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Humanism and Terror: An Essay on the Communist Problem
First published in France In 1947, Merleau-Ponty's essay was in part a response to Arthur Koestler's novel, Darkness at Noon, and in a larger sense a contribution to the political and moral debates of a postwar world suddenly divided into two armed camps. For Merleau-Ponty, the basic question was: given the violence in Communism, is Communism still equal to its humanist intentions?
Starting with the assumption that a society is not a "temple of value-idols that figure on the front of its monuments or in its constitutional scrolls; the value of a society is the value It places upon man's relation to man," Merleau-ponty examines not only the Moscow trials of the late thirties but also Koestler's re-creation of them. And Merleau-Ponty makes it clear that the Moscow trials—and violence in general in the Communist world—can be understood only In the context of revolutionary violence. He demonstrates that it is pointless to begin an examination of Communist violence by asking whether Communism respects the rules of liberal thought; it is evident that Communism does not. The question that should be asked is whether the violence Communism exercises is revolutionary violence, capable of building humane relations among men.
At a time when many are addressing similar questions to societies both in the East and in the West, Merleau-Ponty's investigations and speculations are of prime importance; they stand as a major and provocative contribution to the argument surrounding the use of violence.
Starting with the assumption that a society is not a "temple of value-idols that figure on the front of its monuments or in its constitutional scrolls; the value of a society is the value It places upon man's relation to man," Merleau-ponty examines not only the Moscow trials of the late thirties but also Koestler's re-creation of them. And Merleau-Ponty makes it clear that the Moscow trials—and violence in general in the Communist world—can be understood only In the context of revolutionary violence. He demonstrates that it is pointless to begin an examination of Communist violence by asking whether Communism respects the rules of liberal thought; it is evident that Communism does not. The question that should be asked is whether the violence Communism exercises is revolutionary violence, capable of building humane relations among men.
At a time when many are addressing similar questions to societies both in the East and in the West, Merleau-Ponty's investigations and speculations are of prime importance; they stand as a major and provocative contribution to the argument surrounding the use of violence.
240 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1947
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About the author
Maurice Merleau-Ponty
124 books612 followersFrench phenomenological philosopher, strongly influenced by Edmund Husserl and Martin Heidegger in addition to being closely associated with Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir. At the core of Merleau-Ponty's philosophy is a sustained argument for the foundational role that perception plays in understanding the world as well as engaging with the world. Like the other major phenomenologists Merleau-Ponty expressed his philosophical insights in writings on art, literature, and politics; however Merleau-Ponty was the only major phenomenologist of the first half of the Twentieth Century to engage extensively with the sciences, and especially with descriptive psychology. Because of this engagement, his writings have become influential with the recent project of naturalizing phenomenology in which phenomenologists utilize the results of psychology and cognitive science.
Merleau-Ponty was born in Rochefort-sur-Mer, Charente-Maritime. His father was killed in World War 1 when Merleau-Ponty was 3. After secondary schooling at the lycée Louis-le-Grand in Paris, Maurice Merleau-Ponty became a student at the École Normale Supérieure, where he studied alongside Sartre, Simone de Beauvoir, and Simone Weil. He passed the agrégation in philosophy in 1930.
Merleau-Ponty first taught at Chartres, then became a tutor at the École Normale Supérieure, where he was awarded his doctorate on the basis of two important books: La structure du comportement (1942) and Phénoménologie de la Perception (1945).
After teaching at the University of Lyon from 1945 to 1948, Merleau-Ponty lectured on child psychology and education at the Sorbonne from 1949 to 1952. He was awarded the Chair of Philosophy at the Collège de France from 1952 until his death in 1961, making him the youngest person to have been elected to a Chair.
Besides his teaching, Merleau-Ponty was also political editor for Les Temps Modernes from the founding of the journal in October 1945 until December 1952.
Aged 53, he died suddenly of a stroke in 1961, apparently while preparing for a class on Descartes. He was buried in Le Père Lachaise Cemetery in Paris.
Merleau-Ponty was born in Rochefort-sur-Mer, Charente-Maritime. His father was killed in World War 1 when Merleau-Ponty was 3. After secondary schooling at the lycée Louis-le-Grand in Paris, Maurice Merleau-Ponty became a student at the École Normale Supérieure, where he studied alongside Sartre, Simone de Beauvoir, and Simone Weil. He passed the agrégation in philosophy in 1930.
Merleau-Ponty first taught at Chartres, then became a tutor at the École Normale Supérieure, where he was awarded his doctorate on the basis of two important books: La structure du comportement (1942) and Phénoménologie de la Perception (1945).
After teaching at the University of Lyon from 1945 to 1948, Merleau-Ponty lectured on child psychology and education at the Sorbonne from 1949 to 1952. He was awarded the Chair of Philosophy at the Collège de France from 1952 until his death in 1961, making him the youngest person to have been elected to a Chair.
Besides his teaching, Merleau-Ponty was also political editor for Les Temps Modernes from the founding of the journal in October 1945 until December 1952.
Aged 53, he died suddenly of a stroke in 1961, apparently while preparing for a class on Descartes. He was buried in Le Père Lachaise Cemetery in Paris.
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July 23, 2020
In 1916, Rosa Luxembourg misattributed a phrase to Freidrich Engels which has since become one of those classic socialist slogans, along with "bread and roses," "land and freedom," and "1 coat=20 yards of linen": "socialism or barbarism." The phrase implies an exclusive disjunction between the two terms--where one is, the other cannot be, and it is up to us to choose one at the expense of the other. Socialism, or barbarism, and never the two shall meet.
In 1946, Merleau-Ponty wrote a series of five essays for Les Temps Moderne which were collated into this book, Humanism and Terror, which was published in 1947. Upon his death, Sartre wrote that Merleau-Ponty was never really a believer in Marxism, and in some sense, that's true. Merleau-Ponty practiced what he called a "Marxism without illusions": a cautious, "open" Marxism which, at the same time that it knew its world and the movement of history which bore the world along, knew also its embeddedness within that history--a Marxism that knew its finitude and its contingency because history itself was contingent, a Marxism which did not believe it held the secret key to history, nor that the utopia it sought to realize was ever pre-destined to arrive.
There is a double meaning to the phrase "humanism and terror," a meaning which applies to liberal societies and a meaning which applies to the USSR in 1946 and 1947. On the one hand, liberal societies proclaim their allegiance with humanist values while enacting the terrors of racism, imperialism, immiseration, and alienation. Liberal humanism is a false humanism which clings to abstract constitutional values only to mask its terror. It critiques the revolutionary violence of communists, and yet it refuses to acknowledge its own violence. It is therefore guilty of a "Quaker hypocrisy." On the other hand, the USSR is open about its violence. It partakes of no pretense to nonviolence--it knows that violence is inescapable insofar as we are social beings, it knows itself to be violent, and it claims that its self-aware violence is enacted for the sake of a truly humanist future. Thus the title of the book, and the rejection of Luxembourg's disjunction: The promise of liberal humanism may only be realized by passing through communist terror.
This is the conclusion of the book: communist violence *may* realize the values of liberal humanism. It is not a positive conclusion. Even less is it an endorsement of Leninism or Stalinism. Merleau-Ponty was no tankie. What he finds promising in Marxism is not what it posits, but rather what it rejects: "Marxism does not offer us a Utopia, a future known ahead of time, nor any philosophy of history...Marxism, rather than an affirmation of a future that is necessary, is much more a judgment of the present as contradictory and intolerable." Merleau-Ponty endorses Marxism insofar as it leverages the labor of the negative. It is a "No!" which resists, destroys, and, in destroying, transcends an intolerable present towards an unknown and unknowable future. This movement away from the past and the present is not without risk. It is entirely possible that the revolution will fail, will be led astray into detours, will falter and collapse in on itself, or else will ossify into a new brutal regime, as it in fact did under Stalin. There is no guarantee any political movement, let alone Marxism, will succeed in its aims. The knowledge which Marxism has of itself and of history is of necessity an incomplete, full of gaps and zones of probability, and ultimately based on faith, because it participates in the world and in history, creates itself, asserts itself in struggle, and does not stand outside of history or the world in order to grasp them like an object it possesses. It is much rather possessed by the world because it participates in the flow of situated embodied existence. But for this very reason its knowledge is also meaningful and veracious. If it cannot determine in advance where history is headed, it is neither a blind leap into the void. It can transcend the past only because it knows its past; it is currently transcending its present simply by living through it. The question is, in what direction is it moving? In any case, *it will* know its present retrospectively, once the present becomes the past of a future present by virtue of that passage of time which is a kind of transcendence itself.
Like Hegel and Freud, Merleau-Ponty thought that knowledge is retrospective. Marxism finds a coherency and a narrative arc in history only because its distance from the past allows it to analyze the past and discover a meaningful movement in it. But as it is lived in the present, the course of history and the meaning of its events are entirely ambiguous. Because we are installed within the history, we cannot get outside of it to see it clearly, and we cannot say for certain its outcome will be. Contingency demands of the present that we act without complete knowledge of what the effects of our actions will be. History is forged through faith and risk or it is not forged at all. It is quite possible that Marxism will prove itself to be a failure, but its tenets will be verified or falsified only by the course of history itself.
Far from dissuading us of political action, the contingency of history--the fact that history is *made* before it is fully known--reveals our agency in it, our power of going beyond the given to establish a new present, where, if we are lucky, we *might* be more human. Merleau-Ponty wrote of the French collaborators with the Nazis during the Occupation: "There is a sort of maleficence in history: it solicits men, tempts them so that they believe they are moving in its direction, and then suddenly it unmasks, and events change and prove that there was another possibility. The men whom history abandons in this way and who see themselves simply as accomplices suddenly find themselves the instigators of a crime to which history has inspired them. And they are unable to look for excuses or to excuse themselves from even a part of the responsibility." It is possible that history will judge the USSR and its supporters the same way (and indeed, tankies notwithstanding, this is the judgment that Stalinism would receive).
And yet...in 1946, Merleau-Ponty really *is* a believer. If he cannot endorse Stalin's authoritarianism, or the purges, the gulags, the NEP, the secret police--in short, all of the real, material indications that the USSR was not going to fulfill its humanist aims--he at least resides in his faith in the *idea* of Marxism, in the theory of historical materialism. But isn't this preference for abstract ideals over their incarnation precisely the hypocrisy he accused the liberals of? Isn't it the height of bad faith to install oneself in service to the dream of a Marxist humanism which is realized nowhere in practice? In 1946, Merleau-Ponty was not so sure. It was the duty of Western Marxists to critique the rigid and authoritarian Marxism of the USSR while keeping pledging their allegiance to the Communist project in general, in the hopes that communism in France, England, and elsewhere might be more humane. By 1953, Merleau-Ponty could no longer sustain such hopes. He rejected Marxism completely, and placed his faith instead in the "non-communist left."
Why read this book, then, if the passage of time has revealed its mistakes, if its author has denounced its conclusions, and if, finally, the events and characters which fill its pages have been consigned to the dustbin of history? I think that the value of this book for a contemporary audience is that it embodies the philosophy of history which it sets forth. Stalinism was a mistake. Its future was a nightmare. That much is clear in hindsight, even to most USSR apologists. And yet, in 1946, it was not so clear what the USSR would become. One can always say that the failure of the USSR or of any other communist project is not a conclusive proof of the overall movement's failure, in the same way that a writer who never writes can keep the beautiful dream of writing forever alive in their imagination. There is always a writing to come, a communism to come, a humanism to come, on the horizon...And yet, it never actually becomes realized except as this phantasm over yonder that calls to us and recedes as we approach it. In a sense, it's true that ideas are never conclusively disproved by history--history is not a logical argument, it is a passage which proliferates and accumulates ideas. The "dustbin of history" is much more like a bed where ideas go to lie than a grave. Even if it were a grave, it would be haunted with ghosts. But it is just as true to say that communism as it manifested in the USSR was a failure. It ought to be of interest to us today how it was that so many people came to believe in its future despite the horrors of its present. And today, what utopian dreams are we wed to and haunted by? What horrors are we willing to commit in the name of such fulfilling a mission? It is true that one cannot live within dreams, but it is equally true that one cannot live without them, either. Very few people today believe in humanism except as a dream. It is both behind us, in the past, and in front of us, as a task to be realized. And it will remain so until it is renounced. But even then, we would still be dreaming--posthuman, transhuman, antihuman, all-too-human dreams
P.S. Regarding anarchism, Merleau-Ponty was sadly misinformed. Although he was familiar with the ideas of Proudhon and Serge, and mentioned Stirner once, he seemed to have derived his understanding of anarchism from his relationship with Camus, who was a staunch pacifist. On the rare occasions that Merleau-Ponty mentions anarchism, he does so only to dismiss it as a naive and idealistic philosophy which refuses to accept violence as a necessary aspect of our social existence. This is certainly a strange critique of anarchism, insofar as most anarchists are not opposed to violence at all, but merely to its monopolization by state forces. Many anarchists would agree with Merleau-Ponty's insistence that humans are bound up with each other in messy and sometimes ugly ways, and yet Merleau-Ponty levels this proposition at anarchism as if it were somehow evidence of the theory's insufficiency. Even to proclaim the freedom of another person, he writes, is to do violence to them. Perhaps. But again, violence is not necessarily a taboo for anarchism. And even if it were, to use the term in such a loose and all-encompassing way as to equate the act of proclaiming someone else's freedom with physical harm is to render the term meaningless without further distinctions. It's telling that by 1953, having rejected both communism and capitalism in equal terms, Merleau-Ponty sides with progressive leftism, aiming for parliamentary reforms while declaring support for revolutionary movements when they happen. He cannot conceive of a world without government, without a ruling class. To him, the ruling class are a necessary structure of world history, present at all stages in history. I would respond that he is a poor reader of history, if he is willing to discount all of human existence before agriculture and the civilizations it gave rise to. But perhaps he was, and semi-nomadic hunter-gatherers constituted for him some mythical stage of pre-history. In any case, his political philosophy is about as good as you can get from within a statist system--which is to say, it's not very good. Against all odds, he still *believes* in the possibility of an honest leadership that would accurately listen to and represent its constituency. This could be a reflection of his perceptual ontology, in which the pre-reflective world of non-representational perception gives rise to the reflective world of representational thought, and yet the pre-reflective world of perception can only be *known* through the mediation of representational thought. But this dialectic always leaves an excess of the perceived over the representation, of the signified over the signifier, of the Real over the Symbolic. And so consciousness is "split," is never at peace with itself, and is perpetually unhappy unless it accepts its unhappiness as constitutive of its life so much that it no longer becomes unhappiness. And this does seem to be his political position. It induces in him a kind of "left melancholia": of course, government is a necessary evil, what can you do but resist authoritarianism whenever it throws its head up and fight for freedom whenever you can without believing you can go all the way and resolve the contradiction? But the acceptance of the contradiction and the rejection of utopia is the foundation of much of contemporary anarchism, which seeks the abolition of state control anyway, simply because it is felt to be an unjust obstacle to living an authentic life. If Merleau-Ponty could simutaneously reject capitalism and communism only to retreat to progressivism, perhaps it was because 1953 was not yet 1968. History may not progress, but tendencies accumulate, go in and out of fashion as the present demands of them, and constitute living traditions which are always ready to be revived again as long as their archives remain
In 1946, Merleau-Ponty wrote a series of five essays for Les Temps Moderne which were collated into this book, Humanism and Terror, which was published in 1947. Upon his death, Sartre wrote that Merleau-Ponty was never really a believer in Marxism, and in some sense, that's true. Merleau-Ponty practiced what he called a "Marxism without illusions": a cautious, "open" Marxism which, at the same time that it knew its world and the movement of history which bore the world along, knew also its embeddedness within that history--a Marxism that knew its finitude and its contingency because history itself was contingent, a Marxism which did not believe it held the secret key to history, nor that the utopia it sought to realize was ever pre-destined to arrive.
There is a double meaning to the phrase "humanism and terror," a meaning which applies to liberal societies and a meaning which applies to the USSR in 1946 and 1947. On the one hand, liberal societies proclaim their allegiance with humanist values while enacting the terrors of racism, imperialism, immiseration, and alienation. Liberal humanism is a false humanism which clings to abstract constitutional values only to mask its terror. It critiques the revolutionary violence of communists, and yet it refuses to acknowledge its own violence. It is therefore guilty of a "Quaker hypocrisy." On the other hand, the USSR is open about its violence. It partakes of no pretense to nonviolence--it knows that violence is inescapable insofar as we are social beings, it knows itself to be violent, and it claims that its self-aware violence is enacted for the sake of a truly humanist future. Thus the title of the book, and the rejection of Luxembourg's disjunction: The promise of liberal humanism may only be realized by passing through communist terror.
This is the conclusion of the book: communist violence *may* realize the values of liberal humanism. It is not a positive conclusion. Even less is it an endorsement of Leninism or Stalinism. Merleau-Ponty was no tankie. What he finds promising in Marxism is not what it posits, but rather what it rejects: "Marxism does not offer us a Utopia, a future known ahead of time, nor any philosophy of history...Marxism, rather than an affirmation of a future that is necessary, is much more a judgment of the present as contradictory and intolerable." Merleau-Ponty endorses Marxism insofar as it leverages the labor of the negative. It is a "No!" which resists, destroys, and, in destroying, transcends an intolerable present towards an unknown and unknowable future. This movement away from the past and the present is not without risk. It is entirely possible that the revolution will fail, will be led astray into detours, will falter and collapse in on itself, or else will ossify into a new brutal regime, as it in fact did under Stalin. There is no guarantee any political movement, let alone Marxism, will succeed in its aims. The knowledge which Marxism has of itself and of history is of necessity an incomplete, full of gaps and zones of probability, and ultimately based on faith, because it participates in the world and in history, creates itself, asserts itself in struggle, and does not stand outside of history or the world in order to grasp them like an object it possesses. It is much rather possessed by the world because it participates in the flow of situated embodied existence. But for this very reason its knowledge is also meaningful and veracious. If it cannot determine in advance where history is headed, it is neither a blind leap into the void. It can transcend the past only because it knows its past; it is currently transcending its present simply by living through it. The question is, in what direction is it moving? In any case, *it will* know its present retrospectively, once the present becomes the past of a future present by virtue of that passage of time which is a kind of transcendence itself.
Like Hegel and Freud, Merleau-Ponty thought that knowledge is retrospective. Marxism finds a coherency and a narrative arc in history only because its distance from the past allows it to analyze the past and discover a meaningful movement in it. But as it is lived in the present, the course of history and the meaning of its events are entirely ambiguous. Because we are installed within the history, we cannot get outside of it to see it clearly, and we cannot say for certain its outcome will be. Contingency demands of the present that we act without complete knowledge of what the effects of our actions will be. History is forged through faith and risk or it is not forged at all. It is quite possible that Marxism will prove itself to be a failure, but its tenets will be verified or falsified only by the course of history itself.
Far from dissuading us of political action, the contingency of history--the fact that history is *made* before it is fully known--reveals our agency in it, our power of going beyond the given to establish a new present, where, if we are lucky, we *might* be more human. Merleau-Ponty wrote of the French collaborators with the Nazis during the Occupation: "There is a sort of maleficence in history: it solicits men, tempts them so that they believe they are moving in its direction, and then suddenly it unmasks, and events change and prove that there was another possibility. The men whom history abandons in this way and who see themselves simply as accomplices suddenly find themselves the instigators of a crime to which history has inspired them. And they are unable to look for excuses or to excuse themselves from even a part of the responsibility." It is possible that history will judge the USSR and its supporters the same way (and indeed, tankies notwithstanding, this is the judgment that Stalinism would receive).
And yet...in 1946, Merleau-Ponty really *is* a believer. If he cannot endorse Stalin's authoritarianism, or the purges, the gulags, the NEP, the secret police--in short, all of the real, material indications that the USSR was not going to fulfill its humanist aims--he at least resides in his faith in the *idea* of Marxism, in the theory of historical materialism. But isn't this preference for abstract ideals over their incarnation precisely the hypocrisy he accused the liberals of? Isn't it the height of bad faith to install oneself in service to the dream of a Marxist humanism which is realized nowhere in practice? In 1946, Merleau-Ponty was not so sure. It was the duty of Western Marxists to critique the rigid and authoritarian Marxism of the USSR while keeping pledging their allegiance to the Communist project in general, in the hopes that communism in France, England, and elsewhere might be more humane. By 1953, Merleau-Ponty could no longer sustain such hopes. He rejected Marxism completely, and placed his faith instead in the "non-communist left."
Why read this book, then, if the passage of time has revealed its mistakes, if its author has denounced its conclusions, and if, finally, the events and characters which fill its pages have been consigned to the dustbin of history? I think that the value of this book for a contemporary audience is that it embodies the philosophy of history which it sets forth. Stalinism was a mistake. Its future was a nightmare. That much is clear in hindsight, even to most USSR apologists. And yet, in 1946, it was not so clear what the USSR would become. One can always say that the failure of the USSR or of any other communist project is not a conclusive proof of the overall movement's failure, in the same way that a writer who never writes can keep the beautiful dream of writing forever alive in their imagination. There is always a writing to come, a communism to come, a humanism to come, on the horizon...And yet, it never actually becomes realized except as this phantasm over yonder that calls to us and recedes as we approach it. In a sense, it's true that ideas are never conclusively disproved by history--history is not a logical argument, it is a passage which proliferates and accumulates ideas. The "dustbin of history" is much more like a bed where ideas go to lie than a grave. Even if it were a grave, it would be haunted with ghosts. But it is just as true to say that communism as it manifested in the USSR was a failure. It ought to be of interest to us today how it was that so many people came to believe in its future despite the horrors of its present. And today, what utopian dreams are we wed to and haunted by? What horrors are we willing to commit in the name of such fulfilling a mission? It is true that one cannot live within dreams, but it is equally true that one cannot live without them, either. Very few people today believe in humanism except as a dream. It is both behind us, in the past, and in front of us, as a task to be realized. And it will remain so until it is renounced. But even then, we would still be dreaming--posthuman, transhuman, antihuman, all-too-human dreams
P.S. Regarding anarchism, Merleau-Ponty was sadly misinformed. Although he was familiar with the ideas of Proudhon and Serge, and mentioned Stirner once, he seemed to have derived his understanding of anarchism from his relationship with Camus, who was a staunch pacifist. On the rare occasions that Merleau-Ponty mentions anarchism, he does so only to dismiss it as a naive and idealistic philosophy which refuses to accept violence as a necessary aspect of our social existence. This is certainly a strange critique of anarchism, insofar as most anarchists are not opposed to violence at all, but merely to its monopolization by state forces. Many anarchists would agree with Merleau-Ponty's insistence that humans are bound up with each other in messy and sometimes ugly ways, and yet Merleau-Ponty levels this proposition at anarchism as if it were somehow evidence of the theory's insufficiency. Even to proclaim the freedom of another person, he writes, is to do violence to them. Perhaps. But again, violence is not necessarily a taboo for anarchism. And even if it were, to use the term in such a loose and all-encompassing way as to equate the act of proclaiming someone else's freedom with physical harm is to render the term meaningless without further distinctions. It's telling that by 1953, having rejected both communism and capitalism in equal terms, Merleau-Ponty sides with progressive leftism, aiming for parliamentary reforms while declaring support for revolutionary movements when they happen. He cannot conceive of a world without government, without a ruling class. To him, the ruling class are a necessary structure of world history, present at all stages in history. I would respond that he is a poor reader of history, if he is willing to discount all of human existence before agriculture and the civilizations it gave rise to. But perhaps he was, and semi-nomadic hunter-gatherers constituted for him some mythical stage of pre-history. In any case, his political philosophy is about as good as you can get from within a statist system--which is to say, it's not very good. Against all odds, he still *believes* in the possibility of an honest leadership that would accurately listen to and represent its constituency. This could be a reflection of his perceptual ontology, in which the pre-reflective world of non-representational perception gives rise to the reflective world of representational thought, and yet the pre-reflective world of perception can only be *known* through the mediation of representational thought. But this dialectic always leaves an excess of the perceived over the representation, of the signified over the signifier, of the Real over the Symbolic. And so consciousness is "split," is never at peace with itself, and is perpetually unhappy unless it accepts its unhappiness as constitutive of its life so much that it no longer becomes unhappiness. And this does seem to be his political position. It induces in him a kind of "left melancholia": of course, government is a necessary evil, what can you do but resist authoritarianism whenever it throws its head up and fight for freedom whenever you can without believing you can go all the way and resolve the contradiction? But the acceptance of the contradiction and the rejection of utopia is the foundation of much of contemporary anarchism, which seeks the abolition of state control anyway, simply because it is felt to be an unjust obstacle to living an authentic life. If Merleau-Ponty could simutaneously reject capitalism and communism only to retreat to progressivism, perhaps it was because 1953 was not yet 1968. History may not progress, but tendencies accumulate, go in and out of fashion as the present demands of them, and constitute living traditions which are always ready to be revived again as long as their archives remain
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July 7, 2024Merleau-Ponty criticizes simplistic anti-communism for failing to understand the relationship between Marxists and revolution. Events like the Moscow (Show) Trials can't be understood as simply bad trials that don't meet liberal standards of justice. At the same time, Merleau-Ponty does not justify the Soviet state, but rather shows the complex relationship between Marxism and guilt. Since revolutionaries always justify their behaviour by pointing to the real contradictions in history that force them to act, only by sifting through those contradictions can you learn the circumstances of individual acts. This allows Merleau-Ponty to situate people like Stalin, Bukharin and Trotsky within history without accepting their perspectives as final.
December 19, 2007
An interesting piece from perhaps the most innovative, yet extensively ignored, French thinker of the 20th century -- Maurice Merleau-Ponty. If you have studied the Frankfurt School Critical Theorists, Merleau-Ponty's essay on the 'communist problem' will be of particular interest. For one, it similarly responds to the problems that face Marxist philosophy in the advent of Stalinism. Whereas, the Frankfurt School inherits their analysis from Max Weber, a thinker known for his critique of reason by means of an intellecutalized reserve, Merleau-Ponty writes from the anti-intellectualist intuitions of an existentialist-phenomenologist. For those who are weary of heart when 'existentialism' is uttered, rest assured, Merleau-Ponty's existential-phenomenology is a sophisticated re-working of Edmund Husserl. Which is to say, Merleau-Ponty's existential-phenomenology, despite his close friendship with Sartre, conflicts with the latter on many key points -- you won't find the any dramatic declarations within this work. Moreover, he provides one of the most thriving accounts of subjectivity available today (see Phenomenology of Perception, Visible and Invisible)
"The value of society is the value it places on man's relation to man." A quotation that prefigures recent developments in Critical Social Theory, and a lacuna in the thought of French post structuralists. 'Humanism and Terror' remains one of the most insightful expository works on politics, history and the subject. If nothing else, the clarity of his words alone are sure to captivate.
"The value of society is the value it places on man's relation to man." A quotation that prefigures recent developments in Critical Social Theory, and a lacuna in the thought of French post structuralists. 'Humanism and Terror' remains one of the most insightful expository works on politics, history and the subject. If nothing else, the clarity of his words alone are sure to captivate.
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May 30, 2019This book is much better the second time through. I don’t think I understood it much the clear time I read it seven years ago. It’s interesting how re-reading something is like reading it the first time… Sound like a Madonna song? It points to the true problems of political thinking in binaries. The 1947 setting makes for an historically fascinating time!
August 5, 2025
Dated in many respects but the first few chapters on the politics and philosophy of commitment are deeply important. For that alone, the book warrants consideration. As a historical document of the postwar European left, it has immense value. Fun and deep but short read.
October 10, 2019
What choice, then, is left for man, caught as he finds himself on the shores of human history, ragged, wind torn and bedeviled: Stalin’s purge and the terror of the Moscow trials staining communism’s hope for a future at his back, and the colonial, environmental and domestic exploitation—for the worker, too, is made caught in its violent jaws—of capitalism’s and the wealthy, liberal state’s imperialist, violent past and present? Merleau-Ponty offers a well-reasoned, realistic critique of the situation and implores, as well, the intellectually inclined to give not up hope for Marxist socialism, nor to accept at face value the communism of the Soviet Union. Explication of dialectic movement and Hegelian and Marxist historical analysis are strong points and worthwhile reading as well.
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July 26, 2016Merleau-Ponty's worst book by a wide margin. Maybe the most philosophically sophisticated defense of the show trials ever written, nonetheless his whole case basically rests on the same absurd credulity as the most vulgar Stalinst. Later MP would offer a corrective with Adventures of the Dialectic.
January 25, 2021
Vist oli 1940. aasta, kui Arthur Koestler avaldas oma NSVL-i-kriitilise romaani "Keskpäevapimedus." See oli tähenduslik teos ning tekitas omal ajal palju vastukaja. Nimelt oli Koestler olnud ise 1930. aastatel kommunist ning elanud ka Nõukogude Liidus. Kui nälg, terror ja vägivald tema usku ei kõigutanud, siis tegid seda lõpuks hoopis Moskva protsessid, kus surma mõisteti mitmed vanad bolševikud. Sellest siis ka tema sisekaemuslik romaan, kus ta püüab analüüsida "mis läks valesti" läbi ühe välja mõeldud bolševiku Rubašovi silmade, kes lõviosa romaanist veedab kohtueelses vangikongis.
Peamine küsimus, mille üle Rubašov arutleb on see, et kas eetilised järeleandmised on ennast NSVLis ära tasunud. Ehk kas terror on senimaani olnud mõistlik, loomaks tõeliselt humanistlikku ühiskonda, nagu oli NSVLi algne visioon. Mõistagi jääb Koestler oma romaanis eitaval seisukohale. Stalini diktatuuriga kaasnenud vanade bolševike hukkamine oli paljude vasakpoolsete jaoks viimane piisk, mis illusioonid tappis.
Merleau-Ponty esseeraamat on kriitiline vastus Koestlerile, mis leiab, et usku Nõukogude Liitu ei tohiks ükski 1930. aastate "ämber" muuta. Tõenäoliselt on tegemist raamatuga, mille pärast MP isegi häbi tundis, kuna juba kõigest 2 a hiljem muutis ta oma vaateid ning asus Nõukogude-kriitilisele positsioonile. Igatahes on tegemist üsna põhjaliku ja keeruka filosoofilise analüüsiga, mille läbi närimine tekitab tunde, et autori peamine eesmärk on probleeme hägustada. Loomulikult ei saa ma ka kõigist tema arutluskäikudest aru. Tema kummaliste vaadete kaitseks võib öelda, et 1946. a, kui raamat kirjutati, ei teadnud läänemaailm veel enamusest NSVLi kuritegudest. Mõistagi olid prantsuse vasakpoolsed oluliselt paremad lääne kapitalismi kriitikud kui kommunismimaade kriitikud. Võib-olla sellise vaatenurga alt kogu teost just lugema peakski.
Peamine küsimus, mille üle Rubašov arutleb on see, et kas eetilised järeleandmised on ennast NSVLis ära tasunud. Ehk kas terror on senimaani olnud mõistlik, loomaks tõeliselt humanistlikku ühiskonda, nagu oli NSVLi algne visioon. Mõistagi jääb Koestler oma romaanis eitaval seisukohale. Stalini diktatuuriga kaasnenud vanade bolševike hukkamine oli paljude vasakpoolsete jaoks viimane piisk, mis illusioonid tappis.
Merleau-Ponty esseeraamat on kriitiline vastus Koestlerile, mis leiab, et usku Nõukogude Liitu ei tohiks ükski 1930. aastate "ämber" muuta. Tõenäoliselt on tegemist raamatuga, mille pärast MP isegi häbi tundis, kuna juba kõigest 2 a hiljem muutis ta oma vaateid ning asus Nõukogude-kriitilisele positsioonile. Igatahes on tegemist üsna põhjaliku ja keeruka filosoofilise analüüsiga, mille läbi närimine tekitab tunde, et autori peamine eesmärk on probleeme hägustada. Loomulikult ei saa ma ka kõigist tema arutluskäikudest aru. Tema kummaliste vaadete kaitseks võib öelda, et 1946. a, kui raamat kirjutati, ei teadnud läänemaailm veel enamusest NSVLi kuritegudest. Mõistagi olid prantsuse vasakpoolsed oluliselt paremad lääne kapitalismi kriitikud kui kommunismimaade kriitikud. Võib-olla sellise vaatenurga alt kogu teost just lugema peakski.
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October 25, 2025Extremely interesting - not entirely sure Merleau-Ponty doesn't contradict himself at points (and if he can really reconcile his view of humanism with Marxism; he occasionally seems to slip into economic determinism and then back out of it again...), but offers a great analysis of the USSR in 1946 that refuses to criticise it on non-historical grounds and juxtaposes it's violence with the violence that the liberal democracies opposed to it are conducting both internally (via labour, racism, and prisons) and unemployment. There's a stark criticism of Western humanism in this as it's own form of terror. Kind of loved it but really interested to see where he goes in Adventures of the Dialectic.
October 3, 2024
پس از انتشار کتاب ظلمت در نیمروز کوستلر، مرلو پونتی تصمیم میگیرد بحث مبسوط و سختی پیرامون رابطه انقلاب و کمونیسم ارائه دهد. آیا می توان با ارزشهای لیبرالیسم، کمونیسم را داوری کرد؟
مرلوپونتی از ضد کمونیسم ساده انگارانه به دلیل ناتوانی در درک رابطه بین مارکسیست ها و انقلاب انتقاد می کند. رویدادهایی مانند محاکمات مسکو (نمایش) را نمی توان صرفاً به عنوان محاکمه های بدی که معیارهای لیبرال عدالت را برآورده نمی کند درک کرد. در عین حال، مرلوپونتی دولت شوروی را توجیه نمی کند، بلکه رابطه پیچیده بین مارکسیسم و احساس گناه را نشان می دهد. از آنجایی که انقلابیون همیشه رفتار خود را با اشاره به تضادهای واقعی در تاریخ که آنها را مجبور به عمل می کند توجیه می کنند، تنها با غربال کردن آن تضادها می توانید شرایط اعمال فردی را بیاموزید. این امر به مرلوپونتی اجازه میدهد تا افرادی مانند استالین، بوخارین و تروتسکی را بدون اینکه دیدگاههای آنها را نهایی بپذیرد، در تاریخ جای دهد.
کتاب نه همچون سایر خطابه های پرشور هواداران کمونیسم، که یک بحث کاملا پدیدارشناسانه از استاد مسلم آن است. گاهی ترجمه و گاهی هم متن اصلی، چنان ذهن را خسته می کند که لازم است چند نوبت متن را خواند تا به طور ضمنی درکش کرد.
مرلوپونتی از ضد کمونیسم ساده انگارانه به دلیل ناتوانی در درک رابطه بین مارکسیست ها و انقلاب انتقاد می کند. رویدادهایی مانند محاکمات مسکو (نمایش) را نمی توان صرفاً به عنوان محاکمه های بدی که معیارهای لیبرال عدالت را برآورده نمی کند درک کرد. در عین حال، مرلوپونتی دولت شوروی را توجیه نمی کند، بلکه رابطه پیچیده بین مارکسیسم و احساس گناه را نشان می دهد. از آنجایی که انقلابیون همیشه رفتار خود را با اشاره به تضادهای واقعی در تاریخ که آنها را مجبور به عمل می کند توجیه می کنند، تنها با غربال کردن آن تضادها می توانید شرایط اعمال فردی را بیاموزید. این امر به مرلوپونتی اجازه میدهد تا افرادی مانند استالین، بوخارین و تروتسکی را بدون اینکه دیدگاههای آنها را نهایی بپذیرد، در تاریخ جای دهد.
کتاب نه همچون سایر خطابه های پرشور هواداران کمونیسم، که یک بحث کاملا پدیدارشناسانه از استاد مسلم آن است. گاهی ترجمه و گاهی هم متن اصلی، چنان ذهن را خسته می کند که لازم است چند نوبت متن را خواند تا به طور ضمنی درکش کرد.
August 3, 2024
This is a book about the connection between humanism and political violence. I believe the author rightly argues that humanism can champion liberty and freedom of speech but it can also lead to authoritarianism and in the extreme, terrorism. The author argues against sacrificing individual liberties for collective "progress" (Amen, brother!) This long essay was written in response to the show trials that took place under Stalin in 1936-1938; specifically that of Bukharin. Also as response to Koestler's Darkness at Noon. I did not think that I would like or agree with anything by this author, as he is a noted French, liberal philosopher, but we do have a couple of compatible thoughts. Who knew?;) 140 pages
September 6, 2024
Modern political discourse simply doesn't compare.
Thorough analysis of the moral nature of the Russian Revolution.
"The human world is an open an unfinished system and the same radical contingency which threatens it with discord also rescues it from the inevitability of disorder and prevents us from despairing of it.
[..]
It is a view which like the most fragile object of perception - a soap bubble, or a wave - it like the most simple dialogue, embraces indivisibly all the order and all the disorder of the world."
Thorough analysis of the moral nature of the Russian Revolution.
"The human world is an open an unfinished system and the same radical contingency which threatens it with discord also rescues it from the inevitability of disorder and prevents us from despairing of it.
[..]
It is a view which like the most fragile object of perception - a soap bubble, or a wave - it like the most simple dialogue, embraces indivisibly all the order and all the disorder of the world."
February 20, 2024
One of the more misunderstood books in the history of political philosophy. In his introduction, Merleau-Ponty accused those critics who charged him with Stalinism as, to paraphrase, unable to read. Despite 80 more years of scholarship, folks still fall into the same trap. An excellent treatise on humanism and a sharp indictment of the barbarous contradictions inherent to global North-West liberal democracies.
June 2, 2025
This definitely complies with Foucault’s dictum that at least 25% of any author’s work should be incomprehensible nonsense. It seems to be a book written in the passion of particular events occurring at the time and which, to a contemporary audience, appears extraordinarily foreign.
Not one to re read nor really one to pick up.
Not one to re read nor really one to pick up.
July 31, 2021
Brilliant but wrong. Oh, those French…
May 29, 2025
Expanding on Merleau-Ponty’s work on phenomenology, Humanism and Terror interrogates how states and individuals come to carry out terrorist acts.
January 11, 2025
Interesting reflections on Koestler’s Darkness at Noon about the Moscow show trials of the late 1930’s. Merleau-Ponty is a great example of how one’s theoretical philosophy can shape praxis and political thought. But, the work presupposes a decent knowledge of Marxism: the various iterations of Lenin, Trotsky, and Stalin, so it can be be tough going at times.
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February 8, 2019335.43094 M564 1985
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