Abstract
There is no communication between our mental functioning and us. The core of man does not have a human figure.
Paul Valéry, Cahiers, 2 vols., ed. Judith Robinson (Paris: Gallimard, Bibliothèque de la Pléiade, 1973), C1, p. 990. C1 & C2 will refer here to this edition. All translations from Valéry’s work are my own, unless otherwise noted.
This chapter discusses Paul Valéry’s materialist conception of the human consciousness and its consequences. Either grossly misunderstood or ignored, Valéry’s materialism entails, in fact, powerful ethico-ecological implications. Consciousness having its base in matter/body, hence subject to and determined by physiochemical regulations, implies the passivity of the human subject. Such a consciousness drains the subject of the notion of mastery, will or centrality. The explosion in the 1960s and 1970s in France of the idea of the death of the subject, then, has a precursor, albeit unacknowledged. But authors such as Jacques Derrida and Marcel Gauchet, among others, will contribute to bringing it to light in their (re)readings of Valéry. Further, that Merleau-Ponty, who resurges in recent years as the ‘philosopher of nature,’ makes crucial references to Valéry, is significant. Merleau-Ponty’s later works are imbued with Valéryian conception of consciousness and its organic consequences, that is, the mind/body union and the continuity between the self (subject) and the other (object). Merleau-Ponty’s incorporation of Valéry’s concepts in his own reflections not only illuminates the latter’s much-neglected thoughts, but, together, their writings serve as a lodestar for freshly envisioning man and the environment.
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Notes
- 1.
Paul Valéry, Œuvres, 2 vols., ed. Jean Hytier (Paris: Gallimard, Bibliothèque de la pléiade, 1957 and 1960), vol. 2, pp. 15–25. vol. 1 and vol. 2 will refer henceforward to this edition.
- 2.
V 2, p. 16.
- 3.
Jacques Derrida, “Les Fins de l’Homme” in Marges de la philosophie (Paris: Les Éditions de Minuit, Gallimard, 1972), pp. 129–164. Although Derrida does not mention Valéry’s name in this text, his reading of the Heideggerian ‘inhumanism’ resonates strikingly with the Valéryian inhumanism to be discussed in the paper.
- 4.
V 1, pp. 988–1013.
- 5.
See, especially, Judith Robinson, L’analyse de l’esprit dans les Cahiers de Valéry (Paris: Corti) 1963. In this work, Robinson provides an excellent reading of judiciously selected passages from the Cahiers on the topic.
- 6.
C1, p. 653.
- 7.
Au sujet d’Euréka, vol. 1, p. 859.
- 8.
C1, pp. 667–668.
- 9.
Ibid.
- 10.
Valéry and his contemporaries, including Mallarmé, considered Bergson the greatest French philosopher since Descartes. Nonetheless in the privacy of the Cahiers, Valéry copiously critiques Bergson’s philosophy and marks his differences from the latter. See also Judith Robinson, “Valéry, Critique de Bergson.” Cahiers de l’Association internationale des études françaises, Année 1965, Volume 17, Numéro 1, pp. 203–215.
- 11.
Refer to Judith Robinson, L’analyse de l’esprit dans les Cahiers de Valéry (Paris: Corti, 1963). In this work, Robinson provides an excellent reading of judiciously selected passages from the Cahiers on the topic.
- 12.
C1, p. 806.
- 13.
Ibid., p. 1057.
- 14.
Ibid., p. 948.
- 15.
Ibid., p. 990.
- 16.
E. M. Cioran, Valéry face à ses idoles (Paris: l’Herne, 1970), p. 31. My translation.
- 17.
Yves Bonnefoy, “Valéry et Mallarmé,” in Valéry, le partage de midi: Midi le juste: actes du colloque 1995, ed. Jean Hainaut (Paris: Champion, 1998). p. 63. My translation.
- 18.
Marcel Gauchet, L’inconscient cérébral (Paris: Éditions du Seuil, 1992), p. 154 & p. 170.
- 19.
Ibid., p. 158.
- 20.
Valéry calls this ‘authorless’ poetry as ‘pure poetry’ (vol. 1, pp. 1456–1463).
- 21.
C1, p. 689.
- 22.
Valéry himself writes: “I don’t know why we praise an author for being human when everything that elevates man is inhuman or superhuman…” (vol. 1, p. 1485).
- 23.
Valéry’s little commented essay, L’homme et la coquille (vol. 1, pp. 886–906), is luminous on this topic.
- 24.
Maurice Blanchot, “La Littérature et le Droit à la Mort,” in La part du feu (Paris: Gallimard, 1949), p. 336.
- 25.
Theodor W. Adorno, “Valéry’s Deviations,” in Notes to literature, ed. Rolf Tiedmann, trans. Shierry Weber Nicholsen (New York: Columbia University Press, 1991), p. 138.
- 26.
“Les Fins de l’Homme,” op.cit., p. 161. See also, “Les Sources de Valéry. Qual, Quelle,” MLN, Vol. 87, No. 4. French Issue: Paul Valéry (May 1972), pp. 563–599.
- 27.
V 2, p. 63.
- 28.
C 1, p. 263.
- 29.
Marie-Louise Mallet, ed., The poem in question is Ébauche d’un Serpent, vol. 1, trans. David Wills (New York: Fordham University Press, 2008), pp. 138–145.
- 30.
Instants, V 1, pp. 401–402.
- 31.
Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Eye and Mind, in Phenomenology, Language, and Sociology: Selected essays of Maurice Merleau-Ponty, ed. John O’Neill, trans. Carleton Dallery (London: Heinemann Educational Books Ltd, 1974). This text will be henceforward abbreviated as EM.
- 32.
C1, p. 667.
- 33.
Merleau-Ponty’s expressions such as “a self … caught up in things” clearly echo Heidegger’s Dasein.
- 34.
C2, p. 322.
- 35.
C1, p. 42.
- 36.
Jacques Derrida, “Les sources de Valéry. Qual. Quelle,” MLN, vol. 87, 1972, pp. 563–599 (Johns Hopkins University Press), p. 577.
- 37.
C2, p. 224 & passim.
- 38.
See Introduction à la méthode de Léonard de Vinci, vol. I, pp.1166–1167 (in ‘marginal notes’).
- 39.
Merleau-Ponty, The Visible and the Invisible, ed. Claude Lefort, trans. Alphonso Lingis (Chicago: Northwestern University Press, 1968). This work is henceforward abbreviated as VI.
- 40.
This marks a decisive scission between Merleau-Ponty and Sartre whose L’existentialisme est un humanisme (1946) constitutes a manifesto of his humanism.
- 41.
La structure du comportement (Paris: PUF, 1949), p. 143.
- 42.
C2, p. 329.
- 43.
C2, p. 123 & passim.
- 44.
C2, p. 288.
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Webber, I. (2012). Valéry’s Materialist Conception of Consciousness and Its Consequences. In: Tymieniecka, A. (eds) Art, Literature, and Passions of the Skies. Analecta Husserliana, vol 112. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-4261-1_14
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