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The Birth of Sense
SERIES IN CONTINENTAL THOUGHT
Editorial Board
Ted Toadvine, Chairman, University of Oregon
Michael Barber, Saint Louis University
Elizabeth A. Behnke, Study Project in Phenomenology of the Body
David Carr, Emory University
James Dodd, New School University
Lester Embree, Florida Atlantic University†
Sara Heinämaa, University of Jyväskylä, University of Helsinki
José Huertas-Jourda, Wilfrid Laurier University†
Joseph J. Kockelmans, Pennsylvania State University†
William R. McKenna, Miami University
Algis Mickunas, Ohio University
J. N. Mohanty, Temple University
Dermot Moran, University College Dublin
Thomas Nenon, University of Memphis
Rosemary Rizo-Patron de Lerner, Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú, Lima
Thomas M. Seebohm, Johannes Gutenberg Universität, Mainz†
Gail Soffer, Rome, Italy
Elizabeth Ströker, Universität Köln†
Nicolas de Warren, Katholieke Universiteit Leuven
Richard M. Zaner, Vanderbilt University
International Advisory Board
Suzanne Bachelard, Université de Paris†
Rudolf Boehm, Rijksuniversiteit Gent
Albert Borgmann, University of Montana
Amedeo Giorgi, Saybrook Institute
Richard Grathoff, Universität Bielefeld
Samuel Ijsseling, Husserl-Archief te Leuven
Alphonso Lingis, Pennsylvania State University
Werner Marx, Albert-Ludwigs Universität, Freiburg†
David Rasmussen, Boston College
John Sallis, Boston College John Scanlon, Duquesne University
Hugh J. Silverman, State University of New York, Stony Brook†
Carlo Sini, Università di Milano
Jacques Taminiaux, Louvain-la-Neuve
D. Lawrence Wieder†
Dallas Willard, University of Southern California†
The Birth of Sense
Generative Passivity in Merleau-Ponty’s Philosophy
Don Beith
OHIO UNIVERSITY PRESS
ATHENS
Ohio University Press, Athens, Ohio 45701
© 2018 by Ohio University Press
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Beith, Don, author.
Title: The birth of sense : generative passivity in Merleau-Ponty’s philosophy / Don Beith.
Description: Athens, Ohio : Ohio University Press, 2018. | Series: Series in Continental thought ; No. 52 | Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2018000072 | ISBN 9780821423103 (hc : alk. paper) | ISBN 9780821446263 (pdf)
Subjects: LCSH: Merleau-Ponty, Maurice, 1908-1961.
Classification: LCC B2430.M3764 B45 2018 | DDC 194—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018000072
Dedicated to an especial teacher, authentic friend, and generative philosopher: John Russon
Rhythm and melody supply imitations of anger and gentleness, and also of courage and temperance, and of all the qualities contrary to these, and of the other qualities of character, which hardly fall short of the actual affections, as we know from our own experience, for in listening to such strains our souls undergo a change. . . . There seems to be in us a sort of affinity to musical modes and rhythms, which makes some philosophers say that the soul is a harmony.
—Aristotle, Politics 8
Nature loves to hide.
—Heraclitus, Fragment 123
All action is an invasion of the future, of the unknown.
—John Dewey, Human Nature and Conduct
Birth [is not an act] of constitution but the institution of a future. Reciprocally, institution resides in the same genus of Being as birth and is not, any more than birth, an act: there will be later decisionary institutions or contracts, but they are to be understood on the basis of birth and not the reverse.
Therefore [there is an] instituted and instituting subject, but inseparably, and not a constituting subject; [therefore] a certain inertia—[the fact of being] exposed to . . . —but [this is what] puts an activity en route, an event, the initiation of the present, which is productive after it—Goethe: genius [is] “posthumous productivity”—which opens a future.
The subject [is] that to which such orders of events can advent, field of fields.
—Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Institution
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