Temps, espace, mouvement. Le dernier Merleau-Ponty dans une inédite Esquisse ontologique.

The aim of this paper is to describe Merleau-Ponty’s incessant search in the late Fifties for a radical explanation of his new ontological outlook. As a matter of fact, starting with the Courses on Nature – presented at the College de France between 1956-1960 – as well as some unpublished notes (23rd September, 6th and 7th October 1958) and from the Esquisse ontologique (March 1959?). Merleau-Ponty’s attention is mainly focused on understanding Nature. The principle goal of the investigation is to analyse the notion of Nature in the light of three concepts that are most pertinent to it: time, space, movement. These concept – when examined closely – take on not only a special ontological meaning, but also an aesthetic one. As a matter of a fact, they are constantly “borrowed” from literary, artistic, musical and thespian creations and are inserted into philosophical works where they explode, uncontrollably “expressing” our anchorage to our Being. Far from the hard structure of a rationalized world – which for centuries had reduced Nature to a sheer object for analysis – Merleau-Ponty proposes a really difficult task: thinking about Nature without “explaining” it. A difficult and compelling task after the katastrofe of classical science: Nature refuses to be observed, it avoids visibility, “explodes beneath our gaze”, leaves a “trace” and reveals “shadows” (cfr. N. p. 121). The questions regarding localization and time (“Where am I?” and “What’s time is it?”) can no longer have an exhaustive answer, but branch out endlessly in myriad dimensions, to surrounding worlds which fill our lives or, to be more precise, are our lives. Time and space cannot therefore be considered absolute values, but are “functions”, “symbols”, “open system”. “Here” and “now” are to be conceived as event/evocative figures, photographic images, instant photos, snatches of world, possible entrances to a “idios kosmos” from which our involvement with Being literary hangs. All of this finds a full explanation in the “Esquisse ontologique” where Merleau-Ponty states that time and space cannot give themselves without the movement that contains them and makes them possible. To the question “Where am I?” and “What’s time is it?” two strong statements come to mind: “les temps a des bords en haillons” and “pas de où ponctuel” pointing to the fact that there is only an “amendment” of the world, that there is only “motion” from which time and space draw their metaphoric position.