L’influence de Maine de Biran dans le dépassement par Patočka de la chair merleau-pontienne

Abstract

The Maine de Biran’s influence in the Patočka’s overcoming of Merleau-Ponty’s flesh

In this paper, I examine the sense of being of the subject which is at the same time in the world (ontological univocity) and the medium of its appearing (ontological equivocality). An existential analysis of the intramundane body shows that it is a constituting pole of the appearing and leads Patočka to question its relation to the ego. Maine de Biran’s theory of effort considers the subject as a center made of force and resistance, meaning that self-consciousness is at the same time a consciousness of the body and an awareness that its existence is shaped by exteriority. Yet Patočka deems insufficient such conception and looks for another way to overcome Cartesian dualism thanks to an externalization of the self: how can the self experience its body if it is ontologically different from it? By understanding force and resistance in terms of movement and by considering that each impulse implies its own outward efficacy, Patočka correlates the subject’s appearing to its motricity. This correlation articulates the body and the embodied self. I will ultimately argue that this movement through which the subject comes to existence coincides with the world’s own constitution and therefore explains the subject’s twofold sense of being.

Keywords: body, correlation, ego, movement, impulse, subject, world