Abstract
By taking into account those operations of modernity initiated by Stendhal and Cézanne, Manet and Proust, which were continued by Merleau-Ponty and Lévi-Strauss, this paper considers Claude Imbert's writings from the perspective of the formative role that literature and painting had and still have in mapping a new rationality. The aim is to show how the philosopher reintegrates such priceless experiences, captured by peculiar literary forms, syntagms, and juxtaposition of genres or pictorial manners, into a conceptual and stylistic invention affecting the very core of philosophical activity.