Key Arguments

• He describes how, in 1917, Russian peasants joined urban workers' struggles not primarily through ideology but because they sensed a shared fate, showing that class is lived before it is willed: 'Despite their cultural, moral, vocational, and ideological differences, the Russian peasants of 1917 join the workers’ struggle in Petrograd and Moscow because they sense that their lot is the same; class is lived concretely prior to being the object of a deliberate will.'
• He insists that the social is not originally given as an object in the third person; attempts by bystanders, 'great men,' or historians to treat events as objects miss this lived dimension: 'The social does not at first exist like an object in the third person. Wanting to treat it as an object is the common error of the curious bystander, the “great man,” and the historian.'
• Through the examples of Fabrice, the Emperor, and the historian at Waterloo, he shows that no single perspective or retrospective synthesis captures the true event; the real 'Waterloo' is an anonymous convergence at the borders of perspectives: 'The true “Waterloo” is not in what Fabrice sees, nor in what the Emperor sees, nor in what the historian sees; it is not a determinable object. The true “Waterloo” is what happens on the borders of all these perspectives, and from which they are all drawn.'
• He criticizes objective definitions of nation and class (language, income, production position) as unable to decide membership, given revolutionaries from privileged classes, loyal oppressed individuals, and traitors: 'The historian and the philosopher seek an objective definition of class or of the nation: is the nation based upon common language or upon conceptions of life? Is class based upon income level or upon one’s position in the circuit of production? It is clear that none of these criteria allow us to recognize if an individual belongs to a nation or a class. In all revolutions there are some members of the privileged class who join the revolutionary class, and some oppressed individuals who remain loyal to the privileged class. And every nation has its traitors.'
• He concludes that nation and class are neither external 'fatalities' nor mere inner values, but 'modes of coexistence that solicit' individuals: 'This is because nation or class are neither fatalities that subjugate the individual from the outside, nor for that matter values that he posits from within. They are, rather, modes of coexistence that solicit him.'
• In normal times these modes are latent 'stimuli' that elicit only distracted responses; crises transform tacit commitments into explicit decisions that nevertheless appear as pre‑existing the decision: 'In peaceful times, nation and class are there like stimuli to which I only direct distracted or confused responses; they are latent. A revolutionary situation or a situation of national danger transforms preconscious relations to class and nation that had until then been merely lived into conscious decisions; tacit commitment becomes explicit. But it appears to itself as if it pre-existed the decision.'

Source Quotes

The social event on the outside and on the inside.]* At the end of Notre patrie, Péguy discovers a buried voice that had never ceased speaking,10 just as we are sure upon waking up that objects have not ceased existing during the night, or that someone has been knocking at our door for a while. Despite their cultural, moral, vocational, and ideological differences, the Russian peasants of 1917 join the workers’ struggle in Petrograd and Moscow because they sense that their lot is the same; class is lived concretely prior to being the object of a deliberate will. The social does not at first exist like an object in the third person.

Despite their cultural, moral, vocational, and ideological differences, the Russian peasants of 1917 join the workers’ struggle in Petrograd and Moscow because they sense that their lot is the same; class is lived concretely prior to being the object of a deliberate will. The social does not at first exist like an object in the third person. Wanting to treat it as an object is the common error of the curious bystander, the “great man,” and the historian.

But he only presents us with a representation, he does not reach the battle itself, since, at the moment that it was taking place, the outcome was still contingent and is no longer contingent when the historian recounts the battle, since the deep causes of the defeat and the fortuitous events that allowed them to play a role were equally determining factors in the singular event of “Waterloo,” and because the historian puts the singular event back into the general sequence of the decline of the empire. The true “Waterloo” is not in what Fabrice sees, nor in what the Emperor sees, nor in what the historian sees; it is not a determinable object. The true “Waterloo” is what happens on the borders of all these perspectives, and from which they are all drawn.12 The historian and the philosopher seek an objective definition of class or of the nation: is the nation based upon common language or upon conceptions of life?

The true “Waterloo” is not in what Fabrice sees, nor in what the Emperor sees, nor in what the historian sees; it is not a determinable object. The true “Waterloo” is what happens on the borders of all these perspectives, and from which they are all drawn.12 The historian and the philosopher seek an objective definition of class or of the nation: is the nation based upon common language or upon conceptions of life? Is class based upon income level or upon one’s position in the circuit of production?

And every nation has its traitors. This is because nation or class are neither fatalities that subjugate the individual from the outside, nor for that matter values that he posits from within. They are, rather, modes of coexistence that solicit him. In peaceful times, nation and class are there like stimuli to which I only direct distracted or confused responses; they are latent.

They are, rather, modes of coexistence that solicit him. In peaceful times, nation and class are there like stimuli to which I only direct distracted or confused responses; they are latent. A revolutionary situation or a situation of national danger transforms preconscious relations to class and nation that had until then been merely lived into conscious decisions; tacit commitment becomes explicit.

In peaceful times, nation and class are there like stimuli to which I only direct distracted or confused responses; they are latent. A revolutionary situation or a situation of national danger transforms preconscious relations to class and nation that had until then been merely lived into conscious decisions; tacit commitment becomes explicit. But it appears to itself as if it pre-existed the decision. [n. The problems of transcendence.] The problem of the existential modality of the social world here meets up with all of the problems of transcendence.

Key Concepts

• class is lived concretely prior to being the object of a deliberate will.
• The social does not at first exist like an object in the third person.
• The true “Waterloo” is not in what Fabrice sees, nor in what the Emperor sees, nor in what the historian sees; it is not a determinable object.
• The true “Waterloo” is what happens on the borders of all these perspectives, and from which they are all drawn.
• This is because nation or class are neither fatalities that subjugate the individual from the outside, nor for that matter values that he posits from within. They are, rather, modes of coexistence that solicit him.
• In peaceful times, nation and class are there like stimuli to which I only direct distracted or confused responses; they are latent.
• tacit commitment becomes explicit. But it appears to itself as if it pre-existed the decision.

Context

Subsection [m. The social event on the outside and on the inside.], where Merleau-Ponty analyzes social events, class, and nation as lived modes of coexistence rather than objective entities or pure subjective creations.