encumbered with survivals

“In thought as in life, the only surpassings we know are concrete, partial, encumbered with survivals, saddled with deficits.”

That’s Maurice Merleau-Ponty, in The Visible and The Invisible, by way of Maxine Green’s The Dialectic of Freedom. Greene is reminding us that, of course, dialectics never lead to some “perfect synthesis or harmony.” Yes, naturally. And saddled with deficits is easy to understand, but encumbered with survivals—that’s something I’ll be thinking about for a while.