L’Œil et l’Esprit – réécriture et réinterprétation de la dioptrique de Descartes ?
Does Eye and Mind Rewrite and Reinterprete Descartes’ Dioptrique?

Summary/Abstract: The problem of rewriting and reinterpreting a text raises issues intimately connected with the notions of understanding and translating, starting with the repetition of a similar question and a similar theme. Our purpose here is to show that Merleau-Ponty ’s Eye and Mind is a rewriting of La Dioptrique by Descartes. Both books deal with the same theme and general questioning. Yet can such a repetition of the same issues be understood as rewriting someone else's work? Merleau-Ponty indeed repeats the same general concern: what is seeing? But he does so in a completely different style. At stake with the act of rewriting there is always an interplay around notions of identity and difference, of convergence and divergence. But can we still talk about rewriting when style changes so drastically? That is what we are trying to defend. By comparing the two works, we would like to show that Merleau-Ponty is not only a philosopher who has studied and criticized René Descartes, but one who has tried to rewrite his dioptrique by using completely different means.

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