Philosophy's intrinsic need for self-understanding, the self-interrogation of philosophical interrogation, has acquired particular urgency in our epoch of the "completion of metaphysics." It is thus not surprising that such self-questioning is central to Merleau-Ponty's effort, in The Visible and the Invisible, to "take up again, deepen, and clarif"his own earlier labors from the point of view of ontology.¹ Whereas the scientific mode of interrogation neglects such self-questioning, and while (as Merleau-Ponty undertakes to show) even the philosophies of reflection, the Sartrean dialectic, and transcendental phenomenology still involve a "blind spot" in this regard, Merleau-Ponty seeks to radicalize this dimension of questioning.