The Art of Doubting
Merleau-Ponty and Cezanne
Merleau-Ponty's essay, "Cezanne's Doubt,,,1
appeared in December of 1945, the same year he
published his Phenomenology of Perception,
which would become a classic manifesto of"ex-
istential phenomenology," and collaborated with
Jean-Paul Sartre to found Les Temps Modernes.
While the ostensible aim ofMerleau-Ponty's es-
say is an examination of Cezanne 's painting, it is
no less a thumbnail sketch of his own philosophy
as developed in Phenomenology of Perception.
Given that Merleau-Ponty seeks in Cezanne an
artistic parallel to his own philosophical rumina-
tions, our caution should be alerted; as Sabine
Cone noted while Curator of France's National
Museums, "Cezanne's theories are contradictory
enough to enable one to justify anything." But,
while there is the danger that Merleau-Ponty
finds in Cezanne only what he has put there, it
must also be mentioned that Merleau-Ponty's ex-
amination continues to influence art historians
and interpreters of'Cezanne.' It might be claimed,
in fact, that the very malleability of Cezanne's
work has its parallel in Merleau-Ponty, whose
Phenomenology one early critic labeled "a phi-
losophy of ambiguity," To stick with only one
ambiguity at a time, I will leave aside the ques-
tion of how Merleau-Ponty's examination of
Cezanne relates to that of other interpreters,' and
instead focus on the positive characterization he
offers of Cezanne and its parallels with his own
philosophy. I will begin by discussing the explicit
themes ofMerleau-Ponty's essay, namely (a) the
importance of Cezanne's "return to nature" and
(b) the relation of the artist's life to the meaning
of his work, particularly as these themes eluci-
date the nature of the "doubt" peculiar to
Cezanne. In the second part of this essay, I will
explore the significance of this "doubt" for un-
derstanding Merleau-Ponty's own work and es-
pecially his relation to Jean-Paul Sartre. Giacom-
etti, Sartre's paradigm artist, also manifests
"doubt." But, I will argue, the doubt shared by Gi-
acometti and Sartre differs significantly from that
PHILOSOPHY TODAY
Theodore A. Toadvine, Jr.
of Merleau-Ponty and Cezanne, and it is within
the space of this difference that we can distin-
guish Merleau-Ponty's brand of existential phe-
nomenology from Sartre's existentialism.'
Metaphysical Doubt
As the title of his essay indicates, Merleau-
Ponty is interested in Cezanne's "doubt," that is,
in his uncertainty, his lack of self-confidence, the
struggle and tension of his life. When Cezanne
first made his decision to become a painter, this
lack of self-confidence prevented him from ask-
ing his father to send him to Paris. When he fi-
nally did embark on his career, chastised by his
childhood friend Zola for his "instability, his
weakness, and his indecision" (CD, 14/60), his
attempts met with complete critical rejection.
Described as "a kind of madman who paints in .
delirium tremens,"? an "artist with diseased
eyes," and "nothing but a lamentable failure,"
critics wrote that "of all knownjuries, none could
even in a dream entertain the possibility of ac-
cepting any pictures of this painter?" And in fact
the government, art authorities, and the public all
cried out for the refusal of a collection donated to
the Musee du Luxembourg, and later transferred
to the Louvre, II which contained several Cezan-
nes, calling it a "collection of rubbish which pub-
licly dishonors French art.?" In the face of such
criticism, it is perhaps no surprise that Cezanne
himself came to wonder if the novelty of his
painting were nothing more than an "accident of
his body" stemming from "trouble with his eyes"
(CD, 13/59).13
But Cezanne's anxiety ran deeper than doubt
about his painting ability. He often said he found
life terrifying, while his fear of death drove him
to create a will at the age offorty-six and to begin
practicing religion in his fifties. As he grew older,
he detached himself more and more from those
who admired his work, would motion from a dis-
tance for friends not to approach him, avoided
new situations, and relied on the established hab-
WINTER 1997
545
its of his life of solitude. He had a "morbid consti-
tution" (CD, 15/61), a "basically anxious" nature
(CD, 14/60).
The combination of Ceziinne's history, his
treatment at the hands of his critics, and his psy-
chological tendency towards indecision, instabil-
ity, even schizothymia, apparently provide abun-
dant explanation for his "doubts" as well as for
his withdrawal from human subject matter to-
ward landscapes and nature. But it is precisely
because they were so close to him, to his life and
psychology, that Cezanne's contemporaries
could be satisfied with this psychological expla-
nation of the meaning of his work. In fact, ac-
cording to Merleau-Ponty, nothing could be less
an explanation for the meaning of an artist's work
than the simple facts of her or his psychology.
Nor can this meaning be simply extracted by the
study of art historical influences, Cezanne's tech-
nique, or even his own pronouncements. The
meaning of Cezanne's art-and the meaning of
his struggle--is not to be found in any of the facts
of his life. Cezanne's doubt is not an anxious psy-
chological disposition. Ifwe want to understand
the true meaning of his doubt-its metaphysical
meaning-we must begin by examining his
work, and only then return to see how the facts of
Cezanne's life contribute to the expression of this
metaphysical meaning.
Under the influence of the Impressionists,
Cezanne's painting shifted from an attempt to
project dreams and fantasies onto canvas to an
"exact study of appearances" (CD, 16/61), na-
ture, or the visible aspect of things. Impression-
ism tried "to capture, in the painting, the very
way in which objects strike our eyes and attack
our. senses" (CD, 16/61). Through the juxtaposi-
tion of only the seven colors of the spectrum, Im-
pressionists broke down the local tone of the ob-
ject, eliminating its contours and submerging it
into the atmosphere of the whole. The effect was
a "generally true impression" formed by the in-
teraction of the parts, which no longer corre-
sponded point-by-point with nature. But while
the object is lost in an Impressionist painting, it is
rediscovered by Cezanne, who wished "to repre-
sent the object, to find it again behind the atmos-
phere" (CD, 16/62). By retaining the local tone
with an expanded palette and remaining close to
the form and lighting of the represented objects,
Cezanne gives them "an impression of solidity
and material substance" (CD, 17/62). While the
PHILOSOPHY TODAY
546
impressionists give up the object in favor of sen-
sation, Cezanne wishes to retain their technique
but use it to capture the organization of the object
itself in our visual field.
Like the Impressionists, Cezanne avoids
imagination, abstraction, and the rectifications
imposed by judgement. He disregards the classi-
cal emphasis on outline, composition, and per-
spective in favor of the "immediate impression of
nature" (CD, 17/63). But, all the same, he insisted
that his goal was the representation of "reality."
This paradoxical task is what Emile Bernard
called "Cezanne's suicide: aiming for reality
while denying himself the means to attain it"
(CD, 17/63). The distortions and illusions in his
work, which spurred so much aversion in his crit-
ics, stem from this paradoxical approach to paint-
ing.
But it is in Cezanne's willingness to embrace
this paradox that we find the key to his genius and
the originality of his work. For Cezanne, there is
a basic distinction to be drawn between the spon-
taneous organization of our perceptual life and
the human organization imposed upon this per-
ception by our science and tradition. The mean-
ing of his painting lies in his continual attempt to
unearth, beneath its human organization, the
spontaneous unity of our natural perception. At
this primordial level, the classic dichotomies
which structure our thought about painting and
perception--seeing vs. thinking, nature vs. com-
position, primitivism vs. tradition, feeling vs.
thought, appearance vs. reality-have no hold.
One need not choose between these alternatives,
since the poles are indistinguishable at "the birth
of order through spontaneous organization" (CD,
18/63-64). In fact, what is revealed in Cezanne's
approach is not a returnto the "natural?" which
precedes or underlies the "nuiilim'" asaseparate-
sIfatUifi,DUti~e locus where distinctions
be een'Iiliiuraf and artificial cannot be drawn.
"Wesee1liiiigs; we agree about them; we are an-
chored in them" (CD, 18/64). On the basis of this
agreement and anchorage, we construct the
world of human projects and cultural objects.
Cezanne's desire is not to disregard the cultural,
but precisely to bring to light the anchorage
which ties it to a world of perceptual accord.
The return to perceptual experience is made
possible by a suspension of our everyday way of
looking at objects, and this requires a suspension
of the theories we naively adopt from traditional
science and painting. Our "lived perspective" is
not the geometrical perspective of Renaissance
painting; we must not "substitute for our actual
perception what we would see if we were cam-
eras" (CD, 19/64):
when our eye runs over a large surface, the images
it successively receives are taken from different
points of view, and the whole surface is warped. It
is true that I freeze these distortions in repainting
them on the canvas; I stop the spontaneous move-
ment in which they pile up in perception and tend
toward the geometrical perspective. (CD, 19/64)
The distortions stem from the attempt to capture
the moment when the different perspectives fight
for our attention in living vision. The photo-
graphic or geometrical perspective eliminates the
confusion of natural vision by flattening each ob-
ject into its place, eliminating the jumble of sepa-
rated points against separated backgrounds. But
when viewed as a whole, the discordant perspec-
tives of the Cezannian composition work to-
getherto offer "the impression of an emerging or-
der, an object in the act of appearing, organizing
itself before our eyes" (CD, 20/65). Similarly,
Cezanne restores depth by refusing the single-
lined contour which transforms shapes into ob-
jects. Depth, the "dimension in which the thing is
presented not as spread out before us but as an in-
exhaustible reality full of reserves" (CD, 20/65),
is retained by a multiplication of outlines which
the eye gathers together to discover an emerging
shape.
The attempt to aint th~-.FQI1<!a~it is experi-
enced pnmordiiiIly is not a rejectionof interpre-
ta IOn In favoro[Q1!re seeing, butonly of an inJer-
pretation which would be foreign to seeing itself.
JusTIfSfne rules of tennis must be learned in order
to play, but are then submerged into the natural
activity of the game, the rules of traditional paint-
ing must be absorbed-but then subjugated to the
"motif' of the landscape. As Cezanne would say,
"The landscape thinks itself in me and I am its
consciousness" (CD, 23/67). While Emile Ber-
nard quipped that "a realistic painter is only an
ape" (CD, 22/67), Cezanne's approach to "real-
ism" is just the opposite, since only a human can
suspend everydayness to grasp the truth of
things. Only human reflection can return to the
perceptual foundations of its own cultural edi-
fice. Nature reaches self-consciousness only
through the mediation of the human spirit.
Art, on this view, is neither imitation nor the
creation of an object in accordance with "good
taste" (CD, 23/67). The true source of Cezanne's
doubt, according to Merleau-Ponty, lies in the
function of art as expression:
Words do not look like the things they designate;
and a picture is not a trompe-l 'oeil. Cezanne, in his
own words, "writes in painting what has never yet
been painted, and turns it into painting once and for
all." We, forgetting the viscous, equivocal appear-
ances, go through them straight to the things they
present. The painter recaptures and converts into
visible objects what would, without him, remain
walled up in the separate life of each conscious-
ness: the vibration of appearances which is the cra-
dle of things. (CD, 23/68)
Cezanne's real struggle is not the classical diffi-
culty of art, i.e., of sufficient rigor and technical
precision, but the struggle to wrest a meaning
from what is inherently mute and yet strains to
speak, to bring to vision what is normally trans-
parent and yet is the very vehicle of vision. If one
reads a poem solely for the significations of its
words, one passes by all it contains of the poetic
strictly speaking. Cezanne has effected a poetry
of vision precisely by restoring to vision the pre-
objective appearances normally passed through
on the way to the objective thing.
The difficulties of expression are the difficul-
ties of the first word, the paradox of instituting a
new tradition rather than simply rearranging the
ready-made acquisitions of culture. Such a crea-
tion cannot be simply the externalization of a
pre-formed conception in the mind of the artist,
since the meaning of the work can only be forged
through its execution. The source of Cezanne's
uncertainty lies in this contingency: nothing
guarantees that the work will hit its mark, since
only creation can teach where the mark lies. Like
the first word, the necessity lies in detaching a
meaning from the flow of a particular life to make
it accessible for all. But since no rules for the in-
terpretation yet exist, only the work can teach its
viewer how to read its meaning, Those who wish
to found a tradition must do more than simply
form a new idea, "they must also awaken the ex-
periences which will make their idea take root in
the consciousness of others" (CD, 25/70). Radi-
cal expression must capture for the first time the
structure which can direct the hermeneutic ad-
venture of the spectator. Cezanne's doubts, then,
MERLEAU-PONTY AND CEZANNE
547
stem not from his psychological makeup, but
from the uncertainty of his goal and the inherent
contingencies of the expressive act.
The expressive relation which holds between
the facts of a painting or a text and its meaning is
homologous with the expressivity of a life. It is in
terms of expression, then, that we must under-
stand the meaning of Cezanne's life as an artist in
relation to the psychological facts and historical
contingencies of which this life is comprised,
since these facts form "the text which nature and
history gave him to decipher" (CD, 26/70). Ifwe
seem to find within Cezanne's psychology the
seeds of his work, it is because we approach his
life retrospectively, with the meaning of his ma-
ture work already before our eyes. While the giv-
ens and accidents may provide the "what" of a
life it remains true that the "how" is undeter-
mined and awaits the formation of a project
which "freely interpret[s] itself' (CD, 26/70).
But this freedom is no causa sui which simply
imposes a sense on eve~ts arbin:ary and m~anin~-
less in themselves. Whtle the givens ofa life nei-
ther explain nor determine its path, it is equally
true that one's life and being provide the "pre-
liminary project" for all later dev~lopme,nts: O~
retrospective interpretation of Cezanne s life IS
not, therefore, an arbitrary projection, si~ce we
can find in his early indecisiveness and his later
schizothymia the symbols and dimensions of ex-
istence which are given a metaphysical meaning
through his painting. Just as Cezanne sought his
"motif' which would organize the landscape of a
painting, the givens of a life organize themselves
into "motives" which, unlike determining causes,
must be taken up and given meaning to attain
their efficacy.
While Sartre in discussing freedom had em-
phasized the spontaneity of a free choice that
knows no constraints that are not self-imposed,
for Merleau-Ponty we find that "the choice has
already been made for us with our first breath"
(CD, 27/71). Our existence is imbued from the
start with a certain style, an expressive relation
manifest in our perceptual bond with the sur-
rounding world:
If I am a certain project from birth, the given and
the created are indistinguishable in me, and it is
therefore impossible to name a single gesture
which is merely hereditary or innate, a single ges-
ture which is not spontaneous--but also impossi-
PHILOSOPHY TODAY
548
ble to name a single gesture which is absolutely
new with regard to that way of being in the world
which, from the beginning, is myself. (CD,
27-8/71)
The paradox of freedom lies in thinking both
horns simultaneously: on the one hand, each of
my acts freely goes beyond what has been laid
out for me by the facts of my nature; while, on the
other, there is no act which doesn't find its motive
already etched into my life. Just as the spontane-
ous organization of appearances gives rise to the
object of primordial perception, freedom "dawns
in us without breaking our bonds with the world"
(CD, 28/72) by spontaneously organizing the
givens of our life.
Existential Doubt
Merleau-Ponty's essay on Cezanne has a
nested structure, since it applies the relation of
expression manifest in Cezanne's painting to the
problem of understanding the relation b~tween
the artist and his life. But, as Jean-Francois Lyo-
tard has noted, "Merleau-Ponty certainly would
not have been a great commentator on Cezanne if
'Cezanne's doubt' hadn't been his own.?" We
should expect to find this same structure dupli-
cated, then, in Merleau-Ponty's own work."
When Merleau-Ponty presented the thesis of
Phenomenology of Perception to the members of
the Societe francaise de philosophie in 1946, the
year following the publication of "Ceza~e's
Doubt," his account immediately raised objec-
tions which echoed Emile Bernard's proclama-
tion of Cezanne's "suicide." Emile Brehier sug-
gested that Merleau-Ponty "inverts the ordinary
meaning of what we call philosophy," and de-
stroys his position in the very attempt to formu-
late it. 16 The "suicide" in both cases is the same,
since both Cezanne and Merleau-Ponty aim for
reality while denying themselves the means tra-
ditionally thought necessary to reach it.
The perennial theme of Merleau-Ponty's phi-
losophy is the aim he imputes to Cezanne: the re-
turn to nature as revealed in our perceptual con-
tact with the world. For Merleau-Ponty, accurate
description of this primordial contact entails the
rejection of idealism and realism and the return to
an ontology of meaning or sens" Drawing on
Gestalt psychology and Husserlian phenomenol-
ogy, Merleau-Ponty seeks the foundation of a~l
cultural acquisitions in the spontaneous orgaru-
zation of the world given to perception. To cap-
ture this moment of originary perception, it is
necessary to suspend out habitual ways of deal-
ing with the world and bracket our naturalistic
preconceptions. This process draws us into an
"unfamiliar world in which [we are] uncomfort-
able" (CD, 22/66), according to Merleau-Ponty's
remarks on Cezanne:
If one looks at the work of other painters after see-
ing Cezanne's paintings, one feels somehow re-
laxed, just as conversations resumed after a period
of mourning mask the absolute change and restore
to the survivors their solidity. (CD, 22/66-fJ7)
The crisis of expression is essentially a crisis of
finitude; the attempt to confront expression at its
birth disintegrates everyday platitudes as does an
encounter with death. Even da Vinci's dispas-
sionate objectivity and masterful control of the
meaning of his own existence hides a "secret his-
tory" (CD, 29/73). Merleau-Ponty's confronta-
tion with the problem of expression is finally a
thinly disguised examination of the "existential"
crisis of meaning, humanity's ungroundedness
once the traditional boundaries drawn by nature,
society, and religion have been shattered.
Cezanne is not an artist whose work springs to
mind with the mention of "existentialism." We
are more likely to recall Giacometti's Tall Walk-
ing Figure, typical of his "elongated figures ex-
pressing nihilism and despain''" which graces the
cover of an early introduction to existentialism
19
entitled Irrational Man. Giacometti's art has
been described as
an effort that acknowledged in advance its own
failure but which at the same time insisted that
nothing was more valid than to make the effort
anyway. This fundamental contradiction, arising
from the hopeless discrepancy between concep-
tion and realization, is at the root of all artistic crea-
tion,z°
By embodying this hopeless struggle, Giacom-
etti earns his title as an "existentialist" artist (GP,
39). It is not surprising, then, that Sartre, existen-
tialism's ringleader, adopted Giacometti's paint-
ing as representative of his own philosophical
doctrines. Although at one time Merleau-Ponty's
philosophical position was routinely collapsed
into a variation on Sartre's existentialism," their
respective positions on the possibility of human
communication and meaning differ radically.
This divergence is best illuminated by contrast-
ing the doubt of Cezanne-and Merleau-
Ponty-with the doubt of Sartre's paradigmatic
artist, Giacometti."
InA Giacometti Portrait, James Lord recounts
the painter's self-doubt" and despair at the im-
possibility of the task of painting. Over the
course of eighteen sittings, Giacometti repeat-
edly paints a portrait only to paint it out and begin
again, explaining this endless repetition by sug-
gesting that ''you have to do something by undo-
ing it. ... You have to dare to give the final brush-
stroke that makes everything disappear" (GP,
79).24 He sees the goal of his work in terms of the
task set by Cezanne: "Cezanne discovered that
it's impossible to copy nature. You can't do it.
But one must try all the same, try-like
Cezanne-to translate one's sensation" (GP,
79).25 As in the case of Cezanne, the difficulties of
painting do not lead Giacometti into an artistic
quietism. But while Giacometti sees his task as
identical with that of Cezanne, his difficulty does
not stem from the struggle of expression, of re-
storing a vision by stripping away layers of cul-
tural sedimentation. For Giacometti, the "possi-
bility of reproducing exactly by means of brushes
and pigment the sensation of vision caused by a
particular aspect of reality" is "by definition an
impossibility and yet for that very reason is entic-
ing" (GP, 20).26 The task of painting, then, is the
task of Sisyphus." In full knowledge of the im-
possibility of his goal-to reproduce or create a
"likeness" of'nature'i-c-Giacometti labors on. He
accepts the traditional hierarchy which considers
art as a faulty imitation" ~r rather, in his case,
an impossible imitation-which is why he can
recommend that ''what's best is simply to look at
people" (GP, 33). Giacometti's doubt stems from
the "essential, unbearable duality" (GP, 23) im-
posed by the task of painting, which fills him with
a "constant anxiety" (GP, 36). In an apparently
spontaneous paraphrase of Sartre, he proclaims
that Hell is the face he is engaged in painting (GP,
67).
For Sartre, Giacometti's sculptures incarnate
an untraversible distance-no matter how close
we are to them, they remain distant, repelling us
by their solitude. This distance is not the distance
between two obj ects in objective space, since dis-
tance is a measure of human space30~nly for a
human can a point be farther off or out of reach.
Considering, for example, City Square, 1949,
MERLEAU-PONTY AND CEZANNE
549
Sartre finds "men crossing a public square with-
out seeing each other; they pass, hopelessly
alone, and yet together; they will be forever lost
from each other, yet would never lose each other
if they had not sought each other?" The un-
bridgeable distance between these forlorn figures
is, according to Sartre, "negation in the form of a
vacuum,':" the hole or non-being that comprises
consciousness in the midst of the plenum of the
world." The task of sculpting a human figure is
that of transforming the "plenum" of a thing into
the "vacuum" of human existence. Giacometti,
Sartre explains, is a sculptor because he is driven
to reproduce the "boundless vacuum" that sur-
rounds him; "he wears his vacuum as a snail its
shell."
Painting, is however, the opposite task. Rather
than carving a void into a plenum, the painting
begins with the emptiness of an absolute void,
and within this frame presents the birth of Being
from Nothingness. But the difficulty here lies in
refusing to fill the canvas, in retaining the Void as
pre-existing the figure which comes into being.
What lies behind the figure, then, cannot be its
"background;" the two can have no relation. The
separation between the figure and the vacuum
cannot be a line, which would make of the non-
existent "ground" a surface. The figure stands
radically aloof: "Nothing encloses him, nothing
supports him, nothing contains him.?" Painting is
therefore an attempt to capture "the moment of
creation ex nihilol'"
By eliminating contours, Giacometti avoids
balance, the reconciliation of opposites, the pas-
sivity where two equal forces meet. The line indi-
cates mediation, the beginning of a passage from
being to non-being. But for Giacometti, as for
Sartre, "Being is, and then, all of a sudden, it is no
longer. But there is no transition conceivable
from Being to Nothingness.?" The lines of force
within Giacometti's paintings are all centripetal,
threatening to contract the figure into itself, into
absolute solidity. But where there can be no me-
diation or transition, there is continuous fluctua-
tion: the vacuum is simply the unfolding of the
plenum, while the plenum is an "oriented vac-
uum.?" In painting exactly as he sees, Giacometti
makes his figures, "at the heart of their original
vacuum ... fluctuate ceaselessly between conti-
nuity and discontinuity?" The details of each fig-
ure seem clear only when our attention is focused
elsewhere; each feature escapes when I attempt
PHILOSOPHY TODAY
550
to examine it, only to recongeal on the margins of
my gaze once I turn away. On Sartre's view, Gi-
acometti's attempt to create the living experience
of another human being-the "shock that we feel
on returning late and seeing a stranger walking
toward us in the dark"--requires that the like-
ness, the image on the canvas, be known in ad-
vance to be only a "likeness." Only in this way
can it truly imitate the plastic form of the human
face, which, as the incarnation of nothingness, al-
ternates between an object for my manipulation
and a gaze which forces my retreat.
For Sartre, the struggle for domination within
which all human relationships vacillate is en-
tailed by a dualistic ontology. The absolute pleni-
tude of Being is punctuated by the Nothingness
of consciousness without the possibility of any
mediation or resolution. Through the free adop-
tion of a project, consciousness forges its own
meaning, unable to rely on any external inspira-
tion or hope for any eventual communion with
others. The reconciliation of Being with Noth-
ingness, the ultimate goal of all human projects,
remains impossible, with the result that human
existence is a ''useless passion.?" The painting of
Giacometti is the perfect incarnation of this use-
less passion in its endless, hopeless attempt to
forge the Being of Nothingness and the Nothing-
ness of Being.
The futile passion ofSartrean existentialism is
sharply distinct from the contingency that char-
acterizes Merleau-Ponty's struggle for expres-
sion. Human existence, for Sartre, is a contradic-
tion that allows of no resolution. Expression, for
Merleau-Ponty, is paradoxical precisely because
it somehow puts us in contact with others, allows
us to reach accord, and makes possible the spon-
taneous organization of a meaning that exceeds
the constructions of human consciousness--de-
spite, or rather by means of, the very accidents
and particularities that would seem to impede it.
The primordial situation is not forlornness and
despair, but coexistence within a world of mean-
ing made common through the activity of expres-
sion. Human existence is continually outside it-
self, for Merleau-Ponty as well as Sartre. In
Sartre's terms, I must continually strive to fill the
lack which defines my existence, but all possible
attempts to fill this lack with Being result in my
own annihilation as a subject. But for Merleau-
Ponty, the struggle of existence is ultimately be-
yond our control due to its reliance on others and
a contingent world. Cezanne's work remained a
struggle because success at forging a universal
meaning from a particular experience can only be
gauged retrospectively. The contingencies of this
task cannot be eliminated, and its success can
only be measured by posterity-which, in effect,
guarantees that all successes, including Cezan-
ne's, are finite, since their absolute fulfillment is
infinitely deferred.
Just as Merleau-Ponty sought to explore the
adventure of expression manifest in the life of
Cezanne, we might ask further about Merleau-
Ponty's own doubt. Never does Merleau-Ponty
hint at the struggle of his own attempt to institute
a new philosophical entry onto human experi-
ence. But, if this reading of his essay is correct, it
is precisely Merleau-Ponty's own doubts and un-
certainties that are reflected in his reading of
Cezanne. Human expression, in philosophy as
well as art, is not essentially an act of solitary
creation. No philosophical achievement can
spring fully-formed, an Athena from the head of
its Zeus-like creator, for the simple reason that all
new expressions must find an audience and re-
produce the experience that can lead to their own
propagation. As Merleau-Ponty's century draws
to a close, whether his work will survive remains
an open question-and one which can be an-
swered only by the work of future generations of
philosophers.

ENDNOTES

I. "Le doute de Cezanne" first appeared in Fontaine: Revue 5. Merleau-Ponty's relation to other critics has been touched
mensuelle de la poesie et des lettres francaises 6 (Decem- on by Galen Johnson, "Phenomenology and Painting:
ber, 1945): 80-100, and was reprinted unchanged in Sens 'Cezanne's Doubt,''' The Merleau-Ponty Aesthetics
et non-sens (Paris: Gallimard, 1945); Sense and Non- Reader, pp.6-7; and by Forrest Williams, "Cezanne, Phe-
Sense, trans. by Hubert and Patricia Dreyfus (Evanston: nomenology, and Merleau-Ponty,' ibid .. pp. 168-70.
Northwestern, 1964). A new translation by Michael Smith 6. It should be noted that this essay will deal only with
has recently appeared in The Merleau-Ponty Aesthetics Merleau-Ponty's thought on art and perception up to the
Reader, ed. Galen Johnson (Evanston: Northwestern, time of the publication of "Cezanne's Doubt." For an over-
1993), pp. 59-75. Hereafter, this essay will be cited in the view of later developments in Merleau-Ponty's writings
text as "CD," with French pagination from Sens et non- on painting, see Galen Johnson, "Structures and Painting:
sens preceding the pagination of Smith's English transla- 'Indirect Language and the Voices of Silence'" and "On-
tion. tology and Painting: 'Eye and Mind,''' The Merleau-Ponty
Aesthetics Reader, pp. 14--55. For a concise statement of
2. Sabine Corte, "Introduction," in Cezanne, trans. Carol
the central role philosophy of art plays throughout
Martin-Sperry (Paris: Henri Screpel), p. 28.
Merleau-Ponty's career, see Michael Smith, "Merleau-
3. E.g. Corte's "Introduction" and Judith Weschler, ed.,
Ponty's Aesthetics," ibid., pp. 192-211.
Cezanne in Perspective (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-
7. Marc de Montifaud, "The Exhibition of the Boulevard des
Hall, 1975). Weschler discusses Merleau-Ponty in her "In-
Capucines" excerpted in Cezanne in Perspective, p. 25.
troduction" (p. 16), and includes a selection from "Cezan-
8. J. K. Huysmans, "Cezanne," excerpted in Cezanne in Per-
ne's Doubt" in her collection of critical and interpretive
spective, p. 31. See also Huysmans ~'Response to Camille
discussions.
Pissarro," ibid., p. 30, in which Cezanne is described as an
4. Ferdinand Alquie, "Une philosophie de I' ambiguite: L'Ex- "eye case."
istentialisme de Maurice Merleau-Ponty," Fontaine II 9. Anonymous review from La Lanteme, excerpted in
(April, 1947): 47-70. Although this label was originally Cezanne in Perspective, p. 38.
applied derisively, Merleau-Ponty and his advocates 10. Jean Prouvaire, "The Exhibition of the Boulevard des
adopted it as a positive title. Capucines," excerpted in Cezanne in Perspective, p. 26.

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551
II. The details.of the Caillebotte Bequest can be found in 21. For instance, in Jean Wahl's influential A Short History of
. Bernard Dorival, The School of Paris in the Musee d'Art Existentialism, trans. Forrest Williams and Stanley Maron
Modeme, trans. Cornelia Brookfield and Ellen Hart (New (New York: Philosophical Library, 1949). Wahl includes
York: Harry N. Abrams Inc., 1962), pp. 22-23. Merleau-Ponty with Sartre and Beauvoir as composing the
12. Sabine Cotte, Cezanne, p. 20. "Philosophical School of Paris" (p. 2), but finds no need to
13. Merleau-Ponty rejects a similar reductionistic explana- discuss the views of'Merleau-Ponty or Beauvoir individu-
tion of El Greco's work in terms of astigmatism in La ally, since their "theories are similar to those of Sartre,
Structure du comportement (paris: PUF, 1942), p. 219; though sometimes applied in different domains of experi-
The Structure of Behavior, trans. Alden Fisher (Pittsburgh: ence" (p. 31).
Duquesne University Press, 1983), p. 203. Of course, this assimilation ofMerieau-Ponty's views to
14. Jean-Francois Lyotard, "Philosophy and Painting in the those ofSartre is not without cause. Consider, for instance,..
Age of their Experimentation: Contribution to an Idea of Merleau-Ponty's very sympathetic defenses of Sartre in
Postmodernity," trans. Maria Minich Brewer & Daniel "The Battle over Existentialism" and "A Scandalous
Brewer, The Merleau-Ponty Aesthetics Reader, p. 329. Author," both collected in Sense and Non-Sense.
15. The importance of doubt suggested by the title of 22. I will draw mainly on Sartre's discussion in "The Paint-
Merleau-Ponty's essay has gone virtually unrecognized in ings of Giacometti,' which first appeared in Les Temps
the secondary literature, particularly with respect to the re- Modemes (June, 1954). It is perhaps significant that Sar-
flection of this doubt onto Merleau-Ponty's own work. tre's study of Giacometti appeared shortly after his break
Michael Smith considers the discussion of doubt an "exis- with Merleau-Ponty due to disagreements about the politi-
tential aspect" of the essay which can quickly be left aside cal direction of the review, as detailed in Sartre,
in "Merleau-Ponty's Aesthetics," pp. 2()()-{)1. While Ga- "Merleau-Ponty,' Situations, trans. Benita Eisler (New
len Johnson recognizes the issue of doubt as a central rea- York: George Braziller, 1965), pp. 227-326.
son for Merleau-Ponty's interest in Cezanne, he does not 23. Lord refers specifically to Giacometti's "doubt" and
examine the philosophical basis for this interest and fails "self-doubt," cf. GP, pp. 13,27,38. One must not overlook
to recognize the metaphysical dimension of doubt. See the almost certain influence of Sartre's writings on both
"Phenomenology and Painting: 'Cezanne's Doubt,''' pp. Giacometti and Lord, which is why I will avoid the impos-
5-6. None of the other essays discussing "Cezanne's sible task of determining the "true" Giacometti or repre-
Doubt" in The Merleau-Ponty Aesthetics Reader devote senting Lord's reports as independent corroboration of
any attention to the issue of doubt, despite the title of the Sartre's interpretation.
essay itselfl 24. See also GP, p. 10 I.
16. ''The Primacy of Perception and its Philosophical Conse- 25. Cezanne is cited more than any other painter, cf. ibid., pp.
quences," The Primacy of Perception, ed. James Edie 17,29,33,47,52,61,72-73,78,90,91-92, lOS.
(Evanston: Northwestern, 1964), pp. 28 & 29. This discus- 26. See also ibid., pp. 49, 66, 72.
sion took place on November 23, 1946, and first appeared 27. Cf. ibid., pp. 72, 90.
in Bulletin de la societe francaise
de philosophie 49 (De- 28. Cf. ibid., p. 34.
cember, 1947). Brehier's remarks appear on pp. 136 & 29. The influence of the theme of imitation in the history of
138. philosophy of art and its political consequences are suc-
17. The phrase "ontologie du sens" is Hyppolite's. See "The cinctly set out in Leonard Lawlor, "On the Philosophy of
Primacy of Perception," pp. 149 (French)/39 (English). Art: Imitation and Beyond," (unpublished).
18. This characterization is offered by Wade Baskin in a 30. Sartre, ''The Paintings of Giacometti,' p. 403.
translator's note to J.P. Sartre, "The Paintings of Giacom- 31. Ibid., p. 405.
etti,' Essays in Existentialism, ed. Wade Baskin (Secau- 32. Ibid.
cus, NJ: Citadel Press, 1965), p. 402. 33. Note that Giacometti speaks of making "a little hole in na-
19. William Barrett, Irrational Man (New York: Doubleday, ture," GP, p. 88.
1962). 34. "The Paintings of Giacometti,' p. 409.
20. James Lord, A Giacometti Portrait (Toronto: McGraw- 35. Ibid.
Hill Ryerson Ltd., 1980), p. 39. Hereafter, this source will 36. Ibid., p. 410 (trans. modified).
be cited textually as "GP." 37. Ibid., p. 412.

PHILOSOPHY TODAY
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38. Ibid., p. 413 (trans. modified). 39. Sartre, L 'eire et Ie neant (Paris: Gallimard, 1970), p. 678;
Being and Nothingness, trans. Hazel Barnes (New York:
Gramercy Books, 1994), p. 615.

Kalamazoo College, Kalamazoo, MI 49006-3295

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