Introduction: Crisis and Imaginary

One of the dominant motivations for Merleau-Ponty’s early works was the modern crisis. This crisis consists essentially in a loss of ground, and it initiates crucial reflection on reality and the imaginary. It is not insignificant that surrealism—something to which Merleau-Ponty frequently refers—draws its inspiration and its strength from this same crisis, nor that it explicitly analyzes it as the discovery of the very narrow and artificially limited character of what we commonly call “reality” by adamantly distinguishing it from “the imaginary.” In no way does surrealism propose to flee from reality into dreams, but rather to redefine a more complete reality by integrating the imaginary: a “surreality.” Possibilities, dreamt actions, desires, what is evanescent or unprecedented, the explosive associations that overwhelm all established concepts—these are not nothing, even if they are not fully, substantially, and unrelentingly outside of us.