International book reviews Content Type Journal Article DOI 10.1007/s11007-010-9162-5 Authors Federico Leoni, Università degli Studi di Milano, Milan, Italy Journal Continental Philosophy Review Online ISSN 1573-1103 Print ISSN 1387-2842.

This article examines Merleau-Ponty’s idea of an “ontological psychoanalysis” and extends it in a close dialogue both internal to Merleau-Ponty (his reflection on fetishism and the Kleinian partial object, the phenomenology of hallucination, his dissolution of ontology and the resolution of the flesh in a framework of events or a becoming of becomings) and external to Merleau-Ponty: on the one hand, with Lacan and his Seminar X (the idea of the object little-a, its possible double reading as object-divergence and as (...) event of divergence always in progress); and, on the other hand, with the Bergson of Matter and Memory (his idea of the image in itself: in Lacanian language, a kind of splinter of the real, without relation, autistic, hallucinatory) and with the Bergsonian idea of philosophical gesture (that Merleau-Ponty himself takes up, as we know, in In Praise of Philosophy). The guiding idea is that a psychoanalytic process is an experimental ontology: experimentation with being and of being, and with a being that is the result of its own staging [mise en expérience], in its own becoming through experience and experimentations, in its own future as divergence and its own movement of diverging. And the idea is also that philosophy, or at least a certain idea of philosophy, that of Merleau-Ponty’s Praise, proceeds in the same direction.L’article interroge l’idée merleau-pontienne d’une « psychanalyse ontologique » et la prolonge dans un dialogue serré interne à Merleau-Ponty (sa réflexion sur le fétichisme et sur l’objet partiel kleinien, la phénoménologie de l’hallucination, la dissolution merleau-pontienne de l’ontologie et la résolution de la chair dans une trame d’événements ou un devenir de devenirs) et externe à Merleau-Ponty : d’un côté avec Lacan et son Séminaire X (l’idée d’objet petit a, sa double lecture possible comme objet-écart et comme événement d’un s’écarter toujours en cours) ; de l’autre côté avec le Bergson de Matière et mémoire (son idée d’image en soi : en langage lacanien, une sorte de scheggia de réel, sans relation, autistique, hallucinatoire) et avec l’idée bergsonienne de geste philosophique (que Merleau-Ponty lui-même reprend, comme on le sait, dans Eloge de la philosophie. L’idée directrice est qu’un parcours psychanalytique est une ontologie expérimentale : une expérimentation avec l’être et de l’être, et avec un être qui résulte de sa propre mise en expérience, dans son propre devenir par l’expérience et par les expérimentations, dans son propre advenir comme écart et son propre mouvement d’écartement. Et aussi, que la philosophie, ou au moins une certaine idée de la philosophie, celle de l’Eloge merleau-pontien, procède dans la même direction.L’articolo muove dall’idea merleau-pontyana di una “psicoanalisi ontologica” interrogandola e prolungandola in uno stretto dialogo interno a Merleau-Ponty (la sua riflessione sul feticismo e sull’oggetto parziale kleiniano, la fenomenologia dell’allucinazione, la dissoluzione merleau-pontyana dell’ontologia e la risoluzione della carne in una trama di eventi o un divenire di divenire) ed esterno a Merleau-Ponty: da un lato con Lacan e con il suo Seminario X (l’idea di oggetto a piccolo, la sua doppia lettura possibile come oggetto-scarto e come evento di uno scartarsi sempre in corso); dall’altro con il Bergson di Materia e memoria (la sua idea di immagine in sé: lacanianamente, una sorta di scheggia di reale, irrelato, autistico, allucinatorio) e con l’idea bergsoniana di gesto filosofico (che lo stesso Merleau-Ponty riprende, com’è noto, in Elogio della filosofia). L’idea guida è che un percorso psicoanalitico sia un’ontologia sperimentale: un esperimento con l’essere e dell’essere, e con un essere o di un essere risolto nel suo proprio sperimentarsi, nel suo proprio divenire per esperienze ed esperimenti, nel suo proprio accadere come scarto e nel suo proprio scartarsi. E che la filosofia, o almeno una certa idea di filosofia, quella dell’Elogio merleau-pontyano, proceda in analoga direzione. (shrink)

Il saggio intende sviluppare una fenomenologia della violenza, a partire dagli Scritti di Franco Basaglia, che ha studiato il problema della violenza nell’istituzione psichiatrica e ha riflettuto sulla questione in una prospettiva fenomenologica. La sua tesi fondamentale è stata che la violenza dell’istituzione consista in una sostituzione e in un’alienazione. Il corpo vissuto, l’identità originaria di una persona, le sue esperienze e i suoi pensieri sarebbero rimpiazzati da quelli dell’istituzione, che diverrebbe così il ‘corpo’ di quella persona. La fenomenologia di (...) Basaglia traccia quindi, al seguito di Husserl, un’opposizione netta tra esperienza vissuta e istituzione, soggettività e segno sociale, identità privata e marca culturale. Possiamo tuttavia accogliere questa opposizione tanto semplice e trasparente? E in caso negativo, se la violenza non potesse essere descritta come la semplice irruzione dell’istituzione nello spazio del soggetto, se questa irruzione dell’Altro fosse anzi costitutiva del soggetto stesso, come pensare la violenza? Come definire una ‘politica’ di questa violenza originaria?This essay tries to develop a phenomenology of violence. Its approach is based on the Writings of Franco Basaglia, who studied the phaenomenon of violence in the psychiatric institutions and reflected on this issue from a phenomenological point of view. His main theses was that institutional violence means substitution and alienation. The lived body, the originary identity of a person, his experiences and thoughts are replaced by those of the institution. The institution itself becomes the ‘body’ of that person. Basaglia’s phenomenology thus traces, with Husserl, a neat opposition between lived experience and institution, subjectivity and social sign, private identity and cultural mark. Can we trust this simple and transparent opposition? And if violence cannot be described as an irruption of the institution in the subject’s space, if this irruption of the Other is constitutive of the subject itself, how to define violence? And how to define a ‘politics’ of this originary violence? (shrink)

A meditation on specularity as paradigms of a theory of experience which informs every field of philosophy and human sciences, including contemporary neurosciences. And a meditation, starting from neurosciences and mirror neurons, on the different readings of this paradigm of specularity and specularization. In particular, on that “second” reading of specularization, which suggests that the mirror is not an instrument of representation but of expression, not a device of adaquation but of creation. It is an hypothesis that Merleau-Ponty, facing the (...) very same problems contemporary neurosciences are confonted to, reactivates in an increasingly systematic way in his later years, drawing from a tradition which we try here to reconstruct. From Merleau-Ponty to Bergson, from Bergson to Leibniz, this second reading of specularity contains a possibility which is still fruitful and which neurosciences themselves could adopt in order to reconsider in a new perspective the evidences they have considered until now from the point of view of a first reading of specularity. This second reading of specularity suggests that it is not so much necessary to explain how one subject comprehends the other, but how both subjects are comprehended within the transcendental space of what we could call an event. Empathy is not so much a syntonization among subjects, but subjects are a partial and local desyntonization of that empathic system we should place as the beginining and not at the end of the process. Consciousness does not represent the other consciousness, but they express in a simultaneous and specular diffraction the fundamental unity of an event which is every time unique and impersonal. (shrink)

This chapter approaches the question of the possibility/impossibility of a ‘science of the soul’ and suggests that its impossibility coincides with its highest ‘possibility’. A series of objections is address to the idea of ‘comprehension’ that Dilthey and Jaspers adopted against positivistic psychology and philosophy—not so much to return to the positivistic viewpoint, as to promote the idea that only an ‘un-comprehensive’ science could be adequate to that object which is not an object: human singularity, maybe singularity itself. I use (...) Nicholas of Cusa’s theology ‘against’ the Dilthey-Jaspers theory of comprehension to suggest that a whole landscape of ‘human’ sciences become human by becoming ‘in-human’, ‘un-comprehensive’, and at the same time becoming practical, concrete techniques: Blanchot’s literary critique, Lacan’s psychoanalysis, Mauss’ economics, and Bataille’s sociology. (shrink)

Merleau-Ponty’s article, “La guerre a eu lieu”, contains, as has been said, a kind of new phenomenology of perception. Its research question could be formulated as follows. What prevented German-occupied France from perceiving the enemy as an enemy for so many months or years of alienating cohabitation? The “drôle de guerre” would, among other things, be linked to this singular perceptual impasse. An impasse that is as dramatic as instructive, since it shows that war and politics have nothing to do (...) with handling the friend/enemy dialectical opposition Carl Schmitt situated at the center of his philosophy. Rather, they have to do with handling an adialectical field in which that opposition is not yet delineated and perceptible, but is rather evolving in a continuity and ambiguity that constitute the real (and in this sense immoral) matter of politics and war. (shrink)

This article examines Merleau-Ponty’s idea of an “ontological psychoanalysis” and extends it in a close dialogue both internal to Merleau-Ponty (his reflection on fetishism and the Kleinian partial object, the phenomenology of hallucination, his dissolution of ontology and the resolution of the flesh in a framework of events or a becoming of becomings) and external to Merleau-Ponty: on the one hand, with Lacan and his Seminar X (the idea of the object little-a, its possible double reading as object-divergence and as (...) event of divergence always in progress); and, on the other hand, with the Bergson of Matter and Memory (his idea of the image in itself: in Lacanian language, a kind of splinter of the real, without relation, autistic, hallucinatory) and with the Bergsonian idea of philosophical gesture (that Merleau-Ponty himself takes up, as we know, in In Praise of Philosophy). The guiding idea is that a psychoanalytic process is an experimental ontology: experimentation with being and of being, and with a being that is the result of its own staging [mise en expérience], in its own becoming through experience and experimentations, in its own future as divergence and its own movement of diverging. And the idea is also that philosophy, or at least a certain idea of philosophy, that of Merleau-Ponty’s Praise, proceeds in the same direction.L’article interroge l’idée merleau-pontienne d’une « psychanalyse ontologique » et la prolonge dans un dialogue serré interne à Merleau-Ponty (sa réflexion sur le fétichisme et sur l’objet partiel kleinien, la phénoménologie de l’hallucination, la dissolution merleau-pontienne de l’ontologie et la résolution de la chair dans une trame d’événements ou un devenir de devenirs) et externe à Merleau-Ponty : d’un côté avec Lacan et son Séminaire X (l’idée d’objet petit a, sa double lecture possible comme objet-écart et comme événement d’un s’écarter toujours en cours) ; de l’autre côté avec le Bergson de Matière et mémoire (son idée d’image en soi : en langage lacanien, une sorte de scheggia de réel, sans relation, autistique, hallucinatoire) et avec l’idée bergsonienne de geste philosophique (que Merleau-Ponty lui-même reprend, comme on le sait, dans Eloge de la philosophie. L’idée directrice est qu’un parcours psychanalytique est une ontologie expérimentale : une expérimentation avec l’être et de l’être, et avec un être qui résulte de sa propre mise en expérience, dans son propre devenir par l’expérience et par les expérimentations, dans son propre advenir comme écart et son propre mouvement d’écartement. Et aussi, que la philosophie, ou au moins une certaine idée de la philosophie, celle de l’Eloge merleau-pontien, procède dans la même direction.L’articolo muove dall’idea merleau-pontyana di una “psicoanalisi ontologica” interrogandola e prolungandola in uno stretto dialogo interno a Merleau-Ponty (la sua riflessione sul feticismo e sull’oggetto parziale kleiniano, la fenomenologia dell’allucinazione, la dissoluzione merleau-pontyana dell’ontologia e la risoluzione della carne in una trama di eventi o un divenire di divenire) ed esterno a Merleau-Ponty: da un lato con Lacan e con il suo Seminario X (l’idea di oggetto a piccolo, la sua doppia lettura possibile come oggetto-scarto e come evento di uno scartarsi sempre in corso); dall’altro con il Bergson di Materia e memoria (la sua idea di immagine in sé: lacanianamente, una sorta di scheggia di reale, irrelato, autistico, allucinatorio) e con l’idea bergsoniana di gesto filosofico (che lo stesso Merleau-Ponty riprende, com’è noto, in Elogio della filosofia). L’idea guida è che un percorso psicoanalitico sia un’ontologia sperimentale: un esperimento con l’essere e dell’essere, e con un essere o di un essere risolto nel suo proprio sperimentarsi, nel suo proprio divenire per esperienze ed esperimenti, nel suo proprio accadere come scarto e nel suo proprio scartarsi. E che la filosofia, o almeno una certa idea di filosofia, quella dell’Elogio merleau-pontyano, proceda in analoga direzione. (shrink)

«Quando entro in una macelleria, mi stupisco sempre di non esserci io, lì appeso, al posto dell’animale». Così il pittore Francis Bacon in una conversazione con David Sylvester, che Mauro Carbone riprende e discute nel volume agile e prezioso, che qui presentiamo, dedicato alla nozione di “carne”. Una nozione che, pur antichissima nella storia della cultura europea, torna d’attualità nel dibattito filosofico contemporaneo con la fenomenologia e con il suo progetto di ricondurre l’esperienza,...

L'autore rilegge due saggi, Che cos'è l’Illuminismo, di Kant, e il celebre commento omonimo fornitone da Foucault, mettendo alla prova la tesi che la filosofia coincida ogni volta con l'invenzione di un inedito spazio pubblico, e di una correlativa figura dello spazio privato. Non si tratterebbe, così, di meditare nostalgicamente sul declino di alcuni dei luoghi in cui la parola critica della filosofia ha “fatto comunità” in un passato più o meno recente, ma di chiedersi dove, oggi, l’esercizio filosofico e (...) il contatto bruciante con il reale che esso sembra offrire stiano nuovamente, sorgivamente, anche se forse oscuramente, delineando possibilità d’azione e inedite realtà comuni. (shrink)

The Cogito and the Mexican Salamander.Philosophy and the Rest of Sciences in the late Merleau-Ponty The article examines Merleau-Ponty’s almost parallel reading – in his last courses at the Collège de France – of the Cartesian cogito and the development of the Axolotl, the salamander studied by American biologist Coghill. My hypothesis is that the metaphysics of the cogito and the biology of the Axolotl represented for Merleau-Ponty two ways of access to the same discovery. Descartes came up against a (...) phenomenon, the cogito, which required the reshaping of metaphysics as a sort of (impossible) psychology of the event or the absolute. Within the field of anatomy, Coghill came up against a phenomenon, the embryogenesis of the Axolotl, which similarly required a sort of conversion of anatomy into embryology. Therefore, bios and psyché, “embryonality” and the cogito, would be nothing but the denomination of the objects that psychology and biology meet along their borders, names for what we could refer to as “event,” “continuum,” “becoming” or, according to an old but still suitable definition, “absolute.” This has countless consequences on the relationship between the so-called human sciences and the so-called natural sciences, their eternally missed dialogue, their false complementarity and the illusion that the famous “two cultures” do actually exist.Il Cogito e la lucertola messicana.La filosofia e il resto delle scienze nell’ultimo Merleau-Ponty L’articolo prende in esame la lettura quasi parallela che Merleau-Ponty svolge, negli ultimi corsi di lezione al Collège de France, del cogito cartesiano e dello sviluppo dell’Axolotl, la lucertola studiata dal biologo americano Coghill. La nostra ipotesi è che la metafisica del cogito, e la biologia dell’Axolotl, rappresentino agli occhi di Merleau-Ponty due modi d’accesso a una stessa scoperta. Dall’interno della metafisica, Descartes si imbatte in un fenomeno, il cogito appunto, che esige che la metafisica si istituisca come una sorta di (impossibile) psicologia dell’eventoo dell’assoluto. Tutta la metafisica sarebbe psicologia, cioè indicazione del luogo assoluto nel quale è inscritto ogni luogo. Dall’interno dell’anatomia, Coghill siimbatte in un fenomeno, lo sviluppo dell’embrione dell’Axolotl, che esige analogamente che tutta l’anatomia si risolva in embriologia. Il vivente sarebbe allora in generale questa condizione di gemmazione e autoorganizzazione, e l’embriologia sarebbe la scienza (impossibile) di questo divenire perfettamenteanoggettuale. Bios e psyché, “embrionalità” e cogito non sarebbero che i nomi di ciò che la psicologia e la biologia incontrano al loro confine, nomi di ciò che infilosofia si chiama evento, continuum, divenire, o, con un vecchio e adattissimo termine, assoluto. Il che comporta innumerevoli conseguenze circa il rapporto trale cosiddette scienze umane e le cosiddette scienze naturali, sul loro dialogo eternamente mancato, sulla loro falsa complementarietà, sull’illusione che si diano davvero le celebri “due culture”. (shrink)

This chapter explores Michel Foucault's contribution to a critical assessment of modern and contemporary psychiatric practice. It focuses firstly on the History of Madness : the social, political, cultural, epistemological construction of the object "psychiatric patient" and "psychiatric pathology"; the gradual historical shift from "madness" to "psychiatric pathology" and its social and epistemological consequences; the horizons and limits of the romantic task Foucault assumes on this basis ; the critique Jacques Derrida formulated about this project, and particularly about Foucault's reading (...) of Descartes. Secondly, it examines Foucault's course on Psychiatric Power, focusing on the sociopolitical consequences of this medicalization process: i.e., the construction of the object "psychiatric patient" as "disciplinated bodies", and the general context of this anthropological metamorphosis Foucault studied in his books Discipline and Punish, The Will to Knowledge, and in his course Naissance de la biopolitique. (shrink)

«Quando entro in una macelleria, mi stupisco sempre di non esserci io, lì appeso, al posto dell’animale». Così il pittore Francis Bacon in una conversazione con David Sylvester, che Mauro Carbone riprende e discute nel volume agile e prezioso, che qui presentiamo, dedicato alla nozione di “carne”. Una nozione che, pur antichissima nella storia della cultura europea, torna d’attualità nel dibattito filosofico contemporaneo con la fenomenologia e con il suo progetto di ricondurre l’esperienza,...

A meditation on specularity as paradigms of a theory of experience which informs every field of philosophy and human sciences, including contemporary neurosciences. And a meditation, starting from neurosciences and mirror neurons, on the different readings of this paradigm of specularity and specularization. In particular, on that “second” reading of specularization, which suggests that the mirror is not an instrument of representation but of expression, not a device of adaquation but of creation. It is an hypothesis that Merleau-Ponty, facing the (...) very same problems contemporary neurosciences are confonted to, reactivates in an increasingly systematic way in his later years, drawing from a tradition which we try here to reconstruct. From Merleau-Ponty to Bergson, from Bergson to Leibniz, this second reading of specularity contains a possibility which is still fruitful and which neurosciences themselves could adopt in order to reconsider in a new perspective the evidences they have considered until now from the point of view of a first reading of specularity. This second reading of specularity suggests that it is not so much necessary to explain how one subject comprehends the other, but how both subjects are comprehended within the transcendental space of what we could call an event. Empathy is not so much a syntonization among subjects, but subjects are a partial and local desyntonization of that empathic system we should place as the beginining and not at the end of the process. Consciousness does not represent the other consciousness, but they express in a simultaneous and specular diffraction the fundamental unity of an event which is every time unique and impersonal. (shrink)

The article outlines a meditation on the strategic structure of space, on the tactical definition of the relations of interiority/exteriority, on the processual nature of identifications – i.e. on the way an event summons the subject within a group while drawing both the subject as belonging to the group and the group as belonging to that subject. Two texts guide this reflection: ‘Space’ by Georges Bataille and The Groupist by Jorge Luis Borges and Adolfo Bioy Casares.

The article examines the main features of Merleau-Ponty’s philosophy of nature and, more specifically, the reasons that led it to some consonance with that of the young Simondon. At the center of this recognition, the question of processuality and the pre-Socratic suggestions about a philosophy of the elements. The aim is to derive a need, which, if it remained unfulfilled in Merleau-Ponty, was instead expressed in Simondon and in many contemporary philosophies of nature, e.g. that of Bruno Latour, to whom (...) some space is devoted. That is, the need to bring into focus that substantial indiscernibility between nature and technique, which becomes an evidence if one enters into the idea of process. It is to the ethical and political consequences of this indiscernibility that the article’s conclusions are dedicated. More precisely, these conclusions suggest that only a thought of the indiscernibility between nature and technology has ethical and political consequences, i.e. allows the design of a system of regulations capable of concretely and sustainably modulating the human impact on the planet. (shrink)

A meditation on specularity as paradigms of a theory of experience which informs every field of philosophy and human sciences, including contemporary neurosciences. And a meditation, starting from neurosciences and mirror neurons, on the different readings of this paradigm of specularity and specularization. In particular, on that “second” reading of specularization, which suggests that the mirror is not an instrument of representation but of expression, not a device of adaquation but of creation. It is an hypothesis that Merleau-Ponty, facing the (...) very same problems contemporary neurosciences are confonted to, reactivates in an increasingly systematic way in his later years, drawing from a tradition which we try here to reconstruct. From Merleau-Ponty to Bergson, from Bergson to Leibniz, this second reading of specularity contains a possibility which is still fruitful and which neurosciences themselves could adopt in order to reconsider in a new perspective the evidences they have considered until now from the point of view of a first reading of specularity. This second reading of specularity suggests that it is not so much necessary to explain how one subject comprehends the other, but how both subjects are comprehended within the transcendental space of what we could call an event. Empathy is not so much a syntonization among subjects, but subjects are a partial and local desyntonization of that empathic system we should place as the beginining and not at the end of the process. Consciousness does not represent the other consciousness, but they express in a simultaneous and specular diffraction the fundamental unity of an event which is every time unique and impersonal. (shrink)

This article examines the place of literature in the ensemble of Merleau-Ponty’s research, comparing the function it fills in the economy of his thought to the role other practices and other disciplines such as biology and psychology play in his philosophy. Each of these “discourses” offered Merleau-Ponty access to something comparable to a common phantasmatic substance, a common metaphorical stability of Being, that the biologist, the writer, and the psychoanalyst work on, each in their own writings and categories. But here (...) emerges also a major question. To what extent does the language of Proust reveal itself up to the task of writing the phantasm, to what extent does it respond to this challenge? In what manner are the limits of his language, which are perhaps the limits of language itself, an obstacle to his project? And what is it that permits, at times, the sciences to obtain greater success in engaging in this way? Was it precisely the structure of metaphor that hindered Proust in truly writing encroachment, and the dimension of metonymy was, on the contrary, that in which a certain scientific discourse succeeded at setting itself up on the first try? If, finally and especially, metonymy was the very heart of metaphor, with more or less success touched by one or the other of the “regional” writings of the phantasm? (shrink)

A meditation on specularity as paradigms of a theory of experience which informs every field of philosophy and human sciences, including contemporary neurosciences. And a meditation, starting from neurosciences and mirror neurons, on the different readings of this paradigm of specularity and specularization. In particular, on that “second” reading of specularization, which suggests that the mirror is not an instrument of representation but of expression, not a device of adaquation but of creation. It is an hypothesis that Merleau-Ponty, facing the (...) very same problems contemporary neurosciences are confonted to, reactivates in an increasingly systematic way in his later years, drawing from a tradition which we try here to reconstruct. From Merleau-Ponty to Bergson, from Bergson to Leibniz, this second reading of specularity contains a possibility which is still fruitful and which neurosciences themselves could adopt in order to reconsider in a new perspective the evidences they have considered until now from the point of view of a first reading of specularity. This second reading of specularity suggests that it is not so much necessary to explain how one subject comprehends the other, but how both subjects are comprehended within the transcendental space of what we could call an event. Empathy is not so much a syntonization among subjects, but subjects are a partial and local desyntonization of that empathic system we should place as the beginining and not at the end of the process. Consciousness does not represent the other consciousness, but they express in a simultaneous and specular diffraction the fundamental unity of an event which is every time unique and impersonal. (shrink)