Merleau-Ponty - The Visible and The Invisible (6)

In this video, we follow MP as he begins his critique of Sartre’s philosophy of nothingness. The first section looks at problems with what MP calls “solipsist being” which essentially concerns the way being and nothingness relate to each other. The second section looks at how the other appears for a subject conceived as negation, and the final section looks at being itself.
Website: www.absurdbeing.com
Twitter: / absurdbeing
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00:00 Introduction
00:42 BEING IN OPPOSITION TO NOTHINGNESS
03:32 First criticism: The “trap”
09:20 Second criticism: Being becomes absolute plenitude
17:01 Third criticism: Pure negation and pure being as abstractions
19:29 Fourth criticism: Pre-reflective being (body and situation)
23:44 Fifth criticism: Division of being into two irreconcilable parts
26:17 THE OTHER
27:12 Body and situation as mediating factors
29:58 The other affects me insofar as I expose myself to them
33:27 The other as a direct influence
36:07 BEING AS WORLD
36:53 The threefold aspect of being
44:06 Summary

[@absurdbeing2219]

*Contents* 00:42 BEING IN OPPOSITION TO NOTHINGNESS 03:32 First criticism: The “trap” 09:20 Second criticism: Being becomes absolute plenitude 17:01 Third criticism: Pure negation and pure being as abstractions 19:29 Fourth criticism: Pre-reflective being (body and situation) 23:44 Fifth criticism: Division of being into two irreconcilable parts 26:17 THE OTHER 27:12 Body and situation as mediating factors 29:58 The other affects me insofar as I expose myself to them 33:27 The other as a direct influence 36:07 BEING AS WORLD 36:53 The threefold aspect of being 44:06 Summary

[@ParryStudios]

Hey Nate! Sorry I’m not keeping up on this one. I did study this for my PhD. I had a long standing argument with my sup. (A professor specialising in Sartre and MP) about the terminology of nothingness. In French it isn’t nothing it is Neant. As French speaker Neant doesn’t strictly mean nothing. It is more about the fertile basis from which stuff comes from. Like creativity. If you think about it from a Bergson angle, no-thing is also no object thus no-being - as we make our object through experience. What we experience (the no-object) the erfarhung or the transcendent (pick your philosopher) crosses with the being (the maker of objects) the erliebnetz or the immanent (again Husserl with Deleuze with a dash of Bergson) we get the chiasm - the crossover Bergson’s consciousness as a consciousness of. And that is the biological equivalent of neuron and glia (the crazy idea of my unpublishablebook) the cellular origin of consciousness.

[@absurdbeing2219]

Hey Jack - that’s right. I remember this. Lol, yes, unpublishable. Take comfort from the (possibly true) thought that everybody worth reading has probably had at least one or two unpublishable ideas in their time though! Regarding Sartre and neant, I think I can get on board with you there. At the risk of just adding more terminology, the way I understand it is that nothingness isn’t a _metaphysical_ nothingness (which would be a true emptiness, something like void), but an _ontological_ one, meaning that it is a way of understanding/describing human existence and experience (giving us insights into the world as it is lived) without attempting to explain it. I wonder then, does French have a different word (other than 'neant', I mean) for 'nothing'?

[@shawncostello770]

I think MPs point regarding nothingness is that the root of bifurcated thought is nothingness and when the dust settles everything produced from nothingness feels as though it lacks meaning. Sartre, I think, gets a little mixed up and confuses the sense of things with the products of thought. Sartre describes this gap himself when he refers to a 'haunting'. The reason this is a trap is that there is no way in which language (we could probably say analytics in general) - post-bifurcated thought - can achieve what comes before it. This results in a trap. The way to deal with this trap seems to be to either stay silent and remain a secluded skeptic or join in and respect the Cartesian mind. When perceptual faith is gained, this mind is opened; nothingness becomes a kind of fertile ground; a space in becoming, so to speak. Analytically, it can help to think of it as Cartesianism, but with a twist, which, approached from one direction is a vague nothingness and when approached in the other, a-priori intertwined. A critique becomes possible, but at the same time, futile - It's both accepted and rejected. As @ParryStudios says, it's Deleuzian with a dash of Bergson. Although, I would prefer to express it as Bergsonian, with a splash of Deleuze. Accepted in a spacial metaphysics and gained as faith through a temporal one. Analytically Deleuzian - Completely Bergsonian. I'm not sure returning to biological and physiological models really adds much to the idea here. As Ishmael says, "When I find myself growing grim about the mouth; whenever it is a damp, drizzly November in my soul; whenever I find myself involuntarily pausing before coffin warehouses, and bringing up the rear of every funeral I meet; and especially whenever my hypos get such an upper hand of me, that I require a strong moral principle to prevent me from deliberately stepping into the street, and methodically knocking people's hats off - then, I account it high time to get to sea as soon as I can". Basking in the sea breeze might prove fruitful.

[@keikojing2112]

First time I saw Nathan's criticism of MP!😮😀

[@absurdbeing2219]

Haha - not something I want to make a habit of doing!

[@ZuZu_Petals]

The Others

[@Kuldeep-vb8mi]

Can you do Rene Guenon.

[@absurdbeing2219]

I would love to take 'requests' but unfortunately, I barely have the time to cover the philosophers I am interested in as it is.