The Oblique Cogito: Cryptophenomenology in Pierre Leroux’s “De l’Humanité”
In an era wherein the luminaries of thought were more oft preoccupied with the demarcation of reason or the derivation of society from the abstractions of first principles, Pierre Leroux (1797–1871) furnished a sui generis contribution to philosophy by weaving sentiment, fraternity, and metaphysical structure into a tripartite unity. While Leroux is most commonly remembered in socialist circles for his contributions to the nascent ideologies of social reform, a careful inspection of his magnum opus, “De l’Humanité,” reveals an enigmatic substratum: what might be termed a cryptophenomenology of being, wherein the traditional Cartesian cogito undergoes a profound metamorphosis.
The detail upon which I wish to alight is Leroux’s subtle reconception of self-awareness—not as the isolated punctum of thought thinking itself, but as a fundamentally relational phenomenon, embedded always already in an irreducible triad of existence, feeling, and communion. Though never explicitly stated, the philosopher’s formulations surreptitiously dismantle the solipsism that undergirds classical rationalism and erect in its stead a doctrine of co-being, an entangled consciousness that must be understood before the full radicality of his thought can be apprehended.
A primary text for this endeavor is found in the early passages of “De l’Humanité,” where Leroux posits that to be conscious is to be aware not merely of oneself as an isolated monad, but as one who is in relation—through language, affection, and mutual recognition—with others. He writes, “L’homme est triple: il est existence, sensation, et forme” (Man is threefold: he is existence, sensation, and form)¹. This threefold nature does not admit of priorities; rather, existence, sensation, and form arise simultaneously and cannot be abstracted from one another without violence to the very constitution of being.
In the Cartesian cogito, we are taught that the certainty of thought’s existence stems from its self-evidence. Thought guarantees itself through a reflexive act; yet the structure remains impoverished, composed only of the lonely certitude of a lone subject. Leroux, contra Descartes, evokes not a monadic, but a triadic existence, where being manifests simultaneously in selfhood, affectivity, and communality. He does not make the mistake, so common to many rationalists and even a posteriori empiricists, of treating ontological dimensions as if they were simple aggregates rather than the synthetic a priori conditions of experience.
Indeed, Leroux’s insistence on sensation as equal to existence suggests a proto-phenomenological insight: consciousness must always be “conscious-of,” directed toward something other, imbued with affect and structured by form. Yet Leroux is more radical than the mere admission of intentionality would suggest; for in folding ‘form’ into the very root of human being, he prefigures, albeit in embryonic terms, the realization that subjectivity itself is a constructed relational matrix. The ego arises not as a given but as a system of relations, simultaneously touching the slippery realities of being, feeling, and symbolic ordering.
A particularly significant passage occurs when Leroux states: “Nul ne peut se sentir exister seul; c’est toujours par l’autre que nous nous éprouvons.” (No one can feel themselves exist alone; it is always through the other that we experience ourselves.)² This is not an ethical or sentimental aphorism; it is an ontological principle. Leroux, in effect, denies the possibility of solitary existence-as-certainty. The implication is staggering: the cogito must already imply the alter—thought does not emerge as a solitude but as an immediate pluralism.
Viewed thus, Leroux’s anthropology is undergirded by a cryptophenomenology: the veil below which a philosophy of intersubjective intentionality lurks unsuspected. His metaphysical sociability should not, therefore, be dismissed as a naïve precursor to the more systematic philosophies of intersubjectivity that would later surface in Husserl or Levinas; nor should it be grouped indistinctly among the sentimental utopias of his contemporaries. Rather, it demonstrates a prescient grasp of the enmeshment of being and world that anticipates some of the most profound crises of modern philosophy.
Moreover, Leroux’s insistence on the simultaneity of existence, sensation, and form subtly accomplishes what other systems labor unsuccessfully to secure—the integration of affect into the structures of reason without the humiliation of feeling before logic. This, too, is a concealed victory, one whose ramifications for the hierarchy of faculties have yet to be sufficiently explored. In his order, feeling is not the irrational residue to be tamed by reason, but an equal cardinal pole of our humanity.
Whereas Kant famously enshrined the good will as that which shines like a jewel by its inherent rational necessity, Leroux embeds goodness into the very structure of being itself—it is not that the will chooses to be good, but that to be at all is already to be in relation, and thus to assume a minimal ethical openness.³ Here Leroux’s theological background, which vibrates with a diffuse Christian idealism, fuses seamlessly with his metaphysics: “Dieu, l’Humanité, et la Nature sont un.” (God, Humanity, and Nature are one.)⁴ Yet unlike the German Idealists, he resists the temptation to sublimate finite beings into absolute Spirit; the relationality in Leroux is not a stage toward another synthesis but remains constitutive and permanent.
The deceptive simplicity of Leroux’s phrases obscures their philosophical daring. By cryptophenomenologically embedding intersubjectivity into the core of consciousness, he offers a vision of human being irreducible to the barren dualisms of mind and body, subject and object, self and other. His thought demands from us nothing less than a reconfiguration of the very starting points of philosophy.
That Leroux remained peripheral to canonical philosophy speaks less to a deficiency in his thinking than to its untimely nature. He sowed seeds whose fruits matured long after his death, in a soil more prepared by existentialism, phenomenology, and dialogical philosophy. Yet even now, a full reckoning with his radical reimagination of the self remains elusive.
Thus, in Leroux’s discreet triad of existence-sensation-form, we discern a novel opening: one which evades both the solipsistic abyss of early modern thought and the over-determined constructs of later rationalisms. In the trembling, impure light where selfhood, feeling, and community meet, Pierre Leroux stands as a prophet of relational being, awaiting his rightful rediscovery.
—
By Martijn Benders – Philosophy Dep. of the Moonmoth Monestarium
being, relational ontology, cryptophenomenology, Leroux, cogito, triadic metaphysics, intersubjectivity
—
¹ Pierre Leroux, De l’Humanité, Livres I-VI (Paris: Chamerot, 1840), Livre II, Chapitre 1.
² Ibid., Livre III, Chapitre 4.
³ See comparison with Kant’s Grundlegung zur Metaphysik der Sitten (1785), wherein the good will is abstracted from empirical content.
⁴ Leroux, De l’Humanité, Livre I, introduction.