their proper powers of perceiving.
This unified account is further threatened by yet another aporia associ-
ated with the medium of touch. Extending the thought experiment of the
shrouded body to all manner of elements, Aristotle imagines a world in which
touch is impossible because there is always something in-between, be it water
or air. In such a world, touch too would be a distal power of perceiving. This
leads him directly to consider the question of the unity of the account of the
proper powers: “So is the perception of all things similar, or is it different for dif-
ferent powers of perceiving, just as now it seems that taste and touch perceive
by contact, but the others from a distance?”62 The coherence of the account
comes here to poignant crisis, and Aristotle confronts the possibility that each
power of perceiving might operate in its own peculiar way. His response, how-
ever, is to decisively deny that the powers of perceiving are fundamentally dif-
ferent, but in so doing, he brings to language an understanding of the medium
that further fleshes out the nature of perceiving itself. To the possibility that
perceiving is different for different perceptive powers, Aristotle says:
59 Aristotle, De Anima, 423a15–16. Aristotle writes: ὥστε ἀναγκαῖον τὸ σῶμα εἶναι τὸ μεταξὺ τοῦ
ἁπτικοῦ προσπεφυκός.
61 Aristotle calls the tongue the “most tactile” [ἁπτικωτάτη] of organs, and suggests in the
Parts of Animals that the flesh of the human tongue, because it is the softest, broadest
and most detached, enables us not only to communicate with one another by articulate
speech, but also renders humans “the most acutely perceptive [εὐαισθητότατος] of the
other animals” (Aristotle, Parts of Animals, 660a11–25). The translation of “εὐαισθητότατος”
as “most acutely perceptive” attempts to articulate the appearance of the prefix “εὐ-” in
terms that express the excellence of touch. Contemporary science has fleshed this out fur-
ther, affirming that the highest densities of mechanoreceptors, those sensory nerve end-
ings that convert mechanical energy into electrical signals in which the central nervous
system traffics, “are found in the tongue, lips, palms, fingertips, nipples, clitoris, and the
tip of the penis, accounting for the extraordinary sensitivity of these parts of the body.”
See Sachs, “The Intimate Sense,” p. 28.
But this is not so, but we perceive even the hard and the soft through
other things, just as we perceive what is able to make a sound or a sight
or a smell; but the latter from far away, and the former from nearby, and
thus it escapes our notice; since we perceive them all through a mean
[τοῦ μέσου], but in the former case it escapes notice.63
A truth of perceiving that ought not to escape our notice comes to language
here with the subtle shift of vocabulary from τὸ μεταξύ, the medium, to τὸ
μέσον, the mean.64 Michael Golluber touches upon it when he suggests “Mesou,
which is ambiguous enough to suggest something like ‘medium,’ more pre-
cisely means ‘mean,’ lending an element of the cognitive to what otherwise
appears to be a merely physical or mechanical account.”65 The element of the
cognitive to which Golluber appeals here might perhaps better be said to be
a dimension of discernment endemic to perceiving itself; for this its critical
capacity is what ultimately marks the difference between other living things
with the capacity for nourishment and animals who have in addition the per-
ceptive ability to reach out to a world that presents itself as desirable.
The aporia of touch has led Aristotle to speak of “the medium” as a kind of
“mean,” thus lending voice to the middle voiced dynamic of perceiving itself.
Already in the discussion of seeing, the medium was seen to be decisive; for
Aristotle had said that Democritus had not spoken beautifully when he claimed
there was nothing between the visible object and the power of vision. There
Aristotle had insisted that “it is necessary that there be something between

64 For the sake of clarity, we have consistently translated τὸ μεταξύ, as the “medium,”
although it fails to capture the manner in which Aristotle places a definite article in front
of an adverb in order to thematize the nature of what is “between.” We have translated
the “between” as “medium” to more effectively capture the manner which Aristotle seems
use the term when he is thinking of the relationship of perceiving in material terms. Here,
however, τὸ μέσον is translated as “the mean,” although it can mean whatever is between
things. This allows us to reserve “the mean condition” for μεσότης, the noun associated
with substantive adjective, τὸ μέσον. Polansky recognizes that μέσον “seems the wider
term for whatever is between things, whereas the former [μεσότης] is something between
extremes and somehow just right or appropriate.” See Polansky, Aristotle’s De Anima,
p. 333. Polansky and Welton render μέσον as “intermediate” and μεσότης as “mean.” See
William Welton and Ronald Polansky, “The Viability of Virtue in the Mean,” Apeiron 25/4
(1992), 79–102, here: p. 90 (n15).
65 Michael Golluber, “Aristotle on Knowledge and the Sense of Touch,” Journal of
Philosophical Research 26 (2001), 655–680, here: p. 668.
88 Long
[ὥστ᾽ ἀναγκαῖόν τι εἶναι μεταξύ].”66 But here it now seems that Aristotle there
did not himself speak beautifully, for in criticizing Democritus, Aristotle seems
to have overemphasized the “something” that exists between the power of per-
ceiving and the thing perceived. By focusing on the quality of what fills the gap
between them, he was unable to articulate how they hold themselves toward
one another. The shift from “the medium” to “the mean,” from “τὸ μεταξύ” to
“τὸ μέσον,” enables Aristotle to bring the nature of perceiving to language in
relational rather than material terms.67
Even if, however, Aristotle here speaks of “the mean” as he attempts to
articulate a path through the aporia of the medium, he continues to speak of
“the medium” in order to reinforce the similarity between tangible, visible and
audible things even as he notes a difference:
But tangible things do differ from visible and audible things, for we per-
ceive the latter when the medium acts upon us in some way, but the tan-
gible things not by the medium [ὑπὸ τοῦ μεταξύ] but at the same time as
the medium [ἅμα τῷ μεταξύ], just as someone who is struck through a
shield; for it is not that the shield, being struck, beats upon one, but at the
same time both together [ἅμ᾽ ἄμφω συνέβη] are struck.68
The shield example evokes again the thought experiment of the membrane
tightly joined to the body. Here, as there, the intimacy of the medium is
emphasized; for both together are struck. Here, however, the little word ἅμα
further reinforces the intimacy of touch with a term that means “together” and
“at once” and thus articulates a mode of relation that is, strictly speaking, nei-
ther spatial nor temporal, because simultaneously at the root of both. Derrida
has beautifully suggested as much with reference to the appearance of this
small word, ἅμα, in the context of Aristotle’s account of time: “This locution is
first neither spatial nor temporal. The duplicity of the simul to which it refers

67 Polansky recognizes this when he writes: “The sensitive mean is not a quality but a rela-
tion like either health or virtue depending upon whether we look toward the sense organ
or sense.” See, Polansky, Aristotle’s De Anima, p. 333. Marjolein Oele, citing Plessner’s De
Stufen des Organischen und der Mensch, connects this relational aspect of Aristotle’s
understanding of touch to Plessner’s conception of “positionality”—“the relationship
that a living being has to its environment by ‘arising in it, depending on it, yet oppos-
ing itself to it.’ ” See Marjolein Oele, “Being Beyond: Aristotle’s and Plessner’s Accounts of
Animal Responsiveness,” in Phenomenology and the Non-Human Animal: At the Limits of
Experience, eds. Corinne Painter and Christian Lotz (Dordrecht, 2007), p. 33.
does not yet reassemble, within itself, either points or now, places or phases. It
says the complicity, the common origin of time and space, appearing together
as the condition for all appearing of Being.”69 Although Aristotle returns to the
talk of “the medium” in this passage about the shield, the appearance of the
little word, ἅμα, and indeed, its repetition to reinforce the manner in which
the medium is together with that which is capable of feeling, suggest that the
intimacy of touch has uncovered the conditions according to which perceiving
itself unfolds. The reciprocal and chiasmic nature of perceiving has thus come
to language in the subtle shift in locution from the medium to the mean, and
in the articulation of the little word, ἅμα, which together give voice to a way of
being together Aristotle himself calls, “τὸ αἰσθάνεσθαι,” to be perceived to. The
itinerary of touch has led us to the heart of perceiving.
4 The Heuristics of Touch
Although Aristotle has touched upon the nature of perceiving as a kind of

mean, he continues to speak of the medium in order to reinforce the unity of
the proper powers of perceiving. Thus, before turning his attention to perceiv-
ing as such, Aristotle reaffirms that touch and taste function in the same man-
ner as sight, hearing and smell; for with the contact powers too, “no perception
would come into being, if the perceptual organ were touched.”70 If touch is to
operate like the other powers of perceiving, the organ will need to be located
inside the body and the flesh itself must be said to be the medium, τὸ μεταξύ.71
The locution of the medium reappears here and in the passage on the shield
so as to reinscribe the power of touch into the community of the other proper
powers of perceiving.
69 Jacques Derrida, Margins of Philosophy (Chicago, 1982), p. 56. Derrida goes on in this pas-
sage to insist that Aristotle does not say this, but he “develops his demonstration in the
unnoticed self-evidence of what the locution hama says. He says it without saying it, lets
it say itself, or rather, it lets him say what he says.” Thus Derrida says, without saying it,
something decisive about legomenology; for by attending carefully to “the unnoticed self-
evidence of what the locution [. . .] says,” Derrida is able to discern in the things Aristotle
says something of the truth of what is said. That truth itself emerges precisely because
Aristotle seeks assiduously to put words to things in ways that do justice to those things.
71 Aristotle, De Anima, 423b23–26. A very accessible and rather beautiful account of the
organ of touch can be found in the discussion of the epidermis and the dermis in Diane
Ackerman, A Natural History of the Senses (Vintage, 1991), pp. 83–84. For more on the
physiognomy of touch, see Sachs, “The Intimate Sense.”
90 Long
Yet the intimacy of touch teaches us about the dynamics of perceiving in a

way that the other proper powers of perceiving do not. Thus, at the end of the
chapter, Aristotle returns to the question of perceiving where its nature as a
discriminating power is touched upon and the full significance of the talk of
the mean can be felt. Listen first to how perceiving is here said:
For the to be perceived to is a certain being acted upon; with the result
that what produces makes another thing, being in potency, the sort of
thing that what produces is in activity [τὸ γὰρ αἰσθάνεσθαι πάσχειν τι
εἰστίν· ὥστε τὸ ποιοῦν, οἷον αὐτὸ ἐνεργείᾳ, τοιοῦτον ἐκεῖνο ποιεῖ, δυνάμει ὄν].72
The passage brings to language the poetics of perceiving. To be perceived to

involves a kind of poiesis in the middle voice, a suffering as much as a making.
We have encountered already perceiving as a peculiar kind of passion, for it is
not the standard passion of alteration in which what is changed becomes other
than it was, but rather, the sort of being-affected in which what is affected
comes into its own being-at-work. Thus, what produces the perception is here
said to make that which has the capacity to encounter it the sort of thing that
what produces already is. The power of perceiving and the thing perceived
become one in the activity of perceiving itself. The result clause shows this
in the very manner in which it is declared.73 That which produces is said first
to be itself of such a sort in its being at work (τὸ ποιοῦν, οἷον αὐτὸ ἐνεργείᾳ); the
power of perceiving is, at the end of the clause, still yet in potency (δυνάμει
ὄν); in the middle is the poetics of perceiving by which that which produces
the perception makes the power of perceiving the sort of thing the perceived
thing is (τοιοῦτον ἐκεῖνο ποιεῖ). The manner in which the passage is articulated
shows what had been already said in De Anima II.5: “And the ability to per-
ceive is in potency such as the perceived thing is already [ἤδη] in its being-
at-work-staying-itself.”74 The little word “ἤδη”, “already,” expresses the manner
in which what is perceived itself does not, in being perceived, become other
than it has always already been. However, the poetics of perceiving is itself
said to involve a “certain being acted upon” in the middle voice, suggesting
that the perceived thing too undergoes a certain passion. The account of touch
already intimated as much by its recognition that what is tangible acts upon

73 The term “declare” here is meant to express the Greek λόγος ἀποφαντικός, or the kind of
speaking that addresses things by allowing them to show themselves as themselves. For
an account of this sense of declaration, see Long, Aristotle on the Nature of Truth, 72–76.
the medium and the power of tangibility at the same time. There can be no
delusion of pure objectivity with touch, for the power of touch puts us in touch
with the object touched itself. This encounter always involves an ineluctable
dimension of force. As Hans Jonas has suggested: “the contact-situation always
involves pressure and therefore a modicum of force as part of the experience.”75
Even so, however, in touch that which is perceived relinquishes something of
itself to us; we are made to perceive the sort of thing it already is.
Thus, the capacity to perceive is no mere passivity; rather, the power of per-
ceiving itself is an active condition of the soul, a kind of ἕξις that embodies an
ἦθος, or character. When, as he seeks to articulate the nature of touch, Aristotle
himself touches upon perceiving as a mean, he gives voice to the very ethics
of perceiving. Through the aporia of touch, we are made to feel the extent to
which perceiving is itself a habituated power of the soul. If perceiving is the
most primal way animals inhabit the world, in touch we animals feel ourselves
habituated to the world. Thus, although Aristotle has been criticized for failing
to articulate the active side of touch, what the contemporary psychology of
touch calls “haptics,” nevertheless, with his talk of the mean, Aristotle brings
the active dimension of touch to language.76 Listen:
For we do not perceive [οὐκ αἰσθανόμεθα] that which is as hot or cold, or

hard or soft, as we are, but what exceeds us [τῶν ὑπερβολῶν]; for the power
of perceiving is a kind of mean condition [μεσότητος] being between the
contrary attributes in the things perceived. And because of this, it dis-
cerns the things perceived. The mean is capable of discernment, for it
comes to be either of the two extremes in relation to the other.77
As a mean condition between extreme attributes in things perceived, the

hyperbolic power of touch reaches out toward tangible things with an open-
ness capable of discernment. The hyperbolic openness of touch is a kind of
readiness to be affected in which the mean condition itself becomes the root
75 Hans Jonas, The Phenomenon of Life: Toward a Philosophical Biology: Essays (New York,
1966), p. 140.
76 As Cynthia Freeland rightly mentions, contemporary scientists use the term ‘haptics’ to
refer to the active dimension of touch. See Cynthia A. Freeland, “Aristotle on the Sense
of Touch,” in Essays on Aristotle’s De Anima (Oxford, 1995), p. 236. James J. Gibson traces
the vocabulary of “haptics” to the work of G. Revesz on the psychology of the blind, and
makes the distinction between active (haptic) and passive touch central to his psycholog-
ical account of touch. See James J. Gibson, “Observations on Active Touch,” Psychological
Review 69/6 (1962), 477–491.
92 Long
of the possibility of discernment.78 As we have heard, the tongue is perhaps

the best illustration of this; for not only does everything taste bitter to the
sick p erson due to an excess of bitter moisture, but also, as the most tactile
of organs, the tongue is best able to discern the hot and cold, hard and soft.
Indeed, as infants, we find our original way into the world largely through our
capacity to touch with our tongue.
What we discern in reaching out to the world, however, is that the world
itself presses palpably back upon us, makes itself felt, habituating us to it
through touch.79 Aristotle’s emphasis on the hyperbolic dimension of perceiv-
ing suggests that as a mean condition, the power of perceiving is able to per-
ceive what is unlike itself, discerning this as hot only when the temperature
of the perceiving being is cooler than that which is perceived. This suggests
too, however, that as a mean condition perceiving acclimates us to the world
in which we live. Here again the power of touch is felt, though perhaps only in
the absence of feeling; consider, for example, the manner in which your finger
no longer feels the wedding ring already after only a few months of marriage,
or how your body slowly adjusts to the jolting cold of the ocean water.80 We get
used to it. The world makes itself felt, habituates us to it even as we continue to
reach out toward the world, perceiving that which presents itself as sufficiently
different from us to activate our perceptive powers.
Here our ability to find our way in the world, our very proprioception—the
manner in which we orient our body in the world—is itself conditioned by the
reciprocal activity of perceiving in which we reach out to a world receptive to
our active capacities to perceive even as the world presses itself upon our per-
ceptive capacities to receive it.81 Perceiving operates in the middle voice. As a
mean condition, the power of perceiving is the peculiar way we animals hold
78 Polansky rightly speaks of this openness endemic to the mean as a kind of relation as
opposed to a quality. See Polansky, Aristotle’s De Anima, p. 333.
79 Barad puts it this way: “Touch moves and affects what it effects.” See Barad, “On
Touching—The Inhuman That Therefore I Am,” p. 208.
80 To illustrate this phenomenon Ackerman appeals to the example of how a wool sweater
feels scratchy when we first put it on but “after a while, a touch receptor ‘adapts’ to the
stimuli and stops responding”; we get used to it and no longer notice the sweater we are
wearing. See Ackerman, A Natural History of the Senses, p. 81.
81 Ratcliffe rightly brings touch into tight connection with proprioception: “If we adopt a
phenomenological conception of touch, a distinction between proprioception and touch
is, I think, untenable. Touch, extricated from proprioception, would be so impoverished
as to bear little resemblance to the rich and heterogeneous phenomenology integral to
tactile experience.” See Matthew Ratcliffe, “Touch and Situatedness,” International Journal
of Philosophical Studies 16/3 (2008), p. 302.
ourselves toward and with the world. Touch, the most primal power of per-
ceiving, enables us to feel the contours of the power of perceiving itself, which
never comes to language in the vernacular of the grasp. The hand, indeed,
is conspicuously absent from Aristotle’s account of touch where the tongue
emerges as its most proper site.82
Thus, in the end, after touching upon the nature of the imagination
and thinking in De Anima III, Aristotle returns in the final two chapters to
the question of touch, reaffirming it primal significance for animal life. There
again, he speaks of the mean and the earth and of the contraries that make
up the elements of things:
For touch exists as a mean condition [μεσότης] of all tangible things, and
its perceptual organ is receptive not only of the various differences there
are of the earth, but also of hot and of cold and of all the other tangible
things.83
Touch inhabits the space between the living animal and the earth in which we
live, putting us in touch with the very elements of things, enabling us to find
nourishment and flee danger. As a mean condition situated between the living
animal and the life world, touch empowers us to discern the world as it presses
itself upon us and impresses us with the vast diversity of its beauty and the
swiftness with which it slips away. If, as Aristotle reminds us at the end, with-
out touch it is impossible for the animal to live, still it is through touch that the
82 Aristotle famously likens the soul to a hand which “is the tool of tools [ὄργανόν ἐστιν
ὀργάνων].” See Aristotle, De Anima, 432a1–2. Chrétien identifies “fingering” with the capac-
ities of the hand to explore the contours of the felt world. Fingering, which Chrétien says
is a uniquely human capacity, is not a matter of grasping, but of feeling. In this sense,
fingering is the hand’s way of being more like the tongue. Even so, the hand is always too
easily tempted to grasp. (However tempted the tongue may be, grasping is not a capac-
ity given to it.) Although the distinction between fingering and grasping is missing from
Rosen’s account of touch in Aristotle, nevertheless, Rosen well articulates the tendency
of the hand to possess, rather than to identify with its object: “The hand, in grasping the
object, may be said to hold it, not to become it.” Rosen, “Thought and Touch, a Note on
Aristotle’s De Anima,” p. 134. The concern there for Rosen is the distinction between the
mind, which becomes its object, and the hand, which holds its object. Still, the hand’s con-
nection with conceptuality here, with what the Germans call Der Begriff—from begreifen,
to grasp—cannot be denied. Aristotle’s account of touch avoids the logic of the concept
and thus the economy of the grasp, obsessed as it is with possession. The incapacity of the
tongue to grasp is precisely what makes it the proper site of touch for Aristotle.
94 Long
other powers of perceiving enable us to live well in a world that forever slips
from our grasp.84 And yet, in the end, as at the beginning, the tongue, the very
flesh by which we find our way into the world, enables us to signify beautiful
things to one another and thus to touch upon something of the truth the world
itself articulates: that we belong to it as much as it belongs to us; that we are
able to respond to and with the world and one another in ways that enrich
both the world and the lives lived in it; and indeed, that by cultivating our
capacities to touch, we might feel our way toward a more intimate connection
with the elusive nature of life.

Part 2
Visual Perception and Beyond
∵
chapter 5 à Jacques Taminiaux
Beyond the Innocence of the Painter’s Eye

Pavlos Kontos
To overcome or to question the metaphysics of sight, phenomenology need not

militate against the privilege accorded to vision as the main paradigm upon
which philosophical activity has been modeled. Besides, it would be too naïve
to expect that, just by ascribing an equal prominence, for example, to touch,
a magic wand would absolve phenomenology from its debts to traditional
metaphysics, whatever they may be. Instead, a prejudice-free approach to
sight in Merleau-Ponty’s wake, if it were sufficiently radical,1 might succeed in
articulating a non-metaphysical and non-dogmatic “philosophy of vision,” i.e.,
a new “ontology of the visible.”2 Its true contribution would consist in dem-
onstrating that vision is truly the best vehicle by which to dismiss any dichot-
omy between subject and object, spirit and body, evidence and latency, ego
and Others etc. But to achieve that objective, it is necessary to make room for
transcendences that endlessly broaden the orbit of sight, that is to say, the orbit of
visibility and invisibility. The vexed issue to address, then, is whether Merleau-
Ponty’s privileging of sight respects the necessity of these transcendences.
We will first investigate how Merleau-Ponty conceives of p henomenological
reduction in terms of vision and of the painter as a distinguished viewer and
thinker.3 Second, once certain limits of his phenomenology of painting
and visibility are unveiled, we will propose a way to move beyond them by
extending the spectrum of both painting and visibility and by multiplying the
modes of transcendence of which they admit. More specifically, the paradigms
1 The sufficiency of Merleau-Ponty’s ontology is what Derrida calls into question in Jacques
Derrida, Le toucher. Jean-Luc Nancy (Paris, 2000), pp. 210–243.
2 See Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Le Visible et L’Invisible (Paris, 1964); English translation: The
Visible and the Invisible, trans. Alfonso Lingis (Evanston, 1968), pp. 110 and 182 (respectively—
all references to Merleau-Ponty’s works are to the pagination of the French original text). In
that regard, although with critical reservations to become manifest later on, I tend to share
Dastur’s charitable approach: “were not it possible, while remaining the heir of the tradition,
to put into question from within the inexplicit presuppositions this tradition is based upon?”
(Françoise Dastur, Chair et langage [Paris, 2001], pp. 97–98). See also Claude Lefort, Sur Une
Colonne Absente: Ecrits autour de Merleau-Ponty (Paris, 1978), pp. 146–152.
3 See Jacques Taminiaux’s classic analysis in “The Thinker and the Painter,” in The Merleau-
Ponty Aesthetic Reader, ed. G. Johnson (Evanston, 1993), pp. 278–292.

98 Kontos
of Byzantine painting and of theatre, so we will argue, exhort us to revise or

broaden Merleau-Ponty’s categories of painting, visibility, and invisibility.
1 Phenomenological Reduction and Vision
Merleau-Ponty always praised phenomenological reduction as the philo-

sophical method that plainly satisfies the desideratum of philosophical
self-awareness:4
it is because we are through and through compounded of relationships

with the world that for us the only way to become aware of this fact is to
suspend this movement, to refuse it our complicity (to look at it ohne
mitzumachen, as Husserl often says) [. . .] we must break with our famil-
iarity with it [. . .].5
Undoubtedly, such an epochê brings with it several perplexities of which

Husserl himself was progressively aware. Despite them, however, Merleau-
Ponty takes the epochê as the very starting-point of philosophy. If there is a sig-
nificant divergence between Husserl and Merleau-Ponty, it concerns the way
in which they approach the reflexivity proper to the natural attitude. While
the early Husserl tends to undermine its significance, Merleau-Ponty moder-
ates, even rejects, that disparagement, since he wishes to ground philosophical
reflexivity in a kind that is primordial and original. That is also why, throughout
his work, Merleau-Ponty praises Eugen Fink’s—not Husserl’s—understanding
of the kind of motivation that leads us to performing the phenomenological
reduction.6 That motivation is identified as wonder in the face of the world,
4 See, indicatively, Renaud Barbaras, The Being of the Phenomenon (Bloomington/Indianapolis,

2004), p. 148; Sara Heinämaa, “From Decisions to Passions,” in Merleau-Ponty’s Reading of
Husserl, eds. T. Toadvine and L. Embree (Dordrecht/Boston/London, 2002), pp. 127–146;
Joel Smith, “Merleau-Ponty and the Phenomenological reduction,” Inquiry 28 (2005), 553–571;
Ted Toadvine, “Merleau-Ponty’s reading of Husserl,” in Merleau-Ponty’s Reading of Husserl,
pp. 227–286, here: pp. 268–277. For a detailed overview, see Matthew Goodwin, The Artist
and the Philosopher: The Aesthetic Phenomenological Method of Maurice Merleau-Ponty (Diss.,
Southern Illinois University Carbondale, 2007).
5 Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Phénoménologie de la Perception (Paris, 1945), p. viii; see also pp. i,
341–342. I use with modifications the English translation Phenomenology of Perception, trans.
C. Smith (London, 2005).
6 See Eugen Fink, Proximité et distance (Grenoble, 1994), p. 52. For the use of “wonder” by
Merleau-Ponty, see the ingenious analysis by Mauro Carbone, “A partir de Cézanne,” in
Figures de la finitude, ed. G. Florival (Louvain-la-Neuve, 1988), pp. 100–114.
Beyond the Innocence of the Painter ’ s Eye 99
the self and the Other—no matter whether wonder represents here a sponta-
neous and conscious attitude, or instead a Heideggerian Stimmung: “The best
formulation of the reduction is probably that given by Eugen Fink, Husserl’s
assistant, when he spoke of ‘wonder’ in the face of the world.”7
By contrast, it is striking that when the question of the reduction’s objec-
tive is raised, Merleau-Ponty subscribes to two Husserlian patterns of thought
that appear eerily Platonic, namely reminiscence and sight: “Philosophy can-
not but re-place our relationship to the world before our sight”; for “[t]rue
philosophy consists in relearning to look at the world.”8 Both of these phrases
are variations on the basic phenomenological credo that reduction is not the
outcome of a constitution-process but simply the result of a specific policy of
reminiscence. The phenomenologist is precisely entitled to bring to light that
which, though already present and operational in the natural attitude, has not
yet been thematized and seen as such. In other words, the natural attitude is
a transcendental presupposition for the philosophical stance.9 It is precisely
the non-violent and, at the limit, passive character of philosophy that fits with
its accompanying role: “The originating [originaire] breaks up and philosophy
must accompany this break-up, this non-coincidence, this differentiation.”10
Evidently, the philosophical truth to be unconcealed in this process calls for
genetic—not for static—phenomenology, which prescribes that conscious-
ness should not be described as a closed and all-including sphere of reality, as
if no real transcendence were possible. Instead, one should bring to light the
transcendences that are already at work within consciousness itself and reveal
the weakness of consciousness. It is all well-known that Husserl himself had
hinted at and examined a number of such genuine and unbridgeable transcen-
dences, such as original temporality, life, and open intersubjectivity. The Visible
and the Invisible bears witness to the radicalization of these instances by open-
ing the field of what it labels the “savage world,” that is, a world resisting any
domination by consciousness itself: “Husserl’s (phenomenological reduction)
awakes [réveille] a savage world and a savage spirit.”11 Thus, the final objec-
tive of phenomenological reduction is to enlighten the savage or ‘baroque’
7 Merleau-Ponty, Phénoménologie, p. viii; see also Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Notes de Cours

1959–1961 (Paris, 1996), p. 78; Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Sens et non-sens (Paris, 1948), English
translation: Sense and Non-Sense, trans. H. Dreyfus and P. A. Dreyfus (Evanston, 1964),
pp. 105, 165; Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Signes (Paris, 1960), English translation: Signs, trans.
R. McCleary (Evanston, 1964), p. 37.
8 See respectively Merleau-Ponty, Phénoménologie, pp. xiii, xvi (my emphasis).
9 Edmund Husserl, Zur phänomenologischen Reduktion (1926–1935) (Dordrecht, 2002),
pp. 72–75.
10 Merleau-Ponty, Le Visible, p. 163.
11 Merleau-Ponty, Signes, p. 294.
100 Kontos
world, or, in Merleau-Ponty’s synonymous terms, the fact of “reflexivity” or the

“reversibility” proper to the “flesh”.
The furthering of genetic phenomenology yields a new perspective on
vision and sight. For according to the reflexivity of the “flesh,” vision is neither
a kind of spontaneity proper to consciousness nor an insertion into the world
by means of sense organs. The world is neither pure transcendence nor pure
‘en soi’ but transparency, that is to say, a condition of visibility. To present this
cluster of ideas in a more tangible way, it suffices to follow Merleau-Ponty’s
beloved example of what is visible, namely the example of color. Color is not
a quale, that is, a pure and finite visible thing appearing in front of and fixed
by our eyes; it is always and already invaded by a sort of invisibility and “atmo-
spheric existence.” Within the region of vision, a color is this red only in relation
to other reds and within a constellation including other colors surrounding it,
with which it antagonizes in terms of attractiveness.12 Further, although vis-
ible in itself, color does not emerge from within a pure orbit of visibility but
exceeds, so to speak, the territory of sight: it is what it is only as bound with a
certain texture, for example, a metallic or plastic material. The visible appears
through its intimate relation to the tactile. Obviously, color is not touchable in
itself, but its inner differentiations and qualifications are dependent on touch
too, insofar as it thereby acquires the maximum of its richness and evidence.
In other terms, the optimum manifestation of color is not exclusively a matter
of optimal visibility. Moreover, color appears only as embedded in things, for
example in robes and houses, and hence within a surrounding world endow-
ing these things with a meaning we are acquainted with. That meaning does
not exclusively emanate from our perceptual senses or from the everyday use
of things. Beyond any such boundaries, color is ingrained with historical and
cultural connotations, for example, by being the emblematic Blue of Greece or
by being associated with myths and fictions.
The same sort of reversibility is detectable within the structure of our living
bodies (Leib, chair). On the one hand, there is encroachment (empiètement)
not only between the touched and the touching but also between touching
and seeing, for the same universe that is accessible to us through vision is also
accessible through touch. My own body as an object in the world testifies to
that ambiguity too: even though it is primarily due to touch that I have access
to it, that access is by nature limited and, finally, insufficient to generate a full
12 This way of reasoning should be understood as a progressive departure from Husserl’s
horizon which, at least initially, has been conceived of as an object or an object-in-general;
see Pavlos Kontos, “Perception et négation (Husserl, Heidegger, Merleau-Ponty),” Etudes
phénoménologiques 22 (1995), 51–80.
objectification of my own body. It is only by dint of the sight of the Others

perceiving me that my own Leib can, for the first time, become an objec-
tive part of the visible world.13 The living body enjoys a distinguished status
among the aforementioned modes of reversibility, for it duplicates and com-
plicates the play of reversibility: vision is possible only because the living body
is itself visible. Thus, if the flesh is the ratio essendi of reversibility, the living
body is its ratio cognoscendi:
carnal being [l’être charnel], as a being of depths, of several leaves or sev-

eral faces, a being in latency [. . .] is a prototype of being, of which our
body, the sensible sentient, is a very remarkable variant, but whose con-
stitutive paradox already lies in every visible.14
This phenomenological understanding of transcendences culminates in no

longer locating the origin of vision in a personal self but in what Merleau-
Ponty calls “anonymous life” or “intersubjective flesh.”15 The previous meta-
phors are meant to designate the play of perception on the level of an original
chiasm before or beneath the interference of self-centered spontaneity. Hence,
notwithstanding the ineluctable primacy of vision, its very autonomy and self-
sufficiency have been emasculated. If the conception of vision is a part of the
genetic story about the meaning and the ends of phenomenological reduc-
tion, philosophy’s mission should have been clear enough by now. It repre-
sents the kind of method which should lay these modalities of reversibility
bare and explain why no kind of manifestation and no kind of experience
can be ever located, respectively, in an objective spectacle or within solus
ipse. Transcendence is not primarily an event of consciousness. That is to say,
passivity, intersubjectivity, culture/language, expression etc. do not permeate
the self according to a law proper to the self. They are rather symptoms of the
event of reversibility. Accordingly, the final word of The Visible and the Invisible
is nothing less than a definition of the truth that phenomenological reduction
wishes to unveil: “reversibility is the ultimate truth.”16
It should be underlined, then, that the outcome of phenomenological reduc-
tion does not bespeak a Socratic aporetic stance. It lies in the bold statement
that reversibility is the ultimate truth. Nevertheless, this tenor is not incompat-
ible with the notion that reversibility is never total but always imminent, that
13 Husserl, Ideen zu einer reinen Phänomenologie II (Dordrecht, 1991), p. 167.

15 See respectively Merleau-Ponty, Le Visible, pp. 294–295; Signes, p. 285.
102 Kontos
is, a tendency rather than an accomplishment or a mere coincidence. There

fore, the bold statement above holds true as long as one does not violate the
law of non-coincidence: the world is not vision, the invisible is an element
and never the visible object, the visible object is not absorbed by elements,
my living body is not a mere thing, your living body and mine are not inter-
changeable, my ego is not reduced to pure anonymity, intersubjectivity can
never entirely amount to fusion, language and culture are not mere expres-
sions of mute experience but necessarily imply institution and sedimentation
etc. In short, reversibility does not bring with it the triumph of mere fusion or
an endless regress of negativities.
One might suggest that the rationale of reversibility precludes any sort of
precedence and that, therefore, there is no room for assigning any privilege
to vision either. What is more, it seems that, according to Husserl’s famous
analysis in Ideas II, the sense of touch enjoys the privilege of establishing the
true reversibility between the touching and the touched hands, while the eye
cannot simultaneously be the object and the subject of sight.17 Merleau-Ponty
also and all too often reverts to the example of touching hands. Nevertheless,
he means to extend the same sort of reflexivity to sight,18 without evidently
introducing any counter-intuitive argument against the non-visibility of the
eye.19 His thesis is rather symptomatic of his strategy to underline the deep
and mutual dependency between the senses, the intersubjective/anonymous
condition of visibility, and the reality of my eye as seen in the mirror. The lurk-
ing idea seems to be that reflexivity should not be restricted to the immediate
presence of things as if it were to establish a new sort of evidence for which the
immediacy of touching hands is held to be the genuine guarantor. Reflexivity
and reversibility are a question of depth and distance. From that perspective,
there is no reason to refrain from maintaining that seeing embodies a sort of
touch: “[it] envelops, palpates, and espouses the visible things, [since, in real-
ity, it constitutes] a remarkable variant [of palpation].”20 It follows that, even
though sight has forgone its metaphysical burden, it proves to integrate each
and any sort of privilege proper to the other senses. To comply with this rea-
soning does not—at least, not by itself—mean to condone an illicit strategy
17 Husserl, Ideen II, p. 150.

18 For a detailed analysis of the relationship between sight and touch in Merleau-Ponty, see
Derrida, Le toucher, pp. 210–243; Dastur, Chair et langage, pp. 94–105; Patrick Leconte,
“L’entrepression charnelle,” Bulletin d’analyse phénoménologique 4 (2009), 1–30.
19 See, for example, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, La nature. Cours au Collège de France (Paris,
1995), p. 286.
of usurpation, since one might suppose that, for example, while reflexivity is
proper to touch, it is also characteristic of vision. Or further, one might suggest
that to validly show the omnipresence of reflexivity we should not linger on
the obvious example of touching hands but on the less obvious case of vision.
No matter how one might want to excuse Merleau-Ponty’s vehement predi-
lection for sight, however, we are impelled to recognize its dominance, which is
easily detectable in his visual metaphors and all the more in one and the same
metaphor he resorts to every time he intends to illustrate the various modes of
reflexivity. This is the metaphor of the mirror which, despite its obvious optical
connotations, is brought into play to denote not only the reversibility proper
to visibility but reversibility in itself: “the flesh is a mirror phenomenon.”21
A number of passages bolster the same claim and deserve our attention for
they cover almost any case of chiasm, reversibility, and reflection: the experi-
ence of touching the hand of the Other as substituting for my hand constitutes
a “kind of reflection” and is of the same nature with the experience of cross-
ing glances: “eine Art der Reflexion.”22 Even the experience of sound, insofar as
it obeys the law of reversibility, constitutes a “specular phenomenon.”23 The
metaphor of the mirror draws its strength from its appropriateness to contest
the Cartesian understanding of the mirror as not-constituting a case of true
reversibility.24 All these intertwined patterns merge in the following passage:
[. . .] is formed a Visibility, a Tangible in itself, which belong properly nei-

ther to the body qua fact nor to the world qua fact—as upon two mirrors
facing one another where two indefinite series of images set in one
another arise which belong really to neither of the two surfaces [. . .]:
there is a fundamental narcissism of all vision [. . .].25
If reversibility is the ultimate truth and mirroring and vision really are the
most suitable metaphors to grasp it, phenomenology and phenomenological
reduction cannot remain intact. Still, Merleau-Ponty oscillates between two
options regarding phenomenology’s aspirations: the romantic search for a
return to our primitive and innocent experience of reversibility is juxtaposed
by the awareness of the fact that such a return is elusive. On the one hand,
21 Merleau-Ponty, Le Visible, p. 303 (note from May 1960).

22 See respectively Signes, p. 275 and Le Visible, p. 243 (note from May 1959).
24 Maurice Merleau-Ponty, L’Oeil et L’Esprit (Paris, 1964), English translation: Eye and Mind,
trans. G. Johnson, in The Merleau-Ponty Aesthetic Reader, pp. 38–39.
25 Merleau-Ponty, Le Visible, p. 181 (my emphasis); see also p. 189.
104 Kontos
he maintains that phenomenology is motivated by the “ambition to make

reflection emulate the unreflective life of consciousness.” On the other hand,
however, as early as in the Phenomenology of Perception, he is not reluctant to
admit that “as thinking subjects we are never the unreflective subject that we
seek to know.”26 Later, he will unreservedly state that philosophy should not
even hope to “absorb” the mystery of reversibility: “The immediate is at the
horizon and must be thought as such; it is only by remaining at a distance that
it remains itself.”27 The same sort of vacillation occurs when Merleau-Ponty
comes to identify the starting-point of philosophy. The question is of whether
philosophizing begins as an initiative of a personal or monadic ego or, alterna-
tively, represents an anonymous tendency of humanity. The Phenomenology of
Perception, in the final pages of its introduction, portrayed the philosopher as
a self-conscious subject practicing the phenomenological reduction “out of his
initiative” or “by becoming responsible of his own history by means of reflec-
tion,” on the ground of “a decision to which we engage our life.” By contrast, in
his portrait of Husserl, the emphasis is put on the fact that there is a layer of
thought that Husserl himself neither controls nor dominates. Merleau-Ponty
understands philosophy as being already present within our ‘natural dispo-
sitions’ or ‘mute experience’. Though philosophy constitutes, inescapably, a
second version of our contact with the world, the philosophical impulse as
such is as primordial as any contact with the world: “a ‘ça philosophique’, an
instinct or a transcendental life [. . .] which, in the sediment of the past, does
not constitute but an anonymous ‘es’, a connection of philosophical intersub-
jectivity behind its back.”28
These ambiguities will not leave vision uncontaminated as the main means
of philosophical activity. The emerging competing model is that of trans-
forming and creating. The Phenomenology of Perception had readily utilized
the metaphor of seeing: eidetic reduction should present us a spectacle,
while philosophy should “re-place [the world] before our sight,” and “step[s]
back in order to see the forms of transcendence.”29 The vocabulary of vision,
spectators and spectacle will not be abandoned even in The Visible and the
Invisible, although it is always anticipated by the proviso that no “positive
vision” is implied. The rupture with this pattern comes about each time phi-
losophy is envisaged as a kind of transforming that requires creativity and not
26 See respectively Merleau-Ponty, Phénoménologie, p. xi and p. 76.

27 Merleau-Ponty, Le Visible, p. 161; see also Notes, pp. 68–69.
28 Merleau-Ponty, Notes, p. 80 (my translation).
29 See respectively Merleau-Ponty, Phénoménologie, pp. viii, xiii, 71 (my emphasis).
a merely adjusted vision. The notion of creativity had already cropped up in

the Phenomenology of Perception but will be progressively solidified:
Philosophy as [. . .] expression of the mute experience by itself is creation.

[. . .] It is hence a creation in a radical sense: a creation that is at the same
time an adequation, the only way to obtain an adequation. [. . .] For art and
philosophy together are precisely not arbitrary fabrications in the uni-
verse of the ‘spiritual’, but contact with being precisely as creations. Being
is what requires creation of us to experience it.30
Vision is no longer the exclusive model of philosophical activity, because phe-

nomenological reduction can never answer the expectations to fully grasp the
truth of reversibility: “the incompleteness of the reduction is not an obstacle
to the reduction; it is the reduction itself, the rediscovery of vertical being.”31
Merleau-Ponty means two things by this: First, that phenomenology can never
reach—and, more importantly, it should not aspire to reach—a final foun-
dation, no matter whether it corresponds to consciousness, brute being, or
life. Second, that it should always begin from the start and never claim, as dia-
lectic and reflexive philosophy often do, to say the final philosophical word.
Hence, phenomenology is merely authorized to re-establish, re-confirm and
re-validate one and the same statement, namely, that reversibility is the ulti-
mate truth. It should be content with representing a sort of “negative philoso-
phy” (as we say “negative theology”).32
Phenomenological reduction remains, by nature, incomplete, since it can
achieve no coincidence with primordial truth. This is due to a kind of defi-
ciency proper to philosophical reason, for which one should blame its intrinsic
features. And, first of all, the philosophical language which, in distinction to
the language of literature and despite its being grounded in the parole parlante,
remains too far away from truth. Furthermore, philosophy always comes with
delay to raise a question to the second power and, what is more, it does not
work from within the realm of vision. An ancillary reason is that philosophy’s
creativity might be damaged. Finally, though philosophy designates an e ternal
beginning, its institutional and historical status might prove too rigid and
30 Merleau-Ponty, Le Visible, pp. 247–248 (note from June 1959, my emphasis); see also p. 180.
31 Merleau-Ponty, Le Visible, pp. 229–230 (note from February 1959); see also Phénoménologie,
pp. viii, xvi.
32 Merleau-Ponty, Le Visible, p. 231. I assume that this is also the meaning of what Merleau-
Ponty qualifies as sufficient reduction (Le Visible, p. 224, note from February 1959).
106 Kontos
concept-laden to allow an original restart. In a word, philosophy of vision is, by

nature, less innocent than it should be. Merleau-Ponty’s own words could not
be more suggestive: “[philosophy is] a privative non-coinciding, a coinciding
from afar, a divergence, and something like a ‘good error’.”33 Instead, painting—
as a sort of vision—is innocent and is philosophy and then, by entailment,
“a closer study of painting would lead to a different philosophy.”34
2 The Painter as Innocent Viewer and Thinker of the Visible
It is indisputable that Merleau-Ponty envisages painting as a sort of philosophi-

cal reflection or hyper-reflection (sur-réflexion). Painting and painters embody,
respectively, genuine philosophy and genuine philosophers:
[. . .] in paintings themselves we could seek a figured philosophy of vision.

[For] [t]his philosophy is what animates the painter—not when he
expresses opinions about the world but in that instant when his vision
becomes gesture, when, in Cézanne’s words, he ‘thinks in painting’.35
Accordingly, Eye and Mind does not address the question of beauty but that of
truth. What matters is only truth as it manifests itself in the “ontological for-
mula of painting,”36 for Merleau-Ponty does not subscribe to the ancient Greek
conception equating the true with the good and the beautiful.37 And we know
already that reversibility is the ultimate truth. Thus, the natural conclusion to
draw is that Merleau-Ponty’s study on painting means to argue that painting
constitutes a genuine access to truth, insofar as it is deaf to the sirens of science
and of the “thought from above” (pensée de survol). And, hence, the originality
of his argument does not lie in his complying with the old idea that art and
aesthetics is about truth, but in his very new conception of the sort of truth

34 Merleau-Ponty, L’Oeil et L’Esprit, p. 42.
35 See respectively: Merleau-Ponty, L’Oeil et L’Esprit, pp. 32, 60; see also Notes, p. 58.
37 Galen Johnson, The Retrieval of the Beautiful (Evanston, 2010), pp. 36–41 offers a close
analysis of the “only two occurrences of the word beauty (la beauté) or its cognates in
all three of Merleau-Ponty’s essays on painting.” Nonetheless, he maintains—and I think
he is right in doing so—that we can re-insert beauty in a way which is in continuity with
Merleau-Ponty’s framework. See also Robert Burch, “On the topic of Art and Truth,” in The
Merleau-Ponty Aesthetic Reader, pp. 347–370.
here entailed. Before we move on to that issue and its ensuing perplexities, we
should fill in details the resemblances between philosophy of vision and paint-
ing as an exercise of vision. These will prove that Merleau-Ponty attributes to
painting all of the features of the phenomenological reduction that we previ-
ously pointed out.
First of all, painting is reminiscent of the epochê and its cardinal motive,
namely, wonder. The portrait of Cézanne is among other things a hymn to
“wonder”. Besides, the very title of the text “Cézanne’s doubt” is an indirect
allusion to phenomenological reduction: “Cézanne’s painting suspends [our]
habits [. . .] it is an unfamiliar world” for “only one emotion is possible for this
painter: the feeling of strangeness.”38 Painting, however, can do better than
philosophy because it intensifies philosophy’s creative moment, for the simple
reason that the former shares the same fabric with the realm of the visible.
The painter creates a visible reality pregnant with colors, lines, light etc.,
and hence there is no gap between reflection and creation or between eye and
mind. In a sense, the painter’s body re-creates and proliferates what the human
body already knows: “painting is natura naturans [. . .] transforms in order to
grasp the form in its birth.”39 Nevertheless, like philosophy, painting is labori-
ous and never achieved: “phenomenology is laborious as the works of Balzac,
Proust, Valery, Cézanne,” and the reason is that “only one lyricism is possible
for the painter: that of the continual rebirth of existence.”40 A good many pas-
sages introduce the idea that no painting can be the last one, and that no real
painter can stop painting. The former holds true because painting, like the phi-
losophy of the flesh, lays no claim to a monopolized truth. The latter also holds
true, conceding that painting is not external to the painter’s life. According to
the concluding lines of the study on Cézanne, “that is why he never finished
working. We never get away from our life.”41 Painting and philosophy share a
further common feature: they represent a genetic phenomenology that brings
to light what has been lost or forgotten. Merleau-Ponty’s terms for this are:
re-finding, re-opening, re-creating etc. And one is then entitled to say about
painting what we have already said about philosophy: it restores the enigma of
38 See respectively Merleau-Ponty, Sens, pp. 28, 30 (see also Phénoménologie, p. xvi).
39 Merleau-Ponty, Notes, pp. 56–58; see also Phénoménologie, p. xv, and the previously
quoted passage from Le Visible, pp. 247–248.
40 See respectively Merleau-Ponty, Phénoménologie, p. xvi and Sens, p. 30.
108 Kontos
visibility:42 “[. . .] painting awakens a delirium which is vision itself.”43 To sum

up, painting and philosophy coalesce at key junctures. They share the same
objectives (i.e., to reveal the truth of reversibility), the same genetic method
(i.e., genealogy of vision), the same starting-point (i.e., wonder and epochê),
and the same temporality (i.e., perpetual restart).
Evidently, the claim that painting itself—not only the philosophy of
painting—can serve as ontology of vision needs further clarification, but
Merleau-Ponty remains cryptic on the matter. It is between the lines of his
texts that one should detect the exact philosophical mission with which paint-
ing is charged. First of all, painting functions as a substitute for philosophy in
that painters are ready to say what philosophers should refrain from saying,
although they are tempted to. This is because the phenomenological descrip-
tion of experience is not allowed to surmount a certain limit of proximity to
the enigma of reversibility for fear that it will transgress the boundaries of
what is, in fact, accessible to philosophy. The following page from The Visible
and the Invisible is fairly suggestive in this regard:
Thus, since the seer is caught up in what he sees, it is still himself he sees:
there is a fundamental narcissism of all vision. And thus, for the same
reason, the vision he exercises, he also undergoes from the things, such
that, as many painters have said, I feel myself looked at by the things, my
activity is equally passivity—which is the second and more profound
sense of the narcissism: [. . .], so that the seer and the visible reciprocate
one another and we no longer know which sees and which is seen.44
If we brush aside the two clauses I have put in italics, both of which are indebted
to painters as Merleau-Ponty explicitly acknowledges in other occurrences, the
42 The only change of focus concerns the intersubjective status of awakening. As a matter of
fact, although without any clear differentiation, Merleau-Ponty takes painting to awaken
the genesis of vision not only within the painter himself but also for the sake of the viewer
of paintings (Merleau-Ponty, L’Oeil et L’Esprit, p. 63). Unfortunately, however, no extended
analysis of the viewer is available in L’Oeil et L’Esprit. Trevor Perri, “Image and ontology
in Merleau-Ponty,” Continental Philosophy Review 46 (2013), 75–97, exploits Merleau-
Ponty’s random references to images and imagination to offer a detailed and eloquent
analysis of images and of their spectators. See also Nicolas de Warren, “Flesh Made Paint,”
Journal of the British Society for Phenomenology 44/1 (2013), 78–104, who explains Merleau-
Ponty’s account of image-consciousness in its opposition to those by Husserl and Sartre
(pp. 97–101).
43 Merleau-Ponty, L’Oeil et L’Esprit, p. 26; see also pp. 26, 30, 70, and Signes, p. 33.
44 Merleau-Ponty, Le Visible, p. 181 (my emphasis).
previous passage provides us with a rigid phenomenological analysis. The key

idea is that the world is out there as a source of affection and that, in turn, the
perceiver is primarily passive as the subject of affection. Husserl’s Analyses of
passive synthesis abounds with similar descriptions. But Merleau-Ponty wishes
he were in a position to say something more and, at the same time, he realizes
that such statements are prohibited, so to speak. That is why he puts them
in the mouth of painters, in the way in which, mutatis mutandis, Plato brings
his myths into play. Nonetheless, his philosophical tenet is that reversibility is
never accomplished and that the perceiver is always a perceiver whereas the
world is never a perceiver: “The flesh of the world is not self-sensing [se sentir]
as is my flesh—it is sensible and not sentient.”45 The painter’s voice substitutes
for the philosopher’s voice or the painter instantiates the philosopher’s own
shadow. The reader of Eye and Mind gets the impression that Merleau-Ponty
reasons as if he were a Husserl who happens to be, at the same time, aware of
his shadow and a lover of painting.
But painting is also charged with other roles, all of which cause a number
of difficulties. To begin with, it is staggering that the most common way for
Merleau-Ponty to refer to painting is by the words: “as the painters say.” The
reader of the Phenomenology of Perception and of Eye and Mind will count
some thirty occurrences of this phrase. Not any frequent references to paintings
themselves, not any long analysis of particular paintings or styles or periods,
and much less any protracted argument about aesthetic theories but paint-
er’s words or the words witnessed by their spokesmen provide Merleau-Ponty
with the main and most reliable thread in his describing painting and art. Is
this a reliable method? Merleau-Ponty has noted, in passing, that Cézanne
did not accept any distinction between “the painter who sees and the painter
who thinks.”46 Nevertheless, if the privilege of painting is due to its being a
“mute thinking,” it would be dubious to assume that the paintings themselves
and, on the other, the words of painters are in position to spell out the same
truth. It is telling that at these junctures Merleau-Ponty employs painting in
order to further consolidate his own phenomenological claims. The painters—
usually Cézanne—are invoked as authorities who confirm Merleau-Ponty’s
analysis of color, reflection, light etc. Thus, painting functions as a trustworthy
assistant to philosophy, in that it is called on to consolidate conclusions already
or tentatively established by virtue of phenomenological analysis. It remains to
be examined whether that prominent role of assistant is somehow vindicated
or whether it is just taken for granted that painters are the i ndisputable masters

46 Merleau-Ponty, Sens, p. 22.
110 Kontos
of the visible. The same sort of puzzle comes about each time Merleau-Ponty
understands painting as the path philosophers should take in order to move
away from speculative philosophy. This is certainly the case in the introduction
to Signs and the main point of the Third Chapter of Eye and Mind devoted to
Descartes. The objective of this chapter is only apparently to explain the cause
of Descartes’ partial failure to deal with the problem of visibility; its latent goal
is to announce the need for a new philosophy or for “a new balance.” Here,
painting is not just an assistant but becomes philosophy’s guide. Again, how-
ever, more should be said to furnish the premises explaining why painting can
legitimately serve as philosophy’s guide.
To exacerbate these perplexities, Merleau-Ponty also follows a reverse course,
that is, a path leading from philosophy to painting, in that he often applies
to painting his findings about reversibility. For example, in the First Chapter
of Eye and Mind, after having presented the bare bones of his views about
the enigma of visibility, Merleau-Ponty introduces painting in the following
way: “Once this strange system of exchanges is given, we find before us all the
problems of painting. These problems illustrate the enigma of the body and
the enigma, in turn, legitimates them.”47 This strong claim, as well as a num-
ber of similar ones, inevitably renders painting obedient to the ontology of the
flesh. The result is that the very idiosyncrasy of painting evaporates. To real-
ize this danger, it is enough to read a passage from Eye and Mind quoted too
frequently: “It is by lending his body to the world that the artist changes the
world into paintings.”48 But the same metaphor is invoked in The Visible and
the Invisible in order for our universal experience of the body—not the spe-
cific experience of the painter—to be described: “this magical relation [. . .]
according to which I lend [to things] my body in order that they inscribe upon
it and give me their resemblance.”49 If these claims were simply tautological,
then being a painter would amount to nothing more than having a body and
anyone of us would be a quasi-painter. The previous puzzles allow us to realize
that, though painting might be the mastery of vision, it is far from evident why
it should also represent a philosophy or ontology of vision, no matter whether
painting serves as an assistant, a guide, a substitute, or an obedient student of
philosophy. To linger on all these perplexing paradigms would hardly be wise.
Thus, in what follows I will restrict myself to introducing two examples sub-
stantiating how painting and art might guide the ontology of vision and revers-
ibility to the discovery of new forms of transcendences.

3 Painting, Vision and Its Emblems
It would be meaningless to level against Merleau-Ponty’s ontology the trivial

and anemic objection that certain painters and paintings cast doubt on its
reliability.50 The real worry is whether Merleau-Ponty’s ontology of painting is
trapped in a very restricted conception of carnal visibility and invisibility that
fails to do justice to the possibilities inherent in painting itself.51 Obviously, he
is justified in maintaining that “painting celebrates no other enigma but that of
visibility,”52 insofar as paintings constitute and institute visibility. Nonetheless,
the question is whether painting is exclusively tied to the sort of reversibility
that Merleau-Ponty’s ontology argues for:
it is therefore not a de facto invisible, like an object hidden behind

another, and not an absolute invisible, which would have nothing to do
with the visible. Rather it is the invisible of this world, that which inhabits
this world, sustains it, and renders it visible, its own and interior possibil-
ity, the Being of this being.53
Such a conception of visibility and invisibility as well as a number of auxiliary

notions sustaining it are not, however, universally applicable to painting—at
least not without being partially overhauled. There is, in fact, a prominent
example which, in a very systematic and consistent way, undermines or
complicates certain central and intertwined claims made by Merleau-Ponty:
Byzantine icons. The term ‘icons’54 as a synonym for paintings—by which, in
any case, Merleau-Ponty does not mean the Byzantine icons proper—occupies
a small but important place in the economy of Eye and Mind. It is mentioned
four times, for Merleau-Ponty intends to substitute icons for “profane” images,
50 For the pertinence of Merleau-Ponty’s analysis of painting, see Stéphanie Ménasé,
Passivite et Création: Merleau-Ponty et L’Art Moderne (Paris, 2003).
51 See Véronique Fóti, “The Evidence of Painting,” in Merleau-Ponty: Difference, Materiality,
Painting, ed. Véronique Fóti (New Jersey, 1996), pp. 137–168; “The Dimension of Color,”
in The Merleau-Ponty Aesthetic Reader, pp. 293–308, and her fascinating analysis in
Tracing Expression in Merleau-Ponty (Evanston, 2013), pp. 27–56; Michel Haar, “Painting,
Perception, Affectivity,” in Merleau-Ponty: Difference, Materiality, Painting, pp. 177–193.
Fóti and Haar address similar, though different, objections to Merleau-Ponty’s restricted
conception of painting.
54 See also Merleau-Ponty, Notes, p. 174: “It’s in this way that there can be beings which do
constitute neither a thing ‘in itself’ nor nothing: the paintings—the icons.”
112 Kontos
to the extent that: “the word image is in bad repute because we have thought-
lessly believed that a drawing was a tracing, a copy, a second thing.” ‘Icon’ and
‘carnal essence’ are used as synonyms, and this is the reason why painting may
be envisaged as the ‘iconography’ of philosophy. Hence, Merleau-Ponty is enti-
tled to say that, in Descartes’ conception of painting, “icons lose their powers.”55
Byzantine icons are important at this juncture not because it is allegedly oppor-
tune to literalize the use of the term ‘icon’ by Merleau-Ponty and to contrast it
with his total disregard for Byzantine icons themselves.56 What matters is that
his definition of painting hardly ascribes to Byzantine icons or to any similar
sort of painting a critical place in the history of art. Hence, what matters is that
the paradigm of icons exhorts us to revise or broaden Merleau-Ponty’s catego-
ries of painting, visibility and invisibility, not to repudiate them.
It is not difficult to understand why Byzantine icons do not chime well with
Merleau-Ponty’s analysis of visibility in terms of our carnal condition. To do
so, it suffices to allude to the celebrated masterpiece by Andre Rublev, The
Holy Trinity.57 It represents the Old Testament trinity. The type of this icon
is also known as “Abraham’s Hospitality.” Rublev’s icon consciously breaks
with the iconographical tradition of the subject and bears heavy theological
connotations—later the icon will be recognised as the canonical depiction of
the Holy Trinity.58 All that aside, the nub of the matter is that Merleau-Ponty’s
categories are pertinent to Rublev’s painting only on condition that they make
room for a broader understanding of both visibility and invisibility:
(1) The three figures/angels, the way in which and the reason why they turn their
heads, their sceptres, the mountain, the oak tree, and the house of Abraham
55 See respectively Merleau-Ponty, L’Oeil et L’Esprit, pp. 22, 23, 32, 39.
56 Ironically, icon-painters would have readily endorsed a number of Merleau-Ponty’s
notions, as it is, for example, Klee’s phrase, quoted and endorsed by Merleau-Ponty, that
the “[painter’s] hand is nothing but the hand of a distant will” (L’Oeil et L’Esprit, p. 86).
This is precisely the meaning of their signing the icons by the phrase “by the hand of . . .,”
no matter the sort of ‘distant will’ here implied. And this principle holds a fortiori for the
Russian iconographical tradition, according to which human hands as means of human
independence and labor symbolize the affinity between the painter and the peasants.
57 Rublev A., Holy Trinity, between 1408–25, wood, tempera,  141.5 × 114, Tretyakov Gallery in
Moscow.
58 For the innovative character of the icon and its theological meaning, see the detailed
and illuminating analysis by Gabriel Bunge, The Rublev Trinity (New York, 2007). For
its uniqueness in terms of painting, see Pavel Florensky, Iconostasis (New York, 1996).
My brief comments are heavily indebted to them.
are symbolic59 and do not rely on the familiarity proper to our perceptual
experience. The circle (the emblem of unity) and the rhombus (the means by
which the angels are bestowed with a specific lightness) are symbolic too; they
are not answerable to the rules of perception and movement. More specifically
(2), the light spreads everywhere; it does not guide our eye, nor does it serve
the encroachment of things. It mirrors the ubiquity of the Spirit. Shadows
are entirely absent; colours and lines are symbolic rather than traces of the
visible. They render visible, indeed; but what they render visible is beyond
the enigma of our carnal status. They rely on the enigma of the incarnation
of the invisible God, which legitimates the very existence of icons themselves.
(3) Rublev and any other Byzantine painter would have not recognized the mir-
ror as his emblem either.60 There is no narcissism implied here, and icon paint-
ers do not sign their paintings. Mirror and narcissism are irrelevant, for the
genesis of painting is a question of Grace and not a question of our bodily con-
dition (that is why, literally speaking, only saints can be icon painters). Instead,
Rublev’s emblem is the window, in the sense that icons are windows giving
access to eternal truths. If a notion of ‘body’ is applicable here, it has to do
with the ‘body’ of the Church and with the painter as an intermediary between
that body and truth. (4) Nor does Merleau-Ponty’s principle: “man is a mirror
for man”61 apply here, since the real Other, namely, God, is not my mirror. If a
mirror is present at all, it concerns the dialogue between the three instances/
persons of Holy Trinity as equal with and yet different from one another.
(5) Rublev’s icon cannot be fully understood unless one is familiar with the his-
tory of Byzantine painting itself. This self-referential character of painting (to
which Merleau-Ponty has sometimes been blind)62 becomes evident in what
we do not see; for one of the important clues of the icon is precisely the absence
of Abraham and Sarah, that is, of the two figures which were considered to be
indispensable part of the traditional representation of ‘Abraham’s hospitality’.
(6) Merleau-Ponty’s challenging claim that “I could hardly say where the paint-
ing I am looking at is”63 is irrelevant too. For icons are, by definition, installed
59 Being symbolic does not relegate icons to pure indications or signs: see Florensky,
Iconostasis, p. 65.
60 Merleau-Ponty, L’Oeil et L’Esprit, pp. 32–34: “[painters have been seduced] by the round
eye of the mirror. [. . .] This explains why they have so often chosen to draw themselves in
the act of painting [. . .].”
62 See, for example, Merleau-Ponty, Sens, pp. 32, 112–113; L’Oeil et L’Esprit, pp. 26, 92; Maurice
Merleau-Ponty, L’Institution, la passivité: Notes de cours au Collège de France, 1954–1955
(Paris, 2002), pp. 112–113.
114 Kontos
in a very specific topos that we are already familiar with, that is, in the Christian
temple as a space bridging the distance between the visible Church and the
invisible Glory of God. Such a predetermined narrative (i.e., the iconostasis)
and architectural space (i.e., the temple as a symbolic building) anticipatorily
provide icons with their proper place. And finally, (7), the painting itself is still,
qua visible, only an icon, that is to say, not a ‘carnal essence’ but only a carnal
substitute of what is depicted: “the icon is one thing and what is depicted is
another.”64 The icon testifies to the visible difference between the visibility
proper to the icon and the invisibility proper to the essence of God. It presup-
poses both the incarnation of Christ as God’s “corporeal image” and our own
status as “images” of God.65 One might want to say that these various layers
of ‘becoming-visible’ substantiate the reversibility of the flesh. And, no doubt,
they do. However, such reversibility is primarily grounded in the discontinuity
between the nature/essence of the visible icon and of what, though invisible in
itself, is thereby depicted. An account obliterating this difference would render
icons vulnerable to iconoclastic attacks.
Byzantine painting practices the art of the visible but, nonetheless, its con-
ception of visibility and invisibility differs critically from Merleau-Ponty’s. By
which I do not mean that it would be arbitrary to make the Byzantine paradigm
accommodate the truth of reversibility.66 What we are obliged to acknowledge,
however, is that the reversibility proper to visibility transgresses the limits of
our carnal condition of sight. Hopefully, painting can guide the philosophy
of vision to recognizing multiple and heterogeneous forms of invisibility and
transcendence.
64 John Damascene, PG 94, 1377.

65 Emmanuel Alloa, “Visual Studies in Byzantium: A Pictorial Turn avant la lettre,” Journal of
Visual Culture 12/1 (2013), 3–29, here: pp. 16–23.
66 Fóti nicely points out the connection between Merleau-Ponty’s conception of icons,
paintings, and sacrality in Tracing Expression in Merleau-Ponty, p. 45. Jenny Slatman,
“L’invisible et le visible. Vers une phénoménologie de l’eikôn,” Chiasmi International 1
(2003), 231–247 attempts to elaborate, on Merleau-Ponty’s behalf, a “phenomenology of
the icon” by drawing on Marion’s L’idole et la distance. By contrast, Robert Sokolowski,
“Visual Intelligence in Painting,” The Review of Metaphysics 59/2 (2005), 333–354 pro-
poses a phenomenological analysis of painting that makes room for different layers and
forms of visibility and worldliness—Byzantine icons included—without any reference to
Merleau-Ponty.
4 Ontology of the Flesh beyond Painting
No matter how broadly one understands the notion of visibility, the phenom-
enological analysis of painting is also expected to explain the type of knowledge
to which the painter, as knower of the enigma of the flesh, lays claim. Merleau-
Ponty wants to minimize the role of technique and he is obviously far from
believing that any kind of philosophical or scientific knowledge is compulsory
for painters to successfully exercise their proper “silent thinking.” Even being
acquainted with the history of painting is not, at least in its traditional signifi-
cance, a sine qua non condition for painters to be painters and philosophers.
Merleau-Ponty’s standard way to speak about painters’ knowledge is as fol-
lows: “But the painters knew by experience [the enigma of perspective]”; for
“[Seeing] is the means given to me for being absent from myself [. . .] Painters
have always known this.”67 The point is that painters have a primordial and
non-theoretical experience of visibility that gives them direct access to the
enigma of vision. The problem is that by entrusting this original knowledge
to the painter’s direct grasp of his bodily status and to his relationship with
visible things, one cannot avoid the pitfall of equating painters with every-
day perceivers. And quite often, this is Merleau-Ponty’s concession: “to live in
painting is still to breathe the air of this world—above all for the man who sees
in the world something to paint. And there is a little of him in every human
being.”68 The solution open to Merleau-Ponty in order to obviate this difficulty
is to endow the painter with a certain sensibility or inspiration. However, one
still needs a phenomenological clarification of the distinctive capacity of paint-
ers which renders them efficient in securing a direct access to the truth of
reversibility.
A first reaction would be to praise the innocence that is idiosyncratic to
painting as a sort of original sight: “There is the vision upon which I reflect [. . .]
and there is the vision that actually occurs [. . .] of which we can have no idea
except in the exercise of it.”69 Painting’s distinguished innocence—in contrast
to philosophy—is due to its exercising vision and to producing a visible trace
of vision itself. Painting duplicates the real embodied life, i.e., the narcissism of
the visible. In a sense, the painter extends the natural life of an embodied self
by multiplying the strata of visibility.
67 See respectively Merleau-Ponty, L’Oeil et L’Esprit, pp. 50, 81.

116 Kontos
Yet Merleau-Ponty’s analysis remains inconclusive insofar as he does not

offer any phenomenological exegesis of why and how the painter’s body has
acquired its unique sensitivity to the enigma of visibility.70 The point I wish to
stress is that Merleau-Ponty eschews these questions because of the extraordi-
nary privilege he confers on painting. For painting itself is not the prominent
example we should build on if our aim is to elaborate a phenomenological
account of the bodily or carnal transformation required in order for the artist
to become an artist and eventually to become a philosopher. In reality, other
kinds of art, which without being alien to vision are not exclusively moored
to it either, constitute more suitable paradigms for this sort of investigation.
Theatre is such an art. And a case study worthy of our attention is the the-
ory and practice of performance in the wake of Jerzy Grotowski’s tradition.
Merleau-Ponty seems to miss a great opportunity here to come to terms with
what philosophers from antiquity to Nietzsche have acknowledged as the most
privileged and philosophical kind of art, namely, theatre. One can only specu-
late why he disregarded theatre. Among others things, it may well be because
he was trapped in an exclusive analysis of the body in terms of visibility.
Beyond painting, he eagerly turned his attention to cinema71 for its combina-
tion of visibility and movement,72 but theatre does not figure in his writings as
a prominent path to the philosophy of the flesh.
Silence is revealing of a philosopher’s deep convictions, and Merleau-
Ponty’s silence about theatre cannot be incidental. It is astonishing, however,
if one takes into consideration the innumerable theatrical metaphors encoun-
tered in his works: theatre and scene are the metaphors he relies on to portray
the world of visibility and its layers (in the Phenomenology of Perception, to
give just an example, one encounters more than twenty occurrences of these
70 See, for example, the promising but inconclusive reference to the movement of Matisse’s
hands while painting (Merleau-Ponty, Signes, pp. 57–58).
71 See Merleau-Ponty, “Cinema and the new psychology” (Sens, pp. 85–106), and “The sen-
sible world and the world of expression” published in Chiasmi International 12 (2010).
On Merleau-Ponty’s approach to cinema as a privileged means by which to understand
movement, see Pierre Rodrigo, “L’écart du sens,” Chiasmi International 12 (2010), 71–81
(focusing on montage), Mauro Carbone, La chair des images. Entre peinture et cinéma
(Paris, 2011), and Stephan Kristensen, “Merleau-Ponty, une esthétique du mouvement,”
Archives de Philosophie 69/1 (2006), 123–146 (in which one encounters the telling neolo-
gism “la cinépeinture”).
72 Merleau-Ponty is also, though secondarily, interested in music; see, for example, Merleau-
Ponty, Notes, pp. 61–64. For the (questionable) subordination of music to painting, see
Maria Villela-Petit, “ ‘Qui voit?,’ Du privilège de la peinture chez M. Merleau-Ponty,” Les
études philosophiques 57 (2001), 261–278.
terms). Merleau-Ponty never extensively thematized theatre and actors in the

proper sense of the terms.73 There are only random allusions to confirm that,
in reality, he tends to demote theatre to a sort of pictorial art. In particular,
as it concerns the actors and their “real bodies,”74 the most persistent motif
is their being compared with the materiality of the painting: “Our percep-
tion senses how near is the canvas underneath the painting, or the crumbling
cement under the building, or the tiring actor under the character.”75 Such a
way of speaking might let us recognize the importance of the bodily ‘material-
ity’ of the actor, but it hardly reveals the ways in which the actor constitutes a
real corps-propre and not just the analogue of a canvas. Likewise, the image of
theatre of which Merleau-Ponty is fond is that of an empty theatre:
If I imagine a theatre with no audience in which the curtain rises upon

illuminated scenery, I have the impression that the spectacle is in itself
visible or ready to be seen, and that the light which probes the back and
foreground, accentuating the shadows and permeating the scene through
and through, in a way anticipates our vision.76
73 Despite Merleau-Ponty’s lack of concern for theatre, his account of the body has
inspired a number of studies on theatre and, in particular, on the theatrical actor. One
often invokes Merleau-Ponty’s account of the body in order to articulate a theory of the
“embodied actor” (Suzanne Jaeger, “Embodiment and Presence,” in Staging Philosophy,
eds. D. Krasner and D. Z. Saltz [Michigan, 2006], pp. 122–141), or the double theatrical
condition of the seen (actor) and the seer (spectators) (David Krasner, “Empathy and
Theater,” in Staging Philosophy, pp. 255–277). Stanton Garner, Bodied Spaces (Cornall,
1994), offers a challenging reading of Beckett’s “staging the body” by foregrounding the
continuity between painting and theatre rather than their discontinuity (see pp. 52–62).
More generally, theatre is taken to substantiate the phenomenological attitude (see
Bert States, “The Phenomenological Attitude,” in Critical Theory and Performance, eds.
J. Reinelt and J. Roach [Ann Arbor, 1992], pp. 369–379). On the other hand, the priority
that Merleau-Ponty accords to painting has not escaped strong criticism. Erika Fischer-
Lichte, The Transformative Power of Performance. A New Aesthetics, transl. by S. I. Jain
(New York, 2008), pp. 38–74, nicely explains why the fusion between vision and touch
is refuted by the theatrical experience insofar as spectators display strong reluctance to
accept the mutual touching between actors and spectators as a component of the theat-
rical performance. One might say that the same holds true in the case of the spectator
of paintings; in principle, touching the painting is prohibited, detrimental as it is to its
materiality. To Merleau-Ponty, the tactile is irrelevant in the analysis of painting (L’Oeil
et L’Esprit, p. 27).
74 Merleau-Ponty, Phénoménologie, p. 121.
75 Merleau-Ponty, Phénoménologie, p. 33; see also p. 213.
76 Merleau-Ponty, Phénoménologie, p. 358; see also Sens, p. 50.
118 Kontos
Theatre is envisaged here as a sort of painting. This cannot be, to say the least,
a fertile way to grasp its essence.77 By contrast, it is intriguing to realize how
close the pioneers of European theatre performance are to Merleau-Ponty’s
ideas. Grotowski’s notion of theatre and of the human body could be read as
introducing a phenomenological reduction of Merleau-Ponty’s kind.78 Apart
from Grotowski’s focus on the human body as the source of knowledge or on
the actor’s body in its scenic presence and its communication with the specta-
tors, what is crucial is his idea about what it means to become an actor in the
first place. According to him, no matter the phase of his development from
the “Poor Theatre” and the “Objective drama” to the late nineties, that amounts
to a sort of phenomenological reduction. Let me quote three representative
claims: “Ours is a via negativa—not a collection of skills but an eradication
of blocks”; for “If the techniques of the body, daily, habitual, specific for a
precise culture, are suspended, this suspension is by itself a deconditioning
of perception.” And hence, “one access to the creative way consists of discov-
ering in yourself an ancient corporality to which you are bound by a strong
ancestral relation [. . .] This is a phenomenon of reminiscence.”79 “Suspension,”
“via negativa,” and “reminiscence” are the main features of Merleau-Ponty’s
phenomenological reduction. In that sense, Grotowski’s actor seems to be a
reflection of Merleau-Ponty’s painter.
There is, however, a critical difference that one should not diminish.
Grotowski is clear that becoming an actor is tantamount to withdrawing our
77 Emmanuel Alloa, “Le théâtre du virtuel. D’un double impensé chez Merleau-Ponty,” in
Du sensible à l’œuvre, eds. Emmanuel Alloa and Adnen Jdey (Bruxelles, 2012), pp. 317–333
charitably exploits Merleau-Ponty’s understanding of the actor-and-spectator pairing in
terms of reversibility; his references to the randomly cited Cours de psychologie et de péda-
gogie (1949–1951) are important in this regard. Yet it is obvious that the textual evidence
for this analysis is rather meagre. In any case, I wholeheartedly subscribe to his thesis
that the art of theatre is an “impensé” in Merleau-Ponty’s thought (Alloa, “Le théâtre du
virtuel,” p. 317) and that we should build on it to clarify the concept of incarnation.
78 To the best of my knowledge, there is no reference to Merleau-Ponty in Grotowski’s own
writings (see, by contrast, Lisa Wolford, Grotowski’s Objective Drama Research [Mississippi,
1996], p. 109). At any rate, Grotowski’s approach to theatre is here used as a mere example.
Hence, I eschew the disputed questions of whether his approach is metaphysical and reli-
giously oriented rather than theatre-oriented, and whether his metaphysics of the human
being as source of original powers is compatible with the truth of reversibility. Likewise,
I do not mean to overlook the fact that the predominance of the figure of the actor on
stage might relegate the stage as a sort of icon to a sort of image.
79 See respectively Jerzy Grotowski, “Towards a poor theatre,” p. 29, “Theatre of sources,”
pp. 257–258, and “Performer,” pp. 376–377 (my emphasis) in The Grotowski Sourcebook,
eds. R. Schechner and L. Wolford (London & New York, 1997).
everyday bodily familiarities and demands a strong and long exercise.80 For
the present purposes, the type of exercise involved, its austerity, if not cruelty,
as well as its multi-cultural and religious sources, are irrelevant.81 What mat-
ters is that the theatrical art postulates the acquisition of solid competence.
That requirement is peculiar to theatre (and equally, for example, to dance) for
“unlike the other artistic disciplines, the actor’s creation is imperative. [. . .] An
actor cannot wait for a surge of talent nor for a moment of inspiration.” That
is why Grotowski and his heirs are pedantic in describing the path of transfor-
mation to be followed by the actor with discipline and devotion. To become an
actor “one needs a bloody competence.”82
Hence, theatre—not painting—is the convenient paradigm by which
to realize that revealing the enigma of the body cannot be spontaneously
accomplished from within our carnal everyday experience.83 It presupposes
the reduction of our familiarity with our bodies. Pace Merleau-Ponty’s naïve
assumption that, in order to bring to light the enigma of vision we should
80 For a brief allusion to the fact that the “painter himself is a working man,” see Merleau-
Ponty, Signes, p. 73.
81 Grotowski, Towards a Poor Theatre (New York, 1969), pp. 133–224.
82 See, respectively, Grotowski, Towards a Poor Theatre, p. 128, and “Tu es le fils de quelqu’un,”
in The Grotowski Sourcebook, p. 295 (my emphasis).
83 Furthermore, the paradigm of theatre might allow us to overcome a number of preju-
dices that still permeate Merleau-Ponty’s account of the body. A single example aligned
with Grotowski’s tradition might prove sufficient. According to the theatre director
Theodoros Terzopoulos, theatre—though it might be a sort of spectacle—has not
primarily to do with the body as both seer and seen. The reason is that, to him, the body
of the actor resonates repressed living forces and memories as well as the experience of
pain and the physical production of voice (i.e., not of speech). Neither the eye nor the
hand but the foot is the privileged locus of the body, for it is par excellence what uni-
fies us with the elements of earth and animality. The foot is also the primary receiver
of stimuli and the channel through which a sort of energy spreads into the whole body.
Likewise, the body is no longer modelled on kinaesthesia as a multi-dimensional but
harmonious and cooperative system of senses and movement. The aim is not the con-
stitution of a centrally directed whole but the de-construction, or fragmentation, of the
body. The parts of the body (hands, feet, and the head) are expected to perform autono-
mously (see Giorgos Sampatakakis, “Dionysus Restitutus: Terzopoulos’ Bakchen,” in Reise
mit Dionysos: Das Theater des Theodoros Terzopoulos, ed. F. M. Raddatz [Berlin, 2006],
pp. 90–102). As a consequence, the mouth is no longer logo-centric either, but serves
as what “strives to speak even when it has reached an energy impasse” (Pinelopi
Hatzidimitriou, “The Bacchanalian Body in Theodoros Terzopoulos Theatre,” in The Flesh
Made Text Made Flesh, eds. Z. Detsi-Diamanti, K. Kitsi-Mitakou, E. Yiannopoulou [New
York & Bern, 2007], p. 59).
120 Kontos
simply exercise vision,84 Grotowski insists that the “Performer must develop
[. . .] an organism-channel through which the energies circulate, the energies
transform, the subtle is touched.”85 The channel leading to the truth of our car-
nal status is still our body itself, but a body that we establish from the start by
means of a long, methodical, laborious, and painful acquisition of a new flesh.86
It appears, then, that theatre can reveal aspects of the enigma of reversibility
and, in particular, of the reversibility and re-birth of our own body which, in
principle, are inaccessible to both painting and the ontology of painting.
5 Conclusion
Reversibility is the ultimate truth. To remain faithful to this programmatic

claim, it is not mandatory to withdraw the privilege ascribed to sight. One
should, however, be on guard against any notion of vision and reversibility
that is inimical to transcendences. I have introduced two guiding examples of
transcendence or excess:87 icons as entailing invisibility beyond the boundar-
ies of our carnal condition, and theatre as implying reversibility outside the
territory of sight. The view that painting and the ontology of the visible are,
by themselves, able to guide us to the resolution of the enigma of the flesh is
simply false.88

85 Grotowski, “Performer,” p. 376.
86 What I have in mind overlaps with what Phillip Zarrilli, “Toward a Phenomenological
Model of the Actor’s Embodied Modes of Experience,” Theatre Journal 56/4 (2004), 653–
666, drawing on Merleau-Ponty, labels the “aesthetic inner bodymind [as] associated with
long-term, in-depth engagement in certain psychophysical practices or training regimes”
(p. 661).
87 Hence, the present study merely develops Taminiaux’s following claim: “as soon as there
was painting, it was in excess of itself” (Taminiaux, “The Thinker and the Painter,” p. 292).
88 A first version of this paper was presented at the Collegium Phaenomenologicum (Città di
Castello, July 2011). It was heavily reworked during my time as a Humboldt Fellow at the
University of Freiburg (Fall 2012). A penultimate version of the paper has been read by
Emmanuel Alloa, Véronique Fóti, Evi Grammati, Pierre Rodrigo, Uroš Todorović, Giorgos
Sampatakakis, and Marita Tatari; I am grateful to all of them for their insightful com-
ments and suggestions.
CHAPTER 6
Voyance: On Merleau-Ponty’s Processual

Conception of Vision
Luca Vanzago
1 Introductory Remarks1
Vision plays an increasingly important role over the course of Merleau-Ponty’s

thought. In apparent contrast to the deconstruction of the primacy of vision
in twentieth-century philosophy (especially in Heidegger, Derrida, and Rorty),
Merleau-Ponty not only seems to hold fast to vision, but even reinforces its
importance both in published texts (most notably in Eye and Mind) and in
lectures and working notes. The title of the manuscript known as The Visible
and the Invisible is the most striking proof of vision’s significance. Although
not chosen by its author (the book appeared posthumously), this heading
was clearly on Merleau-Ponty’s mind, as attested by a considerable number
of preparatory notes. Vision is thus the core of the phenomenological ontol-
ogy Merleau-Ponty was developing when his death suddenly stopped his work.
A closer look at the meaning of this centrality, however, should show that, far
from being outdated by the criticisms directed to the primacy of the sovereign
spectator’s gaze, Merleau-Ponty’s approach aligns rather closely with them.
His Phenomenology of Perception, published in 1945, already brings the phe-
nomenological transcendental subject back to its own embodiment, and thus
accomplishes a first step in showing the importance of the incarnation of mind
that Derrida voices in his Writing and Difference. Yet Merleau-Ponty goes much
further than this, in that he actually preceded Derrida’s own more popular crit-
icisms and, in a certain sense, provides an affirmation of these criticisms them-
selves. What is more, he envisaged a different ontology that could effectively
1 In this paper the following works of Merleau-Ponty have been cited: Eye and Mind, trans.
Carleton Dallery, in The Primacy of Perception (Evanston, Il, 1964), pp. 159–190; Le monde sen-
sible et le monde de l’expression. Cours au Collège de France. Notes, 1953 (Genève, 2011); Nature.
Course Notes from the Collège de France, compiled and with notes by Dominique Séglard,
trans. Robert Vallier (Evanston, Il, 2003); Notes de cours 1959–1961. Texte établi par Stéphanie
Ménasé (Paris, 1996); The Visible and the Invisible, trans. Alphonso Lingis (Evanston, Il, 1968).

122 Vanzago
achieve that very turn to a different mode of thinking that is often invoked but
rarely accomplished in post-modern or post-metaphysical philosophy.
In what follows, I will discuss the evolution of Merleau-Ponty’s notion of
vision, and show that his conception of perception already entails a different
ontology. I will therefore place his elaboration of this theme within the frame-
work of his ontology of nature, undertaken in the lecture courses held at the
Collège de France in the 1950s. I aim at discussing and evaluating his meta-
phorical and elliptical remarks concerning vision, the visible, and visibility
that one also encounters in his posthumous texts. My thesis is that Merleau-
Ponty’s later notion of vision requires a dynamic and processual concept of
Being. Merleau-Ponty emphasizes the primacy of process and transformation,
thus suggesting a possible ontology of change as the primary mode of Being.
In this reversal of the Western canonical understanding of Being, vision
becomes the general mode in which beings manifest themselves to them-
selves and to others. The notion of manifestation acquires a processual mean-
ing, much in line with Heidegger’s verbal understanding of essence (Wesen).2
Vision is then understood in terms of “voyance” in order to convey both a pro-
cessual and an ontological understanding, in which the so-called flesh of the
world and the flesh of subjects are intertwined.
2 The Notion of Perception and Merleau-Ponty’s Self-Criticism
In his first lecture course at the Collège de France, which possesses a rather
programmatic structure, Merleau-Ponty begins his analysis with a revision
of his previous positions on perception and the perceptual world. More pre-
cisely, Merleau-Ponty may be worried that what is said in Phenomenology of
Perception could be misunderstood by a commonsensical or biased under-
standing of his formulations. The weight of traditional conceptions might have
misled his readers to hear in Merleau-Ponty’s statements either the a ffirmation
2 Merleau-Ponty owes this notion to Heidegger’s Introduction to Metaphysics. In The Visible and
the Invisible, Merleau-Ponty quotes a passage of the German edition, published by Mohr in
1953. The page quoted is to be found at p. 26 (English translation Introduction to Metaphysics
[New York, 1961], pp. 27–28). However, the page quoted by Merleau-Ponty does not show any
occurrence of this term. An extensive treatment of the term “Being” and its grammar, and a
discussion of the verbal meaning of the term “essence,” are to be found in Chapter 2, Sections
A and B (§§ 17–23) of Heidegger’s Introduction to Metaphysics. In a sense, the whole work is
devoted, among other things, to a verbal understanding of Being, playing with the etymologi-
cal meaning of “Wesen.”
Voyance 123
of the primacy of perception—understood in terms of sensory data and natu-

ral givenness instead of an access to Being—or a mere introductory phenom-
enology which does not touch upon the question of ontology, whereas for
Merleau-Ponty phenomenology and ontology coincide. Therefore, the insuf-
ficient elaboration of what is said in Phenomenology of Perception runs the risk
of distorting the relationship to Being at which Merleau-Ponty aims. It is for
this reason that he feels the need to clarify his own thought through the notion
of expression.3 Thus perception and expression are closely linked, in the sense
that perception is itself expression. It is noticeable that Merleau-Ponty does
not disavow his Phenomenology of Perception, but rather tries to bring to the
fore his true notion of perception and its implications. Expression is a notion
that in this context seems better suited to convey Merleau-Ponty’s central con-
ception of perception as a relation to Being.
Expression is meant to distinguish perception from consciousness, with
the latter being linked to an abstract attitude that is compared and contrasted
with praxis.4 Perception is expressive, and it is expressive of the world while
also expressing the human being in one and the same stroke. The reference
to Heidegger is explicit, but not without a certain reservation: to Merleau-
Ponty, Heidegger and the Heideggerians are still “too philosophical” and
formalistic, insofar as they intentionally ignore the achievements of science
and claim that philosophy is independent of it.5
Perception as expression is not contemplation but action, or better still,
praxis. To perceive, in this perspective, means to belong to what is perceived—
the perceptual world—and not to impose values on it from outside. It means
3 Merleau-Ponty, Le monde sensible et le monde de l’expression, pp. 45–47: “Nous avons essayé
une analyse du monde perçu qui le dégage dans ce qu’il a d’original par opposition à l’univers
de la science ou de la pensée objective. Mais cette analyse restait tout de même ordonnée à
des concepts classiques tels que : perception (au sens de position d’un objet isolable, déter-
miné, considérée comme forme canonique de nos rapports avec le monde), conscience (en
entendant par là pouvoir centrifuge de Sinn-gebung qui retrouve dans les choses ce qu’elle
y a mis), synthèse (qui suppose éléments à réunir) (par exemple problème de l’unité des
Erlebnisse), matière et forme de la connaissance. [. . .]. On évitera les équivoques en repre-
nant (et complétant) les résultats acquis à l’aide du concept d’expression.”
4 Merleau-Ponty, Le monde sensible, p. 47: “On entendra ici par expression ou expressivité la
propriété qu’a un phénomène, par son agencement interne, d’en faire connaître un autre qui
n’est pas ou même n’a jamais été donné. [. . .] Or ceci nous oblige à concevoir la conscience
perceptive tout autrement que l’exige la notion de conscience, d’y mettre une proximité de
l’objet et une distance de l’objet qui sont également ignorées de la notion de conscience.”
5 Merleau-Ponty explains this at length in a footnote. See Merleau-Ponty, Le monde sensible,
p. 47.
124 Vanzago
to institute differences and not to grasp essences. It means, finally, to be

affected by the silent perceptual world and not to make statements about it.
It is with respect to this third aspect in particular that Merleau-Ponty con-
nects perception as expression with “quality, space-movement, world.”6 The
connection between perception and expression is established in terms of
the affective relationship between an incarnated subject and its perceptual
world that involves a number of dynamic elements. These elements are not all
on the same level: some of them refer to the act or event of perception, others
to the percipient subject, and others still to the ontological implications of this
different notion of perception. I will try to distinguish these different mean-
ings and also reflect on their mutual connections.
In the first place, Merleau-Ponty takes into consideration the notion of
Gestalt. This is the simplest formation of perceptual meaning. Merleau-Ponty
stresses the importance of the background, insofar as this is in itself part of the
definition of Being. The very fact that something may be perceptually given
is due to the simultaneous givenness of its background. The individuation of
the “thing” is at the same time the position of a virtuality which is not present
in the same way the thing is, but is not nothing either. This statement, taken
by itself, is anything but surprising in light of Phenomenology of Perception.
Yet in these lectures, Merleau-Ponty emphasizes the dynamic nature of the
figure-background relationship. The usual notion of consciousness neglects
and conceals this interplay, once consciousness is only defined in terms of con-
sciousness of something. Merleau-Ponty relates this concealedness to Marx’s
and Freud’s analyses of mystifying consciousness.
This allows Merleau-Ponty to equate perception and praxis, by which he
does not mean, as he immediately adds, that his position is a materialistic
one. Its significance, rather, is that in order to grasp spirit (esprit) in its nascent
state (état naissant), it is necessary to understand perception itself in terms
of praxis, which in turn is different from action. Praxis is characterized by its
relation to the expressiveness of the human body: “the human body is expres-
sive in this that it carries Umweltintentionalität in each of its gestures, it draws
and deploys an ‘Umwelt’ and even a ‘World’. The identity of the thing is the
equivalence of the different gestures that lead to it.”7 The human body, in other
words, represents the “subject” to which Gestalten, as dynamic expressions,
can be given. The human body is the subject able to perform gestures. In this
connection, a structurally “processual” system between body and perception
comes to the fore. To perceive is to “praxically” (not “practically”) act with one’s
6 See Merleau-Ponty, Le monde sensible, p. 51.

7 See Merleau-Ponty, Le monde sensible, pp. 57–58. My translation.
Voyance 125
own body. The body also functions as the background of the subject itself. The
identity of the subject is a crystallization that is rendered possible only insofar
as it is exposed to the gaze of others.8 Perceptual consciousness is thus defined
in terms of a field that is made possible by a bodily subject (the “zero-point” of
the field) “acting” or gesturing, that is, by a “praxical” subject always intercon-
nected with other similar subjects. Perception is therefore expression for at
least two reasons: first, it is the expression of the relationship between subjects
and things or other subjects and, second, it is the “action” of the world itself
on the bodily subject (as we have seen, Merleau-Ponty defines perceptual con-
sciousness in terms of affections).
In order to further clarify this notion of perceptual consciousness as expres-
sion, Merleau-Ponty undertakes a deeper analysis of the phenomenon of
movement.9 The reason is that the phenomenon of movement belongs to the
sensible world and nicely reveals the expressive relations between body and
natural world.
3 The Phenomenon of Movement
Merleau-Ponty begins by stressing that there can be no question of chrono-

logical or transcendental priority between space and movement. Yet in fact,
when reading what Merleau-Ponty writes in the rest of the section, one is led
to suspect that movement does have some priority over spatiality. No doubt, he
wants to avoid reducing movement to its spatial objective determinations or
to the mental representations of an external spectator. But Merleau-Ponty
seems to be concerned with more than this, and this “more” seems to be his
realizing the ontological importance of movement. The issue primarily con-
cerns the possibility of grasping movement in its own peculiarity, without
reducing it to empirically or conceptually determined features. Movement
must be grasped in its own manifestation.
In order to achieve this goal, one should describe movement from the stand-
point of the body and its place, understood as the zero-point and the abso-
lute “here,” which is already described in Phenomenology of Perception. Here
Merleau-Ponty writes that “there is a place because there is a here of myself who
am not objective body, the place is relationship of me and the world through
my body, not a relation between parts of the world. The place is in the first
8 See Merleau-Ponty, Le monde sensible, pp. 149–150.

126 Vanzago
instance situation.”10 Movement is in this respect a modality and a variation

of primordial spatiality. The issue is further discussed in light of the notions
of proximity and distance, of “here” and “there,” understood not so much in
connection with Heidegger’s de-distancing (Entfernung), as one might expect,
but within the framework of what Merleau-Ponty calls “transcendental logic.”
This logic is different from the formal logic of positivistic philosophy insofar as
it must be able to take into account asymmetrical objects, like the two hands of
Kant’s analysis,11 which constitute real differences and not logical differences.12
Thus, spatiality is related to the body that is moving itself. The absolute-in-
the-relative of the here (and the now, which is, however, not discussed at this
juncture) belonging to the body is a dynamic place.
Place is itself a form of movement: “if the place is a particular tension in the
I-world dynamism, it is already movement, far from movement being a subor-
dinated concept.”13 This becomes clear when movement is considered from
the standpoint of the direct bodily intuition that each bodily subject can have.
Thus, spatiality is not the logical premise for the analysis of movement, but
only its propaedeutic. The problem with movement derives from two equally
inadequate alternative conceptions, realism and idealism, that traditional
philosophy provides us with. In turn, this means that movement must be dis-
cussed in connection with the subject of movement, i.e., the subject moving
itself but also the subject that is subjected to movement. Bergson had seen
this problem, at least in part. His solution, however, is incomplete. Accordingly,
movement must be conceived in a fourfold way: (1) the mobile object must be
a moving object, identified within movement and not apart from it; (2) recip-
rocally, movement must be in the mobile object and not only in its relations
to the outside; (3) there must be, therefore, a mixture between inside and out-
side, before and after, here and there; (4) there must be, furthermore, a mixture
between me and things.
What is most important to stress, now, is the question whether Merleau-
Ponty is considering movement in terms of a phenomenon—alternatively,
of the manifestation of a phenomenon—or also in terms of an ontological
10 See Merleau-Ponty, Le monde sensible, p. 73. My translation.

11 The reference to Kant is not explicit in these lectures, but it is traceable in light of the
reference made to it by Merleau-Ponty in The Visible and the Invisible. See Merleau-Ponty,
The Visible and the Invisible, p. 261.
12 See Merleau-Ponty, Le monde sensible, p. 75: “Logique transcendantale: l’existence spatiale
n’est pas existence logique—objets symétriques indiscernables logiquement. Distingués
par orientation—Donc spatialité intuitive.”
13 See Merleau-Ponty, Le monde sensible, pp. 88–89. My translation.
Voyance 127
s tructure. If the latter is the case, a clarification of the notion of ontology is in

order. In my opinion, it is not enough to say that this ontology is of phenom-
enological spirit; one should point out its new style: it is a “moving” ontology,
that is, an ontology according to which Being means Becoming but also, and
most of all, in which “Beingness” is a processual category. This is probably the
most obscure claim, and it is only partially worked out in these lectures. Still,
I would like to stress the presence of this concern throughout the whole lecture
course as the main concern that, without being clearly stated, tacitly guides
Merleau-Ponty’s approach (and not only here but in many of the lectures and
works that follow).
It bears emphasizing that Merleau-Ponty brings the symbolic value of
movement to light through a comparison with the structure of the Gestalt. The
notion of Gestalt denotes a mode of movement. To say this implies that
the articulation of background and foreground—in its bringing a form to vis-
ibility and, correspondingly, the background to its sinking—is an expression of
nature, i.e., of the perceptual world. Not only is there movement in the world,
but the world itself is made of movement. This means that movement is not
only an ontic phenomenon, but also, and most of all, an ontological structure.
In fact, here Merleau-Ponty says that movement characterizes every kind of
figure. Movement is said to be the becoming of a figure. It is a figural property.
This is not to describe the empirical movement of empirical objects, but rather
to speak of the structure of appearance of the perceptual world as such, since,
as is well known, the Gestalt is for Merleau-Ponty a metaphor of perception.
The emerging notion of movement calls for further analysis. Let us take as
our starting-point the following key clause: “movement understood as reveal-
ing Being.”14 This is the title of a section devoted to the question of causality.
Merleau-Ponty stresses the need to adopt a notion of self-causality that is dis-
tinct from what can be found in Hume’s and Kant’s classical analyses. In study-
ing the phenomenon of self-locomotion of Gestalten, it becomes clear that it
is the continuous transformation of a form, and not some external cause, that
generates movement. It is something like an interior flux emerging from the
figure itself. Movement denotes self-manifesting and self-causing and, hence,
is “clearly some other thing than change of place.” Movement is “revelation
of Being.”15 A discussion of the experiments by the famous Belgian psychol-
ogist A. Michotte allows Merleau-Ponty to clarify this point. He draws from
these experiments the possibility of describing the perceptual field in terms of

128 Vanzago
a processual structure that is capable of self-organization,16 a kind of “percep-

tual miracle.”17 This, moreover, is much more than what the Gestalt-psychology
theorists had concluded. According to Merleau-Ponty, this discovery requires
an adequate generalization. The perceptual field seems to possess its own
meaningful structure, which emerges by itself like a sort of pre-personal
thinking. The “subject” implicated in this global field is itself a self-moving
body. It must possess the “rules” of a “language” in order to move itself. These
rules are diacritical systems.18 Thus movement, global organization of the per-
ceptual field, bodily subject as self-moving body, and “meaning” of the field as
a system of diacritical elements are all parts of the same general phenomenon
that is the perceptual Being. Movement is not the local translation of a thing.
Considered from the standpoint of a “perceptual logic,” that is, a phenomenol-
ogy of perception, movement proves to be general:
Movement is not “essentially of the visible” [. . .]—Movement is event,

not of a sense-thing {Sinnendings}, but of all. Therefore the perceiving
subject possesses an eventful unity of movement (in a sense and from a
sense to another), because it is in direct and active contact with space as
system of the powers of its body.19
Movement is thus seen as an event, yet not of particular things but rather of
“everything.” The perceiving subject is what it is, because it has the eventful
unity of a moving being, unity that in turn is made possible by the body being in
16 See Merleau-Ponty, Le monde sensible, pp. 105–106. This notion of self-organization is
important in light of what Merleau-Ponty states in his first lecture course devoted to
Nature in connection to Whitehead. I have dealt with this issue in my “Process and Events
of Nature: Merleau-Ponty and Deleuze Readers of Whitehead,” Chiasmi International 10
(2008), 227–250.
18 See Merleau-Ponty, Le monde sensible, p. 111: “le mouvement ne le peut qu’en tant qu’il
possède les équivalences d’une sorte de langue naturelle : les champs sensoriels sont cela,
des systèmes diacritiques donnés avec des valeurs d’emploi, des équivalences caractéri-
stiques. Mais entre ces champs il y a aussi des équivalences et comme une langue com-
mune de ces patois.”
19 See Merleau-Ponty, Le monde sensible, p. 112: “Le mouvement n’est pas ‘essentiellement
du visible’: c’est ‘eine dynamisch gerichtete Veränderung eines Gegenstands, die sich unter
besonderen Umständen und Bedingungen in Form der optischen Bewegung entfaltet’—
Le mouvement est événement et non d’un {Sinnendings} mais de tous. Donc le sujet per-
cevant a unité événementielle du mouvement (dans un sens et d’un sens à l’autre) parce
qu’il est en prise sur l’espace comme système des puissances de son corps.” My translation.
Voyance 129
direct and active contact with space seen as a system. Meaning itself is related
to movement. Meaning is made possible by the distribution of movement and
rest, the rhythm of translations and transformations, acceleration and decelera-
tion, that is, time. These are not simply mechanical phenomena. Instead, they
convey their own meaning, including an affective tone. The perceptual world,
seen as a field of movement in its broadest possible meaning, is thus a field
of signs, provided these signs are understood in Saussure’s diacritical terms.20
These signs are “intelligible” only if a bodily subject, able to move itself and
“belonging to” this world, is drawn into the picture. Movement, in other words,
is always “from a certain standpoint,” and does not exist “in itself” objectively.
4 The Ontological Implications of Movement and the Ontology

of Nature
We can draw three conclusions from the foregoing analysis of the notions of
movement and change. First, movement is to be seen as an original and struc-
tural phenomenon, liable to ontological developments; second, this ontol-
ogy has to do with living subjects that are incarnated and not disembodied
transcendental egos; third, these subjects relate to one another through their
incarnation in terms of being visible to each other. Visibility, in other words,
becomes an ontological feature of the subjects understood as acting agents
and not as substances. This holds true insofar as the relationship between
each subject and its world is a dynamic structure of connections that precedes
their poles and does not simply result from them. This dynamic ontology of
structural interconnections, however, could be considered as pertaining only
to human subjects and thus as irrelevant for a philosophy of nature based on
the achievements of modern science. This is the claim that Merleau-Ponty
challenges in his lectures on nature. His broad and far-reaching investigation
entails both a new perspective on nature and a criticism of the prevalent epis-
temological approaches to nature, inorganic and organic alike.
Nature is enigmatic, for it is a peculiar object: it is given to the knowing
subject, but as that from which the subject itself emerges. This is true both
at the individual and at the social and historical level. Perception is the nexus
that attests to this bond. Nature is therefore at once stratified and always
new. It is the “here and now” of a past that was never present. As such, it is a
sort of memory but not the involuntary memory of the body: it is the memory
of Being itself. If, therefore, one still wants to understand nature as existing

130 Vanzago
regardless of whether a subject knows it or not, it is necessary to acknowledge

its ontological status as being different both from the status of the object and
of the subject. Nature is at once pre-objective and pre-subjective. It is at once
a product and a producer.
In this connection Merleau-Ponty examines the classical deterministic con-
ception of nature as it is epitomized by Laplace and then turns to Whitehead
in order to gain a different point of view. Whitehead’s philosophy of nature
is praised for its conception of nature as a non-psychic memory, that is, as
something that possesses a past and a future that are not determinations of
consciousness. Nature is dynamic by itself: its being consists in its becoming.
Nature is always “taking place” and never concludes this very happening, so
that it cannot be properly understood in terms of what it “has been,” for this
neglects its “being,” in the processual and transient meaning of this verb.
Time is thus constitutive of nature. But the temporality of nature is multi-
faceted and not linear. This is particularly clear when one takes evolution
into consideration. Merleau-Ponty discusses this fundamental problem in his
second lecture course devoted to animality, held in 1957–58. The relevance of
this analysis is far-reaching and exceeds the limits of this essay. It will be dis-
cussed here only insofar as it concerns the ontological conception of vision.
Merleau-Ponty, in fact, is in a position to show the ontological implications
of vision thanks to his account of living forms. Living forms are exemplary
structures of becoming. Life is marked by transience, birth and death. There
is a facticity intrinsic to nature that is not due to the finitude of the knowing
subject – which, on the contrary, must be understood as a particular example
of a living being. In emphasizing this aspect of the problem, Merleau-Ponty
is criticizing the existentialist conception of truth as grounded in the human
subject. For him, this means that life is marked by indetermination. The
deterministic model of science, which was undermined by the revolutions in
twentieth-century physics, is clearly even less tenable once biology is taken
into consideration. This is particularly evident in the case of J. von Uexküll’s
works. Merleau-Ponty praises the latter’s notion of the “nature of the subject”
(Subjektnatur) and the correlative concepts of “surrounding world” (Umwelt),
“noticeable world” (Merkwelt) and “effective world” (Wirkwelt).21 The most rel-
evant of Merleau-Ponty’s remarks is about the transformation of the natural
environment, Umwelt, into a “counter-world” (Gegenwelt).22 This process takes
place at the level of higher animal forms, thus already in the realm of life. The
21 The discussion that follows is based on what Merleau-Ponty states in his notes on
Uexküll’s works to be found in Nature. Course Notes from the Collège de France pp. 167–178.
22 See Merleau-Ponty, Nature, pp. 171–172.
Voyance 131
institution of the counter-world is a feature that distinguishes the higher from

the lower animal forms. The counter-world can be described in terms of the
realization of a duplicity. Animals acquire an internal organization that is seen
as a reproduction of the external world. This reproduction obviously is not a
copy. It is rather a structural system of correspondences that functions as
a principle of organization of actions and reactions. With the institution of the
counter-world, therefore, a double structure “comes to the world”: we have at
once the distinction between interiority and exteriority, as well as their mutual
communication. What kind of interiority is this?
In a certain sense, lower animals are more “open” than higher organisms, for
they are more plastic, i.e., more able to adjust to the situation. But this plastic-
ity is possible only by means of the simplicity of their organization. Most of
all, this plasticity is like a universe in its own right. The simple forms have no
“outside”: they are, as Uexküll says, in an ecstatic condition enclosed within
itself; they are neither inside nor outside, since there is no distinction between
inner and outer world at this level. With the institution of the counter-world,
on the other hand, what happens is precisely the insertion of a difference
within the natural world itself. The relationship between the organism and its
environment acquires a further dimension, a depth that produces an inside
and an outside. It is something like a fold within Being itself, to use the well-
known metaphor that Merleau-Ponty adopts in The Visible and the Invisible.
This kind of “event” has many implications. Since it happens within Being
itself, it is a complication of Being, a multiplication of its dimensions. But since
this is an event produced by those parts of the whole that are the organisms,
it is also legitimate to say that the creatures are the creators of their creator,
Being. The creatures, that is, the organisms, enact the multiplication of dimen-
sions and the institution of a difference, which are structures of Being. Thus,
Being depends on beings at least to the same extent as the beings depend
on Being. This is an aspect that Merleau-Ponty also discusses in more philo-
sophical terms through an investigation of Heidegger’s verbal essence (Wesen).
In terms of the evolution of animals, Merleau-Ponty underlines that the
structuration of the counter-world is an event because it is an institution that
does not depend on necessary conditions nor on a telos. It is, hence, the inser-
tion of a novelty, which in turn brings about new events, each of which is
describable in terms of disequilibria. The development of a nervous system
allows the animals to acquire a postural space. Their body is thus able to create
a postural system that functions in terms of signs and not of causes. Maybe here
there is room to talk about a biological intentionality. At any rate, the relation-
ship between body and world becomes more complex because each sign pre-
sented by the world induces a reaction in the animal body that simultaneously
132 Vanzago
changes the world. The animal perceives and moves itself, thus instituting two
further structures: the noticeable world (Merkwelt), that is, the world of aware-
ness, and the effective world (Wirkwelt), which is the world of action. The two
are clearly correlated, which probably explains Merleau-Ponty’s expression
in the working notes of The Visible and the Invisible, according to which per-
ceiving (wahrnehmen) and self-moving (sich bewegen) are the same.23 Note
that in these lectures Merleau-Ponty not only speaks of a world, that is, of
spatiality, but also of noticeable time (Merkzeit) and effective time (Wirkzeit),
temporality. The interrelation between noticeable and effective world (Merkwelt
and Wirkwelt) is not linear but reciprocal. There are thus two series of events
reciprocally influencing each other. It is important to highlight that Merleau-
Ponty compares these findings with two alternative philosophical interpreta-
tions, and rejects both of them: Kant’s account of nature according to the Third
Critique, and Schelling’s philosophy of nature. They both are still outside their
object, both regard the process from above, or at the end of it, not being able
to grasp its very taking place, its actualizing itself, its being in process. They
both try to objectify it and give it a form or shape, and thus both miss it. This
explains why Merleau-Ponty speaks of process in terms of what is unfigurable,
without figure, unanschaulich.
5 A Dynamic Conception of Being
Being as a whole is thus a process, that is, something that cannot be accounted
for in the traditional terms of substance and essence. This is why Merleau-
Ponty adopts Heidegger’s notion of verbal essence (Wesen) as a better
candidate. Since it is not figurable, Being is concealed. But since we human
beings are part of it, in the sense that Being “is” insofar as it is created by its crea-
tures, the concealment of Being is somehow unconcealed. By consequence,
any attempt at explaining consciousness as different from the world would
23 See Merleau-Ponty, The Visible and the Invisible, p. 255: “[b]ut this de jure invisible sig-
nifies in reality that Wahrnehmen and Sich Bewegen are synonymous: it is for this rea-
son that the Wahrnehmen never rejoins the Sich Bewegen it wishes to apprehend: it is
another of the same. But this failure, this invisible, precisely attests that Wahrnehmen
is Sich Bewegen, there is here a success in the failure. Wahrnehmen fails to apprehend Sich
Bewegen (and I am for myself a zero of movement even during movement, I do not move
away from myself ) precisely because they are homogeneous, and this failure is the proof
of this homogeneity: Wahrnehmen and Sich Bewegen emerge from one another. A sort of
reflection by Ec-stasy, they are the same tuft.”
Voyance 133
amount to losing it. But, at the same time, equating consciousness with the
world would amount to resorting to a misplaced pan-psychism. Between
the world and consciousness there is, therefore, a more complex relationship,
one that should be characterized in terms of “neither-nor”: consciousness is
neither identical to nor different from Being. It is rather the very priority of the
relationship between the two that one must account for. If one starts with one
of the two terms, then the task of relating it to the other becomes an impos-
sible task. By contrast, if the relationship is adequately conceived as more pri-
mordial than the two relata, then a wholly different ontology comes to the fore.
For if each term is related to the other in order to be itself, then neither stands
alone, neither is a substance, but each is a relation to, i.e., a tension toward,
the other.
Further, since intentionality also denotes a “relation to,” Merleau-Ponty can
state that this double structure of a “relation-to” proper to each of the two sides
represents an intentional “in one another” (Ineinander). Needless to say, this
form of intentionality is not proper to the “meaning-giving I” (sinngebendes
Ich) but to “functioning intentionality” ( fungierende Intentionalität). This is an
intentionality possessing two sides, without implying two subjects facing one
another. It should rather be viewed in terms of the relationship between activ-
ity and passivity. Each intentional relation is at once passive and active, thus
instituting two circles: one being the relating-at, the other the being-related-by.
Here the Husserlian notion of intentionality displays its true dialectical char-
acter, and Merleau-Ponty is justified in reading Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit
in terms of Husserl’s phenomenology, and vice versa. Thus the concealedness
of Being explains, according to Merleau-Ponty, the peculiar condition of con-
sciousness which, following both Hegel and Husserl (if one considers what
Husserl says of the natural attitude), is characterized in terms of “invertedness”
(Verkehrtheit). As Merleau-Ponty states in the lectures on philosophy and non-
philosophy: “[since Hegel] there is a natural consciousness that is naturally
unconsciousness (cf. Marx and Freud), naturally mystified; it is the conscious-
ness of the exterior, Bewusstsein. Truth is called forth by consciousness, but
[truth] can only occur by tearing and negation of consciousness.”24
Consciousness, in the natural sense of the term, amounts each time to a rela-
tion with a single being, thus concealing its relation to the horizon condition-
ing and permitting this very reference to a single entity. This, however, is not a
24 Merleau-Ponty, Notes de cours 1959–1961, p. 286: “Il y a une conscience naturelle qui est
naturellement inconscience (cf. Marx; cf. Freud) naturellement mystifiée: c’est la con-
science de l’extérieur, Bewusstsein. La vérité est appelée par elle, mais ne peut survenir
que par déchirement et négation d’elle.” My translation.
134 Vanzago
mistake to be corrected by a better use of consciousness, for it is necessary that

consciousness be reverted in order for each single being to emerge from Being.
Merleau-Ponty claims as much in his commentary on Heidegger’s philosophi-
cal development, when he says that “[e]ach unveiling of a being is oblivion of
that which is not unveiled, Verbergung that is das erstlich Verborgene. In this
respect, the Unwahrheit is not human negligence.”25
These words are drawn from Heidegger, but they hold true for Merleau-
Ponty himself, as many places of The Visibile and the Invisible attest. Being is
concealed because it is not a being, not a thing. How then to account for Being?
If compared to the notion of entity proper to the sciences and to metaphys-
ics, Being must clearly be called a Nicht-Seiendes, a non-being. This is not to
be understood, however, as pure nothingness, for this would precisely entail
remaining within the horizon of metaphysics. Merleau-Ponty sees the indi-
cation of another approach in Heidegger’s later thought. What Heidegger
calls Beyng (Seyn), or barred Being, is that which is not nothing, the “there is”
(Es gibt) or il y a, which Merleau-Ponty does not hesitate to compare to
the “something” (Etwas) as that to which man is open, and in the truth of
which we exist. This “something” cannot be accounted for in the traditional
terms of essence, because the notion of essence leads us to grasp that which
becomes in terms of what has become, i.e., in terms of its completion. To
understand the “something” as having been is tantamount to endorsing full
positivity. The “something” therefore is what “makes itself” or “happens” and
is never complete. It is “essencing” (Wesen) in the verbal sense; in French, as
Merleau-Ponty stresses, it has to be rendered by “ester” instead of “être”.26
This incompleteness of the “something” entails, therefore, an incorporation
of nothingness into Being itself. The “something” is never fully actualized and
always in the process of actualizing anew. Presence and absence, positivity and
negativity, are intertwined, being necessary to each other. Yet to appropriate
the Heideggerian “es gibt” in these terms means to reintroduce the notion of
experience. As Merleau-Ponty states:
Heidegger’s enterprise has always been that of describing Dasein as an

Ueberstieg that truly surpasses me and not as [an] “immediate presence
to the world” in Sartre’s sense; Being therefore as a two-layered structure
[. . .] Hence, in Sartre, the possible is “of consciousness”, Being is all
25 Merleau-Ponty, Notes de cours 1959–1961, p. 100: “Tout dévoilement d’un étant est oubli de
ce qui n’est pas dévoilé, Verbergung qui est das erstlich Verborgene. En cela, l’Unwahrheit
n’est pas négligence humaine.” My translation.
26 See Merleau-Ponty, Notes de cours 1959–1961, p. 107.
Voyance 135
actual—no distinction between Being and the being—whereas in

Heidegger there is a possible Being that is not simply das möglicherweise
Seiende, that which is possibly actual, that is belonging to Being of
the nichtiges Nichts itself.27
Sartre’s two levels of Being—the In-itself and the For-itself—negate the

mutual correlation of each other. But Being “is not” without beings, and at
the same time beings are nothing in themselves but represent instantiations
of the always incomplete process of Being. Merleau-Ponty, however, gives a
peculiar inflection to this Heideggerian notion. He underlines the Greek sense
with which to understand it. He writes:
The Wesen insofar as it west reigns as essence, that is the Sein (the possi-
ble understood as pretention to existence). Here and there, it must be
said of this being that it is not susceptible of explication, that it is impos-
sible to give a reason for it, that all Grund is intrinsic to it. This follows
from the very explicitation of Sein as φύσις: a presence that 1) manifests
itself “von selbst” in Husserl’s sense; 2) precisely for this reason is not
selbstverständlich; example: the rose, the Rose-sein.28
This means that there is no “why” for the manifestation of beings. The rose is
without reason. Nevertheless, there is a difference between other beings and
the human being, for while the rose pays no attention to itself, what charac-
terizes the human form of life is precisely its paying attention to itself. Man
is open to the world, thus it is open to itself, and hence to its being seen.29
27 See Merleau-Ponty, Notes de cours 1959–1961, p. 104: “L’entreprise de Heidegger a toujours
été de décrire le Dasein comme un Ueberstieg qui me dépasse vraiment et non comme
[une] ‘présence immédiate au monde’ au sens de Sartre; l’être donc comme structure à
deux étages [. . .] De là, chez Sartre, le possible est ‘de la conscience’, l’Être est tout actuel—
pas de distinction entre l’Être et l’Étant—au lieu que chez Heidegger il y a un possible
de l’Être qui n’est pas simplement das möglicherweise Seiende, ce qui est possiblement
actuel, qui est l’appartenance à l’Être du nichtiges Nichts lui-même.” My translation.
28 See Merleau-Ponty, Notes de cours 1959–1961, p. 107: “Le Wesen en tant qu’il west, règne
comme essence, voilà le Sein (le possible comme prétention à l’existence). Ici et là, il faut
dire de cet être qu’il n’est pas susceptible d‘explication, qu’on ne peut en rendre raison,
que tout Grund lui est intérieur. Cela ressort de l’explicitation même du Sein comme
φύσις: une présence qui, 1) se manifeste ‘von selbst’ au sens de Husserl; 2) justement pour
cette raison, n’est pas selbstverständlich; exemple: la rose, la Rose-sein.” My translation.
136 Vanzago
A being such as the rose is a thrust (poussée) of Being—this is how Merleau-

Ponty renders Heidegger’s discussion of the Greek verb φύειν30—that is, some-
thing that “is” in the sense of becoming, of taking place, and manifesting itself.
In the case of man, this very manifestation itself is manifested; it constitutes
self-manifestation. This self, however, is not acquired through negation or
through the negation of negation. Or better, if a negation is here implied, it is a
lateral and relative negation. It is what Merleau-Ponty calls latency.
This sort of latency is due to two reasons. On the one hand, the self-
manifestation of humans is acquired through their being exposed to the
world. It is not self-possession but, rather, if I may coin an expression, self-
dispossession. This way of accounting for humans’ self-manifestation clearly
resonates with Hegel, though with an important difference, which points to
the second reason. Each manifestation is also self-manifestation, but not in the
sense of an identity between the two. While in Sartre consciousness is at once
self-consciousness, Merleau-Ponty underlines that there is a hiatus, which is
due to the delay or gap that occurs between the being-seen and the seeing-
one’s-own-being-seen. To see one’s own visibility is not a direct act, it is not an
inspection of consciousness, but is possible only insofar as there has been a
previous exposure. As Merleau-Ponty says in one of the last working notes for
The Visible and the Invisible:
To say that the body is a seer is, curiously enough, not to say anything
else than: it is visible. [. . .] More exactly: when I say that my body is a seer,
there is, in the experience I have of it, something that founds and
announces the view that the other acquires of it or that the mirror gives
of it. I.e.: it is visible for me in principle or at least it counts in the Visible
of which my visible is a fragment. [. . .] It is through the world first that
I am seen or thought.31
30 In the Lectures on Nature (see Merleau-Ponty, Nature, p. 3) Merleau-Ponty introduces his
discussion of the various conceptions of nature by saying that he is “looking for the pri-
mordial, nonlexical meaning always intended by people who speak of ‘nature’. In Greek,
the word ‘nature’ comes from the verb ϕύω-, which alludes to the vegetative; the Latin
word comes from nascor, ‘to be born’, ‘to live’; it is drawn from the first, more fundamental
meaning.” The Greek verb is once again mentioned by Merleau-Ponty when discussing
Heidegger’s verbal meaning of Being in relation to the rose of Angelus Silesius’ famous
poem, discussed by Heidegger in his The Principle of Reason. See Merleau-Ponty, Notes de
cours 1959–1961, p. 107.
31 See Merleau-Ponty, The Visible and the Invisible, pp. 273–274.
Voyance 137
Thus, the very capacity of seeing is made possible by virtue of the exposure to
being seen. This seems to me a reversion of Hegel’s model, while there is no
doubt that Merleau-Ponty at the same time closely follows Hegel’s analysis of
experience in the Phenomenology of Spirit. For Hegel, the Absolute becomes
itself through its manifesting itself and hence becoming other than itself. The
Absolute accomplishes this becoming-itself through its progressive manifesta-
tions, figures (Gestalten) which, in being limited, at the same time are the only
way the Absolute can really develop itself and thus attain itself. Thus the mani-
festations are something in between subjectivity and objectivity. As Merleau-
Ponty remarks, according to Hegel:
The phenomenon is not an object and is not a subject. Not an object: it

concerns me, in presenting it I understand myself. Not a subject: it still
has to become for itself. It is the inner framework (membrure cachée) of
‘subject’ and ‘object’—object returning to itself, subject outside itself. It is
the conquest of this order of phenomena, the presentation of its concat-
enation that is the only justification of the absolute. Justification that is
not a demonstration, but self-monstration of the becoming-absolute of
the phenomenon (becoming-phenomenon of the absolute) by its own
movement.32
This structure seems to be fully consistent with Merleau-Ponty’s own

description. He even goes so far as to say that the Hegelian notion of phenom-
enon entails the relativization of the subject-object opposition, each one being
the reverse side of the other, and the two being “for the same” ( für Dasselbe).33
He equates this reversibility to what becomes, in his opinion, the Husserlian
notion of intentionality. The difference therefore does not lie so much in the
structure that is quickly evoked here as in the final meaning of the notion of
Absolute. According to Merleau-Ponty, who follows Heidegger on this point,
the Absolute in Hegel is in the end, once again, only on the side of the subject.34
32 “Le phénomène n’est pas objet et n’est pas sujet. Pas objet: il me concerne, en le présent-
ant je me comprends. Pas sujet: il a encore à devenir pour soi. Il est la membrure cachée
de « sujet » et « objet »—objet revenant à soi, sujet hors de lui. C’est la conquête de cet
ordre du phénomène, la présentation de son enchainement qui est la seule justification
de l’absolu. Justification qui n’est pas démonstration, mais auto-monstration du devenir-
absolu du phénomène (devenir-phénomène de l’absolu) par son mouvement propre”
(Merleau-Ponty, Notes de cours 1959–1961, p. 297). My translation.
34 See Merleau-Ponty, Notes de cours 1959–1961, p. 311 evokes Heidegger’s essay on Hegel’s
concept of experience in Off the Beaten Track (Holzwege).
138 Vanzago
Thus Hegel betrays his own insight concerning experience, which is a dual
“one for the other” (Ineinander) by which each side is what it is only through
its other. The final composition envisaged in the Phenomenology of Spirit, and
even more so the further conception of logic understood in terms of the mind
of God before Creation, are therefore signs of a regression of what was accom-
plished by Hegel in his account of experience, and a return to a conception of
the whole in terms of something already become, that is, no longer becoming.
How then to characterize this “one for the other” (Ineinander) always to
be recommenced anew and always incomplete? The answer can probably be
found in a passage commenting on Heidegger’s Identity and Difference, where
Merleau-Ponty states that: “The meaning, the Als, is the moving relation Being-
beings, a relation that cannot be determined, that is encompassing with respect
to the senses.”35 Thus the notion of sense is framed in terms of a relationship,
which is not a being, a thing, an object, and as such cannot be fixed once
and for all, for it is the very exchange which allows things to become things and
subjects to become subjects. This relationship is, furthermore, a movement,
that is, something that happens and never fully “is”: an event. An event unfolds
itself in figures (the Seinsgeschichte) that do not achieve a final accomplish-
ment but compose an endless circle. As Merleau-Ponty puts it: “To think of the
absolute is not only to think of the absolute, but also of the rest and the abso-
lute starting from the rest, and so forth. What is there is the circle.”36
The solution therefore does not lie in the Hegelian identity of identity and
non-identity, for this means to subordinate difference to identity, and this out-
come is inevitable, according to Merleau-Ponty, when experience becomes
signification, that is, something said. “That is, when experience ceases re-
considering itself, thinking itself as surrounded by an encompassing, vertical,
present world, and when it presumes having totalized everything, having
understood everything, having overcome everything.”37
In the end, therefore, the circle is unsurpassable, the ambiguity (Zweideu
tigkeit) of consciousness is not eliminated by a notion of experience in terms
35 See Merleau-Ponty, Notes de cours 1959–1961, p. 120: “Le sens, le Als, c’est le rapport mou-
vant Être-étant, rapport qui ne peut pas être fixé, qui est englobant par rapport aux sens.”
My translation.
36 See Merleau-Ponty, Notes de cours 1959–1961, p. 315: “Penser l’absolu, ce n’est pas seulement
penser l’absolu, mais aussi le reste et de nouveau l’absolu à partir du reste, et ainsi de suite.
Ce qu’il y a, c’est le cercle.” My translation.
37 See Merleau-Ponty, Notes de cours 1959–1961, p. 317: “C’est-à dire dès qu’elle cesse de se
reconsidérer, de se penser entourée par un englobant, le monde vertical, présent, et pré-
sume d’avoir totalisé, tout compris, tout dépassé.” My translation.
Voyance 139
of that which uncovers its invertedness (Verkehrtheit) and thus realizes its
reversal (Umkehrung), as in Hegel, for exteriority cannot be eliminated, and
the absolute knowledge is still a figure of consciousness. But this ambiguity,
Merleau-Ponty adds, is not bad. It is a defect only if viewed from the perspec-
tive of consciousness itself. But if we succeed in grasping the absolute as a
“light of truth that appears through the thickness of experience, and that
embraces subject and object relativized,”38 then we understand that ambigu-
ity is the mark of Being, understood in terms of radical contingency.
6 Voyance, or the Visibility of the Invisible
Now we are in a position to realize how the notions clarified so far shed light
on the very issue of vision and visibility. Starting from a strong reassessment
of his notion of perception in terms of ontological acting-towards and being-
acted-upon by the world, Merleau-Ponty generalizes the relationship between
bodies and world in terms of a living structure of interrelationships that entails
a simultaneous relationship of each bodily organism to itself, to other organ-
isms, and to the environment. Perception can thus at once be accounted for in
terms of self-manifestation and hetero-manifestation, so to speak. Each living
being is what it is insofar as it is seen by its own environment; the environ-
ment in turn is essentially composed of other organisms and only derivatively
of “things.” To be seen is a feature belonging to the essence of each living being
and is not a mere accident. Accordingly, vision, which is the most eminent
among the senses but not necessarily differing in principle from the others,
represents a double-faceted articulation: to see and to be seen are to be con-
sidered as two faces of the same coin. This entails a different conception of the
acting subject as well as of the acted-upon object. In Merleau-Ponty’s perspec-
tive, the object is also acting and the subject is also acted upon. Vision is thus
no longer simply a mode of sensing, but a mode of Being. This explains why
in some texts Merleau-Ponty recalls Rimbaud’s “Letter of the Seer”, in which
the French poet speaks of “clairvoyance,” as the term is usually translated while
giving it a critical ontological meaning. This is the reason for retaining here the
French term for lack of a better option.
In Eye and Mind (a very telling title with respect to the present themes),
Merleau-Ponty speaks of voyance in terms of what “renders present to us what
38 See Merleau-Ponty, Notes de cours 1959–1961, p. 319: “lumière de vérité qui paraît dans
l’épaisseur de l’expérience, et qui embrasse sujet et objet relativisés”. My translation.
140 Vanzago
is absent.”39 Following Mauro Carbone, we may summarize what lies behind

this short statement as follows: voyance—which in the mutual referring of
perception and the imaginary—“renders present to us what is absent.” As
Heidegger says, seeing is not Vorstellen, i.e., to represent by frontal positioning.
Seeing should instead be regarded as “complying with”—a verb which
expresses the indistinguishability of activity and passivity. With voyance, we
discover that seeing is a complying with the showing of the sensible universe
itself, within which we find ourselves and through which the power of analogy
runs. In virtue of this power, bodies and things recall and implicate each other,
establish new relations, invent lines of force and flight, and, in the end, draw
what Husserl called a “logos of the aesthetical world.” Merleau-Ponty often
uses this expression of Husserl’s precisely because of its implied reconsidera-
tion of the relationship between the sensible and the intelligible.40
Vision thus possesses an ontological value insofar as it does more than what
we actually think it does. The whole essay published by Merleau-Ponty a few
days before his death could be read as a kind of discourse on method, not
only because of its continuous confrontation with Descartes but especially by
reason of its posing the epistemological—as well as ontological—problem of
what it properly means to see and what the implications of a different concep-
tion of vision are for our rational understanding of reality. As Carbone remarks,
an appropriate awareness of the specificity of the sensible world entails a revi-
sion of the usual way of conceiving the relationship between the sensible and
the intelligible.
Through the notion of voyance, therefore, Merleau-Ponty shows that vision
poses an ontological problem that has been overlooked because of the onto-
logical prejudices—stemming from a certain reading of Plato’s ideas and
Aristotle’s metaphysics of substance—relegating the sensible to the lower
realm of what is unstable and therefore uncertain and less true with respect
to what is unchanging, stable, and unmoving. As I have tried to show, Merleau-
Ponty found very early, in his investigation on perception, reasons to doubt this
ontology and to deepen the ontological implications of perception itself.
As Merleau-Ponty explains in the opening lines of Eye and Mind, the arts are
a privileged path through which to raise the question of the ontological mean-
ing of vision,41 because they are able to consider vision for what it actually is
without being burdened by the prejudices coming from the implicit and naïve
ontology of the scientists. However, it is important to stress that Merleau-Ponty
is not rejecting the sciences themselves, but only the ideology with which
39 See Merleau-Ponty, Eye and Mind, p. 171.

40 Mauro Carbone, An Unprecedented Deformation (Albany, NY, 2010), p. 18.
41 See Chapter 5, Beyond the Innocence of the Painter’s Eye, by Pavlos Kontos.
Voyance 141
scientists read the meaning of their discoveries.42 It comes as no surprise, then,

that Merleau-Ponty looks at the work of poets and writers (Proust, Claudel,
Valéry, Saint-John Perse, and Claude Simon, in particular) as well as of painters,
to illustrate his point. Still, their work, too, is interpreted as having ontological
value. Thus, voyance names “the new bond between the writer and the visible”43
which, according to Merleau-Ponty, allows us to go beyond the Cartesian
ontology of vision and reach the possibility of grasping the interrelation
between what is seeing and what is seen. As he explains, “[t]he moderns
rediscover the Renaissance through the magical idea of visibility: it is the
thing that makes itself seen (outside and inside), over there and here.”44 While
Descartes reduces vision to a kind of thought—stimulated by images, in just
the way that thought is stimulated by signs and words—, by contrast, Merleau-
Ponty conjectures that the “unveiling of the voyance in modern art—a voyance
which is not Cartesian thought—might have [an] analogue in the arts of
speech.”45 Poetry, literature, and painting thus provide us with the means to
overcome the separation between entities that is probably the most persistent
idea among the Cartesian inheritance, and to rediscover the interconnection
preceding and, at the same time, permitting this separation. In other words,
we see things and others, but we see them thanks to their mutual bonds that
join them and unite us all, yet cannot in turn be seen. Voyance is the means
given to us, through the work of particular individuals endowed with gifts that
allow them to express what is present in all vision, to become aware of this
invisible “of” visibility itself.
42 As M. Carbone aptly remarks, “clearly, one should not expect to find in science a fully
elaborated ontology capable of taking the place of the modern ontology, accord-
ing to which Nature is the absolute Object and in which the Subject is Kosmotheoros
(an equally absolute spectator). As Merleau-Ponty contends, science as such ‘does not
provide an ontology, not even under a negative form. It has only the power to divest
pseudo-evidence of its pretension to be evidence’ [. . .]. Still, the formulation of ontologi-
cal hypotheses, which is the task of philosophy, ought to be based on the outcomes of
scientific inquiries too. In fact, Merleau-Ponty consistently emphasizes the way in which
currents of twentieth-century scientific inquiry decisively converge. According to him,
they converge in ‘emptying of evidence’ the opposing causalistic and finalistic concep-
tions of Nature—which he considers ‘concepts of artificialism’ [. . .] along with the idea
of the separability of existence and essence (which he holds to be equally artificial)”
(Carbone, An Unprecedented Deformation, p. 14).
45 See Merleau-Ponty, Notes de cours 1959–1961, pp. 182–183. For this analysis see Carbone,
An Unprecedented Deformation, p. 17.
chapter 7
Seeing the Invisible: Jean-Luc Marion’s Path from

Husserl to Saint Paul
Claudio Tarditi
In this paper I intend to provide a critical analysis of how the notion of visibil-
ity develops in two phenomenological approaches, namely Edmund Husserl’s
transcendental phenomenology and Jean-Luc Marion’s phenomenology of
givenness. According to my interpretive hypothesis, the former conceives
of phenomenality in terms of evidence1 and full visibility, whereas the lat-
ter constructs the notion of givenness as a paradoxical manifestation of
invisibility.2 On the one hand Marion criticizes the Husserlian account of vis-
ibility as only suitable to the objects of visual perception (for instance a table,
a bottle, a landscape and so forth). On the other hand, by means of his concep-
tion of givenness, he interprets and radicalizes the notion of visibility within
a broader field of phenomena, called “events,”3 whose phenomenality should
be conceived in terms of originary invisibility. There is no need to discuss the
main aspects of such a radicalization, which constitutes one of the strongest
“heretical”4 subversions of Husserlian phenomenology, since they have been
described by Marion himself.5 Rather, I will focus on a very specific aspect
which defines the development of Marion’s perspective and has not yet been
analyzed in secondary literature on the French phenomenologist, namely his
interpretation of Saint Paul’s Letters and their influence on his considerations
of the essence and structures of visibility.
* The present essay results from my research project A Phenomenological and Hermeneutical
Development of Saint Paul, financed by the Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research
(NWO, project nr. 040-11-390) and carried out at the Nijmegen Center for Contemporary
European Philosophy (Radboud University).
1 Edmund Husserl, Cartesian Meditations, trans. Dorion Cairns, 7th ed. (The Hague, 1982), p. 12.
2 Jean-Luc Marion, In excess, trans. Robyn Horner and Vincent Berraud (New York, 2002),
p. 105.
3 Jean-Luc Marion, Certitudes négatives (Paris, 2010), pp. 243–299.
4 As is well known, this notion of “phenomenological heresy” has been introduced by Paul
Ricoeur, L’herméneutique à l’école de la phénoménologie, 3rd ed. (Paris, 1995), p. 9.
5 See Jean-Luc Marion, Being Given: Toward a Phenomenology of Givenness, trans. Jeffrey Kosky
(Stanford, 2002), pp. 7–61.

Seeing the Invisible 143
At first glance, one might assume that this subject is merely a sub-theme
of the well-known debate relating to the theological turn of French phenom-
enology, a debate initiated by Dominique Janicaud with his critical assessment
of Marion, Heidegger, Levinas, Chrétien and Henry.6 According to Janicaud,
a certain line of French phenomenologists, deeply influenced by Heidegger’s
“phenomenology of the unapparent,”7 reintroduces metaphysics into phenom-
enology and, going beyond its specific limits, namely beyond the objects given
to the intentional gaze, generates a “phenomenology in excess.”8 As a result,
this variety of phenomenology would conceal an implicit theological project
and also an attempt to develop a type of Christian philosophy with clearly
apologetic intentions. Marion responds to Janicaud’s reproach emphasizing
that, although his education did have theological roots and he endeavors to
think about God in a way that exceeds metaphysical concepts, his project
remains consistent with the phenomenological method. In my view, this means
that a phenomenology of givenness is in no way an application of Christian
theology to phenomenology. Rather, it is an attempt to conceive of givenness
with and beyond Husserl, by radicalizing it and enlarging its phenomenal
field. According to the hypothesis I will develop in this contribution, Marion’s
concern with Saint Paul takes place precisely within the horizon of this radi-
calization of transcendental phenomenology in terms of a phenomenology
of givenness. This does not imply that Marion attempts to translate Husserl’s
thought into a theological framework. Rather, it simply means that Saint Paul’s
Letters are sources of inspiration for Marion’s consideration on a number of
crucial problems related to one of the main questions he addresses in his phil-
osophical work, namely the connection between visibility and invisibility.
1 The Privilege of Visibility
Whenever philosophers mention the notion of invisibility, we fall into difficul-

ties and tend to reject it as a form of irrationality or an inclination towards
mysticism. In such cases, somehow or other, we all share Kant’s critical
6 See Dominique Janicaud, “The Theological Turn of French Phenomenology,” in Phenome

nology and the “Theological Turn”, ed. Bernard Prusak (New York, 2000), pp. 3–106.
7 Martin Heidegger, Vier Seminare (Frankfurt, 1977), p. 339.
8 Jean-David Sebbah, Testing the Limit. Derrida, Henry, Levinas and the Phenomenological
Tradition, trans. Stephen Barker (Stanford, 2012).
144 Tarditi
attitude against the “spirit-seer”9 Swedenborg: to reach theoretical validity,

every concept must correspond to a sensible intuition, otherwise it remains a
void intuition, a phantasm or an hallucination.10 In Marion’s view, this Kantian
paradigm deeply influences, mutatis mutandis, also one of the main attempts
to provide a new foundation to philosophy, namely Husserl’s p henomenology.
As is well known, from his Logical Investigations onwards, Husserl sought
to develop a philosophical model capable of overcoming the methodologi-
cal gap between the Naturwissenschaften and the Geisteswissenschaften
by a direct description of human consciousness as intentionality.11 This
latter implies that every act of consciousness is in correlation with a signifi-
cation always reducible to an objective shape.12 Although such an object is
not physically present to the subjective gaze (as happens for instance in
desires, memories, dreams and so forth), intentionality always conserves its
structure of correlation, provided that in Husserl’s view a non-intentional
consciousness is simply absurd. Thus, to found philosophy as a rigorous science,
phenomenology has firstly to describe whether and how the object of inten-
tional correlation can reach the level of “evidence” as the subjective “Erlebnis of
truth.”13 To satisfy this requirement, Husserl introduces the idea of intuitive ful
fillment. According to Marion, it is exactly on this point that Husserl reveals his
debt to Kant (and indeed it is well known how deeply Neo-Kantianism directly
influenced Husserl’s “transcendental turn” while writing his Ideas I):14 our
consciousness can attain the self-evidence of its object, that is a real and
scientific knowledge of it, only if the intentional act is completely fulfilled by
the intuitive manifestation of the intentional correlate.15 The Husserlian choice
9 See Immanuel Kant, Dreams of a Spirit-Seer and Other Writings, trans. Gregory Johnson
(West Chester, 2002), p. 15.
10 See Immanuel Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, trans. Werner Pluhar (Indianapolis, 1996),
p. 106.
11 Edmund Husserl, Philosophy as Rigorous Science, trans. Quentin Lauer (New York, 1965),
pp. 43–59.
12 Edmund Husserl, Analyses concerning Passive and Active Synthesis, trans. Anthony
Steinbock (Dordrecht, 2001), p. 640: “I can doubtlessly designate phenomenological inves-
tigations as [. . .] investigations that attend to the correlations between constituting con-
sciousness and the constituted objectlike formation.”
13 Edmund Husserl, Logical Investigations, 2 vols., transl. John Findlay, 6th ed. (New York,
2008), 2: 194.
14 Sebastian Luft, “Reconstruction and Reduction: Natorp and Husserl on Method and the
Question of Subjectivity,” in Neo-Kantianism in Contemporary Philosophy, ed. Rudolf
Makkreel (London, 2010), p. 61.
15 Husserl, Logical Investigations, 2:221.
for this model has three main consequences. (i) Even if the intentional object
is not necessarily a physical entity, it always shows itself in its essential objec-
tivity (Gegenständlichkeit), that is precisely its being present to consciousness
in the shape of visibility. As stressed by Nicolas de Warren, “I become what
I have seen—I am a h istory of having seen. Perception becomes me. Perception
is thus not only the movement of curiosity but also the becoming of visibility,
and in this sense a knowledge that becomes. Perception becomes what it per-
ceives; in this becoming, perception comes into pre-possession of what has
yet to be seen while retaining what it can no longer see.”16 (ii) According to
Husserl, even in cases of non-perceptual experiences (such as dreams, desire,
love, pain and so on), perception offers the main paradigm of any intentional
experience as such. As Husserl declares, ‘‘throughout the conscious experi-
ences in which my life as the life of an ‘I’ streams on, there belongs a never-
ending stream of experiences of one distinct type according to an essential
necessity, the type of perception. The life of an ‘I’ is a continuous perceiving.’’17
(iii) As a result, one can conclude that, since every kind of experience is inten-
tional, it has to satisfy the two previous points: otherwise, it simply cannot be
defined as an experience.
These three points make us easily understand that “intentionality is not a
watchword, but the title of a central problem.”18 This problem emerges par-
ticularly when we attempt to consider as a whole the fundamental charac-
teristics of intentionality. As stressed by Claude Romano,19 on the one hand
(i) the intentional acts are always referred to a transcendence, namely to an
object or meaning outside consciousness;20 on the other hand (ii) they do not
imply their objects’ existence. According to Romano, proposition (i) states
that the intentional acts are always in connection with a transcendence, but,
on closer inspection, a real relation between consciousness and something
external implies that these two terms necessarily exist, a condition explicitly
excluded by determination (ii). Thus, Romano concludes that the notion of
intentionality is definitely aporetic. As a matter of fact, if one desires something
16 Nicolas de Warren, Husserl and the Promise of Time (Cambridge, 2009), p. 280.
17 Edmund Husserl, Natur und Geist: Vorlesungen Sommersemester 1919 (Dordrecht, 2002),
p. 22.
18 Edmund Husserl, Zur Phänomenologie des inneren Zeitbewuβtseins (The Hague, 1966),
p. xxv.
19 Claude Romano, Au coeur de la raison, la phénoménologie (Paris, 2010), p. 486.
20 Husserl, Analyses concerning Passive and Active Synthesis, p. 17: “The ego is everywhere
living in these acts as carrying them out, as being related to the perceptual object, the
judged object, the willed object through these acts.”
146 Tarditi
not existing (a very frequent case), intentionality is not anymore connected to

exteriority, but only to the structure of inner (or lived) experiences.21 But how
could intentionality be at the same time a relational property and an intrinsic
feature of consciousness? It seems that intentionality needs at the same time
the existence of the intentional correlate and its potential inexistence: here is
a true paradox. To overcome such a tension, constitutive of the Husserlian con-
cept of intentionality as based on the paradigms of perception and visibility,
I will follow Romano’s solution: we need to rethink the validity and the range of
transcendental phenomenology by criticizing the privilege Husserl attributes
to visibility and perception. In other words, as Romano observes,22 although
every intentional experience surely is a kind of experience, it is not certain at
all that every experience is shaped by intentionality. This means that, while in
the case of an act of consciousness based on perception, intentionality per-
fectly reveals a connection between consciousness and a transcendent object,
in other cases—such as desire, love, hate, pain, faith—consciousness has to
deal with a non-objective kind of givenness and, accordingly, a non-intentional
kind of experience. Thus Romano concludes that the Husserlian endeavor to
attribute all these different intentional modalities to a unique paradigm, pat-
terned after perception, ceases to underestimate any variety of non-objective
givenness.23
Husserl’s account of intentionality reveals its ambiguity also in reference to
the notion of constitution. Indeed this latter tries to synthesize three different
claims: (a) the realistic thesis according to which things manifest themselves
to our consciousness, with the result that our knowledge does not influence
its objects;24 (b) the Cartesian argument, according to which there is an abso-
lute heterogeneity between pure consciousness and reality; (c) the transcen-
dental argument, according to which consciousness constitutes reality as
its transcendental correlate. The second and the third arguments represent
Husserl’s position from Ideas I onwards,25 whereas the realistic thesis, typical
of the Logical Investigations, is progressively marginalized. As a result, reality
becomes a system of meanings completely dependent on subjectivity. This
means that the phenomenological reduction does not only change our point
of view on the world, but it radically modifies what we called “world” in our
21 Romano, Au coeur de la raison, la phénoménologie, p. 486.

25 Edmund Husserl, Ideas pertaining to a Pure Phenomenology, 2 vols., trans. Dermot Moran
(New York, 2012), 1:78 and 1:90–91.
natural attitude. In other words, from Ideas I onwards it becomes more and
more clear that arguments (a) and (c) are not compatible. Effectively, whereas
the “natural world” (namely before the act of reduction and intentional consti-
tution) in Ideas I is never influenced by our presence,26 both Husserl’s further
concept of world as intentional correlate and his notion of Lebenswelt point
to a constituted world completely dependent on consciousness.27 In other
words, in my view the inner ambiguity of the Husserlian concept of constitu-
tion originates from its difficult attempt to hold together, in a paradoxical bal-
ance, the notion of self-givenness and the transcendental claim according to
which every meaning depends on subjectivity. Hence, the concept of constitu-
tion reproduces and amplifies the basic ambiguity which I have already shown
surrounds intentionality.
2 Beyond Perception
As briefly illustrated, Husserl’s account of intentionality and constitution

oscillates between realistic and transcendental tendencies. I cannot provide
an in-depth description of the entire process of self-critique to which Husserl
was committed throughout his life. Nevertheless, both his published works
and his posthumous manuscripts28 clearly show that such an uncertainty also
concerns Husserl’s account of perception, which becomes more and more
enigmatic for him, especially in reference to two particular varieties of tran-
scendence: otherness and temporality.29 However, these two phenomenologi-
cal fields in fact reflect and amplify a more radical inadequacy of perception
as the main paradigm of intentional experience. As stressed by de Warren,
“this ambiguity of the Other’s perceptual givenness is, in one sense, familiar
to us since it shares in the form of an ambiguity, or pretension, that charac
terizes any perceptual experience. Every perceptual object is given in an inad-
equate manner as it is composed of aspects of an object that remains hidden
from us.”30
26 Husserl, Ideas pertaining to a Pure Phenomenology, 1:9–10.

27 Husserl, Ideas pertaining to a Pure Phenomenology, 1:90; see also Edmund Husserl, The
Crisis of European Sciences, trans. David Carr (Evanston, 1970), pp. 143–148.
28 See in particular Edmund Husserl, Phantasie, Bildbewusstsein, Erinnerung. Zur Phänome
nologie der anschaulichen Vergegenwärtigungen (The Hague, 1980), pp. 1–108.
29 See in particular Edmund Husserl, Zur Phänomenologie der Intersubjektivität (The Hague,
1973) and Die Bernauer Manuskripte über das Zeitbewusstsein (Dordrecht, 2001).
30 de Warren, Husserl and the Promise of Time, p. 240.
148 Tarditi
Yet, it is enough to compare two important passages—drawn from

the Logical Investigations and the Analyses concerning Passive and Active
Synthesis—to become aware of Husserl’s commitment to the description
of perception both in its passive genesis and active structures. In his Sixth
Logical Investigation, Husserl states: “In the ideal, limiting case of adequate
perception, this self/presenting sensed content coincides with the per-
ceived object. [. . .] Each individual percept is a mixture of fulfilled and
unfulfilled intentions.”31 This short passage explicitly shows that, already in
his Logical Investigations, Husserl is fully aware of the constitutive limits of
perception. In other words, since the very beginning of phenomenology,
perception is considered as the favored model of every scientific truth, but
at the same time as a limiting ideal. Our intentional life has always to deal
with what Husserl calls “perspective shadings”32 (Abschattungen), that is
the result of our perceptual experience, constantly influenced by an enor-
mous quantity of external elements and never able to immediately grasp
the meaning of an object in its absolute givenness. This conviction accom-
panies Husserl throughout his works as a hidden presence and finally
reemerges in his lectures on passive and active synthesis, where he affirms:
we see that every perception implicite invokes an entire perceptual sys-

tem; every appearance that arises in it implies an entire system of appear-
ance, specifically in the form of intentional inner and outer horizons. We
cannot even imagine a mode of appearance in which the appearing
object would be given completely. No final presentation in the flesh is
ever reached in the mode of appearance as if it would present the com-
plete, exhausted self of the object. Every appearance implies a plus ultra
in the empty horizon. And since perception does indeed pretend to give
the object [completely] in the flesh in every appearance, it in fact and by
its very nature constantly pretends to accomplish more than it can
accomplish.33
In this surprising exercise of self-deconstruction, Husserl admits that per-

ception is unsuited to its fundamental task, that is to see, bring to light and
understand objects and meanings as they present themselves. Accordingly, in
my opinion, there is an explicit connection between his early notion of per-
spective shading and his later awareness of the limits of perception. As is well

32 Husserl, Ideas pertaining to a Pure Phenomenology, p. 78.
33 Husserl, Analyses concerning Passive and Active Synthesis, p. 48.
known, Husserl never brought into question the priority of perception as the
main paradigm of experience, because this would have entailed a general cri-
tique of the transcendental model of phenomenology as such. Nevertheless,
the passage drawn from his lectures on active and passive synthesis includes a
notion whose fruitfulness for the thought of Marion, and for our consideration
of it, is yet to be discussed: “Every appearance implies a plus ultra in the empty
horizon.”34 What is the meaning of the expression “plus ultra”? In Husserl’s
view, since perception always implies an intentional correlate in objective
(gegenständlich) shape (even if this latter does not appear to the subjective
gaze), one can argue that its unique possible variety of phenomenality is
visibility. Under these premises it is coherent to suppose that a plus ultra
beyond visibility refers to a further modality of givenness that is not reducible
to visibility. I propose to designate this by the problematic notion of invisibility.
This means that, in my view, Husserl’s openness to a different kind of phenom-
enality beyond the pairing of perception/visibility authorizes its development
through the notion of invisibility. In other words, whereas objects can be gazed
upon by subjectivity, the non-objective givenness always remains invisible and
eludes perception. Thus, one can conclude that phenomena which do not take
an objective shape do not offer themselves to the intentional gaze but rather
manifest themselves in invisibility. In conclusion, from Husserl’s perspective,
what is uniquely at stake in phenomenology is objectivity and, accordingly,
the description of the intentional correlation between the subjective gaze and
its objects.35 Nevertheless, his progressive dissatisfaction with the paradigm
of perception allows us to provide an interpretation of this “plus ultra”36 as a
sign of his openness to non-objective givenness and invisibility. I will attempt
to develop such a discussion through Marion’s interpretation of visibility and
invisibility in his first important book, God without Being.37 As is well known,
this relation is exemplified in this text as the difference between idols and
icons. It is precisely in this context that Saint Paul plays a decisive role in
Marion’s philosophical perspective.

35 Edmund Husserl, The Idea of Phenomenology, trans. Lee Hardy (Dordrecht, 1999),
p. 54. Husserl explicitly excludes from phenomenology any consideration of non-
objective givenness as an “empty logical category”: see Husserl, Ideas pertaining to a Pure
Phenomenology, 1:95.
37 Jean-Luc Marion, God without Being, trans. Thomas Carlson (Chicago, 1991).
150 Tarditi
3 The Idol and the Icon towards Saturation
The first and most serious difficulty one encounters in comparing Husserl’s
above-quoted passages on perception with Marion’s early theological reflec-
tions in God without Being is their remarkable difference of inspiration. The
former offers his complex account of passivity and activity of consciousness,
whereas the latter attempts to develop a new conception of God beyond
metaphysics and ontology. At first glance, they have nothing in common.
Nevertheless, one can easily notice that Marion’s analysis of the idol and the
icon in God without Being does not concern “religious art”38 alone. As he writes
at the very beginning of his book, “such a conflict unfolds in a dimension far
more essential than any possible polemic between pagan art and Christian art:
rather, this very formulation covers [. . .] a much more essential issue. For the
historical succession of two models of art permits one to disclose a phenom-
enological conflict—a conflict between two phenomenologies.”39 As a result,
it is clear that what is actually at stake in Marion’s interpretation of the idol
and the icon is not only relevant from a theological point of view, but repre-
sents a strong contribution to phenomenology, insofar as it is entirely focused
on visibility and invisibility.40 From this viewpoint, one may easily understand
the strict connection between Marion’s perspective and the inner crisis of the
conceptual couple perception/visibility in Husserl. More precisely, one might
affirm that the entire philosophical path that Marion inaugurated with God
without Being could be interpreted as an endeavor to provide a clarification—
with and beyond Husserl—of the enigmatic notion of a “plus ultra”, originating
from the internal crisis of the phenomenological notion of perception.
It could seem quite unconvincing that two kinds of objects—such as the
idol and the icon—represent the most adequate development of the plus
ultra mentioned by Husserl in his lectures on active and passive synthesis.
38 Marion, God without Being, p. 7.

40 Yet, in La rigueur des choses (Paris, 2013), chapter 3, Marion affirms that his theological
education throughout the 1970s (especially due to his dialogue with some very impor-
tant theologians, like Hans von Balthasar, Jean Daniélou, Henri de Lubac and Jean-Marie
Lustiger) was oriented towards a clarification and a deeper understanding of the history
of metaphysics. In his view, the most part of Western philosophy can be understood
only in theological terms. As a result, not only he does wish to contribute to theologi-
cal debates, but also he intends to provide philosophical insights about the theological
roots of the Western metaphysical tradition. In this context, it is increasingly difficult to
share Janicaud’s accusation, according to which Marion would have radically mystified
the original project of phenomenology.
Nevertheless, such an assessment misses the point, because, as Marion repeats

in his God without Being, idols and icons are in no way objects: “In short, the icon
and the idol are not at all determined as beings against other beings, since the
same beings (statues, names, etc.) can pass from one rank to the other. The icon
and the idol determine two manners of being for beings, not two classes of
beings.”41 Thus, the notions of the idol and the icon do not designate two vari-
eties of phenomenality, but the possibility of a passage among them, that
is from visibility to invisibility. It is precisely in that sense that, in my view,
these two notions are perfectly suited to representing the overcoming of the
Husserlian paradigm of perception.
Since idols and icons are not mere objects, but refer to different forms of
givenness, their specific phenomenological differences are to be found in their
particular modes or degrees of visibility. In this regard Marion affirms: “The
idol never deserves to be denounced as illusory since, by definition, it is seen
[. . .]. It even consists only in the fact that it can be seen, that one cannot but
see it. And see it so visibly that the very fact of seeing it suffices to know it
[. . .]. The idol presents itself to man’s gaze in order that representation, and
hence knowledge, can seize hold of it.”42 So the idol offers the possibility of a
complete fulfillment of the intentional gaze. Since the idol fascinates the gaze,
insofar as it is absolutely exposed to this latter’s perception, it accomplishes
the full idea of visibility. As a result, the idol depends on the gaze it fulfills.
If the gaze would not desire to be totally fulfilled by the idol, this latter would
have no meaning for it. In this sense, Marion shares Feuerbach’s idea that
“it is man who is the original model of his idol.”43 On the contrary, “the icon does
not result from a vision but provokes one. The icon is not seen, but appears, or
more originally seems, looks like [. . .]. Whereas the idol results from the gaze
that aims at it, the icon summons sight in letting the visible be saturated little
by little with the invisible.”44 In other words, Marion argues that the invisible
somehow appears in a semblance which, however, never reduces the invis-
ible to the “slackened wave”45 of the visible. Far from the visible advancing
in search of the invisible, one would say rather that the invisible proceeds up
into the visible, precisely because the visible would proceed from the invis-
ible. Introducing the notion of the icon, Marion enters into a process that will

42 Marion, God without Being, pp. 10–11.
43 Marion, God without Being, p. 16. Marion quotes Ludwig Feuerbach, Das Wesen des
Christentums, (Gesammelte Werke) 5 (Berlin, 1968), p. 11.
152 Tarditi
lead him to a total subversion of Husserl’s account of intentionality into the

new phenomenological concept of the gifted (a-donné). If the idol completely
depends on the intentional gaze, the icon exceeds or saturates any attempt of
constitution by provoking a vision which pushes the gaze back from visibility
to invisibility. Indeed Marion states: “The gaze can never rest or settle if it looks
at an icon; it always must rebound upon the visible, in order to go back in it up
the infinite stream of the invisible. In this sense, the icon makes visible only by
giving rise to an infinite gaze.”46
One might still wonder how the icon’s image can engender an infinite gaze,
namely an infinite and restless search for a hypothetical invisible origin of
visibility. As long as the icon is considered an object, the notion of infinite gaze
remains meaningless. Strictly speaking, only the idol is visible, because it ulti-
mately offers itself as a mirror reflecting the subjective gaze and, in doing so, it
confers to this latter a position of substantial pre-eminence. On the contrary,
the icon is capable of arousing an infinite gaze, precisely because it does not
offer itself as an object, but rather as a saturating intuition which exceeds the
limits of any intentional constitution. Accordingly, the icon deprives the sub-
ject of his supremacy over phenomenality. Nevertheless, such an experience
needs to be clarified with due regard to its particular kind of phenomenality. If
in God without Being one cannot find a systematic development of this topic,
Marion’s entire ensuing path—especially from Being Given onwards—focuses
on the notion of saturation as an overcoming of objectivity and subjective
constitution. As is well known, through a progressive deconstruction of tran-
scendental phenomenology and ontology (corresponding to the deconstruc-
tion of transcendental consciousness and Dasein), Marion derives the notion
of the saturated phenomenon with a view to describing an exceptional class
of phenomena and to gaining insight into phenomenality as such, provided
that this latter discloses ‘‘the movement by which the phenomenon gives
itself.”47 This capacity to disclose givenness as such leads Marion to conclude
that saturated phenomena reveal the structure of phenomenality in general:
“My entire project aims to think the common-law phenomenon, and through
it the poor phenomenon, on the basis of the paradigm of the saturated phe-
nomenon, of which the former two offer only weakened variants, and from
which they derive by progressive diminishment.”48 Accordingly, in Marion’s
perspective, whereas saturation is ruled out by metaphysics as an inconsis-
tent concept, it is taken by the phenomenology of givenness for the highest

47 Jean-Luc Marion, In excess, trans. Robin Horner (New York, 2004), p. 36.
48 Marion, Being Given, p. 227.
level of phenomenality. This means that, although not all phenomena involve
saturated phenomena, all saturated phenomena accomplish the unique para-
digm of phenomenality. Or rather, the saturated phenomenon establishes the
truth of all phenomenality, because it marks, better than any other phenome
non, the givenness from which it comes.
The in-depth analysis of the difference between the idol and the icon in the
light of Marion’s further texts on the saturated phenomenon49 leads to the fol-
lowing result: the idol’s phenomenality is totally reducible to an object always
exposed to the intentional gaze, whereas the icon is conceivable only as an
excess—a saturation—of phenomenality, which cannot be objectified by a
limited gaze. In other terms, staring at an icon implies an infinite struggle to
understand the excess of phenomenality which involves my gaze in its invis-
ible manifestation. Under these premises, although presented by the icon, the
invisible is meant to remain invisible. It is not invisible because, at least for
now, it is missed by the subjective gaze, but it is the invisible as such insofar
as there is no way to represent it. In other words, whereas the idol’s function
consists in reducing the invisible to the visible, the icon aims to make visi-
ble the invisible as such (the unenvisageable): as a result, the icon constantly
refers to an invisible alterity without reproducing it in the domain of visibil-
ity. Thus the gaze can never rest when looking at an icon, just because it has
always to jump from the visible to the infinite stream of invisibility. In this
sense Marion affirms: “Whereas the idol is always determined as a reflex, which
allows it to come from a fixed point, an original from which, fundamentally,
it returns [. . .], the icon is defined by an origin without original: an origin
itself infinite, which pours itself out or gives itself throughout the infinite
depth of the icon.”50 In the final analysis, the icon constitutes the saturation
of visibility as such, given that it assumes no other measure than its exces-
siveness, whereas the idol measures the divinity within the extent of the
subjective gaze. While the material idol is characterized by the fact that the
artist attributes the “brilliance of the first visible” to it,51 what characterizes the
icon does not derive from the painter’s hands but from the infinite depth
passing through them or, in other words, orienting them as they follow an orig-
inary gaze. This implies that the icon always comes from elsewhere (d’ailleurs).
As Marion writes, “the essential in the icon comes to it from elsewhere, or
comes to it as that elsewhere whose invisible strangeness saturates visibility
49 Jean-Luc Marion, The Visible and the Revealed, trans. Christina Gschwandtner (New York,
2008) and The Erotic Phenomenon, trans. Stephen Lewis (Chicago, 2007).
154 Tarditi
[. . .]. In return, to see, or to contemplate, the icon merely consists in traversing

the depth that surfaces in visibility [. . .] in order to respond to the apocalypse
where the invisible is made visible through a hermeneutic that can read in the
visible the intention of the invisible.”52
4 Hermeneutics of Invisibility: Saint Paul’s Letters
Before proceeding any further, it is evident that some clarification of the

expression just quoted, “a hermeneutic that can read in the visible the intention
of the invisible,” is necessary. As has been shown, the distinction between the
idol and the icon that Marion introduces in God without Being is reinterpreted
in his later texts as a “topics of the phenomenon,”53 namely as a sequence of
different degrees of saturation of phenomenality. While the idol does not pres-
ent a high level of saturation, since it appears as the full visibility of a mirror
reflecting the subjective gaze, the icon reveals a very high degree of saturation
(although not the highest overall, which is represented, in Marion’s view, by
Revelation), since it is able to transform the subjective gaze into the response
of the gifted to the originary call of invisibility. Nevertheless, one must not for-
get a highly relevant remark Marion introduces at the very beginning of God
without Being: the idol and the icon are not two classes of objects, sharply
divided, but two manners or degrees of phenomenality apt to drift reciprocally
one into the other.54 This means that the degree of saturation is not an intrin-
sic quality of idols or icons, but it depends entirely on the type of gaze directed
at their image. On the one hand, if the gaze comes from a transcendental sub-
ject attempting to constitute the image as pure visibility, it will finally cover the
saturation and turn the image into an idol reflecting the subjective gaze itself.
As already explained, in Marion’s view this constant possibility of falsifying
saturation constitutes the essence of idolatry. On the other hand, if the sub-
ject forsakes all pretentions of supremacy over phenomenality and considers
itself as having been gifted, it can experience the icon’s gaze, beyond whose
eyes the unenvisageable opens the infinite field of invisibility. As a result, in my
opinion it is possible to maintain that the distinction between idols and icons
is a matter of interpretation. Or rather, an authentic interpretation is accom-
plished only if the interaction between phenomenality—in the icon’s case, the

53 Marion, Being Given, pp. 221–233.
image of a face—and subjectivity is shaped as a relation between a call and

a response. Hence, abandoning his transcendental posture, the gifted is able
to interpret the originary icon’s invisibility as the infinite and inexhaustible
saturation of any horizon of visibility. In the end, it is enough to follow only a
few passages from God without Being to become aware of how Marion, thirty
years before taking an explicit position on the possible interaction between
phenomenology and hermeneutics, already demonstrates the hermeneutical
potential of his account of the idol and the icon in his interpretation of some
passages from Saint Paul’s Letters.55 As I will demonstrate, these passages do
not represent a kind of application of Marion’s account of the icon to Paul’s
Letters. Rather, in his view, they offer the most precious confirmation that in
the New Testament there emerge both the possibility of a radically different
variety of gaze and the progressive awareness of the deep connection between
visibility and invisibility.
In the first chapter of God without Being, Marion states that “the formula
Saint Paul applies to Christ, ‘icon of the invisible God’ (Col. 1, 15), must serve
as our norm; it even must be generalized to every icon [. . .].”56 In this passage
Marion emphasizes the Pauline idea of the “invisible God” as reachable only
through the icon of Christ. This means that this latter does not lead God to
visibility, but reveals him as infinite invisibility. In this sense, Christ is an icon
of God, because through his face the human being can receive the infinite
divine gaze as a totally free gift, by which he is no longer constituted as a sub-
ject but, indeed, as a gifted. However, the most relevant hermeneutical aspect
of this passage concerns the necessity to apply the relation between the icon
and the invisible to all icons. In other words, the icon is taken out of its theo-
logical context, with the result that it reveals its phenomenological fruitful-
ness. For instance, it becomes a true keystone of the experience of otherness in
general. Conceiving of otherness as radically as possible means to understand
it as infinite invisibility, that is, as displaying the structure of the icon. On the
contrary, trying to reduce the other to its immediate visibility amounts to a
complete loss of its radical alterity. In this way, the other becomes our idol of
alterity. More precisely, if my gaze fixes the face of the other and attempts to
constitute it as full visibility, I will distort it into a mere idol mirroring my own
subjectivity. Rather, if I accept its manifestation without fixing it in an objec-
tive concept, I will be able to respond to its originary call, “face to face, person
55 Saint Paul’s quotes are drawn from The Holy Bible (Oxford, 1952).
156 Tarditi
to person.”57 In my view, this new possibility to conceive of otherness58 in a

way that exceeds metaphysics represents the main result of Marion’s account
of the icon. Indeed, a few lines further on, Marion quotes another passage from
the first letter to the Corinthians, which is even more explicit about the icon’s
effects on subjectivity: “We all, with face unveiled and revealed, serving as opti-
cal mirror to reflect the glory of the Lord, we are transformed in and according
to his icon, passing from glory to glory, according to the spirit of the Lord.”59
Accordingly, the subject turns itself into the gifted only by reflecting the divine
invisible light, that is the gaze of God that emanates from his icon.
Furthermore, the strong influence of Saint Paul’s Letters on Marion’s the-
ory of the icon in God without Being is testified by the following two passages,
which restate the transiency of the world and the possibility of a radically dif-
ferent kind of gaze. The first passage is known as the “figure of as if ”:
I tell you brothers, the moment is limited: it remains therefore that those
who have wives should be as if they had no wives, that those who cry
should be as if they were not crying, that those who rejoice should be as
if they were not rejoicing, that those who have commerce should be as if
they did not possess, and that those who make use of the world should be
as if they did not make use of it. For the figure of this world is passing
away.60
Although commentators usually discuss the structure of “as if”, whose impor-
tance is to be sought in the moral warning to follow Christ’s poverty and to
abandon all worldly concerns, Marion emphasizes the last sentence, “for the
figure of this world is passing away,” precisely because the “figure of this world”
is directly linked to his interpretation of the idol. In other words, what is pass-
ing away is “this world,” whose visibility depends directly on the subjective
gaze. As long as we treat beings as mere objects of our power of vision and
constitution, we contribute to the construction of the idolatrous figure of this
world. In Marion’s view, this latter can be overcome by another sort of vision
which does no longer depend on subjectivity but rather emanates from the
icon. For this reason Marion quotes Saint Paul again:
57 1 Cor. 13:12. Quoted in Marion, God without Being, p. 22.

58 Concerning Levinas’ influence on Marion, see Joeri Schrijvers, “Marion, Levinas and
Heidegger on the question concerning ontotheology,” Continental Philosophy Review 43
(2010), 207–239.
59 2 Cor. 3:18. Quoted in Marion, God without Being, p. 21.
60 1 Cor. 7:29–31. Quoted in Marion, God without Being, p. 127.
The invisible things of God, since [and by the fact of] the creation of the
world, can be seen in the mode of spirit, in the works, and also the eternal
power and divinity of God: such that they, men, cannot plead their cause,
since having known God, they did not glorify him as God, nor did they
render him thanks, on the contrary they went up in smoke by their
thoughts, and their unintelligent heart was darkened. Pretending to be
wise, they became fools—were distracted.61
Here Saint Paul is very explicit and provides a decisive contribution to Marion’s
account of the relation between visibility and invisibility. The invisible God
becomes somehow visible not in the idolatrous shape of a full visibility com-
pletely liable to the control of the subjective gaze, but rather in the invisible
spirit, which, through the icon’s eyes, manifests itself to man and, demanding
his response, transforms him into a gifted. Those who resist such an infinite
gaze and attempt to submit it to their subjective power of constitution fall
into idolatry. They have their “heart”—but one could also add “their sight”—
darkened and “distracted.” Their attempt to control the icon’s gaze, that is to
reduce it to an object to be intentionally constituted, leads them to betray and
falsify the invisible root of every manifestation. Eventually, as described by the
Acts of the Apostles,62 during Pentecost the spirit comes, pouring down over
the Apostles’ heads—in other words, it manifests itself without taking a visible
or objective shape, since the spirit opens and inaugurates a radically different
kind of vision of the world, with no need to be visible in its turn. If the Apostles
had distorted the coming of the spirit into a visible figure, they would have cre-
ated an idol to be venerated and, at the same time, they would have avoided
the call emanating from the infinite gaze of God. In this case, the spirit would
have been completely falsified and his invisible source of visibility would have
been flattened on the idol’s face, fully visible but without profundity.
Thus, it proves that Saint Paul’s Letters not only constitute one of the most
relevant texts in Marion’s theological education, but also the first hermeneuti-
cal testing ground for his phenomenological description of idols and icons.
Accordingly, Saint Paul plays a decisive role in Marion’s perspective not only
from a theological point of view, but rather in his phenomenological project
to overcome the Husserlian model of visibility. In this sense, Marion’s path
begins with Husserl and, through a deep confrontation with Saint Paul, leads
to a hermeneutical phenomenology of invisibility. My final aim in this essay
is to clarify this complex notion.
61 Rom. 1:20–22. Quoted in Marion, God without Being, p. 130.

62 Acts of the Apostles, 2:1–4.
158 Tarditi
5 Toward a Hermeneutical Phenomenology of Invisibility
The possibility of interpreting a number of passages of Saint Paul’s Letters in

light of the phenomenological distinction between idols and icons requires
a discussion of Marion’s general account of the concept of interpretation. In
short, if one considers Marion’s further phenomenological works as well as
God without Being, one can notice that transcendental phenomenology is a
very useful instrument to deal with visibility, insofar as this latter gives itself
through a perceptual experience. Nevertheless, if one tries to reduce a satu-
rated phenomenon into the intentional structure of noesis-noema, the result
is what Marion calls “idol.” Thus, when phenomenology has to deal with satu-
ration, such as the infinite and invisible gaze of the icon, it requires a slow, pro-
gressive and inexhaustible work of interpretation. In other terms, dealing with
invisibility, phenomenology has to cooperate with hermeneutics. Therefore
this does not mean that Marion accepts (more or less explicitly) including his
phenomenology of givenness into the so-called “hermeneutical turn of phe-
nomenology” which took place in France throughout the 1980s, especially after
Ricoeur’s works.63 As a matter of fact, Marion has always been quite skeptical
about hermeneutics and the possibility of a real hermeneutical turn of phe-
nomenology. In order to gain further conceptual clarity, I will emphasize that,
although Marion’s hermeneutical attitude—for instance toward the tradition
of the Church Fathers—has been rooted in his philosophical style since the
very beginning of his work, his commitment to the theoretical question of
the interaction between a phenomenology of givenness and hermeneutics is
quite recent. Thus, in Marion’s view, such a connection is not a matter of turn
but rather of reciprocal interaction. This means that, on the one hand, phe-
nomenology is uniquely possible as hermeneutics while, on the other hand, a
hermeneutical phenomenology of invisibility would have to be deployed with-
out an end and in an indefinite network.
However, in order to provide a precise description of Marion’s account of
hermeneutical phenomenology, it may be useful to give some more details
about two philosophers whose works gave a decisive impulsion to the herme-
neutical turn of phenomenology: Paul Ricoeur and Jean Grondin. According to
Ricoeur, phenomenology achieves its goals only through hermeneutics, since
in his view the phenomenological reduction is a particular variety of inter-
pretation. Accordingly, hermeneutics includes the analysis of intentionality
within the general attempt to provide a history of subjectivity throughout the
Western tradition. Moreover, such an interpretive description of subjectivity
63 See in particular Paul Ricoeur, From text to action, trans. Kathleen Blamey (London, 1991).
has also to take into account the contribution of psychoanalysis, philosophy of

language and theology.64 An alternative to Ricoeur’s view is given by Grondin’s
notion of “turn.” According to Grondin, phenomenology naturally evolves
into hermeneutics, since it already contains a number of hermeneutical ele-
ments, which were not developed by Husserl. In particular, Grondin argues
that the process of constitution, that is an attribution of meaning, ultimately
is a p rocess of interpretation precisely because our access to the world is
always mediated by language and influenced by historical context.65 So, in
Grondin’s view, the history of phenomenology corresponds to the history of
its developments and transformations into hermeneutics.66 Nevertheless,
both these approaches to phenomenology ultimately have a tendency to under-
mine the importance of phenomenology and its essential role. As a matter of
fact, both in Ricoeur’s and Grondin’s view, hermeneutics comes after phenom-
enology, precisely because it represents its development and its accomplish-
ment, namely a sort of overcoming of phenomenology. Rather, Marion’s
attempt consists in developing an interaction between hermeneutics and phe-
nomenology, with both preserving their own autonomy and their theoretical
identity: in other words, a hermeneutical practice of phenomenology based on
an infinite work of interpretation. One will find a sketch of this hermeneutical
phenomenology in the last chapters of Certitudes négatives, that are related
to the distinction between objects and events. In my perspective, these two
phenomenological notions represent the natural outcome of Marion’s concep-
tion of the idol and the icon exposed in God without Being.
In Certitudes négatives Marion argues that, within the infinite field of given-
ness, consciousness is able to constitute only certain “islands of stability”67
whose essential characteristic is their visibility, namely the fact that they can
be intentionally gazed upon. More precisely, Marion argues that, in a sense, the
intentional gaze provides the foundation for the phenomenon’s stability, that
is what makes it an ob-jectum, a determined and invariable object. It is quite
easy to recognize in this definition of the object the reliance of the idol on the
subjective gaze discussed by Marion in God without Being. According to Marion,
an object can be (a) measured according to certain parameters, (b) envisaged
or reproduced, provided that it (c) results from a cause and (d) can assume in
64 See Ricoeur, From text to action, pp. 38–52.

65 See Jean Grondin, Le tournant herméneutique de la phénoménologie (Paris, 2003),
pp. 23–24.
66 See Jean Grondin, L’horizon herméneutique de la pensée contemporaine (Paris, 1993),
pp. 81–92.
67 Marion, Certitudes négatives, p. 243.
160 Tarditi
turn this same causal function towards other objects. Under these conditions,
the object remains comprehensible to our finite rationality. On the other hand,
what exceeds objectivity cannot be constituted, since it cannot be held in per-
manence and invariability by the subjective gaze. Accordingly, the real prob-
lem concerns how to conceive of this kind of phenomenality which excludes
any objectification by a subjective gaze. In this case, what is at stake for Marion
is the question of the event, the non-objective phenomenon par excellence.68
Since it does not depend on the intentional gaze, but arises by itself without
any possible prevision or reproduction, “it imposes itself as a causeless, auton-
omous and spontaneous actuality always accomplished before the knowledge
we could reach of it.”69 In other words, the event, namely a phenomenon which
is not shaped as an object, happens in an absolutely unpredictable way, when
consciousness is not yet aware of what is occurring to it. As a consequence,
the event’s arrival remains an enigma for us precisely because it imposes itself
by means of its effect of surprise. In other words, one might conclude that the
event’s meaning is always grasped too late, or better, only after the event hap-
pened. It is in this precise sense that Romano argues that the event gives rise
to an “originary delay of every comprehension.”70 This means that the event
inaugurates a completely new kind of phenomenality and thus requires a dif-
ferent variety of gaze. The event is only describable a posteriori, once it hap-
pened, insofar as its phenomenological structure implies its passing rather
than its stability. Since the structure of the event is to come and pass without
enduring in presence, consciousness is always in a passive attitude towards it.
In other words, consciousness can only receive the event and respond to it. No
prevision is possible, no control is permissible. Nevertheless, Marion does not
conclude that the event is lacking in rationality because, rather, it contains
more rationality than one could ever imagine. This endeavor to reduce such an
overabundance of rationality to the structures of consciousness always takes
place after the event’s occurrence and has to deal with its essential invisibility.
It is as though we see a light so bright that it is invisible to any eye. It is evident
that the phenomenological structure of events could easily be applied to the
description of the icon. This means that the icon manifests itself as the event of
an infinite gaze whose phenomenality is not reducible to any subjective power
of control and constitution. Accordingly, the icon is only conceivable as an
68 Concerning Marion’s account of the Heideggerian notion of the Ereignis, see Marion,
Being Given, pp. 34–39.
70 Claude Romano, Event and Time, trans. Stephen Lewis (New York, 2013), p. 209.
event, because its manifestation is comprehensible only a posteriori, namely

after its gaze has reached us and provoked our response.
On closer inspection, this distinction between objects and events repro-
duces and amplifies the one between idols and icons following the “hermeneu
tics that can read in the visible the intention of the invisible.”71 In other words,
when dealing with phenomena exceeding limitations imposed upon them by
a subject, phenomenology has to be practised as hermeneutics. This means
that just as the difference between icons and idols depends on the subject’s
decision to “lose its anteriority”72 and its power of control over phenomenality
in general, so the event can only be received by a gifted which interprets what
happens without objectifying it. In a decisive passage, Marion states:
The distinction between the modes of phenomenality (objects and

events) can be articulated in a series of hermeneutical variations, [. . .]
having ontological authority on beings’ phenomenality. It only depends
on my gaze that even a stone could once appear as an event [. . .] or, on
the opposite, that God himself could sometimes appear as an object (for
instance in case of idolatry or totalitarianisms).73
Thus the distinction between objects and events is in fact grounded on varia-
tions of intuition, or rather on a series of “hermeneutical variations.”74 The
more a phenomenon appears as an event, the more it is saturated with intu-
ition. The more it appears as an object, the more it is deprived of intuition.
Nevertheless one could oppose that, since in Marion’s view these hermeneu-
tical variations have “ontological authority”75 on phenomenality in general,
they run the risk of reintroducing transcendental subject, precisely the one
who presumes to fix the norm of all manifestation. According to Marion, this
risk remains unavoidable: our attitude towards phenomena is ultimately free,
it depends on our decision to receive them as events to be interpreted (for
instance, the event of the icon as well as the event of alterity) or to struggle to
constitute them as objects (as happens in case of idolatry). Nevertheless, from
a strictly phenomenological perspective, an event can only be interpreted
by a gifted, since the transcendental subjectivity cannot have access to a non-
objective phenomenon, but rather it continually attempts to attain the full

72 Marion, The Visible and the Revealed, pp. 43–44.
162 Tarditi
visibility of transparent objects throughout its scientific evidence. As a result,

when transcendental subjectivity encounters the icon, in most cases it will
reduce its infinite gaze into an idol. On the other hand, according to Marion,
the object does have a double possibility: to be perceived and precisely consti-
tuted as an object (as it happens in most cases) or to be interpreted in its turn
as an event. In short, the object can be constituted as such or interpreted as an
event, whereas the event is uniquely commensurable with the hermeneutical
practice of phenomenology by a gifted, since its reduction to an object ulti-
mately represents its falsification.
In conclusion, Marion’s path, beginning with a perceptual paradigm of vis-
ibility (Husserl), leads—in God without Being—to a new framework within
which visibility and invisibility are in deep interaction. Upon closer inspection,
the overcoming of Husserl’s paradigm of visibility leads Marion to his distinc-
tion between the idol and the icon not as two classes of objects, but rather
as two modes of phenomenality. In this context Saint Paul’s Letters have a
strong influence on Marion’s perspective as the first and main hermeneutical
testing ground for his theory of idols and icons. Throughout this path, Marion
develops his distinction between these two modes of phenomenality introduc-
ing another distinction between objects and events. The event constitutes a
particular variety of phenomenality which avoids any objective description
and no longer requires the gaze of transcendental subjectivity, but rather
the infinite gaze of the gifted. Accordingly, beyond the domain of objectiv-
ity, one can have access to a different kind of visibility, whose phenomenality
is only conceivable as eventness and whose “counter-experience”76 contradicts
the finite conditions of the subjective experience. Although such a notion of
counter-experience could seem paradoxical, Kierkegaard reminds us that
“the paradox is the passion of thought, and the thinker without the paradox is
like the lover without passion; [. . .] So the supreme paradox of philosophy is to
aim to discover something escaping his challenge.”77
76 Marion, The Visible and the Revealed, p. 134. See also Kevin Hart, ed., Counter-Experiences:
Reading Jean-Luc Marion (Notre Dame, 2007).
77 Søren Kierkegaard, Concluding unscientific postscript, trans. David Swenson (London,
1945), p. 37.
Part 3
Rival Paradigms
∵
chapter 8
The Use and Abuse of Vision

Michael Inwood
When philosophers consider sense-perception, they often focus primarily on

vision and sideline, with or without apology, our other senses. Moreover, when
they resort to perceptual models and metaphors to express their view of intel-
lectual knowledge, vision tends to predominate over the other senses. It is true
that they often speak of “grasping” things that are not literally tangible, the
point of an argument for example, or “getting in touch with” reality, and may
informally say that they “smell a rat” or that some event or proposition leaves
a “nasty taste in one’s mouth,” but such non-visual metaphors do not usually
exert a comparable force to that of claiming that we just “see” that murder
is wrong or that 2+2=4. Vision and the priority assigned to it has, in recent
years, been held responsible for various features of philosophy itself. Hans
Jonas argued that vision has given us the “idea of an enduring present, the con-
trast between change and the unchanging, between time and eternity”;1 the
idea of “form as distinct from matter, essence as distinct from existence, and
the difference between theory and practice”; and the idea of infinity.2 These
acquisitions might be regarded as benefits, but more commonly the priority of
vision is charged with encouraging a variety of philosophical faults.3 The visual
model is accused of underwriting a purely theoretical attitude to the world, in
* I am grateful to Anna Aravantinou, Imola Atkins, Fiona Ellis, Pavlos Kontos, Grahame Lock,
Stephen Priest, Jonathan Price, and Ralph Weir for their generous help and advice.
1 An entirely different account of the origins of our ideas of eternity and the “timeless pres-
ent” is given by Jaakko Hintikka in “Time, Truth, and Knowledge in Aristotle and other Greek
Philosophers,” in Time and Necessity: Studies in Aristotle’s Theory of Modality (Oxford, 1973),
pp. 62–92.
2 Hans Jonas, “The Nobility of Sight: A Study in the Phenomenology of the Senses,” in The
Philosophy of the Body: Rejections of Cartesian Dualism, ed. Stuart F. Spicker (Chicago, 1970),
p. 328.
3 The charges are retailed at length in Martin Jay, Downcast Eyes: The Denigration of Vision
in Twentieth-Century French Thought (Berkeley, 1993). See also David Michael Levin, ed.,
Modernity and the Hegemony of Vision (Berkeley, 1993), especially the sober rebuttal of some
of the charges by Stephen Houlgate in “Vision, Reflection, and Openness: The ‘Hegemony of
Vision’ from a Hegelian Point of View,” pp. 87–123.

166 Inwood
contrast to practical engagement with it (Dewey, Heidegger, Macmurray);4

the belief that we can “mirror” a mind-independent, external world, rather
than simply talk to each other (Rorty); the view that the world is an object
for the satisfaction of our curiosity and open to our technological manipula-
tion (Heidegger); and a tendency to regard other people as objects of our pan-
oramic gaze rather than as worthy of our respect and hearing (Levinas).
I propose in this paper to compare vision with other senses, primarily touch
and hearing, in several respects and to ask, in each case, what effect the priori-
tization of vision might have on our philosophical approach.
1 The Ubiquity of the Visible
Almost everything we believe to exist has a visual appearance and can be seen
by those who have eyes to see. Not everything, of course. Not electrons, not
abstract entities, such as ideas and concepts, and not such a non-abstract entity
as wind. I can see that it is windy from seeing trees sway in the wind. I can feel
the wind and hear it, but I cannot see the wind itself. But almost everything
else has a visual appearance, from which I can usually tell a lot about it even if
I do not move myself or the object. To discover more about an object I may
need to move closer to it, or further away, or to move around it to inspect other
sides of it. But usually I do not need to do so because of my previous experi-
ence of touching things of that sort and moving around them. Most things that
can be seen can also be touched and have a texture and a shape that can be dis-
cerned by touch. But this applies more readily to small things. To discover the
shape of a mountain by touch and kinaesthesia is a lengthy and arduous busi-
ness, which vision performs more efficiently. By contrast, most objects do not
have a characteristic and informative sound, unless something in particular
happens to it. I can hear a cup fall to the ground and break, but a cup does not
routinely emit a sound and the sound it does emit when something happens to
it does not differentiate it from many other objects, a plate for example. This is
why philosophers dealing with the perception of physical objects more often
focus on their appearance rather than their sound, why, for example, Husserl,
although he was interested in the experience of hearing a tune, holds up a die
4 In John Macmurray, The Self as Agent (London, 1957), pp. 104–126. A. Seth Pringle-Pattison
similarly charges the eye-metaphor with encouraging a “view of intelligence as spectator ab
extra” in his 1912 Gifford Lectures: The Idea of God in the Light of Recent Philosophy, 2nd ed.
(New York, 1920), pp. 113–114, 194–195.
The Use and Abuse of Vision 167
before his audience and asks them to look at it rather than listen to it. By con-
trast, Husserl invites his audience to listen to himself rather than look at him.
Humans (and possibly animals) have many features that, except in the unusual
case of visual or tactual sign language, can be discerned only by hearing them
speak. One can, of course, read their writing, but we normally do this when the
author is absent, whereas speech is mostly face to face. This helps to explain
why Levinas favours hearing over vision. Most of the people I see are simply
faces in a crowd. A friendly or a beautiful face may attract my attention and
this may be a prelude to a closer acquaintance. But to pursue such an acquain-
tance I need to listen to, and speak to, the other person, since the character, etc.
of another person is not inscribed in their visual appearance.
2 The Range of Vision
In a single gaze I can embrace many different objects, together with the rela-
tions between them in my visual field and, to some extent, their relations in the
visual world. By contrast, I cannot touch or feel many objects at the same time.
At present, I am sitting on chair, with my elbows resting on the table before
me, and holding an object, or perhaps a few objects, in each hand. So I feel
the chair, two spots on the table, and the objects in my hands. But that is very
little in comparison with the array of objects that greet my sight both within
the room and outside through the window. Moreover, the objects I feel are
not tactually continuous in the way that objects of vision are; it is not touch
but vision and my familiarity with my body and the reach of my limbs that
make me aware of the spatial relations between these objects. Hearing is dif-
ferent again. I can hear at the same time a large number of different sounds.
But the different sounds tend to obscure each other in a way that different
visible objects do not. The different sounds may either blend together to form
a harmonious complex sound, such as a symphony, or remain disconnected
like the hum of voices at a party. In either case, it requires effort to single out
an individual sound for attention unless it is much louder than the others and
drowns them out. One visible object may, of course, partially obscure another
if it stands in front of it; but two objects, and indeed many objects, may be
equally visible, none of them blocking my view of the others. It is this feature
of vision that explains why it provides a more tempting model, though per-
haps a misleading model, for our knowledge of the world. Vision gives us a
more extensive segment of the world than does either touch or hearing and
it records the details more clearly. Leibniz spoke of the soul as “miroir d’un
168 Inwood
univers indestructible.”5 It is hard to think of a tactual or auditory metaphor

that would have served his purpose as well.
One reason for the great number of objects that vision encompasses is the
great distance that it traverses. From my balcony I can see a row of apartment
blocks, and beyond those a distant mountain. If I look up into the night sky
I see remote stars. There seems no limit to the reach of vision. Everything we
see points beyond itself, if not to another object, then to a space in which
objects might have been. It is when the child gazes into the sky that it wonders
whether the world extends forever. This is why Jonas claims that vision gave us
the idea of infinity.
3 Change, Time and Freedom
Often when I survey a scene for a short, or even a longer, time, the scene
and the objects in it undergo no noticeable change. It is otherwise with hear-
ing. The sounds of the orchestra or of the party goers constantly change. They
recede into the past, albeit tacitly retained in my memory, and are replaced by
different sounds. This need not be so. It is possible for a qualitatively identical
sound to persist for a long time, but usually sounds are not like this.6 It takes
time to hear in a way in which it does not take time to see. The objects that
I explore by touch, like the objects of vision, may well remain unchanged
as I run my fingers over them. But then different objects and different regions
of a single object are not presented to me simultaneously. Again, it takes time
to explore something by touch. It is hard to imagine an interesting auditory or
tactual artwork comparable to a painting of an unchanging landscape. It is to
this feature of vision, “simultaneity of presentation,” that Jonas attributes the
“idea of an enduring present, the contrast between change and the unchang-
ing, between time and eternity.”7 Philosophers such as Heidegger and Bergson
might regard this as a doubtful benefit that encourages us to misconceive the
world as a static thing and neglect its temporality.
5 Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, La Monadologie, ed. Émile Boutroux (Paris, 1978), § 77.
6 In Individuals: An Essay in Descriptive Metaphysics (London, 1959), P. F. Strawson constructs
a purely auditory world, in which sounds occur in such a way as to present an analogue
of visual and tactual space. This exercise illustrates the difference between sounds as they
might conceivably have been and sounds as they actually are.
7 Jonas, “The Nobility of Sight,” p. 328. Jonas gives the following formula: “Hearing—presentation
of sequence through sequence; touch—presentation of simultaneity through sequence;
sight—presentation of simultaneity through simultaneity” (p. 319).
Even though vision does not require noticeable change, we can of course
see things change as well. But even if the scene I survey does not noticeably
change, I can change the focus of my attention. My attention wanders from
the street below with its apartment blocks to the mountain in the distance.
The apartment blocks are still within my field of vision, only somewhere at
its periphery. I can turn my head to change my perspective. I can close my
eyes if the sun is too bright. Jonas stresses the freedom that vision allows us.
He perhaps exaggerates its difference in this respect from hearing, where, he
says, the “freedom of selective attention is extremely limited.”8 It is true that we
have eye-lids, but no ear-lids, and that if we are within range we cannot help
hearing the sounds that occur unless we stop up our ears—and that blocks
off all sounds, not just the one we do not wish to hear. However, if more than
one conversation is going on around me, I can choose to attend to one rather
than the others. The problem then is that the noise of the other conversation
makes my chosen conversation harder to hear. That does not happen in the
case of vision. The peripheral visibility of one thing does not interfere with
my attending to another thing. Vision is panoramic in a way that hearing and
touch are not.
4 Perspectivism
Nietzsche wrote: “There is only a perspective seeing, only a perspective ‘know-

ing’; and the more affects we allow to speak about one thing, the more complete
will our ‘concept’ of this thing, our objectivity be.”9 Vision is from a perspective.
It always makes sense to ask “From what angle did you see such and such?”
I can change my position or move my head and thereby change the perspective
from which I see something. Alternatively, Husserl can turn the die he is hold-
ing around, so that his audience see it from another angle without changing
their own positions. Hearing is not perspectival. I may move closer to someone
or move downwind to improve my hearing of what they are saying. If I hear
what s/he says, I fully hear what s/he says; it has no reverse side that can only
be heard from a different angle. In the case of a composite sound, such as a
symphony, I may change my seat in a concert hall in order to hear the violins
8 Jonas, “The Nobility of Sight,” p. 316. Cf. also Jonas, “The Nobility of Sight,” p. 316: “hearing,
bound to succession and not presenting a simultaneous coordinated manifold of objects,
falls short of sight in respect of [. . .] freedom.”
9 Friedrich Nietzsche, On the Genealogy of Morality, trans. C. Diethe (Cambridge, 2007),
p. 87.
170 Inwood
more clearly than the brass. But this is to hear a part of the sound more clearly
or, alternatively, to hear a different sound altogether; it is not to hear one and
the same sound from a different angle. Touch is perspectival, though not in
quite the same way as vision is. I can touch different parts of an object by run-
ning my fingers across it, or change my posture, so that I feel it (e.g. the sofa on
which I am sitting) with a different part of my body. Curiously, when we use
“see” or “grasp” in a metaphorical sense, the perspectivality of literal vision and
touch is generally excluded. If someone claims that they just see that 2+2=4 or
that murder is wrong, or grasp the proof of Pythagoras’s theorem, it makes no
sense to ask from what angle they see it or from what side they grasped it. If
perspective is involved at all here, it may be the presuppositions that they bring
to bear that enable them to see or grasp. People with different presuppositions
may be unable to see or grasp such things. But anyone who does see or grasp
them sees or grasps them simpliciter, not from diverse perspectives. Nietzsche
was too hasty in extending perspectivism from literal vision to knowledge in
general. It makes no sense to ask “From what angle do you know that 2+2=4 (or
the way from Oxford to Banbury)?”
5 Vision and Causality
Vision involves what Jonas calls “dynamic neutralization.”10 Vision has no

causal effect on the objects of vision and, conversely, the objects of vision have
no phenomenally discernible effect on the perceiver in virtue of their being
seen or looked at—as long as it is not too bright and dazzling. Vision is purely
passive or receptive. All I have to do is open my eyes and turn them in the
right direction, and I see whatever is before me. In this respect vision contrasts
with touch. To touch something, I must move towards it and do something to
it. Touch is not as immediate and effortless as vision appears to be. What I do
to the object will alter it to some degree, if only by leaving my finger prints on
it. Conversely, my contact with the object alters me to some degree; it may for
example burn me or scratch me. Hearing resembles vision in some of these
respects. I do not need to do anything to something in order to hear it. Nor
does it have any phenomenally discernible effect on me, as long as it is not
too loud. I hear whatever sound is within earshot as long as my ears are func-
tioning properly. Indeed, since I do not have earlids, I cannot but hear what is
there to be heard, though I may not attend to it or “listen” to it. So why is sight
10 Jonas, “The Nobility of Sight,” pp. 322–325. Macmurray makes the same point: see The Self
as Agent, pp. 105ff.
regarded as especially theoretical, impractical, etc.? One reason is that vision is

contrasted with touch rather than hearing (Macmurray, for example, does not
deal with hearing at all.) Another is that sounds are less closely connected with
an object than its visual appearance is. We readily distinguish an object from its
sound, especially since most objects do not continuously emit a sound in the
way that they continuously present a visual appearance.11 We speak of hear-
ing things and we also speak of hearing the sounds they make. Similarly, we
smell things and we smell smells, we taste things and we taste tastes. But in the
case of vision there is no natural word corresponding to “sound,” “smell” and
“taste.” Aristotle said that we see colours and, as with other sensory modalities
(primarily touch), shapes, sizes, number, and rest and motion.12 But that seems
a disjointed conglomeration of disparate items, unless, like Jonas, we combine
them under the heading of “image.”13 However, to be presented with an appro-
priate image of an object is to be presented with the object itself, whereas to
be presented with its sound is not. Earwitness testimony is less reliable than
eyewitness testimony. “See that” is factive, whereas “hear that” is not: “I saw
that he had arrived” entails “He had arrived” but “I heard that he had arrived”
does not. In fact, “I heard that he had arrived” most likely implies that my belief
is based on the testimony of a third party. “I heard him arriving,” by contrast,
implies that I heard sounds associated with his arrival, but it is less likely to
be accepted without question than “I saw him arriving.” We commonly say:
“I didn’t just hear (about) it. I saw it with my own two eyes.” It is from this
feature of vision, together with its “dynamic neutralization,” that we gain, in
Jonas’s view, the concept of objectivity, of the thing as it is in itself as distinct
from the thing as it affects me, and from this distinction arises the whole idea
of theoria and theoretical truth. Furthermore, the image is handed over to
imagination, which can deal with it in complete detachment from the actual
11 In “What can we see?” W. Kneale notes that we say that “bodies make or cause sounds and
smells, but never that they make or cause views” and also that that “the presence of a body
in the neighbourhood may be inferred from the occurrence of some sound or smell, but
very rarely, if ever, that the presence of a body may be inferred from the occurrence of a
view” (W. Kneale, “What can we see?,” in Observation and Interpretation in the Philosophy
of Physics, ed. S. Korner [New York, 1957], p. 156).
12 Aristotle, De anima, 418a17–18.
13 Kneale, “What can we see?,” p. 155, says that although “we most commonly talk of see-
ing bodies of various sorts, we have words such as ‘sight’, ‘spectacle’, ‘scene’, and ‘view’
with which to indicate the special object of vision when we wish to concentrate attention
on that.” As this implies, however, these words naturally indicate the object of attentive
vision rather than of vision simpliciter, and he has to cut off this implication in order to
maintain that whenever one sees a body, one sees a view.
172 Inwood
presence of the original object: the detachability of the image, i.e. of “form”
from its “matter,” of “essence” from “existence,” is at the bottom of abstraction
and therefore of all free thought.14
This is why Husserl, with his interest in essences, often focuses on vision
rather than touch15—an exclusion for which he was criticized by Max Scheler.
Hearing does not have these effects, because it does not present the object
to me in sufficient detail and reliability. Touch does not have them, both for
this reason (at least in the case of sighted people) and because of the dynamic
interaction between the toucher and the touched. However, touch gives us
access, in a way that vision does not, to the solid reality of things. It acquaints
us with the causal efficacy of objects and also of ourselves. It is important here
to distinguish two components of touch: the feeling of resistance and tactual
discrimination. It is primarily the feeling of resistance that assures us of the
reality of things.16 It would be conceivable for a human being to be entirely
anaesthetized, so that he could not discriminate the tactual qualities of things.
But he would still perceive resistance. He would, for example, find that he
could proceed no further, since his path was blocked by a wall, even though
he could not feel the tactual qualities of the obstacle. For this, of course, he
requires the capacity to make purposive movements and kinaesthesia, inform-
ing him when he is moving and when he is not, though vision will also play a
part in this.17 Someone who lacked these capacities could hardly be aware that
14 Jonas, “The Nobility of Sight,” p. 323.

15 However, in his posthumously published Ideen II: Phänomenologische Untersuchungen
zur Konstitution (The Hague, 1952), Husserl assigns priority to touch in accounting for the
interaction between the world and one’s own body (Leib), and also for the objectification
of one’s own body as one physical body (Körper) among others. It is also worth noting that
many of Husserl’s works derive from lectures and that it easier to get a sizable audience to
look at a single object than to get them to feel it, at least at the same time.
16 Jonas, “The Nobility of Sight,” p. 324; Macmurray, The Self as Agent, p. 108. According to
M. Heidegger, Sein und Zeit (Tübingen, 1986), pp. 209ff., the idea that reality is “resistance”
(Widerstand) was proposed and analysed by Wilhelm Dilthey in Beiträge zur Lösung der
Frage vom Ursprung unseres Glaubens an die Realität der Außenwelt und seinem Recht
(Reimer, 1890), pp. 90ff. Dilthey’s idea was taken up by Max Scheler: see e.g. Problems of a
Sociology of Knowledge, trans. by M. S. Frings, ed. K. W. Stikkers (London, 1980), pp. 9–13,
p. 141 (“reality, in all modes of perception and remembrance, is given only as ‘resistance’
against dynamic, drive-like attentiveness”) and p. 215 n. 117.
17 Hence Heidegger, in assessing the Dilthey-Scheler view, says: “Resistance is encountered
in a not-coming-through, and it is encountered as a hindrance to willing to come through.
With such willing, however, something must already have been disclosed which one’s
drive and one’s will are out for. [. . .] The experiencing of resistance—that is, the d iscovery
he lived among other objects or even survive at all, unless he received sup-
port from others who do possess these capacities.18 Tactual discrimination is
a different matter, but it presupposes awareness of resistance. As Macmurray
says: “The tactual perception of shape, size, weight, hardness, surface texture,
all depend upon the varying of resistance from zero to a maximum which is
determined by the amount of energy which I can bring to bear. But such dis-
crimination involves the cooperation of other forms of sensory awareness; in
particular, the kinaesthetic awareness of the movements of the body.”19
It is noteworthy that, as in the case of vision, there is no natural word for
the object of touch corresponding to “smell,” “sound” and “taste.” This is both
because of the complexity of touch—one might discern the presence of an
object by touch without feeling its “feel”—and because of the intimate con-
nection between touch and the body touched. We find our way around in the
world primarily by sight and touch rather than by our other senses, and “sight
is correlated with touch in a much closer and more detailed fashion than any
of the other senses can be.”20
of what is resistant to one’s endeavours—is possible ontologically only by reason of the

disclosedness of the world” (Heidegger, Being and Time, p. 210). I quote the translation of
J. Macquarrie and E. Robinson (Oxford, 1962), but cite the pagination of the German edi-
tion, which is given in the margins of the translation.
18 Cf. Macmurray, The Self as Agent, p. 108, who adds: “a purely visual experience would
provide no ground for distinguishing in practice between imagining and perceiving. The
result would be a practical solipsism.” In this book, Macmurray neglects other people and
also hearing, omissions remedied in his Persons in Relation (London, 1961).
19 Macmurray, The Self as Agent, pp. 110–111.
20 Kneale, “What can we see?,” p. 156. Kneale presupposes that touch gives us direct contact
with bodies in a way that other senses do not, and explains the correlation of vision with
touch, and its relative immediacy, by the precision with which vision, in contrast to hear-
ing and smell, guides our movements: “Bodies are primarily objects of touch in the large
popular sense of that word which includes not only the capacity to feel contacts and pres-
sures but also an ability to recognize the positions of our limbs and a derivative ability to
discover the shapes of things by movements of exploration. Since, however, the percep-
tion of bodies by touch is involved in any action we may undertake to alter our environ-
ment, it is not surprising that it should provide the framework within which we try [. . .]
to co-ordinate the deliverances of our other senses, nor yet that we should speak most
confidently of perceiving bodies by that other sense which is most closely connected with
control of our action on bodies” (pp. 156–157).
174 Inwood
6 Vision, Touch and Agency
When I see, or look at, an object, I do not thereby do anything to the object,
or do anything at all, except see, or look at, it. We say such things as: “I’m not
doing anything, I’m only looking.” So it is with hearing. Hearing something or
listening to it is not thereby doing anything (to it): “I’m not doing anything, I’m
only listening.” It is otherwise with touch. Touch involves dynamic interaction
between the toucher and the touched. Touch often involves my acting, and
acting on another object. Macmurray exaggerates, however, in suggesting that
touch invariably involves such action. The experience of resistance, he says,
“presupposes that I am doing something, that I am in action, and that I am
prevented from achieving my intention. [. . .] Resistance, therefore, is a frustra-
tion of the will.”21 I am sitting on a chair. No doubt, the chair alters the shape of
my body and I affect, to some degree, the shape of the chair, especially if it is
soft. The chair prevents me from falling to the ground, and I feel the resistance
of the chair to my body. But it is hardly my intention to fall to the ground. Some
further examples of Macmurray’s hyperbole are these: “I can only become
aware of anything tactually by doing something to it. Tactual perception is
necessarily perception in action.”22 “The resistance of the Other is not merely
a negation of the act of the Self, it is necessary to the possibility of the act,
and so constitutive of it. To act at all is to act upon something.”23 “Tactual per-
ception is always perception in action. If we abstract from the action, we no
longer have a perceptual element, but a feeling, that is, an element in the gen-
eral coenasthesia which is the awareness of our own internal state. A prick,
for instance, in its immediacy is a feeling of pain which is located in my skin
[. . .]. I do not refer the pricking feeling to the object which causes it, as I do, for
example, with a visual sense-datum.”24
There are crucial ambiguities in the verbs “act,” “act upon” and “do.” If I am
walking on a lawn, then I am doing something and I am acting intentionally.
I am also acting (up)on the lawn in the broad sense of “having an effect on”
it. I feel the resistance of the lawn and, to an extent, its texture (which differs
from that of a pavement). But I am not acting on the lawn in the same way or
sense as I am acting on the wheelbarrow that I am pushing. If I stumble on a
stone, the feelings I have of resistance and texture become even more conspicu-
ous, and I exert an effect on the stone and the lawn, just as they exert an effect on
21 Macmurray, The Self as Agent, p. 108.

me, and I refer the pain in my head to the ground that causes it. But my stum-
bling, falling and colliding with the earth is not an action at all in the sense of
an intentional action. Again, if someone taps me on the shoulder from behind,
I feel her hand and I have an effect on her hand as it does on me, but I am not
acting upon, doing anything to, the hand, or acting at all in the intentional
sense. I do not feel or touch the hand in the same way or sense as I do when
I turn around and shake hands with my friend. This suggests that there is a sim-
ilar relevant ambiguity in the verbs “touch” and “feel.” To feel something may
be simply to perceive it by the sense of touch. In this sense, I feel a hand on my
shoulder or the ground beneath my feet. In a narrower sense to feel something
is to examine it by touching it, an intentional activity—these two senses do not
correspond neatly to the two senses of “act”: when e.g. I shake someone’s hand,
I feel the hand in the wider sense, but I do not usually examine it. I may again
“feel around for” something, such as a light-switch or my spectacles, that is,
search for it by my sense of touch. I can, of course, feel around for something,
without actually feeling it, and conversely, I can feel something without feel-
ing, or having felt, around for it. To touch something, by contrast, is to put some
part of my body, usually my fingers, in contact with it. This may be uninten-
tional on my part. If it is intentional, I may, or may not, do it in order to feel the
object, though I am likely to feel at least its resistance and, if my fingers are not
numb, its texture as well. Hearing-verbs, and especially vision-verbs, are more
various and discriminating. The verb “hear” is closely analogous to “feel” in the
wider sense. It is to perceive sounds by the sense of hearing. The verb “listen,”
by contrast, is analogous to “feel” in the narrower senses. To “listen (to)” is to
hear sounds attentively, while to “listen (for)” something, such as the sound of
a helicopter, is to make an effort to perceive it by hearing. If I am listening to
something, such as a symphony or a conversation, then I also hear it, while if
I am listening for something, I may not hear it, or indeed not hear anything at
all. Vision supplies corresponding verbs. “To see” is simply to perceive by the
sense of sight or vision. “To look at” something is to direct one’s vision upon
it in order to see it, to examine it by means of vision, while to “look (out) for”
something is to attempt to find it by means of vision. “Looking at” something
usually implies actually seeing it,25 whereas “looking for” it does not.26 None
of this undermines the point that touch involves bodily contact and causal
25 “Usually,” because the implication is defeasible, as in “I was looking straight at it, but
I didn’t see it.”
26 The verb “watch” is similar to “look”: to watch something is to look at it carefully, while
to “watch (out) for” is similar to “look out for”: it implies waiting for something to appear
rather than actively searching for it, as does “look for.” The distinction between the verbs
176 Inwood
i nteraction between the toucher and the touched, whereas vision and hearing
do not. But it casts doubt on Macmurray’s linkage of touch and intentional
action. To touch or feel something may involve acting on it, but equally it may
not. Conversely, acting often, though not invariably, involves touch.27
7 A Field for Action
To see is not to act. However, vision presents a field for possible action. Since
vision has such a wide range, it enables us, and more especially our ancestors,
to detect the approach of danger in advance.28 It does so more effectively than
hearing both because of its greater range and because it provides more infor-
mation about the source of danger. It allows us time to prepare to counter it.
Touch is useful for detecting obstacles and threats near at hand, such as a hot
stove or a kerb, but there are many dangers for which it cannot adequately
prepare me because it arrives too late. By the time I can touch an enemy, or a
hungry lion, my defensive options are severely limited. I need to see them at
a distance.
Vision presents us not merely with dangers, but also with opportunities.
I may, of course, look at something in order to understand it or to use it in an
appropriate manner. Heidegger, however, was especially averse to curiosity, the
desire to see “just in order to see.”29 The German word for “curiosity” is Neugier,
literally “craving (Gier) for the new (neu).” Since curiosity “seeks to see only in
order to see and have seen,” it does not linger over what it sees; it quickly moves
on to something else. The idea is conveyed by the 1969 film, If It’s Tuesday,
This Must Be Belgium. But Heidegger acknowledges a more venerable source,
namely Augustine’s Confessions.30 Augustine says that since sight, “the lust of
the eyes,” is the “chief of our senses in the acquisition of knowledge,”31 we apply
sight-words to the other senses as well: while we do not say “listen how it glows,”
“smell how it glistens,” “taste how it shines,” or “feel how it flashes,” we say not
only “see how it shines,” but also “see how it sounds, see how it smells, see how
“smell” and “sniff” is similar to those between “see” and “look/watch,” and between “hear”
and “listen.”
27 I can salute an officer or declare war without touching the officer or the enemy.
28 Cf. Jonas, “The Nobility of Sight,” pp. 325–328; Macmurray, The Self as Agent, pp. 111–114.
29 Heidegger, Being and Time, p. 172.
31 Augustine, Confessions X. xxxv. 54, from Augustine, Confessions and Enchiridion, trans.
A. C. Outler (London, 1955). The expression “the lust of the eyes” comes from 1 John 2:16.
it tastes, see how hard it is.” He then gives examples of the way in which vision
panders to curiosity, the search for experiences not for the intrinsic pleasure
of the experience, but for the sheer experience itself: the sight of a “lacerated
corpse” and of theatrical performance. But vision, he concedes, is not the only
culprit. We also desire to know only for the sake of knowing, even when the
knowledge is of no use to us. For example, “it is with this same motive of per-
verted curiosity for knowledge that we consult the magical arts.”32 Heidegger
quotes Augustine’s remarks about vision,33 but not his censure of knowing
for the sake of knowing, since he was more favourable to knowledge with no
practical purpose than Augustine was. Nevertheless, he, like Augustine, con-
cedes that curiosity is “not confined to seeing.”34 Why then do both affix the
blame for curiosity on sight? Our craving for the new is satisfied by hearing,
especially the speech of others, as well as by vision, and also by touch, especially
in erotic encounters. It is true that we say such things as “let’s see what he says,”
more often than “let’s hear how he looks.”35 This is due to the priority of vision
among our senses. A community consisting exclusively of blind people, for
example, could hardly survive, unless their other senses were greatly enhanced
in compensation, whereas our other senses, apart from touch, are dispensable.
It does not follow, however, that vision is more susceptible to the temptations
of curiosity than our other senses. Perhaps the answer is that vision is normally
required in order to satisfy one’s curiosity through other channels. In order to
listen to someone and to recognise that they might be worth listening to, one
normally has to see them first. In order to touch someone and to think that
they might be worth touching, one usually has to see them first. Erotic desire is
usually first aroused by sight, especially the sight of a face, rather than by hear-
ing or touch. We recognise others by their looks, especially the appearance of
their face, rather than by the sound of their voice or the feel of their body. This
is no doubt why Levinas, for all his hostility to the “panoramic” look or gaze,36
stresses the importance of the face. Vision opens up a field in which our other
senses can get to work.
32 Augustine, Confessions X. xxxv. 55.

35 “Let’s hear how he looks” might be expanded to: “Let’s listen to someone who will tell us
what he looks like.”
36 Emmanuel Levinas, Totality and Infinity, trans. A. Lingis (Pittsburgh, 1969), pp. 220, 289–
290, and passim.
178 Inwood
8 Sartre, Others, and the Look
Levinas prefers hearing to vision. This preference is only plausible because of

the existence of other people, to whom I can listen and speak—the sounds we
can hear emitted by natural objects are far less interesting than their visible
features—, and it is others who are the central focus of Levinas’s work. Sartre’s
account of others, by contrast, famously focused on the look. The causal neu-
trality of vision is modified when other people are involved. Often, if I look at
and see another person, he can see me looking at him and see that I can see
him. Here there is a discrepancy between sight and our other senses. If I hear
and listen to another, he may see that I can hear him and see that I am listen-
ing, but he cannot hear me listening to him or hear that I hear him, unless
I or a third party tells him so. The eyes are visible, but the ears are not audible.
Similarly, the other may, from various visible cues such as the wrinkling of my
nose, see that I smell him. He might, from various audible cues, even hear that
I smell him. But he cannot smell that I smell him or smell me smelling him.
Touch is more complicated. If I touch another person, he can often feel that
I am touching him and feel me touching him. He may also see me touching him
and see that I am touching him. But touching here amounts to “putting a part
of my body in contact with” his body. He does not strictly feel me feeling him
or feel that I can feel him.37 He rather infers it from a variety of tactual, vis-
ible and perhaps auditory cues, as well as his background assumptions about
the tactual powers of other human beings. To touch something, even an inan-
imate object, is to act, to do something which, even if it is unintended, has
causal consequences. To see or look at, smell or sniff, hear or listen to, an inani-
mate object is not in this sense the performance of an act; it has no phenom-
enally discernible consequences. To touch another person is also to perform an
act, whether communicative, aggressive, amatory or simply inquisitive; even if
it is involuntary, it may require an apology. But equally, though less intrusively,
to look at another person is to perform an act. There is a wide variety of vision-
verbs indicating the nature of the act and the response it invites: ogle, stare,
gaze, gape, gawk/gawp, rubberneck, peer, peep, glance, watch, etc.
In Being and Nothingness, Sartre considers two cases of the “look.”38 In
neither case is the looking reciprocal. In the first I see from a distance a rustic
37 See also Maurice Merleau-Ponty on the “fundamental narcissism of vision” in Le Visible
et l’Invisible (Paris, 1964), p. 183 (Engl. transl. The Visible and the Invisible, trans. A. Lingis
[Evanston, 1968], p. 139).
38 Jean-Paul Sartre, L’Être et le Néant (Paris, 1943), pp. 292–341 (Engl. transl. Being and
Nothingness, trans. H. Barnes [New York, 1948], pp. 252–303).
scene in which no humans are present. It is now my scene, surveyed exclu-

sively from my own point of view. It is as if I were looking at a two-dimensional
painting. Then another man appears on the scene, presumably with his eyes
open and looking at his surroundings. I now look at the scene from his point of
view, as it were. The scene is reconfigured. The scene no longer converges on
myself as its sole observer. It now has another competing centre towards which
it is drawn. Rather than two-dimensional, it becomes three-dimensional,
observable from different points of view. A similar, though less conflictual,
account was presented by George Herbert Mead in his account of team games.
An effective football player must see the game not only from his own view-
point, but from the viewpoints of other players both in his own team and in
the opposing team. He must ask what they expect him to do and how they are
likely to respond before he makes his play. He must adopt the standpoint of
“the generalized other,” viewing his own conduct in the context of the game
as a whole.39 Such experiences are primarily visual.40 Hearing does not com-
monly provide sufficient information about the world and is, in any case, not
perspectival in the same way as vision.41 Touch, though it reveals the three-
dimensionality of the world, is too restricted in its range and I cannot feel
another person touching or feeling something.
In Sartre’s second case, I am doing something untoward such as keyhole
peeping, when I hear footsteps behind me. I assume that the other person has
seen what I am up to and look at myself from his or her point of view. I switch
my focus from the scene before me to myself, viewing myself as a Peeping Tom.
This experience is unsettling, though it has the beneficial effect of making me
aware of myself as I am regarded by others. It is unclear, however, that such
experiences are confined to vision. In conceivable alternative scenarios other
senses come into play. I reach for a book on the bottom shelf of a library and
fart as I do so; then I hear footsteps behind me, suggesting that another person
has heard and/or smelt me. I am masturbating vigorously and audibly, when
I hear my mother’s footsteps outside the bathroom door. I am walking along
39 George Herbert Mead, Mind, Self, and Society: From the Perspective of a Social Behavorist,
ed. C. W. Morris (Chicago, 1934).
40 This claim must be restricted to the normal sighted person, since some blind people play
football well, using other senses to compensate.
41 Pavlos Kontos has drawn my attention to the fact that one adjusts the volume of one’s
voice to the requirements of the audience and of the situation, depending, for exam-
ple, on whether one is addressing a large crowd or engaged in an intimate conversation.
However, vision usually plays a part in this, informing one of the distance of the audience
and perhaps of the presence of intrusive overhearers.
180 Inwood
talking to myself; I hear footsteps behind me; I attempt to pretend that I am

singing, but with no assurance that my auditor is deceived. In these cases it
is the nose or the ear of the other that disturbs me rather than the eye. The
eye of the other still plays a crucial role, however. It is primarily by vision
that others—with the exception of my mother—recognise who I am. Even
if the other person does not know me from Adam, I am still registered in their
memory in case I ever meet them again. Nevertheless, even if the other person
does not see enough of me to recognise me again, I am still aware that the other
regards me as an autoeroticist, a farter or a self-talker. I see myself as others see
me, even if they only smelt or heard me.
9 Husserl and Others
Vision and touch provide most of the knowledge we need in our dealings with
non-human objects. Hearing plays only a subdued role. This is not so when
it comes to dealing with other humans. After vision has enabled us to recog-
nise another as a person, as a certain type of person, or a particular person,
it does not get us very far in finding out about the person. For that we need
hearing and speech, which have not yet been entirely supplanted by reading,
emails and sign-language. When Descartes, and perhaps Husserl, focus on
vision, they tend to obscure the part played by other people in our practical
and cognitive engagement with the world. Descartes did indeed write letters
to other people, inviting them to check his reasoning, but other people play no
part in his Meditations on First Philosophy except as objects of fallible vision:
Descartes is alone with God. In the fifth of his Cartesian Meditations Husserl
gives his most explicit account of the “Uncovering of the sphere of transcen-
dental Being as monadological intersubjectivity,”42 that is, roughly, of one’s
ability to conceive of, and of one’s reasons for believing in, the existence of
people other than, but on a par with, oneself—a theme that is fundamental in
one’s “constitution” not only of other experiencing subjects, but also of oneself
as an objectively existing subject and of an objective spatio-temporal world
that is our world, not simply my world.43 His account has at least three relevant
42 Edmund Husserl, Cartesian Meditations: An Introduction to Phenomenology, trans. D. Cairns

(The Hague, 1960), p. 121.
43 Husserl, Cartesian Meditations, pp. 84ff. The interpretation of Husserl’s account is a mat-
ter of controversy, as is the solution to the problem, or problems (conceptual, as well as
epistemological), that he is confronting. For a diversity of views on it, see Alfred Schütz,
“The Problem of Transcendental Intersubjectivity in Husserl,” in Collected Papers III (The
controversial features. First, the first four Meditations are devoted to, besides
general questions about phenomenology, the non-human world and one’s own
ego. Other egos are introduced as a subsidiary matter. Secondly, and connect-
edly, our knowledge of others is, according to Husserl, built up from the bot-
tom. That is, first he sees someone as a physical object, then as animate, then
as a living creature, then as a human being, and finally as Mrs. Husserl. Thirdly,
another person is apprehended, in Husserl’s account, only by vision. Hearing
and speech play their part only afterwards.44 Husserl is mistaken on all three
counts. There never was a time when I was aware of non-human reality but
not of the presence of others; the world I experience has always been saturated
with the presence of others. Consequently, my awareness of others is not based
on a prior awareness of a physical object, a biological organism, and so on. As
Heidegger and Sartre note, I am aware of the presence of others immediately,
without any phenomenally discernible intervening stages. Finally, hearing and
touch play a crucial part, both in my original encounter with others and in
my subsequent encounters with them. In fact, vision is not the primary mode
of access to one’s own body—the similarity of which to the bodies of others
sustains the argument from analogy on which Husserl supposes our belief
in others to depend. Unless I look in a mirror, my own body is a variable,
Hague, 1970), pp. 51–91; David Carr, “The Fifth Meditation and Husserl’s Cartesianism,”
Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 34 (1973–4), 14–34; David Andrew Bell, Husserl
(London, 1990), pp. 215–226; Dan Zahavi, Husserl and Transcendental Intersubjectivity
(Athens, OH, 2001); and A. D. Smith, Husserl and the Cartesian Meditations (London,
2003), chap. 5. Husserl reflected on the problem throughout his career, and arrived at
conclusions considerably different from those I have attributed to him. His writings on
it were published posthumously in volumes 13, 14, and 15 of the Husserliana collected
works, Zur Phänomenologie der Intersubjektivität, 3 vols. (The Hague, 1973), containing
respectively manuscripts from 1905–1920, 1921–1928, and 1929–1935.
44 Cf. Michael Theunissen, The Other: Studies in the Social Ontology of Husserl, Heidegger,
Sartre, and Buber, trans. C. Macann (Cambridge, Mass., 1984), pp. 115–116 (I have modi-
fied Macann’s translation): “Husserl restricts the perception that discloses the Other
in the primordial situation [. . .] to sensory seeing. As appresentation of the alien
organic body, experience of the alien is an ‘interpretative perception’ and, as such,
the ‘thingly-spatial seeing and originally interpretative envisioning, collaborating
in the apprehension of an alien embodiment’ (Edmund Husserl, Erste Philosophie,
II [The Hague, 1965], p. 63). So it is, for example, impossible to accomplish the sense-
constituting experience of the Other in hearing. Just as little, according to Husserl,
does speech, as enunciated discourse, contribute to the primary constitution of the
Other. [. . .] From now on right up to the end of his life, in the sphere of the relation
of different subjects, he brings into play enunciation—as linguistically articulated ‘recip-
rocal communication’—only after visually directed empathy has already done its work.”
182 Inwood
f ragmentary and usually peripheral, though nevertheless strangely persistent,

object of my own vision. If awareness of one’s own body is to be assigned to
any of our five senses, it is to the multiform sense of touch or feeling.45 The
focus on vision, at the expense of touch, plays a part in Husserl’s, and Descartes’s,
tendency to dissociate one’s body from oneself.
It would be an exaggeration to claim that Husserl’s errors stem exclusively
from his concentration on vision. Other factors bear the primary responsibility.
One is Husserl’s conflation of phenomenology with a stratified ontology
placing inorganic matter at the bottom followed by organic life, then psychical
and emotional life, and finally the intellectual and cultural world.46 While we
might accept that sheer inorganic matter is ontologically more fundamental
than human life, it does not follow that inorganic matter is invariably phenom-
enally prior for us. Another is Husserl’s concern with epistemology, with the
question “how do we know that such-and-such is the case?” or, more strictly,
“how do I know that such-and-such is the case?”47 Moreover, perhaps because
of his aversion to psychologism, he interprets this question as a request for
compelling evidence and arguments that such-and-such is the case, for good
reasons for believing it rather than simply my reasons for believing it. But
good reasons for believing something may not be my reasons for believing
it. Whatever the merits of the analogical reasoning on which Husserl founds
our belief in others, Sartre is surely right in denying that our conviction of the
reality of others is derived from such analogical reasoning. Like most practis-
ing philosophers, Husserl was an adult and he asked the question “how would
I now argue for the existence of others?” rather than “how did I first acquire
this conviction in my childhood?” and “what is the phenomenal quality of this
long-entrenched belief now?” Husserl’s focus on vision plays at most a facili-
tating role in all this. If he had paid more attention to hearing and speech, it
would have been more difficult for him to play down the role of others—even
45 Husserl was of course aware of this and deals with it at length in his posthumously pub-
lished Ideen II.
46 These are the levels differentiated by Nicolai Hartmann, who presented such an ontology
in, for example, New Ways of Ontology, trans. R. Kuhn (Chicago, 1953), but distinguished it
from phenomenology.
47 If “we” is used to mean “we collectively” rather than “each of us individually,” the question
“how do we know . . .?” is different from the question “how do I know . . .?” and may require
a different answer. The answer to the question “how do we know that there are electrons?”
will involve reference to various experiments and calculations, while the answer to the
question “how do I know that there are electrons?” will involve reference to newspapers
and other types of testimony. In the case of knowledge of others, the question can only be
“how do I know . . .?”
in the formation of our conception of the non-human world. It is crucial for

phenomenology too, though not for epistemology, that we do not regard oth-
ers only with a cognitive interest. Not only perception, but desires, needs, and
emotions are in play from the start. I depend on others, I want their friend-
ship or admiration, I approach them in hostility or with desire, though mostly
with indifference. All of this should figure in a phenomenological account of
my belief in their reality.48 Levinas, Merleau-Ponty and Schütz, among others,
have helped to provide such an account.
10 Conclusion
Vision, like our other senses, has a variety of aspects. When we appeal to vision,
not all of these aspects need be in play at once. A philosopher has consid-
erable freedom of choice in deciding which aspects to stress and which to
suppress. The “look” is quite different from the “panoramic gaze.” We have
freedom too when we transpose literal vision onto the metaphorical plane. In
claiming that we just see that 2+2=4 or that murder is wrong, a philosopher
exploits the phenomenal immediacy of vision and its factivity, but rescinds its
perspectivality. A focus on vision accompanies a variety of putative philosoph-
ical errors and omissions. However, owing to vision’s multiplicity of aspects
and the freedom they allow, it is hard to be sure that concentration on vision is
ultimately responsible for the fault. If a philosopher both focuses on vision and
adopts a correspondence theory of truth (or a theoretical attitude to the world
or an egocentric approach to things, etc.), it is rash to lay the blame on vision.
The philosopher may have chosen to focus on vision as an appropriate vehicle
for the expression of a prior preference for, say, a correspondence theory of
truth over, say, the dialogical and consensus alternatives of Peirce, Habermas
or Rorty. And who is to say that the preference is mistaken? To lay the blame
on vision for an error, it must first be established that there is an error to be
blamed for. Even if the errors are manifest, as they are in a version of Husserl’s
account of others, there may well be other factors in play that relieve the guilt
of vision. The question about the merits and disadvantages of the “optical
paradigm” admits of no simple or definitive answer.
48 As Theunissen says: “According to Husserl, the Other originally encounters me only in
outer perception” (Theunissen, The Other, p. 115).
chapter 9
In the Shadow of Light: Listening, the Practical

Turn of Phenomenology, and Metaphysics of Sight
David Espinet
In one of the most influential texts of the occidental philosophical tradition,

Plato’s Cave Allegory, a highly problematic process is depicted.1 In a nutshell,
there is a noetical and ethical situation that is paradigmatic for the whole
of metaphysics: Sight becomes the leading sense whereas its counterpart
among the distance senses, listening,2 disappears in the process of ascension
towards the sun. There is no need to decipher this allegory extensively to see
that it stands in the main current, indeed, perhaps at the center of the genesis of
a vast and fundamental philosophical investment of visual experience: in fact,
the allegory displays in the most obvious way that metaphysics is the meta-
physics of sight. Doubtless, Plato here repeats and reinforces a topos already
at work before him. So the parricide in the dialogue Parmenides does not alter
the deployment of the thoroughly visual metaphoric at work in Parmenides’
poem; nor, on a conceptual level, does it change Plato and Parmenides’ shared
1 I have worked out the following interpretations more extensively in several publications,
including: David Espinet, Phänomenologie des Hörens: Eine Untersuchung im Ausgang
von Martin Heidegger (Tübingen, 2009); David Espinet, “Hermeneutische Wende und die
Phänomenologie des Hörens. Überlegungen im Anschluß an Heidegger, Blumenberg und
Husserl,” Internationales Jahrbuch für Hermeneutik 9 (2010), 97–114; “Intentionaler Blick und
vorintentionales Aufhorchen,” in Husserl und Heidegger im Vergleich, ed. Friederike Rese
(Frankfurt am Main, 2010), pp. 133–151. Of most precious value has been for me Don Ihde’s
early work on the matter: Don Ihde, Listening and Voice: Phenomenologies of Sound, 2nd
ed. (Albany, 2007). I owe thanks to Joe Balay and Alex Feldman for helpful remarks on the
material worked out in the present text.
2 As most of the texts quoted in this essay are originally in German or Greek, I will give a short
notice to explain the lexical choices in the main text as well as in some translations: I mostly
use the term “listening” for acoustic receptivity because its twin “hearing” does not render
properly the intensity and openness of attention at stake in what follows. We can listen to,
or for something or somebody, but we only hear something tout court, which obviously does
not have the same character of engagement with what is heard. This difference does not
exist in other languages, such as German or Greek, which render the distinction by the use of
prepositions like the German “hören auf ” or, in Greek, of genitive-constructions like “(κατ/
ὑπ-) ἀκούειν τοῦ φίλου” pointing at an intensified relation to what is perceived when listening.

In The Shadow Of Light 185
orientation towards unchangeable structures of truth. Unlike, however, pre-

Socratic thinking in general, Plato’s use of visual metaphors and allegorical
scenarios of sight tends toward a more conceptual direction. This change is
confirmed most clearly by his leading concepts εἶδος and ἰδέα, which literally
meant before Plato only “shape,” “face” or “look.” In other words, in the Cave
Allegory we can see how sight becomes the leading paradigm for the project of
metaphysics itself.3
Strikingly, however, Plato’s Cave Allegory depicts not only the ascent to the
light of reason, but a loss implicit within this very metaphysics of sight:
the oblivion of listening. In the cave, reality and thus thinking are constituted
on two sensible levels, that of the eye and that of the ear, but sensible experi-
ence in the open “intelligible space [τὸν νοητὸν τόπον]”4 outside the cave, the
space of universal transparency of and accessibility to the things themselves, is
reduced exclusively to sight and visibility. Little attention has been paid to the
detail that the inhabitants of the cave do not only see shadows, but also hear
“echoes.”5 In the ascent, the auditive dimension is reduced to pure visibility.
To be more precise, we are present at a double reduction, in which all sensible
experience first is reduced to sight, and, then, sight to thinking.6
In a kind of theoretical play, we participate in the eclipse of listening through
a process of active neglect of this other intellectual distance sense. Correlative
to this eclipse is the universalization of sight. Only playing slightly on words,
one might say that in the shadow of light an oblivion of listening takes place,
and listening is left back in the cave with all its epistemic ambiguity and ethical
precarity. It is as if in Plato’s concentration on sight and visibility there would
be no room for the sense of listening and its genuine phenomenal richness in
the space of reason, especially practical reason.
But before dealing with the partition between theoretical and practical rea-
son and the correlative partition between metaphysics of sight and of listen-
ing, let me give a quick phenomenological sketch of some basic features of
this forgotten richness of listening. Unlike vision, which is centered around
3 See e.g. Hans Jonas, “The Nobility of Sight,” Philosophy and Phenomenological Research,
14/4 (1954), 507–519; Hans Blumenberg, “Licht als Metapher der Wahrheit: Im Vorfeld der
philosophischen Begriffsbildung,” in Ästhetische und metaphorologische Schriften, ed. Anselm
Haverkamp (Frankfurt am Main, 2001), pp. 139–171.
4 See Plato, Republic, 517b5 (all translations are, if not indicated otherwise, my own).
5 See Plato, Republic, 515b8. To my knowledge Jean-Luc Nancy was the first to highlight this
detail with philosophical intentions: see Jean-Luc Nancy, À l’écoute (Paris, 2002), p. 44 n. 1.
6 See Ihde, Listening and Voice, pp. 8–9.
186 Espinet
one unique source of light, listening has no principal source of sound; from
the very beginning of life, we are acoustically immersed in a sheer plurality of
sounds in which polyphonic soundscapes shape our acoustic experience. Not
even one’s own voice can claim the sort of unique status that the sun naturally
occupies in our life-world. Moreover, our bodily organization allows us in lis-
tening to be integrally open in all directions, whereas sight is receptive only
to a frontal and lateral horizon. Because of this intensified openness in listen-
ing, it is much harder to concentrate in a complex acoustical situation than
in a visually exciting environment. With this receptive character of listening
goes a deeply pathic or affective character, both sensually as well as emotion-
ally; words, music and simple noises like a screaming voice often have a direct
impact on our mood. Further, on a corresponding physiological level, auditory,
like olfactory, stimuli are difficult to avoid or ignore. Because of this organic
and emotional affectability, listening is the primary sense of address: speak-
ing and screaming voices are hard to shut out. Vision, in contrast, operates
more in the mode of intentional directedness. Whereas sight tends to fix
objects, listening gets caught up in and swept along by the movement of acous-
tical processes. Finally, listening is not only, through its spherical openness, a
distinctive spatial sense, but it is perhaps even more an eminent sense of time.
The ephemeral and fluid character that belongs to all listening stands again in
contrast to vision, which usually gives the illusion of atemporal presence.
In a kind of reverse of the partial, monodirectional, focused, intentional, uni-
or better monoversal and atemporal character of sight, listening appears as the
integral, pluridirectional, affective, multiversal, and most temporal sense—
the sense, however, that in Plato’s Cave Allegory is left behind.
Like Paul Valéry’s Socrates in his Eupalinos, who famously throws the objet
ambigu that he found on the seashore back into the flood where the strange
thing came from,7 the author of the Cave Allegory marginalizes listening and
7 See Paul Valéry, Eupalinos ou l’architecte, in Oeuvres, ed. Jean Hytier, 2 (Paris, 1960),
pp. 116–120; see Hans Blumenberg, “Sokrates und das ‘objet ambigu’” and “Die essentielle
Vieldeutigkeit des ästhetischen Gegenstandes,” in Ästhetische und metaphorologische
Schriften, pp. 74–111 and 112–119. Blumenberg shows that Socrates misses the plurality of
experience by the neglect of an genuine aesthetical attitude: “Der Sokrates im Dialog Valérys
gelangt nicht zur ästhetischen Einstellung gegenüber dem objet ambigu, weil er auf der
Frage, auf der Definition, auf der Klassifikation des Gegenstandes besteht—darin hat er sich
zum Philosophen entschieden. Die ästhetische Einstellung läßt die Unbestimmtheit stehen,
sie erreicht den ihr spezifischen Genuß durch einen Verzicht, durch den Verzicht auf die
theoretische Neugier” (Blumenberg, “Die essentielle Vieldeutigkeit,” pp. 118–119). We shall
come back to the motive of “theoretical curiousness” and its “abandonment” in the context
of Heidegger’s late thinking.
its genuine sense of multiplicity and temporality. It is through sight and its
offspring like ἰδέα, εἶδος, θεωρία, contemplatio, intuitio, lumen naturale, notio,
evidentia, Betrachtung, Anschauung, Horizont, Aufklärung and enlightenment
just to name a few, that philosophy not only depicts but establishes a specific
space of reason, which since Plato has the character of transparency, immobil-
ity, stability, and atemporal objectivity.
It has been suggested that the metaphysical assumption of eternal and
incorruptible structures stands in close relation to the stability and presence
we experience in contact with visible things,8 which, even when they are
in movement, give us the impression of remaining what they are. Visible
things appear in fact to have always already been there as soon as vision
encounters them; in general they do not come about or disappear like sounds
or noises. These latter can only constitute things in the very course of their
movement, that is, in the mode of starting and passing by, as in melody or
in the permanent modulation we know from the sound of flowing water.
Taking these phenomenological observations into account, it seems plausible
to hold with Bernhard Waldenfels that “occidental ontology would look dif-
ferently, had it oriented itself less towards sight and more towards listening.”9
In order to give this aperçu some philological substance I will first quickly
sketch the genesis of the metaphysics of sight and the correlative oblivion of
listening in a couple of case studies from classical metaphysical texts. First, I
will elucidate how the orientation toward sight and visibility concretely shapes
concepts in Platonic dialectics and Aristotelian ontology. Second, I draw atten-
tion to the place listening occupies within an Aristotelian metaphysics of sight.
It seems noteworthy to me that listening, although banished from first phi-
losophy there, becomes a leading metaphor in practical, second philosophy.
Here Aristotle’s distinction between noetical and dianoetical virtues is espe-
cially telling. Finally, I will follow this practical vein from Aristotle to Kant and,
in a genuine appropriation of both, to Heidegger’s practical turn of phenom-
enology, where, in very analogous ways to Kant’s primacy of practical reason,
Heidegger undertakes a rehabilitation of practical reason. Whereas Kant’s use
of acoustic metaphors remains thematically unreflected (but highly suggestive
and with some resonance in the conceptual framework of practical reason),
Heidegger’s analytics of Dasein and language lend to the capacity of listening a
8 Cf. Jacques Derrida, “White Mythology,” in Margins of Philosophy, trans. A. Bass (Chicago,
1982); as well as, again, Blumenberg, “Licht als Metapher der Wahrheit.”
9 Bernhard Waldenfels, Phänomenologie der Aufmerksamkeit (Frankfurt am Main, 2004), p. 198:
“Unsere abendländische Ontologie sähe anders aus, wenn sie sich stärker an das Hören und
weniger an das Sehen angelehnt hätte.”
188 Espinet
deeply conceptual significance, even the function of a philosophical leitmotiv.

In many ways, Heidegger’s hermeneutical phenomenology is a turn to a phe-
nomenology that is no longer directed only by the intentional gaze and by
a conception of phenomenality as standing in light of a visual appearing of
things (φαίνεσθαι). Now Heidegger’s phenomenology has also become aware
of the listening character of subjectivity. Paying heed to this shift, the Kantian
conception of the Categorical Imperative and the Aristotelian notion of ethi-
cal virtue seem to accord on some registers with Heidegger’s conception of
thinking as listening.
1 Platonic and Aristotelian Metaphysics of Sight and the Oblivion

of Listening
The oblivion of listening is frequently repeated throughout Plato’s work. One

obvious example where Plato could have taken listening into account, but did
not, is the written form of dialogue itself. However, Socrates’ escape from the
blinding light into the λόγοι10 is depicted, again, in terms of sight and visibility.
Blinded by the light of the things themselves, Socrates insists nevertheless on
visual, however mediated, access to things: one should now “look at [σκοπεῖν
τῶν ὄντων] things” through λόγοι, as he puts it in the Phaedo. Consequently,
in the Theaetetus “thinking [τὸ διανοεῖσθαι]” will be described as a “speech
[λόγον], which the soul engages in with itself about what it wants to look at
[περὶ ὧν ἂν σκοπῇ].”11 In the Sophist, however, where Plato comes very close
to a rehabilitation of listening within the space of reason, the oblivion of lis-
tening finally takes a very sharp turn: at one point the Stranger declares that
“thinking [διάνοια] and speech [λόγος] are the same,”12 transposing thereby the
acoustic space of a lively dialogue into the immanence and silence of the soul.
Thinking would be, then, “the inner dialogue of the soul with itself without
voice [διάλογος ἄνευ φωνῆς].”13 Shortly before this implicit determination of
thinking as listening, however, a brief but significant passage could have led
to an explicit determination of thinking as listening to the λόγος. In order to
understand how a meaningful and truthful cohesion of linguistic expressions
can be formed, Theaetetus had asked: “What must we listen to when dealing
10 See Plato, Phaedo, 99d–e.

11 Plato, Theaetetus, 189e4–7.
12 Plato, Sophist, 263e3.
13 Plato, Sophist, 263e4.
with words [Τὸ ποῖον οὖν δὴ περὶ τῶν ὀνομάτων ὑπακουστέον]?”14 The Stranger’s
answer: “Whether they all fit together with one another, or none of them, or
some will and some will not.”15 To my knowledge, it is the only time Plato
brings the praxis of listening into play right in the process of a philosophical
determination of dialectics. Heidegger, in an early lecture course, detects the
special import of this passage: “It is noteworthy—on the simple terminological
level—that Plato uses here the expression ὑπακούειν, whereas Plato uses, as the
Greeks ordinarily do, the notions of ἅπτεσθαι, ὁρᾶν for the direct grip on things.”16
According to what we have been arguing, ὁρᾶν (“see,” “look”) would have been
the more typical metaphorical register (later we shall also confront the intrin-
sic relation between touch—ἅπτεσθαι—and sight that Heidegger presupposes
here and that is also at work in Aristotelian ontology). To be sure, one must
notice that Plato does not pay attention to the resonances his own approach
to dialectics has. Listening resonates on the margins of dialectics, named and
unheard at the same time. What does it mean to listen to words, to their genu-
ine significance as well as their meaningful interrelation in order to know if a
sentence or determination is true or not? The question “What is listening in
the horizon of meaning?” does not become questionable in the Sophist nor
elsewhere in Plato’s work. It is Heidegger who explicates this terminologically
remarkable shift in Platonic dialectics: “What is at stake here is the proper lis-
tening to the plurality of spoken words in order to see what matters within
that plurality of words in relation to their κοινωνία. ὑπακούειν does not mean
simply to hear sounds, but more properly it means genuine perception, under-
standing of discourse; one has to listen,”17 to whether all, some, or none of the
words can be assembled in a meaningful way. With a fine ear for the termi-
nological resonances, Heidegger points at a hermeneutical fact fundamental
for all understanding and thinking, a fact Plato simply presupposes and hence
forgets in his dialectics, a fact that Wittgenstein also, with special attention to
language, will wonder about: “Hearing [hören] a word as having this meaning.
14 Plato, Sophist, 261d4.

15 Plato, Sophist, 261d4–6.
16 Martin Heidegger, Platon: Sophistes, ed. Ingeborg Schüßler (Frankfurt am Main, 1992),
p. 587 (“Es ist auffallend—rein terminologisch—, daß Plato hier den Ausdruck ὑπακούειν
gebraucht, während er sonst, wie überhaupt die Griechen, für die direkte Sacherfassung
die Termini ἅπτεσθαι, ὁρᾶν gebraucht.”)
17 Heidegger, Sophistes, pp. 587–588 : “Hier handelt es sich um das rechte Hinhören auf die
Mannigfaltigkeit der gesprochenen Worte, um dadurch zu sehen, worauf es bei dieser
Mannigfaltigkeit hinsichtlich ihrer κοινωνία ankommt. ὑπακούειν meint gerade nicht: ein-
fach Laute hören, sondern meint eigentlich: echtes Vernehmen, Verstehen der Rede, es ist
darauf hinzuhören, εἴτε πάντα ἀλλήλοις συναρμόττει εἴτε μηδέν, εἴτε τὰ μὲν ἐθέλει, τὰ δὲ μή.”
190 Espinet
How curious that there should be such a thing!”18 Wittgenstein’s wonder points
to the fact that understanding language starts with listening to words in such a
way that their meaning both emerges from and outstrips the sensible, without,
however, leaving the audible simply behind. Heidegger’s early hermeneutics
of factical speaking already notices the peculiar affinity of listening and the
meaning of single words, or of propositions and their specific coherence.
Let’s turn now in a second case study to Aristotle’s metaphysics of sight. It
is remarkable to what extent Aristotle’s orientation towards sight and visibil-
ity stands in continuity with the Platonic primacy of sight (despite all other
fundamental differences with Plato).19 Like Plato, Aristotle’s approach to the
oblivion of listening does not consist primarily in an elimination of listening
altogether; on the contrary, Aristotle in fact devotes a precise analysis to listen-
ing and hearing in his De Anima.20 Nevertheless, as for Plato, the neglect results
from the peculiar status that listening receives in respect to the space of reason
and knowledge.
Most prominently in this vein is the first sentence of the collection of texts
that has been passed down under the title of Metaphysics: “All men by nature
desire to know [εἰδέναι]. An indication of this is the delight we take in our
senses; for even apart from their usefulness they are loved for themselves; and
above all others the sense of sight [διὰ τῶν ὀμμάτων]. For not only with a view
on action, but even when we are not going to do anything, we prefer seeing
[τὸ ὁρᾶν] [. . .] to everything else. The reason is that this, most of all the senses
[μάλιστα . . . τῶν αἰσθήσεων], makes us know [ποιεῖ γνωρίζειν] and brings to light
many differences between things [πολλὰς διαφοράς].”21 Two points must be spe-
cially highlighted: The first meaning of “εἰδέναι” is “seeing”; knowing is having
seen, and this is the meaning Aristotle has in mind when he engages his new
definition of ἐπιστήμη (“There is a knowledge [ἐπιστήμη] which views [θεωρεῖ]
being as being”).22 Second, Aristotle justifies such a predilection for sight with
the phenomenologically erroneous, but under certain ontological presuppo-
sitions coherent assumption, that sight would provide (in absolute terms) a
18 Ludwig Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations, trans. G. E. M. Anscombe, P. M. S.

Hacker, Joachim Schulte, rev. 4th ed. (Malden/Oxford, 2009), nr. 534.
19 Hans Blumenberg has pointed out the remarkable continuity of the metaphors of vision
and light for the whole of history of philosophy, see Blumenberg, “Licht als Metapher der
Wahrheit.”
21 Aristotle, Metaphysics, 890a21–27; translation Ross: Aristotle, Metaphysics, trans. W. D.
Ross, in The Works of Aristotle, ed. W. D. Ross, 2nd ed., 3 (Oxford, 1928).
higher degree of differentiation in perception than other senses do. At one

point Aristotle even holds in De Anima that “sight [ὄψις]” would be “μάλιστα
αἴσθησις,” that is, “perception in the highest sense.”23
Yet it would seem rather to be the case that each perceptual sense provides
the most accurate and differentiated perceptions relative to its own field of
activity. It seems simply absurd to pretend that sight would render more dif-
ferences than, say, smell. Sight does not give any precise picture of odor or
sound at all. Nevertheless we should not assume that Aristotle would have sim-
ply forgotten this trivial fact, for Aristotle stresses himself that “perception is
always true [ἀεὶ ἀληθής] in relation to its proper objects [αἴσθησις τῶν ἰδίων].”24
This means that there is a basic faculty of perceptual differentiation proper to
(and different in) each sense in its specific own domain, an ἰδία αἴσθησις, which
cannot be replaced by any other sense. But why does Aristotle, then, set up a
hierarchy between senses like the one in Metaphysics A1? What is it that leads
him to neglect listening (as well as the other senses except touch), both in his
analysis of perception and in relation the very space of reason?
2 The Birth of the Metaphysics of Substance in Sight
The simple answer to this is Aristotle thinks that in absolute terms (leaving
aside all relative aspects of the proper richness of the different perceptive
fields) sight provides the most differentiated picture of being. More precisely,
two features of sight are useful for Aristotle’s ontology and its rhetoric of being:
Like Plato, Aristotle believes that the faculty of sight, more than any other
sense, is apt to give access to a level of greater generality. Being, then, often
appears as identical with being-seen. However, he also finds in sight a deeper
concreteness of being, using it to show that “within that concept of being there
is more to be found than mere abstraction.”25 Thus, as implausible as the argu-
ment for greater differentiation may be, Aristotle’s assumption is not absurd
within an ontological and epistemological frame that motivates him to privi-
lege individuals, that is, solid bodies endowed with a dominant character of
presence.26 This general metaphysical assumption is confirmed in De Sensu

24 Aristotle, De Anima, 427b12; see also Aristotle, De Anima, 430b29.
25 Blumenberg, “Licht als Metapher der Wahrheit,” p. 140.
26 To give some more substance to this claim, two more recent examples: Peter Strawson’s
definition of individuals which explicitly excludes sounds from the sphere of individu-
als, which according to Strawson are “material bodies,” with a “three-dimensional” shape
192 Espinet
437a4–17, a parallel passage to the quoted Metaphysics 980a20–27. In De Sensu

Aristotle holds:
Of these faculties [the distance senses of smell, hearing and vision], for
the mere necessities of life and in itself, sight is more important [κρείττων
ἡ ὄψις καθ’ αὑτήν], but for the mind [πρὸς δὲ νοῦν] and indirectly hearing
is more important [κατὰ συμβεβηκὸς ἡ ἀκοή]. For the faculty of sight
informs us of many differences of all kinds, because all bodies have a
share of colour [τὸ πάντα τὰ σώματα μετέχειν χρώματος], so that it is chiefly
by this medium that we perceive the common sensibles [τὰ κοινά]. (By
these I mean shape, magnitude, movement and number.) But hearing
only [μόνον] conveys differences of sound, and to a few animals differ-
ences of voice. Indirectly [κατὰ συμβεβηκός] hearing makes the largest
contribution to wisdom [πρὸς φρόνησιν]. For discourse [ὁ λόγος], which is
the cause of learning, is so because it is audible; but it is audible not in
itself but indirectly [κατὰ συμβεβηκός], because speech is composed of
words [ἐξ ὀνομάτων], and each word is a rational symbol [σύμβολoν].
Consequently, of those who have been deprived of one sense or the other
from birth, the blind are more intelligent than the deaf and the dumb.27
As one will notice, Aristotle’s predilection for sight is confirmed and somewhat
explained on several levels and registers. In the first place, he affirms straight-
forwardly that sight is “more important” than the other distance senses like
smell or hearing not only “for the mere necessities of life,” but “in itself.” The
reason why, Aristotle tells us, is that sight gives us the most differentiated pic-
ture of those entities that have “a share of colour,” a category that obviously
includes “all bodies.” The point of view opened up by the visible presence of
having “some endurance through time” and which “should possess qualities of tactual
range” (Peter Strawson, Individuals: An Essay in Descriptive Metaphysics [London, 1964],
pp. 38–39); and Edmund Husserl’s phenomenological account of the constitution of
things in Ideas II (§§ 12–17), where he holds that “things which are given primordially
and which exhibit themselves primordially, [. . .] are the solid bodies. [. . .] Thus it is touch
which gives these bodies as normal bodies,” and, more “precisely a parallel givenness for
sight and touch” (Edmund Husserl, Ideas Pertaining to a Pure Phenomenology and to a
Phenomenological Philosophy, Second Book: Studies in the Phenomenology of Constitution,
trans. Richard Rojcewicz and André Schuwer [Dordrecht, 1989], p. 58). Fluid bodies or
sounds are thus taken to be abnormal bodies and come only indirectly into the focus of
constitutive phenomenology.
27 Aristotle, De Sensu, 437a4–17 (translation: Aristotle, Parva Naturalia: On Sense and
Sensible Objects, trans. Walter S. Hett [Cambridge/London, 1957], p. 219).
bodies, according to Aristotle, gives the best access to the “common sensibles,”
that is, to the general epistemic features of things; and Aristotle (or a later
scribe) adds: “By these I mean shape, magnitude, movement and number.”28
In other words, it is the shape of individual, countable bodies and their pres-
ence in place and time that interests Aristotle. Such an apparently self-evident,
but unquestioned presupposition becomes more intriguing when we ask why
Aristotle decides to focus his epistemology and, hence, ontology on the access
to being via the presence of solid entities like individual bodies: is it because,
in a realistic turn, he wants to found the genesis of ontology in the sphere of
visible and palpable individuals and their genuine sense of presence, or is it
because Aristotle’s ontological premises of a metaphysics of substance lead
him to the phenomenal character of presence that sight so clearly has? Given
the texts and descriptions Aristotle provides, one can hardly decide whether
sight leads to the primacy of presence, or whether presence leads to primacy
of sight, that is, whether a metaphysics of sight leads to metaphysics tout court
or whether metaphysics tout court rather leads him to a metaphysics of sight.
Regardless, what is crucial to notice here is the circularity that is established
between sight and presence in the context of Aristotelian ontology.
Hand in hand with that heliotropic29 circle of sight and presence goes the
oblivion of listening. At first glance, one may take Aristotle’s comments in De
Sensu 437a 4–14 (quoted above) as a rehabilitation of listening. Yet the stance
of this passage with respect to listening is ambiguous, to say the least:30 what
Aristotle gives with one hand, he takes away with the other. On the one hand,
he affirms that for νοῦς (“mind,” “reason”) and φρόνησις (“prudence,” “intelli-
gence,” “wisdom”), “listening is more important” than sight—but only κατὰ
συμβεβηκός, that is “indirectly,” as Aristotle emphasizes several times in a row.
According to this, listening or hearing “makes the largest contribution” both
28 See also Aristotle, Metaphysics, 1020a13–14.

29 This is an allusion, of course, especially to Derrida’s White Mythology. I follow Derrida’s
analysis in its core intention of showing that sight and metaphysics of presence are tightly
connected; I do not think however, that the relation between eye and ear can be described
as “circular complicity” (Derrida, “Tympan,” in Margins, p. viii); nor that Heidegger would
still be trapped (more than Derrida) within a metaphoric of sight and, with that, in meta-
physics of presence. In fact, as Ihde rightly emphasizes, the “temporality of sound” is char-
acterized by a strong sense of “absence” (Ihde, Listening and Voice, p. 108).
30 It seems to me that Gadamer misses the fundamental ambiguity of the passage when
he holds that Aristotle would have already affirmed the “primacy of listening (Vorrang
des Hörens)” that which “underlies the hermeneutical phenomenon”: see Hans-Georg
Gadamer, Wahrheit und Methode: Grundzüge einer philosophischen Hermeneutik, 6th ed.
(Frankfurt am Main, 1990), p. 466.
194 Espinet
to theoretical and practical reason, however, only indirectly, accidentally but

not essentially. Aristotle gives two reasons for these qualifying remarks that
he finds necessary for listening (but not for sight): first, “hearing only [μόνον]
conveys differences of sound, and to a few animals, of voice.” In other words,
hearing does not convey differences of individual and solid bodies, but only of
sounds.31
From the viewpoint of the absolute heliotropical orbit, sound and listen-
ing appear to be epistemologically weaker faculties than sight. It seems obvi-
ous that acoustic objects rank below visible bodies for Aristotle thanks to
the constitutive fluidity, multiplicity, and temporality that characterize most
sounds and noises (The fact is that listening or hearing can be more precise
than sight, e.g. when dividing a string into exactly two parts of equal length
by listening at the octave). Aristotle’s second point of caution about listening
is that “speech” or “discourse [λόγος]” is “audible not in itself but indirectly.”
According to Aristotle, the λόγος is “composed of words, and each word” is only
a “symbol” of, as Aristotle states in De Interpretatione, a “νόημα,”32 a specific
rational content “within the soul [ἐν τῇ ψυχῇ].”33 In order to avoid a naturaliza-
tion of λόγος, Aristotle holds that the connection between this rational con-
tent and its “acoustic articulation [φωνὴ σημαντική]” through signifying words
is “not” established “by nature [φύσει οὐδέν ἐστιν]” but “according to” a given
“contingent composition [κατὰ συνθήκην].”34 In view of the contingency of the
relationship between sound and rational content, Aristotle stresses the acci-
dental character of listening with regard to νοῦς and λόγος. There is, in short,
no essential connection between a phonetic sound and a certain meaning.
The point is here, however, as Aristotle himself stresses, that a word is only a
“word [ὄνομα]”35 if it becomes an expression of something, that is, if the word
“becomes a symbol [γένηται σύμβολον]”36 for something more than its mere
sound. But such becoming-symbolic is not possible without a specific sphere
of sensibility, which for language is most obviously listening. In other words,
if it is true that without noematic content the symbol would be nothing but
mere noise, it is also true that the constitution of symbols as expressions of
31 I do not think that “only [μόνον]” here means that hearing alone would be capable of per-
ceiving sounds. The whole argumentation of the passage goes in the opposite direction.
This is confirmed by an early reception of De Sensu by Thomas Aquinas.
32 Aristotle, De Interpretatione, 16a10.
34 Aristotle, De Interpretatione, 16a19–27.
something would be both impossible and pointless without a space of listen-

ing and acoustic sensibility in and through which meaning may be articulated
or withheld. It is exactly this acoustic or, to be more precise, akroamatic37 con-
dition of possibility of λόγος, νοῦς, and φρόνησις to become actual within a
space of listening that Aristotle neglects. It seems as if his conceptual frame of
the duality of νόημα and αἴσθησις would not allow for listening and sound to be
more than accidentally part of λόγος and φρόνησις. What seems unproblematic
with respect to sight and θεωρία becomes problematic for listening and λόγος,
and yet Aristotle fails to take note of his fundamentally diverging approaches
to sight and listening.
This kind of inconsistency shows even more clearly the intrinsic connec-
tion of a metaphysics of sight and the ontology of presence when we take into
account the rivalry between sight and touch in the Aristotelian hierarchy of
senses. Aristotle himself, after all, sometimes contests the primacy of sight38
and treats the hand and its tactual perception to be the first organ of intelli-
gence. The human being, “because it is the most intelligent of all animals, has
hands.”39 In perfect accord with such assumptions, Aristotle also holds in De
Anima that it is by virtue of his tactual sense that the human being would be
“the most intelligent of animals”; the human tactual sense would exceed “by far
in precision”40 the tactual senses of other animals. Finally, in De Generatione
Aristotle notices the conflict and exclaims: “Yet still vision is prior with regard
to tactual perception!”41
This very rivalry itself between sight and touch42 shows clearly that being
as presence is indeed at stake here, whether this presence be understood as a
practical “handiness [Zuhandenheit]” or even as theoretical and “mere objec-
tive presence [Vorhandenheit].”43 In German, these terms, Heidegger’s basic
concepts for the presence of being, make explicit the intrinsic connection
37 See Manfred Riedel, Hören auf die Sprache: Die akroamatische Dimension der Hermeneutik
(Frankfurt am Main, 1990), pp. 7–14, and 161–178.
38 Cf. Gilbert Romeyer-Dherbey, “Le problème de la préeminence d’un sens chez Aristote,”
in La parole archaïque (Paris, 1999), pp. 270–289.
39 Aristotle, De Partibus Animalium, 687a8–10.
41 Aristotle, De Generatione et Corruptione, 329b14. I follow the reading of Romeyer-Dherbey,
“Le problème de la préeminence d’un sens chez Aristote,” p. 285.
42 Merleau-Ponty has pointed out, that “after all, the palpation of the eye is a remarkable
variant” of “the tactile palpation” (Maurice Merleau-Ponty, The Visible and the Invisible,
trans. Alfonso Lingis [Evanston, 1968], p. 133).
43 Cf. Martin Heidegger, Being and Time, trans. Joan Stambaugh, revised Dennis Schmidt
(Albany, 2010), pp. 70–71.
196 Espinet
of the hand and the presence of things. It is noteworthy in our context that
Vorhandenheit is identified by Heidegger with the presence of theoretical
objects and their universal character: “Theoretical looking at the world has
always already flattened it down to the uniformity of what is merely present
[Einförmigkeit des puren Vorhandenen].”44 In other words, what appears to
Aristotle as rivaling vision is the very possibility for touch to beat sight in the
field of presence, the field of the things we can see and/or even grasp with
hands; regardless of who wins, it is a competition for presence which marks
the ontological keynote in Aristotelian physics and metaphysics. In a kind of
reconciliation of hand and sight, Aristotle holds, at the very summit of his
metaphysics—the determination of νοῦς ποιητικός—that the “soul” would be
“like the hand, for the hand is the tool of tools.”45 What the soul, then, ‘grasps’
is the “visible form [εἶδος]”46 of things. Finally, Aristotle pushes the analogy
between the genuine space of reason and visual and tactual presence even
further: in the same way that the soul would be the organ of organs by its
capacity to grasp rational contents, “reason would be the visible form of visible
forms [ὁ νοῦς εἶδος εἰδῶν],”47 that is, the “light [τὸ φῶς]”48 for all eidetic struc-
tures, the light of sight itself or even the enlightening activity of an “immortal
and eternal [ἀθάνατον καὶ ἀΐδιον]”49 activity of thinking, the νοῦς ποιητικός.
3 The Practical Sense of Listening and the Hermeneutical Turn

of Phenomenology: From Aristotle and Kant to Heidegger
In the shadow cast by the light of first philosophy, in the sphere of Aristotle’s
second philosophy, there becomes audible a different resonance of the space
of reason. Here, within practical rationality, Aristotle switches to a metaphori-
cal register of listening and audibility. It seems as if the danger of contami-
nating λόγος with sensibility by mixing it with listening would be negligible
for Aristotle in the domain of φρόνησις as practical reason. However, there
is no evidence of an explicitly conceptual status of listening here, either. It is
rather Heidegger who detects in his lecture on Basic Concepts of Aristotelian

Philosophy,50 one year before his Sophist-lecture quoted above, both the ter-
minological peculiarity of the metaphor of listening in Nicomachean Ethics A
13 and its philosophical import: “The explicit emphasizing of ἀκούειν is note-
worthy because otherwise the basic possibility of existence, for the Greeks, is
located in θεωρεῖν, in ὁρᾶν. Later we will take up how these go together.”51 Before
considering the philosophical relevance of ἀκούειν at stake for Heidegger,52
and the special relation of listening to θεωρεῖν (which Heidegger will approach
only very vaguely, if at all, in the named lecture from 1924, but will treat more
extensively some years later in Being and Time and eventually in some texts of
1950s and 60s), let us first consider the passage in question from Nicomachean
Ethics A 13.
At the very moment in which he develops the distinction of ethical and
dianoethical virtues, Aristotle sketches a tri- or perhaps quadri-partition of
the human soul, in which listening plays the role of mediation between two
opposites. The inner principle of life for animals provided with λόγος consists
for Aristotle of a vegetative and a rational part and, between these two opposed
extremes, an irrational element, which nevertheless “obeys reason [πειθαρχεῖ]”
and which “in the temperate and the brave person [. . .] is still more ready to
listen [εὐηκοώτερόν], since in their case all elements are in total harmony with
reason [πάντα γὰρ ὁμοφωνεῖ τῷ λόγῳ].”53 Aristotle goes on to describe this space
of practical reason as a space of listening as follows:
So the element without reason [τὸ ἄλογον] seems itself to have two parts.
For the vegetative part has no share at all in reason [λόγου], while the part
consisting in appetite and desire in general does share in it in a way, in so
far as it listens to and obeys it [μετέχει πως, ᾗ κατήκοόν ἐστιν αὐτοῦ καὶ
πειθαρχικόν]. So it has reason in the sense that a person who listens to the
reason of his father and his friends is said to have reason [τοῦ πατρὸς καὶ
τῶν φίλων φαμὲν ἔχειν λόγον], not reason in the mathematical sense. That
the element without reason is in some way persuaded by reason [πείθεταί
πως ὑπὸ λόγου τὸ ἄλογον] is indicated as well by the offering of advice, and
50 Martin Heidegger, Basic Concepts of Aristotelian Philosophy, trans. Robert D. Metcalf and
Mark B. Tanzer (Bloomington, 2009).
51 Heidegger, Basic Concepts, p. 32.
52 Discussed by Heidegger intensively in the named lecture: see Heidegger, Basic Concepts,
pp. 32–45, pp. 71–78.
53 Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, 1102b26–28 (translation: Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics,
trans. and ed. Roger Crisp [Cambridge, 2004], p. 22). Translation slightly altered in order
to reproduce the “πάντα” more accurately.
198 Espinet
all kinds of criticism and encouragement. And if we must say that this
element possesses reason, then the element with reason will also have
two parts, one, in the strict sense, possessing it in itself [καὶ τὸ λόγον ἔχον,
τὸ μὲν κυρίως καὶ ἐν αὑτῷ], the other ready to listen to reason as one is
ready to listen to the reason of one’s father [τὸ δ’ ὥσπερ τοῦ πατρὸς
ἀκουστικόν τι].54
Whether we assume a tripartition or a quartering of the soul, the relation

between the vital and the purely rational part of the soul remains untouched:
in both cases it is established by a third faculty, the capacity of listening. What
Aristotle means by ἀκούειν and its cognates (εὐηκοώτερον, κατήκοον, ἀκουστικόν)
is admittedly not the perceptual hearing of sounds. In that case Aristotle
would not have used genitive constructions like “τοῦ πατρὸς ἀκουστικόν τι,” “to
listen to,” “pay heed to the father,” but the alternative accusative construction
indicating that an object is perceived, which, contrary to the genitive does not
address the rational agent. What is obviously at stake here for Aristotle is a gen-
uine commitment of the soul to itself: the bindingness of λόγος for the ἄλογον,
and, correlatively, a responsiveness of the ἄλογον element to λόγος. This form
of commitment is certainly not a repression of the irrational element by the
rational element. What Aristotle describes is a form of pre-rational consent or
trust of the irrational element of soul with its rational counterpart.55 Hence,
Aristotle compares λόγος and ἄλογον with the correlational fit of convex and
concave forms.56 Again, as in De Sensu 437a 4–17, Aristotle does gesture toward
the very delicate and subtle medium of listening to λόγος that cannot be under-
stood within the harsh difference between the mere sensible and the purely
rational sphere. Now, outside the ontological and epistemological realm, and
unlike in De Sensu, Aristotle opens a way to a genuine faculty of listening,
which does not have a perceptual character for him, but oscillates between a
metaphorical, somehow partly sensible sphere and a conceptual content.57 In
other words, the space of practical reason depicted here is that of a peculiar
54 Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, 1102b28–1103a3 (trans. Crisp, p. 22).

55 I have developed the phenomenology of trust implicit in Aristotle’s concept of πίστις
more extensively elsewhere: see David Espinet, “Vertrauen auf Wahrhaftigkeit. System
atische Überlegungen zu einer Ethik des Hörens bei Heidegger, Aristoteles und Kant,” in
Sterbebegleitung: Vertrauenssache, eds. Gerhard Höver, Hieke Baranzke, Andrea Schäfer
(Würzburg, 2011), pp. 29–30.
56 Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, 1102a31–32.
57 Listening has here, in short, the function of an “absolute metaphor”: see Hans Blumenberg,
Paradigmen zu einer Metaphorologie (Frankfurt am Main, 1998), pp. 7–13.
form of listening, a faculty presumably capable of bridging the gap between

the sensible and the rational, which are two voices of the soul that are appar-
ently opposed to each other. To use Aristotle’s own metaphor, which resonates
within an acoustic space of reason, in the soul of a free and therefore temper-
ate human being, “everything speaks in accord with the rational element [πάντα
γὰρ ὁμοφωνεῖ τῷ λόγῳ],” or even more literally, “everything speaks in the same
voice.” Put another way, listening-to is not merely a determination of desire; it
is also a determination of “εὐδαιμονία,” that is, of “a certain kind of activity of
the soul in accordance with complete virtue [ἐστὶν ἡ εὐδαιμονία ψυχῆς ἐνέργειά
τις κατ’ ἀρετὴν τελείαν].”58 As Aristotle makes very clear, the capacity to listen
is on the side of the ἄλογον, which means that the vital element of the soul is
not simply restricted and somehow colonized by the λόγος, but rather that the
listening ἄλογον adheres to λόγος by and through listening to λόγος in the way
that we listen to parents or friends—or, as in another Aristotelian register, in
the way that the “true politician is thought to have taken special pains” in order
“to make citizens good and capable of listening to the laws [βούλεται γὰρ τοὺς
πολίτας ἀγαθοὺς ποιεῖν καὶ τῶν νόμων ὑπηκόους].”59 If the politician or lawgiver
stands for λόγος, the citizens paying heed to the law are part of the same ratio-
nal process, and the “pain λόγος takes” to educate the ἄλογον is not less painful
than the necessary self-restraint effectuated by the listening pre-rational part
of the soul.
In the shadow of the light and largely unnoticed by Aristotle, there thus
takes place a systematic coining of a concept of practical reason as listening.
Aristotle himself does affirm the fundamental and systematic relevance of the
relationship established by listening:
Virtue [ἡ ἀρετὴ] is distinguished along the same lines. Some virtues we

say are intellectual [τὰς μὲν διανοητικὰς], such as wisdom, judgement and
practical wisdom, while others are virtues of character [τὰς δὲ ἠθικάς],
such as generosity and temperance [ἐλευθεριότητα δὲ καὶ σωφροσύνην].60
Virtues are distinguished along the lines of the pre-rational, ethical ability
to listen, and dianoetical forms of reason that are open, as one must note, to
theoretical thinking. In other words, and only slightly overstressing the point,
ethics in its core is about nothing else than this very relation between λόγος
and ἄλογον, which Aristotle conceptualizes through the metaphor of listening.
58 Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, 1102a5–6 (trans. Crisp, p. 20).

59 Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, 1102a9–10 (trans. Crisp, p. 20), translation slightly altered.
60 Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, 1103a3–7 (trans. Crisp, p. 22).
200 Espinet
Self-command as “liberality [ἐλευθεριότητα]”61 or “temperance” and the great

number of other ethical virtues are the expression of a fundamental capacity
of the irrational part of the soul to listen to its rational counterpart. Listening
itself would then be a pre-rational faculty, neither irrational nor purely
rational.62
Herein lies the philosophical import of the passage for Heidegger. He can
now develop a positive understanding of the Aristotelian notion of the “ani-
mal provided with λόγος,” that is, with language and reason, as “human being.”
As we have seen, the ἄλογον able to listen to λόγος must not be understood
as a merely a-logical and vital function of the soul, but, formulated positively,
ἄλογον is the capacity to be partly rational without being entirely irrational. As
Heidegger puts it in a particularly hermeneutical turn, such pre-rational ratio-
nality is characterized by the capacity of the human soul for “letting-something-
be-said-by-others [Sich-etwas-sagen-Lassen[s]-von-anderen]” and “letting-
something-be-said-by-himself [Sich-etwas-von-sich-selbst-sagen-Lassen[s]].”63
For Heidegger, since both ways of “letting-something-be-said-by-itself” are
structurally intertwined, listening is as much a relation to oneself as to others.
Heidegger touches on precisely what is at stake for Aristotle when he states
that the human being as animal provided with λόγος “lets something be said
insofar as she listens. She does not listen in the sense of learning something,
but rather in the sense of having a directive for concrete practical concern.”64
But unlike Aristotle, Heidegger nevertheless points out the intrinsic relation
of this ‘metaphorical’ listening to with the acoustical listening, that takes place
in factical discourse: “I have pulled this passage out to make it clear that what
we call physiological processes are modes of being that make it possible to
genuinely be.”65
This difference is significant on at least two levels. First, Heidegger shows
the relevance of sensible acoustic experience within the process of ethical con-
stitution, which must not be understood as a mere self-relation, but rather as a
general responsiveness to an address, regardless of whether this address comes
61 Translates H. Rackham: see Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, trans H. Rackham (Cambridge,
MA, 1934), p. 20.
62 See Hans Blumenberg, “Ist eine philosophische Ethik gegenwärtig möglich?,” Studium
Generale 6 (1953), 174–184; see also Ludwig Siep, “Unbegriffliches in der praktischen
Philosophie,” Zeitschrift für philosophische Forschung 44/4 (1990), 635–646.
64 Heidegger, Basic Concepts, p. 76. Translation altered: “hören,” in this context, should not
be translated by “to hear” as the latter does not render the binding character of “hören,”
and thus its recognitional sense, intended by Heidegger here.
from within or from without. Second, Heidegger undermines the distinction

between the ethical and theoretical attitude; listening and speech are funda-
mental to both an ethical responsiveness and a theoretical sight. Factical, that
is, empirically oriented science cannot not take place, at least to some extent,
in a linguistic—and thus acoustical—space of communication, because “it is
the possibility of being-with-one-another.”66 Aristotle had already noticed in the
passage quoted above from De Sensu that listening is more important “for learn-
ing [τῆς μαθήσεως]” than sight, “because” λόγος is “audible.” Heidegger includes
in the sphere of listening aspects of theoretical reason explicitly excluded by
Aristotle in the passage quoted from Nicomachean Ethics A 13: listening to the
friends does “not” constitute “reason in the mathematical sense [λόγον [. . .] οὐχ
ὥσπερ τῶν μαθηματικῶν].”67 For Heidegger, however, listening does.
This last point is most obvious in Being and Time, where Heidegger leaves
no doubt about the intrinsic relation of listening and the elucidation of things.
Having λόγος means both to speak and to listen, and from this the animal
rationale has “the possibility of [. . .] discovering world and Dasein itself.”68
Heidegger thus gives listening an equiprimordial status with sight.69 But the
first point, that is, the ethical function of the faculty of listening with respect to
the εὐδαιμονία of soul, can also be reconstructed in the text of Being and Time.
It seems probable, to say the least, that Heidegger reactivates the Aristotelian
option of εὐδαιμονία as listening to λόγος, when he states in Being and Time:
“Listening to [hören auf ] . . . is the existential being-open of Dasein as being-
with for the other. Listening even constitutes the primary and authentic
openness of Dasein for its ownmost possibility of being, as in hearing [hören]
the voice of the friend whom every Dasein carries with it.”70 The “voice of the
friend” in question is the ‘good spirit,’ the carrier of the εὐ-δαιμονία (literally
the εὖ δαίμων) that gives Dasein access to its “ownmost possibility of being.”
Heidegger describes this voice of the friend in the frame of a transcendental
address: “whom every Dasein carries with it.” Listening becomes, in that sense,
an existential feature like attunement, understanding or discourse.71

67 Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, 1102b 33.
69 See e.g. also Heidegger, Being and Time, pp. 165–167.
71 The figure communicates, of course, with the existential feature of “being answerable”
which has been pointed out masterly by Steven Crowell in its normative relevance for
Dasein: see Steven Crowell, “Being answerable: reason-giving and the ontological meaning
of discourse,” in Normativity and Phenomenology in Husserl and Heidegger (Cambridge,
2013), pp. 214–236.
202 Espinet
From the Aristotelian subtext scrutinized above and studied intensively by

Heidegger himself in 1924, as well as from the standpoint of Heidegger’s own
appropriation of the concept/metaphor of listening as an existential feature of
Dasein, one cannot help but think of Kant’s definition of practical reason, and,
to be more precise, of the imperative character of the moral law. This echo of
Kant is not only a philological question; it is also crucial for the understanding
of Heidegger’s phenomenology of listening and its genuine ethical import.72
Kant describes the moral responsiveness and addressability of the rational
agent as “the voice of reason [Stimme der Vernunft],” which is “in reference to
the will [. . .] so distinct, so irrepressible, and so audible [so unüberschreibar]
even to the most common human beings.”73 A literal translation of “unüber-
schreibar” would be “the voice, which cannot be shouted over.” In other words,
the “pure moral law of reason”74 is something the rational agent, in order to be
rational, has to “listen to [gehorchen].”75 That means: The ratio essendi of listen-
ing is freedom, and listening the ratio cognoscendi of freedom.
“Listening to” proves to be for Kant, as for Aristotle, a figure of practical
reason. For both, listening encodes the autonomy of the subject or the soul,
that is, the fundamental self-relation effectuated as self-legislation and self-
restriction. In Aristotle’s words, already quoted above, “in the temperate and
the brave person” the irrational part of the soul “obeys reason [πειθαρχεῖ]”; in
this person, the part “consisting in appetite and desire in general [ἐπιθυμητικὸν
καὶ ὅλως ὀρεκτικὸν] [. . .] listens to and obeys” [μετέχει πως, ᾗ κατήκοόν ἐστιν
αὐτοῦ καὶ πειθαρχικόν] the rational part of the soul, “which has reason in a valid
way [. . .] in itself [τὸ λόγον ἔχον [. . .] τὸ μὲν κυρίως [. . .] ἐν αὑτῷ].” In short, λόγος
κυρίως, the ruling, rational part speaks in the voice of a Categorical Imperative.
This intrinsic relation of Aristotle’s and Kant’s understanding of freedom is
confirmed by Hans Blumenberg, who states that for both Kant and Aristotle
freedom “appears primarily as the danger of arbitrariness and disorder. Only
when logos subordinates itself under the ‘house rules’ of being, does freedom
become freedom in the proper sense of the free woman or free man, liberated
from obstinate and arbitrary self-will.”76 In contrast to Aristotle, however, for
72 Cf. e.g. Jean-Luc Nancy, “ ‘L’éthique originaire’ de Heidegger,” in La pensée dérobée (Paris,
2001), pp. 85–113.
73 Immanuel Kant, Critique of Practical Reason, 5:35; translation: Immanuel Kant, Critique of
Practical Reason, in Practical Philosophy, ed. and trans. Mary J. Gregor (Cambridge, 1996).
74 Kant, Critique of Practical Reason, 5:92.
75 Kant, Critique of Practical Reason, 5:92, translation altered.
76 Blumenberg, “Ist eine philosophische Ethik gegenwärtig möglich?,” p. 174. Blumenberg
refers to Aristotle, Metaphysics, 1075a18–23.
Kant “the house rules of being” are not cosmological, but subjective. It seems
to me nonetheless that the determination of ethical virtues in Nicomachean
Ethics A 13 is at least very close to that subjective turn at work in Kant’s under-
standing of the imperative character of moral law, especially if we take into
account the metaphor/concept of listening.
To my knowledge, before and after Heidegger little attention has been
paid to the Aristotelian determination of listening in Nicomachean Ethics
A 13 and its conceptual import; even readers like Hans Blumenberg hear in
Kant’s metaphorical orchestration more Luther’s than Aristotle’s voice.77 For
Heidegger, however, listening becomes crucial. How? After having established
the direct and even philological conceptual relation between Heidegger and
Aristotle, as well as between Kant and Aristotle, how does Heidegger’s concep-
tual use of listening meet the Kantian framework, and what import does this
appropriation have? Is there any conceptual link between Heidegger’s voice of
the friend and Kant’s voice of reason? My final considerations will give a brief
sketch of the particular philosophical vein in which Heidegger undertakes the
practical turn of phenomenology towards a thinking that listens and is thus
open for the eventful character of experience.
It is quite obvious that Kant plays a major role in the genesis of the analyt-
ics of Dasein, but Kant also plays a major role in Heidegger’s later thinking of
the event as a facticity of its own kind. Indeed, what Kant describes in terms
of voice and listening is this genuine fact of practical reason, which, for finite
rational beings, is not calculable in advance, precisely because it originates in
freedom. Thus Kant rejects the idea both of an “automaton naturale” and of an
“automaton [. . .] spirituale [. . .] driven by representations” as “at bottom noth-
ing better than the freedom of a turnspit.”78 In contrast, the fact of freedom
consists in a radical in-determination or openness to an incontrollable address
of a voice, which, again, “cannot be shouted over.” Kant calls this event a “fact of
reason because one cannot reason it out from antecedent data of reason”;
it “instead forces itself upon us of itself as a synthetic a priori proposition.”79
What is “given”80 in such an eminent address of reason to the finite subject is
binding for her, but nevertheless has to be listened to. In other words, it is an
irrefutable, ‘real’ duty (not a real fact). That means that the voice of reason and
the faculty of listening to that voice are a transcendental faculty that do not
stand apart from factical life, but rather have to be understood as a response
77 See e.g. Blumenberg, “Licht als Metapher der Wahrheit,” p. 163.
204 Espinet
to that very factical life and to the general contingency of finite reason. These
traits I believe indicate a fundamental accord of Heidegger’s conception of
authentic Dasein with Kant’s moral subjective determination of practical rea-
son on the one hand, and, on the other, with the Aristotelian conception of the
constitution of ethical virtues based on listening to the λόγος. The latter is, in
turn, analogous to Kant’s notion of finite rationality as autonomy. And even
the fact that Aristotle treats successful listening to the λόγος as constitutive for
εὐδαιμονία should not blur our perception of the close family likeness between
the Aristotelian and Kantian conceptual features encoded in an analogously
metaphorical vein. Only if it is “one’s own happiness,” as Kant stresses him-
self, which is “made the determining ground of the will,” then the principle of
happiness becomes the “direct opposite of the principle of morality.”81 On the
contrary the Categorical Imperative is indeed for Kant, as many have shown,
a rational percept for general happiness.82 For authentic Dasein, listening to
others and to oneself is equiprimordial; both originate from a listening to the
voice of the friend, which is neither me nor not me. Like moral law, which is
the objective form of subjectivity and not the single subjective subject as finite
being, Heidegger’s voice of the friend is neither individual nor general Dasein,
but a fundamental faculty of self-relation and other-relation. Every listening
to the voice of the friend, which every Dasein carries with her as a condition
of possibility of addressability, is the event of ethical life within the temporal
finitude of Dasein.
It is significant that Heidegger formulates this ethical imperative of listening
in section 34 of Being and Time, in which he focuses on language and speech.
This location indicates that Heidegger centers the epistemological problem
in the field of practical reason as ethical self- and world-constitution. Such
a hermeneutical and practical turn of phenomenology was already audible
in Heidegger’s early lecture on the Basic Concepts of Aristotelian Philosophy,
where language forms the core of the process of self- and other-relation: only
through language can the possibility of “letting-be-something-be-said” by oth-
ers and by oneself arise. But unlike in 1924, Heidegger now integrates a larger
perspective in which listening becomes a leading concept of hermeneuti-
cal phenomenology. Like Kant, Heidegger stresses the primacy of practical
81 Kant, Critique of Practical Reason, 5:36. Cf. also Manfred Sommer, “Mit dem Zufall leben,”
in Identität im Übergang: Kant (Frankfurt am Main, 1988), pp. 162–182.
82 Cf. Blumenberg, “Ist eine philosophische Ethik gegenwärtig möglich?”; for the general-
izing aspect see more recently also Stephen Engstrom, “The Concept of the Highest Good
in Kant’s Moral Theory,” Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 52/4 (1992), 747–780.
reason,83 but unlike Kant, Heidegger does not leave intact the primacy of
sight for theoretical reason. As he formulates it in a lecture on The Principle
of Reason in the 1950s: “Thinking should bring into view what one can hear
[Das Denken ist ein Erhören, das erblickt].”84 This short sentence indicates the
way in which Heidegger’s thinking leads to a further deconstruction of the pri-
macy of sight. In many ways, this deconstruction of sight goes hand in hand
with the radicalization of Heidegger’s understanding of the event as such.
Listening, in its multiversal, affective, integral, and eminently pathic phenom-
enal character becomes the sense of the event for Heidegger.
This development becomes most obvious in his later thinking, where he
explicitly addresses listening as the proper gesture of thinking: “Every posing,
every question takes place within the very grant of what is put in question.
What do we discover when we give sufficient thought to the matter? This, that
the authentic attitude of thinking is not a putting of questions—rather, it is
a listening to the grant, the promise of what is to be put in question [Daß das
Fragen nicht die eigentliche Gebärde des Denkens ist, sondern—das Hören der
Zusage dessen, was in die Frage kommen soll]. But in the history of our think-
ing, asking questions has since early days been regarded as the characteristic
procedure of thinking, and not without good cause.”85
The “good cause” lies in the fact that questioning already overlooks a certain
field, has a grasp on a certain substantial content, and hence already knows
enough to engage in a deeper exploration of whatever stands in question.
Heidegger here alludes to a whole range of philosophical conceptions in
which the question plays a starting or a founding role of thinking, as in the
well-known Socratic questioning,86 the Aristotelian conceptions of wonder
and ἀπορία,87 or the neo-Kantian understanding of the question as an initial
form of thinking,88 not to omit Kant himself, who states in the first Critique
83 Cf. Kant, Critique of Practical Reason, 5:119–121.

84 Martin Heidegger, The Principle of Reason, trans. Reginald Lilly (Bloomington, 1991), p. 46
(Martin Heidegger, Der Satz vom Grund, ed. Petra Jaeger [Frankfurt am Main, 1997], p. 69).
85 Martin Heidegger, “The Nature of Language,” in On the Way to Language, trans. Peter D.
Hartz (New York, 1971), p. 71.
86 See e.g. Plato, Meno, 82c–d.
87 See Aristotle, Metaphysics, 995a34–995b1.
88 Cf. Heinrich Rickert, Der Gegenstand der Erkenntnis, 6th ed. (Tübingen, 1928), p. 173;
Hermann Cohen, Logik der reinen Erkenntnis (Berlin, 1902), p. 69; Paul Natorp, Die
logischen Grundlagen der exakten Wissenschaften (Leipzig, 1910), p. 14.
206 Espinet
that it “is already a great [. . .] proof of [. . .] cleverness or insight [Klugheit und
Einsicht] to know what one should reasonably ask.”89
Heidegger’s understanding of a thinking that listens tries to twist free of
such methodological clairvoyance. It tries to understand the radical openness
that must have been there when thinking finds or rather hits on (and even
more is hit by) unexpected possibilities. Such thinking amid facticity starts
with listening, that is, it begins when thinking precisely does not consist in
“always hearing only what we already understand.”90 In other words, Heidegger
transfers the ethical attitude of listening and its pre-rational openness into the
inner realm of theoretical reason. To be more precise, theoretical reason now
unfolds primarily in an acoustical space of reason. Thinking is already listening
in the shadow of light, where it hears something that it does not understand.
This pre-rational openness, however, does not echo Heidegger’s political, or
ethical, and, not even, his philosophical intentions from the 1930s on. It rather
lets resound a possibility of rationality which Heidegger responds to and even
unfolds conceptually but ultimately himself fails to understand, as we now
know from his so-called Black Notebooks.91 The reasons for Heidegger’s fun-
damental error may be multiple, but they are not philosophical. If listening
to oneself, to others, and to the λόγος itself is rationality in full bloom, then,
as Heidegger’s identification with Nazism and his admiration for Hitler make
clear, we can do little better in describing the perversion—or the dialectics92—
of listening than to defer to what Moses Mendelssohn said about the decay
and destruction of enlightenment: “The more noble a thing is in its perfection,
says a Hebrew writer, the more ghastly it is in its decay. A rotted piece of
wood is not as ugly as a decayed flower; and this is not as disgusting as
89 Immanuel Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, trans. Paul Guyer and Allen Wood (Cambridge,
1998), A 58 / B 82.
90 Heidegger, “The Nature of Language,” p. 58.
91 Cf. Martin Heidegger, Überlegungen II–XII. Schwarze Hefte 1931–1941, ed. Peter Trawny
(Frankfurt am Main, 2014).
92 This essay was written before the publication of the Black Notebooks. Future develop-
ments of the practical sense of listening must adopt a critical stance concerning a genuine
dialectics of listening—like in a certain analogy, it has been advanced for the dialectics of
enlightenment—in order to show that the pre-objective openness that listening stands
for is also the condition for blind obedience without being reducible to it. Indeed, listen-
ing often starts before understanding, but it does not—like blind obedience—refuse to
understand. Listening is a figure of freedom within the realm of finite rational beings, but
such beings may fail to be free within this space.
decomposed animal; and this, again, is not as gruesome as man in his decay. So
it is also with culture and enlightenment. The more noble in their bloom, the
more hideous in their decay and destruction.”93
93
Moses Mendelssohn, “On the Question: What is Enlightenment?,” in What is
Enlightenment? Eighteen-Century Answers and Twenty-Century Questions, ed. and trans.
James Schmidt (Berkeley, 1996), p. 56.
chapter 10
Seeing the Truth and Living in the Truth: Optical

Paradigms of Truth and Pauline Countermodels
Antonio Cimino
1 Ancient Thought and Optical Paradigms of Truth
The metaphysics of sight finds one of its most conspicuous expressions in opti-
cal paradigms of truth. According to these paradigms, whose basic conceptual
frameworks will be specified in the following sections of this essay, truth is
experienced by means of theoretical attitudes or comportments, namely intu-
ition and observation.1 Thus, the experience of truth turns out to be a primar-
ily visual experience, which is characterized by a transitive relation between
an observer and what is visually given, so that experiencing truth primar-
ily means seeing truth. The essays contained in the first part of the present
volume already document to what extent ancient Greek philosophy, most
notably Plato and Aristotle, provided the first philosophical articulation
of the metaphysics of sight.2 In my contribution, rather, I will focus on how
contemporary philosophers criticize the metaphysics of sight by question-
ing its theoretical conceptions of truth. In fact, objections levelled against the
alleged primacy of vision in ancient thought have been elaborated in conjunc-
tion with a substantial critique of optical paradigms of truth. In this vein, I will
address three models (those by Heidegger, Badiou, and Agamben) of such a
critique, with a view to showing a truly remarkable aspect that the three have
in common and that has so far gone more or less unnoticed. This aspect is,
namely, the fact that in dealing with the metaphysics of sight and with related
optical paradigms of truth, Heidegger, Badiou, and Agamben draw inspiration
* The present essay results from my post-doctoral research project The Truth of Conviction:
Attestation, Testimony, and Declaration, financed by the Netherlands Organisation for
Scientific Research (NWO). It is part of a larger project, Overcoming the Faith–Reason
Opposition: Pauline Pistis in Contemporary Philosophy (project nr. 360-25-120), carried out
at Radboud University Nijmegen and at the University of Groningen. I thank Paul Carls for
checking my English.
1 In this essay, I will use “theoretical,” “contemplative,” and “optical” as synonyms.
2 See especially the contribution provided by Jussi Backman on Towards a Genealogy of the
Metaphysics of Sight: Seeing, Hearing, and Thinking in Heraclitus and Parmenides.

Seeing The Truth And Living In The Truth 209
from the Pauline Letters, which results in Saint Paul serving as a countermodel
to theoretical, Platonic-Aristotelian conceptions of truth.
As a very rough first approximation, the theoretical nature of Plato’s and
Aristotle’s conceptions of truth can be elucidated considering the notions of
“theory” or the “theoretical” in the strict etymological sense.3 This is clearly
symptomatic of the manner in which ancient philosophy consistently under-
stands and actualizes itself as the metaphysics of sight. In this respect, one
can easily provide substantial evidence by taking into account a considerable
number of passages by several ancient philosophers. What is “seen,” “contem-
plated,” or “observed” concerns, above all, the eternal beings or phenomena
belonging to the cosmic reality (planets, stars, etc.).4 In this vein, according
to the Aristotelian definition, philosophy is θεωρεῖν, insomuch as its aim pri-
marily consists in contemplating the first principles and causes of reality.5
Accordingly, the experience of truth is also characterized in terms of such a
θεωρεῖν.6
The optical paradigms acquire a more specific philosophical connotation—
truly decisive for the entire tradition, including phenomenology and other
contemporary philosophical methods—when they exceed the realm of sight
in the narrow sense. As a result, what is seen or observed is not primarily what
the bodily eyes see, but what one can see through noetic or intellectual, cogni-
tive acts.7 Plato in particular (and the entire Platonic tradition) underscores the
fact that the authentic philosopher is the one who is able to go beyond what
the eyes can see and to contemplate eidetic givens (forms, ideas, etc.). In many
3 See Hannelore Rausch, Theoria. Von ihrer sakralen zur philosophischen Bedeutung (Munich,
1982). See also Joachim Ritter et al., eds., Historisches Wörterbuch der Philosophie, 10
(Darmstadt, 1998), 1128ff.
4 The contemplation of the cosmos can be considered the seminal experience that defines
the emergence of philosophy as θεωρεῖν. Our entire philosophical tradition provides mas-
sive and extensive evidence of the self-understanding of philosophy as θεωρεῖν, from the
Presocratics (see, e.g., Die Fragmente der Vorsokratiker, eds. Hermann Diels and Walther
Kranz, 2 [Berlin, 1954], p. 13), through Plato (see, e.g., Phaedo, ed. John Burnet [Oxford, 1901],
99d6), to Aristotle (see, e.g., Metaphysics, ed. W. D. Ross [Oxford, 1924], 986b24), Spinoza (see
Ethica ordine geometrico demonstrata, ed. Carl Gebhardt [Heidelberg, 1972], pp. 277–308),
and even Wittgenstein: see Ludwig Wittgenstein, Tractatus logico-philosophicus (Frankfurt
am Main, 2006), 6.45: “Die Anschauung der Welt sub specie aeterni ist ihre Anschauung als—
begrenztes—Ganzes. Das Gefühl der Welt als begrenztes Ganzes ist das mystische.”
5 See Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, ed. I. Bywater (Oxford, 1894), 1177a12–1181b23.
6 See Aristotle, Metaphysics, 993a30: ἡ περὶ τῆς ἀληθείας θεωρία. See also Plato, Phaedrus,
ed. John Burnet (Oxford, 1901), 247d4: θεωροῦσα τἀληθῆ τρέφεται.
7 See, e.g., Plato, Republic, ed. John Burnet (Oxford, 1902), 529a9–c3.
210 Cimino
cases, ancient and medieval thinkers do not confine themselves to emphasiz-

ing the essential difference between, on the one hand, visual experience actu-
alized by the eyes and, on the other, noetic-eidetic vision, since, as is often the
case, such a difference is regarded as an irreconcilable contrast. According to
them, the eyes allow for a seeing that gets caught up in a dispersed and inco-
herent manifoldness, whereas noetic or intellectual sight enables one to grasp
a coherent and unified givenness, the eidetic one.8
The optical framework just described needs further specifications as to
the various levels of truth. In fact, on the one hand, intuitive truth should be
regarded as a monothetic act of seeing an eidetic given, or of perceiving a sen-
sorial given. On the other hand, propositional truth has to be traced back to
a synthetic-diairetic activity and refers to a correspondence between linguis-
tic articulation and states of affairs.9 On its own, the truth-relation between
linguistic articulation (or propositional content) and states of affairs can be
experienced primarily on the basis of an observing (theoretical, contem-
plative) attitude, which in principle enables one to see whether there is a
correspondence.10
The above-outlined theoretical paradigms of truth have been questioned
by Heidegger, Badiou, and Agamben, with Saint Paul acting simultaneously as
their main source of inspiration and as a countermodel against the Platonic-
Aristotelian tradition. Such a circumstance is particularly challenging, for
this philosophical use of Saint Paul against ancient thought is in no way self-
evident. As a matter of fact, the reception of Saint Paul in contemporary
philosophy is deeply paradoxical, and that holds true specifically as con-
cerns Saint Paul’s contributions to the question of truth. According to
Nietzsche, Saint Paul should be regarded as an archetypical falsifier and liar,
who, in line with the Platonic theological-philosophical tradition, manipulates
8 See Plato, Phaedrus, 249b6–c1; Theaetetus, ed. John Burnet (Oxford, 1900), 148d and 181c.
This contrast has an ethical connotation as well, already in Plato, but especially in the
Platonic-Christian tradition.
9 See Plato, Sophist, ed. John Burnet (Oxford, 1900), 262a1ff. and Aristotle, De interpreta-
tione, ed. Lorenzo Minio-Paluello (Oxford, 1949), 17a1ff. See also Martin Heidegger, Logik.
Die Frage nach der Wahrheit, ed. Walter Biemel (Frankfurt am Main, 1976), pp. 127–190.
10 See Martin Heidegger, Sein und Zeit, ed. Friedrich-Wilhelm von Herrmann (Frankfurt am
Main, 1977), § 44a. Even if the primacy of the optical paradigms in Plato and Aristotle is
well-documented, one has to avoid oversimplifications, since in both cases we can find
substantial starting points for different conceptions of truth. I would like to mention the
case of practical truth: see especially Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, 1139a26–27. In this
connection, one could also mention the concept of truth that, according to Plato and
Aristotle, defines philosophical life: see e.g. Aristotle, Metaphysics, 1004b15ff.
reality and disseminates false doctrines, dogmas, and invented truths in order
to deprive life of its intrinsic value and to reach a privileged position of power.11
On the contrary, Heidegger’s, Badiou’s, and Agamben’s philosophical readings
of Saint Paul radically reverse Nietzsche’s violent statements by undermining
the two basic assumptions that underlie his polemical interpretation devel-
oped in The Antichrist, namely the alleged Platonic tendencies of Saint Paul
and the Pauline commitment against philosophical truth. In fact, although
they read the Pauline Letters on the basis of very diverse assumptions and
questions, in the end Heidegger, Badiou, and Agamben come to the same con-
clusion: Saint Paul can serve as a source of inspiration in order to articulate a
new account of truth that cannot be reduced to traditional optical paradigms.
More precisely, I will show to what extent Heidegger, Badiou, and Agamben
share certain interpretive frameworks, with a special focus on three interre-
lated points that define the above-mentioned reversal of Nietzsche’s reading.
First, Heidegger, Badiou, and Agamben decidedly separate Saint Paul from the
Platonic theological-philosophical tradition. Second, for these three thinkers,
against the background of this tradition, Saint Paul provides us with a sub-
stantially alternative model that enables us to overcome Platonic-Aristotelian
metaphysics through new, philosophically meaningful patterns that thus can-
not be understood in merely theological or religious terms. Third, on closer
inspection, one can see a shared Pauline horizon in Heidegger’s, Badiou’s, and
Agamben’s notions of truth, namely the fact that truth should be traced back to
an intransitive (performative or evental) experience, which, in the end, stands
out against Plato’s and Aristotle’s theoretical paradigms of truth.
2 Pauline Conceptions of Truth in Heidegger, Badiou, and Agamben
Heidegger, Badiou, and Agamben, in line with those interpretive patterns that
they respectively introduce in addressing ancient thought and Saint Paul, read
in different ways the above-outlined optical paradigms of truth. In connection
with this, I am not interested in examining the historical-philological accuracy
of their readings of Greek philosophy—not only because this would require a
different approach and another thematic focus, but especially because I intend
to concentrate my attention on the conceptual frameworks that define their
attempts to play off Saint Paul against Greek philosophy.
11 See especially Friedrich Nietzsche, Der Antichrist, (Sämtliche Werke) 6/3 (Berlin/New
York, 1969), pp. 163–252, here: pp. 213ff. As regards Nietzsche’s interpretation of Saint Paul,
see Daniel Havemann, Der “Apostel der Rache”. Nietzsches Paulusdeutung (Berlin, 2002).
212 Cimino
If one considers Heidegger’s, Badiou’s, and Agamben’s readings of Saint

Paul, one could not imagine more divergent interpretations. Heidegger
starts from the Pauline experience of factical life in order to elaborate his
own phenomenological hermeneutics of facticity. Saint Paul here acts as a dis-
cussion partner, and the specific question to be addressed is that of the time
and historicity belonging to human existence. Badiou’s interest in Saint Paul,
rather, should be traced back to political issues concerning the question of
universalism.12 According to Badiou, against the abstract universality of glo-
balization and capitalism, Saint Paul can provide us with a new framework
that enables us to conceive of a universal singularity rooted in the event
declared by a subject and linked to a truth procedure. Finally, Agamben sets
out to restore the primordial meaning of messianism13 by (re)discovering
in Saint Paul the authentic essence of the messianic, with special emphasis
on the relation between faith and language. Despite these heterogeneous
approaches, a shared Pauline horizon can be revealed, which shapes precisely
the way Heidegger, Badiou, and Agamben re-address the question of truth.
In the following analysis, I will show that these thinkers elaborate conceptions
of truth that start, more or less explicitly, from Saint Paul, inasmuch as they
understand the experience of truth as an intransitive relation. In the end, for
all three thinkers, experiencing truth will amount to living the truth, or rather,
living in the truth.
2.1 Heidegger: Saint Paul and the Existential-Phenomenological

Paradigm of Truth14
Heidegger’s critique of the theoretical paradigms of truth should be exam-
ined in the light of his general analysis of objective presence (Vorhandenheit).
According to his thesis, objective presence is a mode of being that corresponds
to a specific attitude of human existence, namely the scientific or theoreti-
cal one, whose characteristic features can be summarized as follows. First, a
theoretical attitude is an observing comportment toward beings.15 Second,
it is a distanced comportment, to the effect that it is unconcerned about the
12 See Alain Badiou, Saint Paul: The Foundation of Universalism, trans. Ray Brassier (Stanford,
2003), pp. 1–15.
13 See Giorgio Agamben, The Time That Remains: A Commentary on the Letter to the Romans,
trans. Patricia Dailey (Stanford, 2005), p. 1.
14 In this paper I use “existential” in a broad sense, regardless of Heidegger’s differentiation
between “existential” and “existentiell.”
15 See Heidegger, Sein und Zeit, § 13.
personal or existential meaning of beings.16 Third, it articulates itself through

scientific or constative utterances that in turn report states of affairs.17
Heidegger argues that objective presence and the related theoretical (or
observing) attitude primarily shaped philosophy in ancient Greece, precisely
in terms of a contemplative comportment that objectifies beings and relations
between them. Accordingly, the primacy of the θεωρεῖν in Plato and Aristotle
corresponds to the ontological priority of objective presence—a priority that
is reflected both in the pre-eminence of substance (οὐσία) and in the concep-
tion of truth as correspondence. In modern and contemporary philosophical
thought, such a theoretical paradigm related to the priority of objective pres-
ence re-emerges in the form of the primacy of intuition, which, according to
Heidegger’s destruction of the history of ontology, influences the most impor-
tant thinkers.18
As a matter of fact, already in the lectures held after the First World War,19
Heidegger vigorously criticizes Husserl for his theoretical conception of phe-
nomenological intuition and enacts or achieves the phenomenological atti-
tude in terms of a hermeneutical intuition, which is executed through an
immanent re-enactment of factical life.20 Within the framework of his her-
meneutical and performative conception of phenomenology, Heidegger takes
Saint Paul as one of his main sources of inspiration. First, Heidegger views
16 See Martin Heidegger, Phänomenologie des religiösen Lebens, eds. Matthias Jung, Thomas
Regehly, and Claudius Strube (Frankfurt am Main, 1995), pp. 9–18.
17 See Heidegger, Sein und Zeit, § 33.
18 Heidegger’s critique of intuition unfolds in his entire work, from the very beginning up
to the late development of his thought: see Martin Heidegger, Zur Sache des Denkens,
ed. Friedrich-Wilhelm von Herrmann (Frankfurt am Main, 2007), pp. 78ff.
19 See Martin Heidegger, Zur Bestimmung der Philosophie, ed. Bernd Heimbüchel, 2nd ed.
(Frankurt am Main, 1999), p. 117.
20 For a more detailed account of this central aspect of Heidegger’s early hermeneutics
of facticity, see Antonio Cimino, Phänomenologie und Vollzug. Heideggers performative
Philosophie des faktischen Lebens (Frankfurt am Main, 2013). Heidegger’s elaboration of
an existential paradigm of truth, inspired by Saint Paul, includes a radical critique of the
primacy of intuition and in general of the optical paradigm. Such a critique is a consis-
tent development of his conception of hermeneutical intuition that he develops in his
early hermeneutics of factical life. Within the ontological analysis of human existence,
Heidegger’s overcoming of intuition takes place in the form of a reduction, inasmuch as
he shows to what extent intuition and the related ontological basis of objective presence
are derivative and should be traced back to a more fundamental dimension rooted in
understanding (Verstehen). In the end, according to Heidegger’s reduction, intuition is
nothing but a derivative form of the primordial hermeneuticity that characterizes human
life as such: see Heidegger, Sein und Zeit, pp. 194–195.
214 Cimino
Saint Paul’s articulation of factical life as an alternative to the theoretical

paradigm initiated by Greek thought, inasmuch as Saint Paul lets the truly pri-
mordial features of factical life emerge, especially its own historical-temporal
finitude and enactment-sense.21 Second, Saint Paul’s Letters provide Heidegger
with a considerable number of suggestions with regard to a philosophical
elaboration of authentic life.22 Most remarkably, Saint Paul supplies a new
paradigm of temporality that is an alternative to Greek thought’s ontology of
substance and presence, although Plato and Aristotle provide many relevant
insights concerning existential truth.23 It is precisely the Pauline paradigm of
temporality that allows Heidegger to overcome the ontology of presence that
serves as the main basis for the primacy of θεωρεῖν, the correspondence theory
of truth, and the alleged predominance of intuition.
The Pauline roots of Heidegger’s conception of truth in terms of authentic-
ity can be concretely documented by reference to Heidegger’s reading of the
First Letter to the Thessalonians.24 Within this framework, he works out
the opposition between authenticity and inauthenticity starting from the
Pauline contrast between two different ways of experiencing the παρουσία.
On the one hand, the inauthentic experience of the παρουσία, in searching for
precise givens, finds its expression in the attempt to objectify the specific tem-
porality of factical life. On the other hand, authentic life allows for a genuine
experience of the finitude that characterizes human existence, without any
consideration of objectifiable givens:
The entire question for Paul is not a cognitive question [. . .]. He does
not say, “at this or that time the Lord will come again”; he also does not
say, “I do not know when he will come again”—rather he says: “You know
exactly. . . .” This knowledge must be of one’s own, for Paul refers
the Thessalonians back to themselves and to the knowledge that they
have as those who have become. [. . .] εἰρήνη καὶ ἀσϕάλεια (5:3), “peace
and security” in factical life: this expression represents the How of self-
comportment to that which encounters me in factical life. That which
21 See especially Heidegger, Phänomenologie des religiösen Lebens, pp. 78–80.
22 See Benjamin Crowe, Heidegger’s Religious Origins: Destruction and Authenticity
(Bloomington, 2006).
23 In this regard, one can mention e.g. the fact that in his Marburg lectures on Plato’s Sophist
Heidegger interprets the Aristotelian concept of practical intelligence (ϕρόνησις) in terms
of conscience (Gewissen): see Martin Heidegger, Platon: Sophistes, ed. Ingeborg Schüßler
(Frankfurt am Main, 1992), p. 56.
24 See Heidegger, Phänomenologie des religiösen Lebens, pp. 87–105.
encounters me in my worldly comportment carries no reason for distur-

bance. Those who find rest and security in this world are those who cling
to this world because it provides peace and security. “Peace and security”
characterizes the mode of this relation to those who speak this way.25
Heidegger interprets the Pauline expression εἰρήνη καὶ ἀσϕάλεια as an indica-

tion of the attitude that characterizes those who are not in a position to live
and experience temporality in an authentic way, provided that they search for
security in meaningful worldly content and things. This reading clearly pre-
figures what in Being and Time Heidegger articulates in terms of inauthen-
tic existence, which is indeed absorbed in the meaningfulness of the world.26
Analogously to inauthenticity, such an attitude articulated by Saint Paul as
εἰρήνη καὶ ἀσϕάλεια goes hand in hand with a lack of self-knowledge:
Sudden ruin overcomes them [. . .]. They are surprised by it, do not expect
it. Or still better: they are precisely in the attitudinal expectation; their
expectation is absorbed by what life brings to them. Because they live in
this expectation, the ruin hits them in such a way that they cannot flee
from it. They cannot save themselves, because they do not have them-
selves, because they have forgotten their own self, because they do not
have themselves in the clarity of authentic knowledge. Thus they cannot
grab hold of and save themselves (cf. 5:4 ἐν σκότει: “in the dark”).27
One can easily notice that in his reading of 1 Thess 5:3–4 Heidegger places
particular emphasis on the Pauline metaphorical opposition between dark-
ness and luminosity, which is related to the two ways of experiencing facticity
and temporality. This is a crucial issue for our approach to the metaphysics
of sight. As a matter of fact, the metaphorical constellations related to light
play a truly decisive role both in Plato’s and Aristotle’s metaphysics and for
the entire ensuing tradition.28 In the end, those constellations are indeed an
25 Heidegger, Phänomenologie des religiösen Lebens, pp. 102–103; Engl. transl. The
Phenomenology of Religious Life, trans. Matthias Fritsch and Jennifer Anna Gosetti-
Ferencei (Bloomington, IN, 2004), p. 72.
26 See Heidegger, Phänomenologie des religiösen Lebens, pp. 9–18.
27 Heidegger, Phänomenologie des religiösen Lebens, p. 103; Engl. transl. The Phenomenology
of Religious Life, p. 72.
28 See Werner Beierwaltes, Denken des Einen. Studien zur neuplatonischen Philosophie und
ihrer Wirkungsgeschichte (Frankfurt am Main, 1985), p. 139. See also Werner Beierwaltes,
Plotins Metaphysik des Lichtes, in Die Philosophie des Neuplatonismus (Darmstadt, 1977),
pp. 75–117.
216 Cimino
intrinsic component of the metaphysics of sight, with the metaphysics of light

being its necessary correlate. The metaphysics of sight and the metaphysics
of light, together with their various illustrations, define the core of traditional
metaphysics and its self-understanding.
Against such a background of the metaphysical use of metaphorical con-
stellations of light, the Pauline opposition between darkness and luminosity
represents a substantially alternative articulation of that constellation, pro-
vided that it does not concern any metaphysical commitments, but only two
ways of life:
5:4 ὑμεῖς δέ, ἀδελϕοί, οὐκ ἐστὲ ἐν σκότει: “but you, brothers, are not in the
darkness.”—ἵνα ἡ ἡμέρα ὑμᾶς ὡς κλέπτης καταλάβῃ, “so that the day sur-
prises you like a thief.”—ἡμέρα has a double meaning: (1) opposite the
darkness is the “brightness” of knowledge of oneself (ὑμεῖς υἱοὶ ϕωτός ἐστε
5:5 [for you are all children of light]). (2) ἡμέρα means “day of the Lord”,
that is, “day of the παρουσία.” This then is the kind and mode of Paul’s
answer. Through this (“let us keep awake”) we see: the question of the
“When” leads back to my comportment. How the παρουσία stands in my
life, that refers back to the enactment of life itself. The meaning of the
“When,” of the time in which the Christian lives, has an entirely special
character. Earlier we formally characterized: “Christian religiosity lives
temporality.” It is a time without its own order and demarcations. One
cannot encounter this temporality in some sort of objective concept of
time. The when is in no way objectively graspable.29
The Pauline opposition between light and darkness, or at least in Heidegger’s

reading of it, turns out to constitute a complete reversal of the metaphysical
understanding of such an opposition.30 According to this understanding, as
29 Heidegger, Phänomenologie des religiösen Lebens, p. 104; Engl. transl. The Phenomenology
of Religious Life, pp. 72–73.
30 This reversal goes largely beyond Heidegger’s reading of Saint Paul. In fact, Heidegger’s
destruction of traditional metaphysics can be viewed, among other things, also as an
attempt to question the structural configuration of onto-theology in terms of the meta-
physics of light. The clearest indication of this approach is Heidegger’s concept of Lichtung
(“clearance”): see especially Heidegger, Zur Sache des Denkens, pp. 83ff. Heidegger’s “clear-
ance” can be read as a reformulation and reversal of the metaphysics of light, inasmuch
as this notion dismisses the metaphysical tenet of full luminosity and affirms instead the
mutual belonging of light and darkness, concealment and unconcealment. In the end,
Heidegger’s concept of truth as unconcealedness (Unverborgenheit) is to be understood
precisely as a critique of the metaphysical claim to fully displayed luminosity.
Plato’s allegories show, light is the specific element in which true knowledge
of the foundations of reality unfolds, whereas darkness characterizes the low-
est of cognitive and ontological levels.31 Another paradigmatic example of
metaphysical metaphors of light is Aristotle’s conception of the active intel-
lect, which is fully in line with the Platonic allegories and consistently reaf-
firms the luminosity of true knowledge and also of the foundations of reality.32
In this sense, luminosity is ascribed to epistemic and ontological fundamenta
inconcussa, whereas empirical, instable, and contingent reality is ascribed to
darkness. This framework is completely reversed in Heidegger’s appropriation
of Saint Paul. For the “children of light” are not those who search for secure
foundations, objective givens, and safe conditions. On the contrary, they are
those who experience fragility, contingency, and the finitude of human exis-
tence, and give up all claims to certainty.
In line with his reading of Saint Paul, Heidegger elaborates his conception of
authentic existence in terms of existential truth. Existential truth is linked to a
self-concern and a self-appropriation that is not due to external factors and is
indeed an intransitive process. In fact, such a self-concern does not imply any
introduction of new cognitive or epistemic contents, but only refers to how one
experiences the world and the self. If one wants to formulate this phenomenon
according to the early Heidegger’s terminology, one has good reason to say that
the self-appropriation actualized in authentic existence as existential truth
does concern the enactment-sense, not the content sense. On the contrary,
the theoretical, observing, or contemplative attitude related to the optical
paradigms structurally implies a distance. Contemplating something always
implies a proper distance, in the strict sense, as is the case with the observa-
tion of celestial phenomena. If one introduces the optical paradigm in order
to explain self-knowledge in terms of self-contemplation, a distanced com-
portment towards the self emerges. A concrete example of this distanced self-
observing can be seen in Husserl’s reflective approach, which Heidegger deems
unsuitable in view of a proper philosophical self-understanding of human
existence. The existential paradigm of truth overcomes such a self-alienation.
Existential truth discloses human life in its own original character and, in
doing so, does not have any optical grasp of human existence. Existentiality
and thrownness, which define human life in its most genuine possibility, can-
not be grasped or experienced through intuition or other epistemic acts, but
only through performing authentic existence. Here we have a complete reversal
of the hierarchy that defines the traditional epistemic paradigm. According to
31 See, e.g., Plato, Republic, 508a–509b.

32 See especially Aristotle, De Anima, ed. W. D. Ross (Oxford, 1961), 430a10–25.
218 Cimino
the latter, intuition of essences or principles implies an overcoming or bracket-

ing of factical individual givens, with the result that eidetic givens are grasped
in their pure and non-contingent givenness. Instead, Heidegger argues that
this intuitive grasp is only a derivative one, whereas the enactment of authen-
tic life turns out to be a more fundamental and original (self-)knowledge.
In the end, being-towards-death does not consist in any intuition of death.
And the certainty related to being-towards-death cannot be traced back to a
merely epistemic one.33
Existential truth is equivalent to authenticity, which in turns enables
one to see the one-sided character of a theoretical attitude and an objec-
tive presence. In the case of existential truth, the primacy of the optical par-
adigm that shapes the traditional notion of truth is finally overcome, since
existential truth cannot be “seen,” it is not a “visible” feature of concrete or
ideal entities (or states of affairs) nor any correspondence relation between
entities (or states of affairs) on the one side and psychic and/or semantic pro-
cesses on the other side. Existential truth can only be enacted or experienced
from within the first-person perspective and finally turns out to be an intransi-
tive experience. In sum, one cannot “see” it but can only live in it.
The irreconcilability of authentic existence and the optical paradigm is sub-
stantiated by Heidegger in line with his interpretation of ancient philosophy
in terms of a worldly oriented attitude. Within the framework of an ontologi-
cal analysis of human existence, the central role of θεωρεῖν and the related
primacy of objective presence in ancient philosophy have to be traced back
to inauthentic tendencies of human life, inasmuch as this interprets itself as
taking worldly entities as a foundation:
Now it is clear why the pure onlooking settles something for the exis-
tence of man and why it is the highest in the Greek sense. Our under-
standing of the ultimate meaning of human existence for the Greeks
depends on our seeing how an ethical consideration was for them
from the very outset outside of the points of view we know today from
traditional philosophies. For the Greeks the consideration of human
existence was oriented purely toward the meaning of Being itself, i.e.,
toward the extent to which it is possible for human Dasein to be everlast-
ing. The Greeks gathered this meaning of Being, Being as absolute pres-
ence, from the Being of the world.34
33 See especially Heidegger, Sein und Zeit, p. 352.

34 Heidegger, Platon: Sophistes, p. 178; Engl. transl. Plato’s Sophist, trans. Richard Rojcewicz
and André Schuwer (Bloomington, IN, 2003), p. 122.
On closer inspection, according to Heidegger, the primacy of vision and θεωρεῖν

that emerges in ancient philosophy is nothing but a radicalization of the curi-
osity that shapes the inauthentic attitude of human life. Put another way, there
are ontological reasons that explain why sight or vision plays an eminent role
in ancient thought. Since the existential paradigm of truth means an overcom-
ing of curiosity as one of the peculiar phenomena of inauthenticity, such a
paradigm is supposed to allow one to overcome the predominant role of vision
in experiencing truth.
2.2 Badiou: Saint Paul and the Evental-Declarative Paradigm of Truth

The Pauline overcoming of the traditional optical paradigm of truth becomes
particularly apparent in Badiou, since he emphasizes the intransitive charac-
ter of evental-declarative truth. With a view to clarifying this peculiar intran-
sitivity, it makes sense to view Badiou’s conception of truth in light of his own
account of the relationship between event, subject, truth procedure, and dec-
laration, with a special focus on the dynamics that shape such an intransitivity.
One should, first of all, consider Badiou’s definition of the Pauline truth
procedure. According to Badiou, this procedure consists in a process that
can be described as follows: declaring the event and “being faithful to this
declaration.”35 In this context, the notion of πίστις (faith, conviction) has a very
specific meaning, since it refers to “the subject at the point of declaration.”36 If
one considers this peculiar truth procedure against the background of tradi-
tional theories of truth, some basic differences can be highlighted. In fact, the
Pauline truth procedure cannot be traced back to the correspondence theory
for two reasons that are related to each other and that deeply undermine the
presuppositions of a correspondence. First, the declaration of the event does
not consist in a constative description or report of it. In ontological terms,
there is no relation between a Cartesian res cogitans and things. As Badiou
points out, the Christian subject emerges precisely in conjunction with the
above-described truth procedure, provided there is no subject independently
of the truth process and of the event.37 Second, a constative description is not
possible, because there is no empirical or historical givenness to the event. Put
another way, the declaration of the event does not consist in a report related to
the event as a describable historical or empirical fact, with the result that there
is no historical, empirical, physical “proof” of the event.
35 Badiou, Saint Paul, p. 14.

37 See Badiou, Saint Paul, p. 14: “The Christian subject does not preexist the event he
declares.”
220 Cimino
Pauline truth is also deeply different from what I would call an ontologi-
cal or a Platonic conception of truth. According to the Platonic conception,
truth is an “objective” feature that concerns things themselves and does
not depend on subject-related circumstances. Platonic ideas are indeed the
paradigmatic example of this notion, provided that psychic or subjective activ-
ity does not affect their truth status. In principle, philosophical contempla-
tion of ideas is a typical transitive experience of truth: truth is “seen”—not in
terms of an empirical or sensorial given, but as a noetic or eidetic one. In the
case of Badiou’s account of the Pauline truth procedure, there is no truth inde-
pendent of the truth procedure of the evental declaration, with truth being
intrinsically evental, i.e. it is intrinsically connected to the event and also to
the declaration of it. Such a truth is thoroughly subjective, inasmuch as “it is of
the order of a declaration that testifies to a conviction relative to the event.”38
The peculiar status of Pauline truth could be further specified, if one con-
siders the pair “universal vs. particular/individual” and underscores that the
traditional role this opposition plays in determining truth is substantially
dismantled in Badiou’s reading of Saint Paul. The paradigmatic examples of
universal truths are once again the Platonic ones: logical, mathematical truths
etc. are universal truths, not affected by empirical or historical situations. On
the other hand, examples of particular (or individual) truths are indeed the
historical ones: a report on the fact that event x happened in place y on day z
is true if, and only if, it truly describes that fact. The Pauline truth procedure
escapes this opposition, since it is based on a universal singularity.
In other words, the evental nature of Pauline truth implies its own
singularity. According to Badiou, the Pauline truth procedure is no mere rep-
etition and there are no pre-established orders, procedures, or identities that
structure truth. Put differently, truth is “neither structural, nor axiomatic, nor
legal. No available generality can account for it, nor structure the subject who
claims to follow in its wake. Consequently, there cannot be a law of truth.”39
However, precisely because truth is singular, truth will be universal, insomuch
as Pauline truth allows for the overcoming of pre-defined historical, cultural,
ethnic, or political orders. In fact, due to its singularity, truth breaks with those
orders and identities, with the result that it paves the way for a genuine and
new form of universality. In the end, this universality is understood in terms of
universal singularity.40

40 Badiou, Saint Paul, p. 22: “A truth procedure is only universal insofar as it is supported, at
that point through which it indexes the real, by an immediate subjective recognition of its
singularity.”
Badiou’s overcoming of the optical paradigm also emerges in his theory of

discourses, where he analyzes the structural subjective dispositions relating
to Jewish, Greek, and Christian discourse. Particular attention should be
paid to the way he describes the essential features of Greek discourse, that is,
ancient philosophy:
What then is Greek discourse? The subjective figure constituted by it is

that of the wise man. But wisdom consists in appropriating the fixed
order of the world, in the matching of the logos to being. Greek discourse
is cosmic, deploying the subject within the reason of a natural totality.
Greek discourse is essentially the discourse of totality, insofar as it
upholds the sophia (wisdom as internal state) of a knowledge of phusis
(nature as ordered and accomplished deployment of being).41
On closer inspection, this description provided by Badiou properly summa-

rizes the structure of the theoretical attitude performed by Greek philosophers
in their dealing with cosmic reality. More precisely, “the matching of the logos
to being” or the “appropriating the fixed order of the world” constitutes the
essence of the θεωρεῖν performed and articulated by ancient philosophers. At
this juncture, the contrast between the intransitivity of the evental-declarative
process and the transitivity of the Greek discourse becomes more apparent.
While the evental-declarative emergence of subjectivity does not go along
with any counterparts or correlates, Greek discourse enacts itself precisely in
dealing with cosmic totality. On the contrary, the universal singularity relating
to the intransitive evental-declarative process goes beyond both Jewish and
Greek discourse: “One must proceed from the event as such, which is a-cosmic
and illegal, refusing integration into any totality and signaling nothing. But
proceeding from the event delivers no law, no form of mastery, be it that of the
wise man or the prophet.”42
The Pauline discourse does not take place in the form of a theoretical recog-
nition of the order that structures the cosmic totality, but rather its universal
singularity allows for a break with such orders. In turning out to be an alterna-
tive both to Jewish prophecy and to Greek philosophy, the Pauline apostleship
radically questions traditional criteria of truth and undermines the relevance
of any sight-based experiences: “How is one to know when one is an apostle?
According to the truth of a declaration and its consequences, which, being

222 Cimino
without proof or visibility, emerges at that point where knowledge, be it empir-

ical or conceptual, breaks down.”43
2.3 Agamben: Saint Paul and the Performative Model of Truth

If Heidegger and Badiou provide, respectively, an existential model of truth
and an evental-declarative one, Saint Paul leads Agamben to what one could
call performative or enactive truth, according to which truth is to be understood
in terms of performative veridiction.44 In fact, analogously to the Pauline inspi-
rations that I analyzed in the case of Heidegger and Badiou, Agamben consid-
ers truth not in theoretical or optical terms, but as an inner dynamics of the
Pauline articulation of faith.
Such an articulation of faith is neither propositional, in the sense of con-
stative truth, nor intuitive, in the sense of a monothetic grasp of eidetic or
sensorial givens. Performative truth should be understood as ὁμολογία between
utterances and inner disposition: “The experience of the word of faith thus
does not entail the experience of a denotative character of a word, its refer-
ring to things, but an experience of the word’s being near, held in the harmony
between mouth and heart, and, by means of this homologein, the word becomes
the deliverer of salvation.”45 The intransitivity of the performative truth comes
out, especially considering that the “experience of the word of faith” is not
directed towards any counterpart or correlate, given that it is a process char-
acterized by what Agamben calls the “self-referential quality of the word of
faith.”46 In this connection, the contrast Agamben emphasizes between per-
formativity and propositional truth becomes apparent when he outlines the
two ways of understanding ὁμολογία. On the one hand, one can understand
ὁμολογία in the traditional sense fixed by Aristotle, as correspondence between
mental states, words, and states of affairs. On the other hand, as Agamben has
43 Badiou, Saint Paul, p. 45. See also the following passage (Badiou, Saint Paul, p. 44), where
the undermining of visibility is reaffirmed: “What exactly does ‘apostle’ (apostolos) mean?
Nothing empirical or historical in any case. In order to be an apostle, it is not necessary to
have been a companion of Christ, a witness to the event. Paul, who claims his legitimacy
only from himself, and who, according to his own expression, has been ‘called to be an
apostle,’ explicitly challenges the pretension of those who, in the name of what they were
and saw [my emphasis, AC], believe themselves to be guarantors of truth. [. . .] An apostle
is neither a material witness, nor a memory.”
44 See Antonio Cimino, “Messianic Experience of Language and Performativity of Faith.
Agamben’s Interpretation of Pauline Faith,” Freiburger Zeitschrift für Philosophie und
Theologie 61/1 (2014), 127–140.
45 Agamben, The Time That Remains, p. 131.
it, one can understand ὁμολογία as consistency between words and attitude:
“for Paul, homologia does not consist in a relation between words and things,
but in language itself in the nearness between mouth and heart. Each revela-
tion is always and above all a revelation of language itself, an experience of a
pure event of the word that exceeds every signification.”47 Put another way, the
Pauline ὁμολογία does not mean propositional truth, but performative truth,
understood as veridiction or truth-telling.48
The performative experience of the word of faith does not match any logi-
cal or ontological frameworks of traditional metaphysics. First, such an experi-
ence is not a visual one, but is related to hearing; accordingly, in this experience
of truth sight does not play any role whatsoever.49 Second, the performative
nature of the experience concerning the word of faith radically escapes tra-
ditional ontology, since “[f]or Paul, this is faith; it is an experience of being
beyond existence and essence, as much beyond subject as beyond predicate.”50
Third, the performative experience articulates itself not by means of predica-
tion or apophantic logic, but through the nominal sentence; in other words,
performative or enactive experience does not relate to a ‘believing that Jesus
is the Messiah,’ since it only concerns a ‘believing in Jesus Messiah.’51
One can stress a substantial convergence between Agamben’s reading of
the Pauline ὁμολογία and Badiou’s concept of fidelity. Both of them character-
ize Pauline truth as an inner consistency. In fact, the consistency belonging to
the ὁμολογία is, in the end, a coherency between words and deeds (Agamben),
whereas the consistency of the Pauline truth procedure consists in being faith-
ful to the evental declaration (Badiou). In both cases the intransitive character
of truth comes to light, provided that truth does not consist in any relation
(between words and states of affairs, or between words and mental states, or
between theoretical/visual experience and its alleged correlates), but rather
refers only to a performative or evental process.
47 Agamben, The Time That Remains, p. 134. See also Agamben, The Time That Remains,
p. 130: “But in Paul, the correspondence is not between different words, or between words
and deeds; rather, this correspondence is internal to the word itself, between mouth and
heart.”
48 See again Agamben, The Time That Remains, p. 134.
49 Agamben, The Time That Remains, p. 129: “For Paul, this experience is above all an experi-
ence of the word, and this should be our starting point. The two dense nominal syntagmas
in Romans 10:17 categorically affirm ‘The faith from hearing, the hearing through the word
of the Messiah.’ From the perspective of faith, to hear a word does not entail asserting the
truth of any semantic content, nor does it simply entail renouncing understanding [. . .].”
51 See Agamben, The Time That Remains, pp. 126–128.
chapter 11
Self-touch and the Perception of the Other

James Mensch
Husserl’s account of intersubjective recognition in the Cartesian Meditations

seems to suffer from an obvious difficulty. It is based on the appearing behav-
ior of Others, which the recognizing subject compares with his own behavior.
If they are harmonious, then the recognition is successful. As Husserl writes in
this regard, “[t]he experienced animate organism [Leib] of the Other continues
to manifest itself as actually an animate organism solely through its continually
harmonious behavior. [. . .] The organism is experienced as a pseudo-organism
[Schein-Leib] precisely when it does not agree in its behavior.”1 “Harmonious”
means harmonious with the observing subject’s behavior: I regard myself and
my Other. To the point that the Other behaves as I would in a similar situa-
tion, I recognize him as a subject like myself. The basis for this recognition is
the similarity of our appearing bodies. Yet, as Lanei Rodemeyer has pointed
out, “my experience of my own body is nothing like my experience of another
person’s body.” Thus, the supposed “‘natural’ similarity between the two bodies
would never be automatically given” as a basis for intersubjective recognition.2
The difficulty is not just that I always experience my body from the vantage
point of the “here,” while the Other’s body is always regarded visually as over
“there.” It is that the perceptions that allow me to grasp my body as my own are
not part of my experience of the Other. I experience the Other’s body visually.
I experience my own kinesthetically as I move my limbs. I feel my body when
it is touched. When I touch other objects, I do not feel their being touched.
Furthermore, they do not immediately respond to my will; only my body does.
Thus, I experience myself moving it directly; I do not move my body by moving
something else. All these experiences are not visual, they are, as Husserl argues,
fundamentally tactile. In Ideas II, he claims that touch, rather than sight, lies at
1 Edmund Husserl, Cartesianische Meditationen, ed. S. Strasser (The Hague, 1963), p. 144. All
translations from German in this article are my own. This publication is the outcome of the
project “Philosophical Investigations of Body Experiences: Transdisciplinary Perspectives”
(GAP 401/10/1164) realized at Charles University in Prague, Faculty of Humanities. It was sup-
ported by The Ministry of Education, Youth and Sports—Institutional Support for Long-term
Development of Research Organizations—Charles University, Faculty of Humanities.
2 Lanei Rodemeyer, Intersubjective Temporality: It’s About Time (Dordrecht, 2006), p. 163.

Self-touch And The Perception Of The Other 225
the basis of the sense that a subject has of his embodiment. In fact, he writes:
“A subject whose only sense was the sense of vision could not have an appear-
ing body.”3 The body that appears could not be recognized as his own.
How, then, do we resolve this difficulty? How do we go from our tactile per-
ception of our body as our own to the visual grasp of the Other as an “ani-
mate organism” like ourselves? The solution, I am going to argue, is to be found
in Husserl’s account of how we constitute the sense we have of ourselves as
embodied. In this account, touch will turn out to be foundational not just
for our sense of embodiment but also for the self-awareness that marks us as
embodied subjects.
1 Self-touch and Self-awareness
In its emphasis on touch, Husserl’s account is strongly reminiscent of Aristotle’s

in the De Anima. Both philosophers take touch as foundational. Aristotle
understands its founding quality in terms of the “soul.” The soul, for him, is
what makes an animate organism actually animate. It is the actualization
(ἐντελέχεια) of the body’s capability to be alive—this, by virtue of the soul’s
being its functioning (ἐνέργεια) as a living body.4 In his words, “[i]f the eye were
a living creature, its soul would be its vision [ὄψις].”5 It would be “the seeing
of the eye.”6 For Aristotle, the functioning of the living body is a layered affair,
each further level presupposing the preceding. The basic level is the capacity
to absorb food. Both plants and animals share this functioning. Animals, how-
ever, also function as sensing beings. On this level, the primary functioning is
that of touch.7 Touch is, in fact, the basis of all the other senses. “Without a
sense of touch,” he writes, “it is impossible to have any other sensation.”8 This
is because touch alone perceives immediately by contact. All the other senses
perceive by contact as well, but through a medium. The medium is moved
and it moves the body. For example, sound is first a motion in the air, which
3 Edmund Husserl, Ideen zu einer reinen Phänomenologie und phänomenologischen Philoso-

phie. Zweites Buch, ed. W. Biemel (The Hague, 1952), p. 158. This text will be referred to as
Ideas II.
4 Aristotle, De Anima, trans. W. S. Hett (Cambridge, 1964). Unless otherwise indicated, all trans-
lations from the Greek are my own.
5 Aristotle, De Anima, 412b 18–19.
6 Aristotle, De Anima, 413a 1.
7 See Aristotle, De Anima, 413b 5.
8 Aristotle, De Anima, 435a 13–14.
226 Mensch
forms its medium and then, by contact, a motion in the ear drum. The point is
that the functioning of the other senses depends on the functioning of touch.
If sensation distinguishes the animal, it follows “that deprived of this one
sense alone, animals must die.”9 What makes them actual animals is no lon-
ger present. What, then, is touch? How does it mark our being alive? Aristotle
remarks that without it, the animal could not avoid some things and seize
upon Others.10 To state the obvious, incapable of sensing, it could not distin-
guish itself from its environment. The fundamental character of touch means
that it founds this distinction.
To understand how it does this, we have to turn from Aristotle to Husserl.
As Husserl observes, what allows us to distinguish ourselves from our environ-
ment is the experience of self-touch. When I touch other objects, I do not feel
their being touched. Touching myself, however, I feel not only the flesh that I
touch, I also feel its being touched. Self-touch thus marks off my flesh as mine.
What is the sense of the flesh that it distinguishes? It is, according to Husserl,
that of being foundational for our self-awareness. As Husserl remarks, when
I touch an object, I have a “double sensation.” I do not just feel the object, I feel
my sensations of it. Thus, I feel both “the coldness of the surface of a thing
and the sensation of cold in the finger” when I touch a cold object. Similarly,
“in the case of a hand lying on the table, the same sensation of pressure is at
one time taken as [aufgefaßt als] a perception of the table’s surface (of a small
part of it, properly speaking) and at another time, with a different direction of
attention and another level of interpretation [Auffassungsschicht], it results in
sensations of my fingers pressing on it.”11 The difference, in other words, is a
change in the interpretation imposed on these sensations.
This doubling is not yet self-awareness. For this, I must touch myself. When
I do so, the two parts of my body have a double functioning. Functioning as a
physical object, “each [part] is, for the other, an external thing that touches and
works upon it.”12 Functioning as flesh, each has touch sensations with the pos-
sibility of taking them in a two-fold way. The touched hand, for example, feels
the touching hand’s smoothness, warmth, etc. as the properties of an external
object. It also, however, feels its own sensations as it is being touched. The same
holds for the touching hand. The hand that it touches is felt like an external
thing; the touching hand also feels internally its sensations of touching, i.e., the
pressure on its fingers. As a result, each hand is both sensing flesh and sensed
9 Aristotle, De Anima, 435b 5–6; here I follow Hett’s translation.

10 Aristotle, De Anima, 434b 17–18.
11 Husserl, Ideas II, p. 154.
object. As a sensed object, it has its real properties. As sensing flesh, it has its
localized sensations that spread across its surface. Each hand through the other
thus becomes aware of itself as a sensing object. Each is grasped as an object
that, qua sensing organ, is also a subject. The ability of flesh to be taken as both
subject and object gives it the special character of its self-awareness. At the
origin of the “inner distance” that characterizes the subject-object dichotomy
is the fact that on the level of touch, flesh’s relation to itself is not direct, but
rather mediated. We must touch ourselves to grasp ourselves as both sensing
subject and sensed object.
2 The Spatiality of Self-awareness
The radical nature of this account of our self-awareness is apparent when we

compare Husserl’s position to Kant’s. For Kant, our consciousness and, hence,
our self-consciousness involves temporal rather than spatial relations. To grasp
these temporal relations, we must turn inward, that is, regard our memories
and anticipations. Outside of us, it is always now; the external perception that
directs itself to the world cannot “see” the past or the future. Neither is present
since the former has vanished and the latter is yet to come. Thus, at any given
moment we only outwardly see spatial relations. As Kant expresses this insight,
“time cannot be outwardly intuited, any more than space can be intuited as
something in us.”13 Thus, I intuit time in its pastness and futurity through my
memories and anticipations; regarding them, however, I cannot speak of their
spatial relations. I cannot, for example, say that a memory (as opposed to its
object) is a given size or is to the left or to the right of another memory. My
memories are not out there in space; they are within me.14 If we accept this
conclusion, then we cannot visually see other subjects. The external percep-
tion that presents them as spatial objects excludes the temporal relations that
structure their consciousnesses.
For Husserl, however, the self-awareness that characterizes consciousness
involves spatiality. Because it is founded on self-touch, it does not collapse the
self that is aware with the self that it is aware of. The spatial distinction of
one hand from the other—and more generally, the spatial extension of our
body as it functions in our self-awareness—prevents this. This insight can be
13 Immanuel Kant, Kritik der reinen Vernunft (2. Aufl.), (Kants gesammelte Schriften) 3
(Berlin, 1955), B37 (3: 52).
14 For Kant, this leads to the conclusion that “if we abstract from our mode of inwardly intu-
iting ourselves [. . .] then time is nothing” (Kant, Kritik der reinen Vernunft, B51, 3: 60).
228 Mensch
put in terms of Merleau-Ponty’s description of his left hand touching some

object, while being touched by his right hand. He writes, “[w]hen my right
hand touches my left hand while [the left hand] is palpating the things [. . .]
the ‘touching subject’ passes over to the rank of the touched.” It “descends
into the things, such that the touch is formed in the midst of the world.”15
Touched, the touching subject is thrust into the spatial world. How is this
possible? The answer is that it is already spatial. Spatiality is inherent in the
alterity that characterizes our subjectivity. We are, in our self-awareness, both
sensing subjects, with memories and anticipations, and sensed objects with
extended properties. Our very embodiment imposes this dichotomy on us.
What about visual perception? Given its role in grasping the spatial charac-
ter of existence, why does not the mere visual perception of ourselves thrust
us into the world? Cannot I say, for example, that I appear as part of the spatial
world when I recognize myself in the mirror? Husserl writes in response, “I do
not see my body, the way I touch myself. What I call the seen body [gesehenen
Leib] is not something seeing that is seen, the way that my body, as touched, is
something touching that is touched.” What is lacking here is “the phenomenon
of double sensation,” a phenomenon that could only occur if “one eye could
rub past the other”—that is, if one eye could touch the other.16 The point is
that when I look myself in the eye with a mirror, “I do not see the seeing eye
as seeing.” The eye I regard is like the eye of another. I have to employ empa-
thy to indirectly judge that it is identical with my eye.17 The eye that regards
me from the mirror is, in other words, experienced as an object. My seeing it
does not give me a first person experience of its seeing. To have this I would
have to experience its seeing as my seeing. Touch does this since the hand that
is touched also feels. Here, the sensations of the touched hand point back to
the touching hand as touching. By contrast, the eye that I regard in the mirror
is like the inanimate objects that I touch. I feel their properties, but I do not feel
them feeling me. They do not, in other words, return my awareness to myself.
How, then, do I regard my eye as my own? I can do so, according to Husserl,
only by touching it. Touched, it provides the “touch and kinesthetic sensations”
that allow me to apprehend it as belonging to my body.18 Such sensations are
15 Maurice Merleau-Ponty, The Visible and the Invisible, trans. A. Lingis (Evanston, 1968)
p. 134. As the register of the Husserl Archives in Leuven shows, Merleau-Ponty read
Husserl’s Ideas II.
crucial. As I cited Husserl, “[a] subject whose only sense was the sense of vision
could not have an appearing body.”19 For my body to appear as mine, i.e., for
there to be the self-awareness that makes it mine, we need “the phenomenon
of double sensation” as it functions in self-touch. Lacking this, we are like
those patients that the neurologist Oliver Sacks describes who, on waking,
attempt to make room for themselves by shoving their own leg out of bed.20
Unable to touch themselves, they react to and move their bodies as if they
were foreign objects. This can be put in terms of the “localization” that touch
provides. The kinesthetic sensations of tension that I experience in moving my
hand become localized because they are constantly “intermixed” with those
given by the hand as it touches objects and is touched by them. It is through
touch that I experience movement as my own. It is because the visual body
coincides with the tactual that it participates in this localization, i.e., is rec-
ognized as my own.21 Part of this recognition involves my sense that my body,
as opposed to other objects, is immediately responsible to my will. Because
of the localization of my kinesthetic sensations, when I move myself, I feel
myself being moved. The moved arm, for example, is sensed as both mover
and moved. As such, I have a sense of moving it immediately. As Husserl writes:
“the body as a field of localization is [. . .] the precondition for the fact that
it is taken as [. . .] an organ of the will,” that is, as “the one and only object
that, for the will of my pure ego, is moveable immediately and spontaneously.”22
In other words, I sense my hand as moving itself. It is, in itself, both subject
and object of this motion. This is because the dichotomy that distinguishes
between the two is inherent in the constitution of its sense as my hand, that is,
as a part of my “animate organism.”23

20 Oliver Sacks, The Man Who Mistook his Wife for a Hat and Other Clinical Tales (New York,
1986), p. 55.
21 In Husserl’s words, “[o]bviously, the body is also to be seen just like any other thing, but it
becomes a body (Leib) [that is mine] only by incorporating tactile sensations, pain sensa-
tions, etc.—in short, by the localization of the sensations as sensations” (Husserl, Ideas II,
pp. 158–159).
23 Here it is to be noted that for Husserl, the pure ego, i.e., the ego as the “pole” of our
various acts, is itself constituted. In Husserl’s words, “[d]er Ichpol ist konstituiert in
der Ichsynthese, die alle aktuellen und potentiellen Akte beständig und ohne jede iden-
tifizierende Aktivität zur einheitlichen Deckung bringt, alle, die in einer lebendigen
Gegenwart als primordiale auftreten können und auftreten, auch schon die Aktphasen
in den kontinuierlich sich zeitigenden Akten” (Edmund Husserl, Phänomenologische
230 Mensch
3 The Double Pairing
To apply these insights to our intersubjective recognition, we must first discuss

the double “pairing” that such recognition requires. Husserl introduces it by
speaking of “appresentation.” Appresentation (or “co-intending”) is an intend-
ing of the presence of one thing on the basis of the presence of another. Thus,
on the basis of the presence of the front side of a chair I can co-intend its back,
which is not immediately present. The back, of course, can be made present.
I can walk around so as to view the chair from the other side. For Husserl,
however, appresentation can also occur in cases where I cannot make the co-
intended originally present. This is because the intention to one thing on the
basis of the other does not necessarily require the fulfillment of this intention.
Thus, I can appresent things, such as the interior of the sun, which I cannot
present. I also can be mistaken: what I appresent is not there; my appresenting
turns out to be an “an empty pretention.” Pairing is a form of appresentation. It
is based on two similarly appearing objects. As Husserl defines it, “two data are
intuitively given and [. . .] they phenomenologically establish a unity of simi-
larity; thus, they are always constituted as a pair.” Such constitution means that
the sense that is intuitively present in one of them can serve as a basis for the
co-intending of the same sense with regard to the other. As Husserl expresses
this, the thought of one member “awakens” that of the other. There is, then,
an “intentional overreaching” that results in the “intentional overlapping of
each with the sense of the other.”24 Suppose, for example, we experience
a connection between a person’s appearance—his style of dress, etc.—and
Psychologie. Vorlesungen Sommersemester 1925, ed. Walter Biemel, 2nd ed. [The Hague,
1968], p. 481). This constitution includes that of the ego as a lasting and remaining onti-
cal unity. As Husserl later writes, “Das Ich selbst ist konstituiert als zeitliche Einheit. Es
ist die schon als stehendes und bleibendes Ich erworbene (und im Forterwerben immer-
fort weiter erworbene) ontische Einheit: identisches Ich meines zeitlichen Lebens
als dasselbe seiende Ich all meiner Vergangenheiten, meines innerhalb der kontinuierli-
chen Einheitsform der Zeit verlaufenen und jetzt noch fortströmenden Lebens, das fort-
strömend in sich und für sich immer neue Vergangenheit als verharrende konstituiert”
(Ms. C 17, Sept. 20, 1931 published in Zur Phänomenologie der Intersubjektivität: Dritter
Teil, ed. Iso Kern [The Hague, 1973], p. 348). Cf. also Ideas II, where Husserl asserts that
the ego is “constituted as unity” in relation to the stream of experiences, which itself
“is constituted as a unity in unending, immanent time” (Husserl, Ideas II, p. 112). What
this doctrine signifies is that we cannot think of the “pure ego” apart from the constitu-
tion of the sense that we have that we move our body immediately. Its presence is itself a
part of the constitutive process.
24 Husserl, Meditations, p. 142.
certain forms of behavior. When we encounter another person similarly

dressed, we may “pair” him with the first individual. On the basis of a “unity of
similarity,” there then can occur an associative transfer of sense. We assume,
for example, that someone dressed as a postman will behave like one.
The first “pairing” at work in intersubjective recognition is not between my
and the Other’s body; it is between my body in the “here” and the “there.” I can
move from where I am to somewhere else. “This implies,” Husserl writes, “that,
perceiving from the there, I should see the same things, only in correspond-
ingly different modes of appearance such as would pertain to my being there.”25
On the basis of what I presently experience, I can thus co-intend how things
would look from another position. This also occurs with my own body. Tied
to the possibility of my movement is the fact that “my bodily animate organism
is interpreted and interpretable as a natural body existing in space and mov-
able like any other natural body.”26 Given this, the presentation of my body
in the here contains an implicit appresentation of the same body “existing in
space” at a distance. In Husserl’s words, I have the possibility of appresenting
“the way my body would look if I were there.” The first pairing is, then, between
my body in the modes of the here and the there. It is with regard to the body
interpreted in the latter mode—i.e., as there—that the Other’s body comes to
be paired with my own.27
At the basis of both pairings is what Husserl calls an “analogizing apper-
ception.” As the term “analogy” indicates, it is essentially a process whereby
consciousness spontaneously acts to set up a proportion. In the first pairing,
the first two terms of the proportion are my appearing behavior in the here
and the there. The third and fourth terms are my experiences of myself as con-
trolling this behavior. This involves the sense I make of my surroundings, since
I behave according to the sense I make of what I experience. In the first pairing
at issue, all the terms can become intuitively present. What I appresent with
regard to the possibility of my being there can, if it is a real possibility, be trans-
formed into an actual presentation by my moving there. I can, for example,
go into the kitchen and make breakfast thus making actual the behavior and
intentions that I appresented from the bedroom.
In the second pairing at work in intersubjective recognition, this is not
possible. I can only appresent and never present to myself what another
person’s intentions are. What I do in such cases is fill in the fourth term of
the proportion on the basis of the three that I can actually experience. Thus,

232 Mensch
regarding another person in the kitchen making breakfast, the similarity of our
behavior allows me to transfer to him the intentions I would have were I in his
situation. I cannot, of course, see the Others’ intentions. Here, Kant is correct.
The memories and anticipations that form the basis of such intentions are not
visually available to me. The pairing that I make, however, does not demand
this. I can appresent what I can never make present. What verifies the pair-
ing and its transfer of sense is the Other’s appearing behavior. As long as this
behavior is similar to mine—i.e., similar to how I would behave were I there in
his situation—the transfer runs smoothly.28 In this transfer, the actual other-
ness of the Other is constantly maintained. This is because he is actually there,
while I am here. Since I cannot be in both places at the same time, his pairing
with myself in the there demands that he have a set of experiences that is dis-
tinct from what I presently experience in the here. Thus, I always appresent
the Other as actually other. In Husserl’s words, what is “primordially incompat-
ible,” i.e., my simultaneously experiencing the world from two different stand-
points, becomes compatible in granting the Other a distinct consciousness.29
4 Touch and Intersubjective Recognition
I began this essay by asking about the relation of touch to sight in our recog-
nition of Others. Our experience of our own bodies is fundamentally tactile
and immediate. Others, however, are regarded at a distance. Our experience
of them is, thus, primarily visual. How do we go from the first to the second?
What allows us to say that Others are “animate organisms” like ourselves? The
answer is to be found in the nature of our self-experience. The bridge between
the visual perception of the Other and our tactile self-presence is present in
our self-experience. This is because the self-touch that distinguishes us from
the world is inherently spatial. Based as it is on the extended quality of our
28 In this sense, intersubjective recognition is part of a much wider process of analogising
apperception. In normal life, whenever data are paired through a recognition of their
given similarity, any additional sense that is attributed to the first is transferred associa-
tively to the second. This process goes on more or less continuously. In Husserl’s words,
“[e]ach everyday experience involves an analogizing transfer of an originally established
sense to a new case, with its anticipative interpretation of the object as possessing a simi-
lar sense” (Husserl, Meditations, p. 141).
29 As he puts this, “my primordial ego, through appresentative apperception, constitutes for
itself another ego which, according to its own nature, never demands or allows fulfillment
through direct perception” (Husserl, Meditations, p. 148). It does not, for the appresented
perception involves a there actually different from my here.
bodies, self-touch presents us as sensing subjects who are also extended

objects. Doing so, it lays the foundation for our presence in the spatial, visually
extended world where we encounter our Others.
The point may be put in terms of Merleau-Ponty’s observation that through
our bodily being, we provide the venues for the world’s appearing. Using the
word tapisser, to cover, drape, line or wallpaper, he asserts, “our flesh lines and
even envelops all the visible and tangible things.”30 Thus, we “line” the world
with visual qualities through our eyes, with tactile qualities through our sen-
sitive skin, and so on. Doing so, our embodied being provides measures “for
being, dimensions to which we can refer it.”31 In other words, through our flesh,
we can refer to the sensible aspects of being. We can measure it along the axes
or dimensions of its tastes, sounds, smells, roughness and smoothness. The
world that is present through our embodiment is, however, the very world that
our embodiment thrusts us into. This means, Merleau-Ponty writes, “my eyes
which see, my hands which touch, can also be seen and touched [. . .] they
see and touch the visible, the tangible from within” the visible and tangible
world.32 Similarly the flesh that “lines and even envelops” the things of this
world is “nevertheless surrounded” by them.33 It is within the world it reveals.
Given this, the world is not simply something I represent in my consciousness,
but rather something I encounter, something I engage in as part of the world.
There is, in other words, an ontological continuity between myself and the
world.
For Husserl, the phenomenological basis for asserting this continuity is pro-
vided by touch. It is what locates our senses as our own. All our sensations,
the kinesthetic, the visual, the auditory, olfactory, etc., are interwoven with the
tactile. Localized by the tactile, they become part of the flesh that both “lines”
our world and thrusts us into it as a sensing subject that is also an extended
object. We can thus pair our appearing body, as such an object, in the here and
the there. In Husserl’s words, we can take it as “a natural body existing in space
and movable like any other natural body.” We can appresent it as there since
its visual presence, anchored by touch, remains appresentatively the presence
of our flesh.
What about the pairing that links this appresented body to that of the
Other? How do we deal with the difficulty that “my experience of my own
body is nothing like my experience of another person’s body”? I experience my
30 Merleau-Ponty, The Visible, p. 123.

234 Mensch
own body as a sensed object and as sensing flesh. This is what I appresent as
“there” in the first pairing. Objective exteriority and sensing interiority pertain
to my appresented body. In pairing this with the Other’s body, I co-intend this
sensing interiority. There is, in other words, an associative transfer of the sens-
ing interiority of my appresented body (my body in the “there”) to the visu-
ally appearing body of the Other, who is also “there” in the spatially extended
world. What allows me to go from the exterior appearance of the Other to the
Other’s interiority is the fact that my appresented body has both aspects. I do
not, of course, directly experience the other person’s sensing interiority. But
this is the point of the transfer. Its basis is not just the similarity of our appear-
ing behavior. It is my self-experience as a subject that is also an object. Taking
the Other’s appearing body as also having this dual character, I can move
from the other as a visual object to the other as a sensing subject like myself.34
5 Touch and the Genesis of Intersubjectivity
For many readers, Husserl’s analysis of intersubjective recognition seems

excessively formal. The immediacy of our recognizing Others seems to belie
the complicated descriptions that we have only summarized. The sense of
unnecessary complexity only increases when we note the context of his
analysis. It is a response to the charge that the phenomenological approach
inevitably leads one to solipsism. In Husserl’s words, the objection is that
“[w]ithout wishing to admit it, it falls into transcendental solipsism; and the
whole step leading to other subjectivity and to genuine objectivity is only pos-
sible through an unconfessed metaphysics”35—one that goes beyond the phe-
nomenological description of our experiences. Solipsism, of course, is largely
a philosophical problem. To wonder if Others really exist is not something
most people do.
Husserl’s descriptions, however, have a wider, psychological bearing. This
becomes apparent when we focus on the genesis of the dichotomy between
sensing subject and sensed object that is inherent in our flesh. Originally, the
34 Dan Zahavi comes to the same conclusion. He writes: “my bodily self-exploration per-
mits me to confront my own exteriority [. . .]. It is exactly the unique subject-object status
of the body, the remarkable interplay between ipseity and alterity characterizing body-
awareness that provides me with the means of recognizing other embodied subjects”
(Dan Zahavi, “Beyond Empathy,” Journal of Consciouness Studies 8 (2001), 151–167, here:
p. 161).
developing embryo is part of the mother’s flesh. We have no real evidence that,
in constant contact with the mother, it distinguishes itself from her. Even after
birth, the infant’s sense of itself seems to include her. This can be expressed
in terms of the three aspects of the self-Other relation involving touch: there
is the infant as a touching subject, the infant as an object touched by itself, and
the infant as an object touched by its caregiver. Originally, all three are in an
undifferentiated unity; only later are they separated out. Thus, originally, the
infant takes himself as a touched object in the same way as he takes the Other
as a touched object. Similarly, he takes himself as an object touched by himself
in the same way as he takes himself as an object touched by the other person.
The caregiver’s body is, thus, taken as his own; together, they are differentiated
from the world. In other words, the original assumption is that of a union of
their sensing flesh. As the phenomenologist, Gail Soffer, describes this origi-
nal state, the infant does not attribute his sensations to the Other. Rather, “he
expects to sense in the body of the other.” Similarly, he presumes “that the
other senses via his own body.”36 The breakup of this initial sense of identity
with the caregiver occurs in stages. Gradually, the child gains a sense of the
otherness of the Other. Only at the end of this process, according to Soffer,
is the child capable of “individualized empathy, an empathy of the form, ‘if
I were there and I were x,’ where x specifies traits of the other,” then I would
experience what x experiences.37 At this point, the child fully realizes that
the Other has his own experiences, which are distinguished by features of the
Other—differences, for example, in gender, age and physical condition—that
he does not possess.
This increasing sense of the otherness of the Other is paralleled by a devel-
oping sense of the intentionality directed to the Other. This can be put in terms
of its etymological sense, which comes from the Latin intentio, which signifies
a “stretching out” and “straining towards” something.38 Its original object is the
mother. The infant seeks to bond her to himself. Being held, he re-establishes
the warmth and intimacy that he felt in the womb. The goal is a reestablish-
ing of an identity. As the child develops, this goal continues, but in ways that
increasingly acknowledge her alterity. A child, for example, will often begin by
36 Gail Soffer, “The Other as an alter ego: A genetic approach,” Husserl Studies 15 (1999), 151–
166, here: p. 160.
37 Soffer, “The Other as an alter ego,” p. 163.
38 “Stretching out,” “straining,” and “tension” are the three basic meanings listed by Lewis
and Short for intentio. From there, its meaning comes to be “a directing of the mind
towards anything.” See A Latin Dictionary, eds. C. Lewis and C. Short (London, 1966),
p. 976.
236 Mensch
showing its mother or caregiver what he is reading by flipping the book over
so that the text appears upside down. This indicates an incomplete sense of
the Other as an embodied individual who sees from her (rather than from the
child’s) perspective. The child must learn that she does not see things the way
he sees them. Doing so, he re-establishes their identity by assuming that once
things are properly positioned, she will see what he sees. As part of this, he also
believes that by changing his place, he actually experiences what the Other
experiences. According to Soffer, equivalent attempts to re-establish identity
occur in the later stages. Each of these involves an increasing sophistication
of how the Other is “like” him. This implies that the turning towards the Other
(the intentionality) that underlies such attempts is built up, layer by layer, as
the child develops. The adult’s relations to Others—in particular, his ability to
recognize Others as like himself—is informed by this development.
Placed in this context, Husserl’s accounts of touch show why it is so impor-
tant in the development of our intersubjective relations. As numerous studies
have shown, infants deprived of touch suffer from anxiety.39 Prolonged depri-
vation can result in emotional and cognitive deficits that affect their adult
relations to Others.40 Persons suffering from these have difficulties in bonding
with Others. In extreme cases, they seem to lack the ability to make the move
from the visual exteriority of the Other to his sensing interiority. They intel-
lectually can understand that their actions cause Others pain, but they lack
the ability to emotionally experience this. They have no empathy. From a
Husserlian perspective, such deficits in our intentional life are ultimately
those of touch. They affect both its role in our self-apprehension as well as in
39 See e.g., Katherine Harmon, “How Important Is Physical Contact with Your Infant?,”
Scientific American (April 30, 2010): http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/infant-
touch/.
40 The classic cases of this occur in poorly run orphanages. Lou Agosta writes, “after the fall
of the Soviet Union, Romanian orphanages were understaffed, bare bones institutions
that rigged up mechanical, assembly line-like ways of delivering bottled milk to infants,
like feeders in a bird cage. The results were the production of symptoms developmen-
tally similar to neurological damage, autism, and infantile psychosis [The references
the author cites are M. A. Diego and N. A. Jones, “Neonatal antecedents for empathy,” in
Empathy in Mental Illness, eds. T. Farrow and P. Woodruff (Cambridge, 2007), p. 161, and
R. A. Spitz, “Hospitalism: a Follow-up Report,” The Psychoanalytic Study of the Child 2
(1946), 113–117]. Many of these symptoms were able to be reversed by adoptive, caring,
nurturing parents, but, depending on the duration of the neglect, not all” (“Empathy
and Sympathy in Ethics,” Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy, http://www.iep.utm.edu/
emp-symp).
our apprehension of Others as like ourselves. What is indicated here is that

touch, in its foundational role, is something that must be fostered if it is to
fully develop. In their unconsciously teaching the infant how to touch, parents
and caregivers solve in a practical way the philosophical problem of solipsism.
Touching him, they show him how not to just to be self-aware, but also how not
to be alone in the world that visually appears to him.
Index
Agamben, Giorgio 6, 208, 210–212, 222–223 evidence 21, 27–28, 31, 33, 89n69, 97, 100,
Anaximander of Miletus 11 102, 141–142, 144, 162, 182
appearance 24, 35, 38, 49, 51, 62–67, 83, 86, expression 4, 32, 75, 101, 105, 123–125, 127,
88–89, 127, 148–149, 166–167, 171, 177, 188, 194, 200
230–231, 234
appresentation 181, 230–231 face 101, 155–157, 177, 185
Aristotle 1–3, 5, 11, 13, 15–17, 20–21, 24–25, Fink, Eugen 98–99
29–30, 33, 57, 67, 69–94, 140, 171, 187, freedom 5, 168–169, 183, 202–203, 206n92
190–205, 208–211, 213–215, 217, 222, Freud, Sigmund 124, 133
225–226 fulfillment 36, 144, 151, 203, 232n29
Augustine 15, 176–177
Gadamer, Hans-Georg 193n30
Badiou, Alain 6, 208, 210–212, 219–223 Galilei, Galileo 36–37
Bergson, Henri 126, 168 gaze 5, 31, 45, 121, 125, 143–144, 149, 151–162,
blinding/blindness 43, 45–46, 48, 188 166–168, 177–178, 183, 188
body 6, 16, 30, 39, 49, 53, 71n6, 77, 85–92, Glaucon 39
97, 100–120, 124–131, 136, 165–182, Grotowski, Jerzy 116, 118–120
224–235
Blumenberg, Hans 186, 190–191, 198, 202–203 hand 78n30, 93, 102–103, 112n56, 116n70,
119n83, 126, 153, 167, 175–176, 195–196,
cave 39, 184–186 226–233
Clement of Alexandria 23–25 hearing 2, 5, 11, 13, 16, 18–19, 21–23, 25, 26–28,
Cohen, Hermann 205n88 33, 37, 41–42, 72, 75, 77, 79, 82, 89,
constitution 99, 119n83, 146–147, 152, 166–182, 184, 189–194, 198, 201, 206, 223
156–157, 159–160, 180–181, 190, 194, 200, Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich 4, 133,
204, 229–230 136–139
contingency 139, 194, 204, 217 Heidegger, Martin 1–6, 11–21, 25–31, 33, 68,
cosmos 37–38, 209n4 99, 121–123, 126, 131–138, 140, 143, 166,
curiosity 15, 145, 166, 176–177, 219 168, 172, 176–177, 181, 184, 187–190, 193,
195–198, 200–219, 222
dark(-ness) 21, 24, 48, 56, 157, 215–217 Henry, Michel 143
Derrida, Jacques 72, 73n10, 85, 88, 89n69, Heraclitus of Ephesus 2, 11, 21–26, 28, 33
97n1, 102n18, 121, 187n8, 193 hermeneutics 14, 154–155, 158–159, 161, 190,
Descartes, René 110, 112, 140–141, 180, 182 196, 200, 204, 212
Dewey, John 166 Hume, David 127
dialectic 3, 51–67, 105, 133, 187, 189, 206 Husserl, Edmund 1, 3–7, 68, 98–104, 108–109,
Dilthey, Wilhelm 14, 172n16 133, 135, 137, 140, 142–152, 157, 159, 162,
Diogenes Laertius 12n4 166–167, 169, 172, 180–184, 192, 213, 217,
discursiveness 26, 33 224–236
echo 185, 202, 206 icon 1, 4–5, 111–114, 118, 120, 149–162

enlightenment 187, 206–207 idol 5, 149–162
ethics 6, 91, 199 image 3, 25, 37–38, 44, 46, 49–54, 56–63,
event 6, 101, 124, 128, 131–132, 138, 142, 65–67, 103, 111–112, 114, 117, 141, 152,
159–163, 165, 203–205, 211–212, 219–223 154–155, 171–172
240 Index
intentionality 71–72, 131, 133, 137, 144–147, Michotte, Albert 127

152, 158, 235–236 mirror 7, 43, 75, 102–103, 113, 136, 152,
intersubjectivity 5–6, 99, 101–102, 104, 154–156, 166, 181, 228
108n42, 180, 224, 230–231, 232, 234, 236 movement 4, 36–37, 48, 52, 57–59, 65, 74, 98,
invisibility 4–5, 40, 97–98, 100, 111–112, 114, 113, 116, 119, 124–138, 145, 152, 172–173,
120, 142–143, 149–158, 160, 162 186–187, 192–193, 229, 231
multiplicity 183, 187, 194
John Damascene 114n64
Jonas, Hans 5, 91, 165, 168–176, 185 Nancy, Jean-Luc 72–73, 85n56, 97n1, 185n5,
202n72
Kant, Immanuel 1, 5–6, 19, 126–127, 132, narcissism 103, 108, 113, 115, 178n37
143–144, 187, 196, 202–205, 206n89, Natorp, Paul 111n14, 205n88
227, 232 Nietzsche, Friedrich 1, 5, 7, 16n23, 116,
Kierkegaard, Søren 162 169–170, 210–211
kinaesthesia 119n83, 166, 172 numbers 39–42, 55–57, 64
kinesthetic 224, 228–229, 233
knowledge 21–22, 26, 40–41, 50, 57–60, 62, ocularity 14–15
65, 67, 115, 118, 139, 144–145, 151, 160, 165, onto-theology 156n58, 216n30
167, 170, 176–177, 180–181, 190, 214–218, organism 120, 131, 139, 181, 224–225, 229,
221–222 231–232
language 5, 31, 36, 101–102, 105, 128, 167, 180, painting 4, 97–120, 141, 168, 179
187, 194, 200, 204, 212, 223 pairing 6, 118, 149, 230–234
Leibniz, Gottfried Wilhelm 167–168 Parmenides 2, 5, 11–34, 184, 208n2
Levinas, Emmanuel 5, 7, 143, 156n58, Phaedo 2, 18n34, 43–47, 50n2, 56n18, 188,
166–167, 177–178, 183 209n4
life 3, 14, 62, 69–77, 93–94, 99, 101, 104–105, phenomenon 6, 22, 48, 72–73, 76, 81, 91–92,
107, 115, 130, 135, 148, 182, 192, 197, 98n4, 103, 118, 125–129, 137, 152–154,
203–204, 211–219, 232, 236 158–161, 193n39, 217, 228–229
listening 5–6, 26, 33, 36, 71, 174–175, 177–178, Plato(-nic) 1–3, 11–14, 17–21, 23, 26, 29, 31,
184–206 33–68, 76n21, 83n49, 99, 109, 140,
look 2, 11, 17, 19–20, 28, 30–31, 33, 38–48, 184–191, 205n86, 208–211, 213–218, 220
50–51, 61, 63–66, 98–99, 172n15, 174–179, protometaphysics 21, 26, 33
183, 185, 188–189, 196
Luther, Martin 13–14, 203 recognition 4, 59–60, 68, 90, 200n64,
220n40, 221, 224, 229–234
Marion, Jean-Luc 4–5, 114n66, 142–162 recollection 3, 57–62, 71n6
Marx, Karl 124, 133 reduction (phenomenological) 4, 97–118,
mathematics 39–40, 49n1, 53 146, 158
medium 4, 16, 20, 25, 50, 52, 61, 72, 79–91, responsiveness 88n67, 198, 200–202
192, 198, 225–226 Rickert, Heinrich 205n88
Mendelssohn, Moses 206, 207n93 Ricoeur, Paul 142n4, 158–159
Merleau-Ponty, Maurice 1, 3–4, 78, 97–141, Romano, Claude 145–146, 160
178n37, 183, 195n42, 228, 233 Rorty, Richard 121, 166, 183
metaphysics Rublev, Andrei 112–113
of light 216
of presence 16 Saint Paul 4–6, 142–161, 208–223
of substance 140, 191–196 Sartre, Jean-Paul 5, 108n42, 134–136, 178–182
of vision 11 saturation 5, 150–155, 158
Index 241
Scheler, Max 172 temporality 14, 99, 108, 130, 132, 147, 168,

Schelling, Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph 132 193–194, 214–216, 224n2 187
self-conscious(-ness) 14, 104, 136, 227 Thales 40
Sextus Empiricus 22–23, 27 Theaetetus 2, 17n29, 40–43, 62–64, 188,
silence 41, 116, 188 210n8
smell 24–25, 72, 75, 79, 81–82, 84, 87, 89, 165, theatre 4, 98, 116–120
171, 173, 176, 178, 191–192, 233 tongue 28, 69–71, 75, 82n46, 84, 86, 92–94
Socrates 3, 18, 20, 39–47, 50–61, 83n49, 186, touch 3, 5–6, 16–17, 35, 50, 60, 69–94, 97,
188 100, 102–103, 117, 123, 165–182, 189–192,
solipsism 173n18, 234, 237 195–200, 224–237
sound 17, 24, 37, 42, 81–82, 87, 103, 166–173,
175–178, 186–198, 206, 225, 233 Valéry, Paul 107, 141, 186
speech 23, 41, 47, 51, 61–67, 86n61, 119n83,
141, 167, 177, 180–182, 188, 192, 194, 201, Whitehead, Alfred North 128n16, 130
204 Wittgenstein, Ludwig 189–190, 209n4
Strawson, Peter 168n6, 191–192n26
symbol(-ic) 49n1, 113–114, 127, 192, 194 194 Yorck von Wartenburg, Paul 14–15

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Phenomenology and the Metaphysics of Sight

Chris Bremmers (Radboud University, Nijmegen, Editor in Chief)

Jos de Mul (Erasmus University, Rotterdam)

The titles published in this series are listed at brill.com/scp

Antonio Cimino and Pavlos Kontos

Copyright 2015 by Koninklijke Brill nv, Leiden, The Netherlands.

This book is printed on acid-free paper.

1 Towards a Genealogy of the Metaphysics of Sight: Seeing, Hearing, and

2 The Extent of Visibility 35

4 On Touch and Life in the De Anima 69

5 Beyond the Innocence of the Painter’s Eye 97

6 Voyance: On Merleau-Ponty’s Processual Conception of Vision 121

7 Seeing the Invisible: Jean-Luc Marion’s Path from Husserl to

8 The Use and Abuse of Vision 165

9 In the Shadow of Light: Listening, the Practical Turn of

11 Self-touch and the Perception of the Other 224

It is not an exaggeration to say that the development of the phenomenological

© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, ���5 | doi ��.��63/9789004301917_002

virtues of phenomenology: its descriptive pertinence and its sensitivity to the

This is because beyond perceptible things there is a scale of non-perceptible

for Marion’s attempt to philosophically rethink the question of visibility and

steps. First, he provides a short historical overview of the primacy of vision

Towards a Genealogy of the Metaphysics of Sight:

Among modern interpreters, it has become a commonplace to regard the clas-

1 A prominent characterization of the ancient Greeks as Augenmenschen, “eye-people,” can

© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, ���5 | doi ��.��63/9789004301917_003

1 In an Ideal Light: Heidegger and the Platonic Metaphysics of Sight

One of the first modern thinkers to explicitly regard Greek philosophy as a

of glory” that considers the “invisible things” of the revelation to be intelligible

Making the totality of givenness [Gesamtgegebenheit] visible and evi-

e­ mphatically quotes a passage where Yorck notes the provenance of metaphys-

Being is what shows itself in pure, intuitive perception [Vernehmen], and

(Gegenwärtigen).22 In this account, the Western metaphysics of sight is rooted

Because being [Sein] means presence [Anwesenheit] and constancy

Seeing is the paradigmatic metaphysical sense because it is affords a particular

The ancients considered that things are given most completely in

28 Plato, Phaedrus, in Platonis opera, 2, 250d3–4.

and had by an accepting [Hinnehmens], it is the disposable presencing

In the process of production [Herstellens], of course, the jug [Heidegger’s

36 Kahn, Plato and the Socratic Dialogue, pp. 354–355.

The attribute constant in Heidegger’s reading of the Greek understanding of

41 Plato, Republic, 507c6–509c2.

2 Hearkening to the Voiceless Voice: Heraclitus’s Protometaphysics

In the light of Heidegger’s account of the profound complicity between the

45 Plato, Republic, 508d4–9.

The emphasis is on discourse and hearing rather than spectating or seeing.”49

In terms of the knowledge [γνῶσιν] of truth, the human being seems to

As the onomatopoetic term indicates, the foreign speech of “barbarians”

69 Heraclitus, DK 22 B 98.

As auditory sensing [Empfinden], hearing [Hören] constantly takes place

3 The Vision of Pure Presence: Parmenides’ Insight

For a first indication of a metaphysics of sight, we will have to look at

77 Heraclitus, DK 22 B 19.

83 Nightingale, Spectacles of Truth, p. 33.

90 Parmenides, DK 28 B 2.1, 8.1.

[γλῶσσαν].” Rather, the fundamental decision is to be made by purely concep-

99 Parmenides, DK 28 B 7.3–5.

them104—have followed Theophrastus’s interpretation and placed B 16 among

What is “absent” in the ordinary sense of the spatial or temporal absence of a

way of the absolute “there is not” (absolute nonpresence, absolute non-

110 Parmenides, DK 28 B 2.1–5.

117 Parmenides, DK 28 B 9–15, 17–18.

120 Parmenides, DK 28 B 19.

© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, ��5 | doi ��.��63/9789004301917_002

1 A prominent characterization of the ancient Greeks as Augenmenschen, “eye-people,” can

© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, ��5 | doi ��.��63/9789004301917_003

e mphatically quotes a passage where Yorck notes the provenance of metaphys-

28 Plato, Phaedrus, in Platonis opera, 2, 250d3–4.

36 Kahn, Plato and the Socratic Dialogue, pp. 354–355.

41 Plato, Republic, 507c6–509c2.

45 Plato, Republic, 508d4–9.

69 Heraclitus, DK 22 B 98.

77 Heraclitus, DK 22 B 19.

83 Nightingale, Spectacles of Truth, p. 33.

90 Parmenides, DK 28 B 2.1, 8.1.

99 Parmenides, DK 28 B 7.3–5.

110 Parmenides, DK 28 B 2.1–5.

117 Parmenides, DK 28 B 9–15, 17–18.

120 Parmenides, DK 28 B 19.

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1 Plato, Timaeus, 47a–b. Translations are by the author.

6 Plato, Republic, 526a

10 Plato, Theaetetus, 183b.

12 Plato, Theaetetus, 185b.

14 Plato, Theaetetus, 186a.

16 Plato, Phaedo, 99d.

18 Plato, Phaedo, 99e–100a.

21 Plato, Phaedo, 100b.

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4 Plato, Republic, 532b.

10 Plato, Republic, 518d.

14 Plato, Republic, 525c.

24 Plato, Meno, 81c–d.

25 Plato, Phaedrus, 247c.

27 Plato, Meno, 98b.

30 Plato, Republic, 509b.

31 Plato, Sophist, 237d.

34 Aristotle, Metaphysics, 1084a34–35.

1 Helen Keller, The World I Live in (New York, 1908), p. 7.

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4 Aristotle, De Anima, 403b20–24.

8 Aristotle, Metaphysics, 980a21.

10 Jacques Derrida, On Touching—Jean-Luc Nancy (Stanford, 2005), p. 24.

20 Aristotle, De Anima, 414b1–6.

33 Aristotle, De Anima, 418a13–4 and 420b1–4.

41 Aristotle, De Anima, 419a17–21.

44 Aristotle, De Anima, 420a3–4.

48 Aristotle, De Anima, 421a20–23.

63 Aristotle, De Anima, 423b4–8.

66 Aristotle, De Anima, 419a20.

72 Aristotle, De Anima, 424a1–2.