MERLEAU-PONTY'S

PHENOMENOLOGY OF PERCEPTION
Merleau-Ponty's
Phenomenology of
Perception

A Guide and
Commentary
Monika M. Langer
Associate Professor of Philosophy
University of Victoria, British Columbia
 © Monika M. Langer 1989

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First published 1989

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British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

Langer, Monika M.
Merieau-Ponty's phenomenology of perception
: a guide and commentary.
1. Merleau-Ponty, Maurice
I. Title
194 B2430.M3764
ISBN 978-0-333-45291-2 ISBN 978-1-349-19761-3 (eBook)
DOI 10.1007/978-1-349-19761-3
 Contents
Preface vii
Acknowledgements xx

INTRODUCTION: CLASSICAL PREJUDICES AND THE

RETURN TO PHENOMENA
1 'Sensation' 3
2 'Association' and 'Projection of Memories' 6
3 'Attention' and 'Judgment' 10
4 The Phenomenal Field 15

PART I: THE BODY

Experience and Objective Thought: the Problem of the Body 23
1 The Body as Object and Mechanistic Physiology 27
2 The Experience of the Body and Classical Psychology 36
3 The Spatiality of the Body Itself and Motility 39
4 The Synthesis of the Body Itself
and
5 The Body in its Sexual Being 48
6 The Body as Expression and Speech 56

PART 11: THE PERCEIVED WORLD

The Theory of the Body Is Already a Theory of Perception 69
1 Sensing 72
2 Space 80
3 The Thing and the Natural World 88
4 Others and the Human World 97

PART III: BEING-FOR-ITSELF AND BEING-IN-THE-WORLD

1 The Cogito 109
2 Temporality 123
3 Freedom 133

CONCLUSION: A Critical Assessment of

Merleau-Ponty's Phenomenology of Perception 149

Bibliography 178

Index 181

v
 Preface

To date several commentaries have been published which deal

with Merleau-Ponty's philosophy as a whole or with some parti-
cular aspect of his thought. Useful as many of these are in their
own right, they do not help their readers to grapple specifically
with the notorious difficulties of Merleau-Ponty's central work,
the Phenomenology o[ Perception. This exegesis aims to meet that
need. As Guerriere noted in publishing a translation of the
analytical table of contents of the Phenomenology o[ Perception, 'the
reader of the work needs all the help he can get'. 1 Even for the
professional philosopher, Merleau-Ponty's text poses considerable
problems because its phenomenological analyses are extremely
convoluted and its style makes it difficult to distinguish the
author's own position from those wh ich he is criticizing. Merleau-
Ponty's penchant for exploring related ideas and themes renders
his 'argument' elusive, disjointed, and sometimes even in-
complete. In addition, the text abounds in oblique references and
assurnes a thorough knowledge of the works of Descartes, Kant,
Husserl, Heidegger and Sartre. Finally, the English translation
compounds the difficulties which Merleau-Ponty's rich prose
itself presents. Even the revised (1981) English edition is fre-
quently misleading and occasionally downright incorrect; at best
it lacks the nu an ces of the original.
My exegesis therefore reconstructs, clarifies and - where
necessary - completes Merleau-Ponty's phenomenological analy-
seschapter by chapter. It explains the importance of various
chapters and shows the logic of their sequence. Where requisite, it
provides the relevant passages from the primary texts of other
philosophers whose positions Merleau-Ponty is developing or
criticizing, and explains just how he is doing so. Throughout, it
alerts the reader to problems of translation and when necessary,
re-translates key terms or passages. Finally, it considers Merleau-
Ponty's own reservations about the work and offers a critical
assessment of the Phenomenology o[ Perception as a whole.
In the light of the numerous difficulties noted above, the reader
may well wo nd er wh ether the Phenomenology o[ Perception actually

vii
viii Preface

warrants the effort which is required to read it. Despite its

problematic nature however, the text is a classic of phenomeno-
logy and is especially relevant today. Since the original was
published over forty years ago, the latter point calls for elabora-
tion. This introduction will serve to contextualize the Phenomeno-
logy of Perception and to establish its particular importance for our
own time. In his PREFACE Merleau-Ponty states that 'the pheno-
menological reduction is that of an existential philosophy,.2 We
must therefore consider the nature of existentialist philosophy and
the meaning of the phenomenological reduction.
There is a continuing widespread tendency to regard existen-
tialist philosophy as outdated and to relegate it to the status of a
brief episode in the history of modern thought. Such a view is
based on the sorts of misconceptions about existentialism which
Sartre addressed in his famous lecture 'Existentialism is a Huma-
nism', delivered in the same year that Merleau-Ponty's Phenome-
nology of Perception was published. This is not the place to
reiterate Sartre's defence of existentialism; rather, it will suffice to
note some general points about existentialist philosophy. The
latter encompasses a host of widely differing positions and no
single definition accommodates all those who are generally consi-
dered its representatives. Nonetheless, a commonality of concerns
underlies the diversity of these thinkers.
To detect that commonality, it is helpful to recall the marvellous
story which Aristotle related about Herac\itus, and which Hei-
degger retold in his 'Letter on Humanism'. A nu mb er of inquisit-
ive strangers seek out Herac\itus in hopes of witnessing some-
thing extraordinary. They are surprised to find the famous philo-
sopher simply 'warming hirnself at a stove'.3 In failing to discover
anything patently divorced from daily life, the unannounced
visitors are puzzled and disappointed; they are sure that a thinker
warming hirnself at the centre of his ordinary horne cannot be
philosophizing. As they are on the point of leaving, Heraclitus
encourages them to consider more closely the ordinary, concrete
situation which they so swiftly dismissed as insignificant and
irrelevant to thought. 'There are Gods present even here', says
Heraclitus,4 thereby tacitly urging his visitors to reflect on their
assumption that philosophizing demands a turning aside from
daily life. I am not suggesting that Heraclitus was an existentialist;
however, the little story captures perfectly the core of existentialist
philosophy in its emphasis on concrete thinking. In focusing on
 Preface ix

the actual human situation as the starting point for any authentie
philosophy, this ancient anecdote implicitly counters the assump-
tion that genuine thinking must be abstract. It thus stresses the
central importance of pondering the meaning of our being-in-the-
world and points out the general alienation from such concrete
philosophizing.
Existentialist philosophy challenges the contention that philoso-
phy is inherently high-flown; that the search for truth requires a
turning away from the world oE our concrete experience, as Plato's
cave allegory would have us believe. It rejects the Platonic-
Cartesian-Hegelian ideal oE eternal truth or absolute knowledge
on the one hand and, on the other, the positivistic levelling which
insists on objectivity and calculation. 5 Contending that both
approaches are abstract and inadequate for an understanding oE
our being-in-the-world, existentialist philosophy seeks to awaken
us to an awareness of our fundamental involvement in a natural-
cultural-historical milieu. It stresses that we are not neutral
observers but rather, situated participants in an ongoing, open-
ended, socio-historical drama. It claims that truth comes into
being in our concrete co-existence with others and cannot be
severed from language and history. The existentialists declare that
a non-situated human being is inconceivable, that the philosoph er
does not survey the world, and that philosophy is firmly rooted in
a situation which has a historical depth. Far from being the
unfolding of absolute knowledge, 'philosophising starts with our
situation' and attempts to illuminate it. 6 The existentialist philoso-
phers' central concern is to prompt humans not to live thought-
lessly but rather, to have a keen awareness of their freedom and
responsibility in the shaping of a situation in which they are
always already involved.
The fundamental features characterizing the situation analysed
by the major twentieth-century existentialist philosophers persist
to this day. If we are to appreciate the particular relevance of
Merleau-Ponty's Phenomenology of Perception for our own time, we
must bear those features in mind. Already in 1931 Jaspers,
drawing on Kierkegaard and Weber, published a detailed philoso-
phical study of the deracination and functionalization of humans
in mass society and warned that the attitude fostered by modern
technology was profoundly dehumanizing. He stressed that 'the
reality oE the world cannot be evaded'; that 'the signifiance of
entering into the world constitutes the value of philosophy'; and
x Preface

that the latter 'is not to be regarded as the objective validity of any
sort of knowledge, but as the consciousness of being in the
world'.7 Following the Second World War, Jaspers focused his
attention on the horrific possibilities of the new military techno-
logy and the utter inadequacy of the prevalent mode of thinking to
counter the threat of total annihilation. He warned that his tory
had become a single global movement and that the developed
nuclear technology precluded any survivors in the event of
another world war. Jaspers emphasized the urgent need to recog-
nize 'that technology, know-how, achievements, are not enough',
and that 'a new way of thinking' must replace the all-pervasive
problem-oriented approach. Jaspers argued that only a new,
non-operational'encompassing thinking', leading to a new, non-
confrontational politics, could avert a nuclear holocaust. 'If we
grow sure of our freedom, and thus of our responsibility, there is a
chance for ... salvation', he concluded. 8
Heidegger too expressed his concern about the nature of mass
society, the destructive potential of modem technology, and the
widespread lack of any non-operational way of thinking. He
argued that 'calculative thinking' is indispensable in its proper
sphere, but that it is incapable of preventing a total victimization
of humans by technology. Heidegger contended that such think-
ing had its source in the seventeenth-century revolution in funda-
mental concepts, and that by the mid-twentieth century it had
transformed nature into 'a gigantic gasoline station'. The same
operational approach was now being applied to humans them-
selves, resulting in an unprecedented rootlessness coupled with
the threat of a nuclear holocaust. Heidegger noted that genetic
engineering was already on the horizon, but that there was a
disturbing absence of thought devoted to the meaning of this utter
transformation of human existence through technology. He ar-
gued that only by thoughtful questioning could the annihilation of
human life be forestalled and a new rootedness established in the
modem world. 9
For their part, Merleau-Ponty and Sartre likewise criticized the
prevalent mode of thinking and warned that attempts to evade the
implications of the concrete situation could only lead to disaster.
Thus they decided to found their famous journal Les Temps
Modernes. In his essay 'The War Has Taken Place', which appeared
in the inaugural issue, Merleau-Ponty declared: 'we have learned
history, and we claim that it must not be forgotten'.10 He urged his
 Preface xi

readers to renounce Cartesian rationalism in favour of a genuinely

concrete philosophy. The latter would not take up its abode in a
realm allegedly beyond the vicissitudes of daily life. On the
contrary, the new way of philosophizing would elucidate the
impossibility of escaping one's concrete co-existence with others,
and would stress the need to participate responsibly in shaping
the future.
Given the steadily increasing stockpiles of nuclear weapons, the
growth of computer technology, the accelerated automation of the
workplace, and the ongoing experiments in genetic engineering,
the specific concerns expressed by existentialist philosophers
regarding technological society are even more pressing today-
and the call for a non-operationalist thinking is becoming ever
more urgent. In arecent international conference on the twenty-
first century held at the University of Victoria, Professor Morris
Berman explicitly emphasized the need for 'a truly embodied
approach to the world'. Arguing that 'we are at a crossroads now',
Berman cautioned against a 'disembodied and formalistic' cyber-
netic thinking 'in our eagerness to reject the mechanistic science of
the last 300 years',u He noted that Merleau-Ponty, recognizing
'the fallacy of misplaced concreteness', warned in his 1960 essay
'Eye and Mind' that:

Thinking 'operationally' has become a sort of absolute artificial-

ism, such as we see in the ideology of cybernetics .... If this
kind of thinking were to extend its reign to man and history; if,
pretending to ignore what we know of them through our own
situations, it were to set out to construct man and history on the
basis of a few abstract indicies ... then ... we enter into ... a
sleep, or a nightmare, from which there is no awakening.
Scientific thinking, a thinking which looks on from above,
and thinks of the object-in-general, must return to the 'there is'
which underlies it; to the site, the soil of the sensible and
opened world such as it is in our life and for our body ... that
actual body I call mine .... Further, associated bodies must be
brought forward along with my body ... 12

It is not difficult, especially in light of the above passage, to

appreciate the exceptional pertinence of Merleau-Ponty's Pheno-
menology 01 Perception to our own time. As we have seen, existen-
tialist philosophy is highly critical of any 'thinking which looks on
xii Preface

from above'. The credibility of its critique ultimately depends

upon its providing a comprehensive philosophical foundation for
the latter - and that is precisely what the Phenomenology of Percep-
tion does. In an address summarizing and defending the work
shortly after its publication, Merleau-Ponty pointed out that 'the
perceived world is the always presupposed foundation of all
rationality, all value and all existence'. Although 'there is a whole
cultural world wh ich constitutes a second level about perceptual
experience', perception is nevertheless 'the fundamental basis
which cannot be ignored'.13 The critique of our twentieth-century
cultural world as dehumanizing and destructive must therefore be
based on a phenomenological account of our perceptual expe-
rience. The phenomenological reduction is indispensible for the
disclosure of that primary experientiallevel.
If we are to understand how Merleau-Ponty employs the pheno-
menological reduction, we must situate his reduction within its
philosophical context. Descartes had been concerned to establish
the foundation for a universal science based on reason alone. He
attempted to seeure a method whereby fundamental self-evident
truths would serve as axioms from which other truths could be
deduced so as to provide an organically connected system of
scientifically established truths. By submitting everything to
systematic doubt, Descartes hoped to put knowledge on an
absolutely firm foundation. The intuitively apprehended existence
of the finite seH provided the foundation - so Descartes thought -
for this comprehensive scientific philosophy. However, Husserl
maintained that Descartes' methodological doubt had not been
radical enough. According to Husserl, Descartes' cogito ergo sum
failed to put the res cogitans in abeyance. This failure to 'bracket'
the T as a psychological reality subverted Descartes' attempt to
establish knowledge on a sure foundation, argued Husserl. At the
same time, he commended Descartes for attempting to find a firm
basis for knowledge by suspending all affirmations concerning the
everyday world and focusing on the world as it is given to
consciousness. Husserl himseH therefore sought to provide an
absolutely certain ground for knowledge by adopting and radica-
lizing the Cartesian method.
Like Descartes, Husserl began with a normative ideal of philo-
sophy as a presuppositionless, rigorous science having universal
validity and formulating eternal truths. The realization of this
ideal demanded the search for a foundation, for a sphere in which
 Preface xiii

things give themselves absolutely, that is, with a darity, distinct-

ness and completeness which renders them apodictic. Husserl's
phenomenological reduction bracke ted a11 belief in transcendent
existence and focused on transcendental subjectivity - that T
which Kant and Husserl daimed was necessarily involved in any
act of consciousness. Husserl's phenomenological reduction
seemed to hirn to open up arealm of immanent experience capable
of serving as the foundation for philosophy. This realm did not
contain psychical facts, events, or experiences, as had Descartes';
rather, it consisted of universal meanings or 'essences' underlying
these psychical entities. Instead of concentrating on any particular
act of thinking or perceiving, for example, Husserl turned to the
essence of thinking as such, or the essence of the perceiving as
such.
For Husserl in short, the sphere opened up by the phenomeno-
logical reduction consisted of fundamental structures of con-
sciousness reduced to essences - that is, to universal, absolutely
necessary meanings constituted by the transcendental ego. The
task of phenomenology was the descriptive analysis of these
essences as they appeared to the inte11ectual intuition of the
phenomenologist, who adopted a neutral position regarding the
status of the external world. Thus the phenomenological reduc-
tion, based on the epoche (or suspension of judgements concern-
ing the existential status of the objects of consciousness), was the
method whereby Husserl tried to return to consciousness as the
region of absolutely certain knowledge. In his Cartesian Medita-
tions he asserted that the world was 'who11y constituted by the
transcendental ego'. Since his philosophy dispensed with Descar-
tes' psychical ego and showed up the presuppositions of the
various sciences, it seemed to Husserl to be truly radical. The
sciences, he contended, never stopped to consider what it means
to observe, to perceive or to think - they presupposed these as
given. It was the task of phenomenology - as Husserl conceived it
- to examine such presuppositions and to describe the constitut-
ive role of the transcendental ego. The other sciences remained
naive in failing to examine their own presuppositions; with
common sense, they shared the natural attitude to the world.
Towards the end of his li fe , Husserl began to question this
'Cartesian Way to phenomenology' and the very notion of philo-
sophy as a rigorous science; he came to consider the transcen-
dental ego as 'apparently empty of content'. His theory of evi-
xiv Preface

dence, hinging as it did on the criteria of absolute certainty and

completeness, was thrown open to question by his realization that
phenomenological reflection is itself temporal; that subjectively
lived time is the field of all conscious acts and hence, that these
conscious acts themselves unfold in time, rather than being given
immediately and completely in one 'fell swoop' to a disinterested
gaze. The last works of Husserl therefore began to sketch out a
'new way to phenomenology' focusing on areturn to the life-
world as the pre-given ground of an practical and theoretical
activities. Husserl finally designated the field of perception as the
very heart of the life-world. His self-criticism regarding the
emptiness of the transcendental ego was taken a step further by
Sartre who, in his Transcendence of the Ego, rejected the transcen-
dental ego altogether. 14
According to Sartre, Husserl was profoundly mi staken in think-
ing that the existing world can be bracketed. The suspension of an
affirmations of existence beyond consciousness leaves only 'a
great emptiness', argued Sartre, because consciousness has no
contents; hence consciousness can never in fact be isolated from
the existing world. The 'reduced, neutral standpoint' of the
Husserlian phenomenologist therefore had to be rejected in favour
of a concern with the world of our actual, lived experience. For
Sartre, the reflective study of consciousness became the study of
human existence situated in the world. Though constituted by
consciousness, an truths, values and meanings were declared to be
outside consciousness and in the world - hence they were contin-
gent. The 'natural attitude' thus became a matter of living in 'bad
faith'. In bringing to light the presuppositions of that natural
attitude, the phenomenological reduction served to jolt conscious-
ness out of its bad faith by eliminating the Cartesian-Husserlian
escape-route. In the Sartrian pure reflection, 'there are no more
barriers, no more limits, nothing to hide consciousness from
itself '. Sartre's phenomenological reduction effectively plunges
human beings 'back into the world' .15
Like Sartre, Merleau-Ponty rejects Husserl's abstract 'universal
essences' and transcendental ego. Merleau-Ponty's emphasis,
however, is on that which Husserl had designated as the heart of
the life-world, namely, perception. According to Merleau-Ponty,
Husserl pointed the way towards a descriptive study of the
life-world, but failed to appreciate its significance. Thus the latter
did not realize that the intentionality of consciousness is first and
foremost a bodily intentionality. Merleau-Ponty points out that an
 Preface xv

knowledge takes place within the horizons opened up by percep-

tion, that the primordial structures of perception pervade the
entire range of reflective and scientific experience, and that all
forms of human co-existence are based on perception. Phenome-
nology's concern therefore must be with the pre-reflective world
which is the background of all reflection, the world in which
human beings are already engaged prior to reflection. Merleau-
Ponty argues that the perceiver is not a pure thinker but a
body-subject, and that any act of reflection is based on that pre-
personal, anonymous consciousness which is incarnate subjectiv-
ity. There can be no sphere of absolutely self-sustaining thought;
the only foundation for knowledge is our concrete inherence in the
world. The entire universe of science is thus built upon the
life-world which it takes for granted.
Merleau-Ponty criticizes the 'Cartesian Way to phenomenology'
for failing to be truly radical and in fact being a 'philosophicallie'.
The Cartesian philosophy falls into dogmatism by masking the
origin of reflection. Consequently, a genuinely radical reflection
wh ich recognizes the pre-reflective realm from which it itself
springs, is required. This 'hyper-reflection', as Merleau-Ponty
calls it, does not destroy reflection for the sake of the unreflected
experience; rather, it is a matter of taking account of 'the total
situation, wh ich involves reference from the one to the other'.16
The relationship between thought and its object must be situated
within that openness to the world upon wh ich it rests. It is not
possible ever in fact to undo the bond between the human being
and the world, and to remake it subsequently as 'the Cartesian
Way' tried to do. According to Merleau-Ponty, the task of pheno-
menology is to help us to see the primordial bond more clearly, to
bring it to our attention. As a truly radical philosophy, phenome-
nology should alert us, for example, to the fact that ideas are never
absolutely pure thoughts but rather, cultural objects necessarily
linked to acts of expression whose source is the phenomenal body
itself as already primordially expressive. In short, phenomenology
must awaken us to an awareness of consciousness as incarnate in a
body and inhering in a world. The notion of 'incarnate subject-
ivity' is therefore central to Merleau-Ponty's phenomenology.
Merleau-Ponty points out in the PREFACE that:

See king the essence of consciousness will therefore not consist

in developing the Wortbedeutung of consciousness and escaping
from existence into the universe of things said; it will consist in
xvi Preface

rediscovering my ac tu al presence to myself .... Looking for the

world's essence is not looking for what it is as an idea once it has
been reduced to a theme of discourse; it is looking for what it is
as a fact for us, before any thematisation. 17

Instead of focusing on the conditions for the possibility of

experience as various transcendental philosophies have done,
Merleau-Ponty's phenomenology aims to draw our attention to
the always presupposed and actually present background of our
actual experience. It dispenses with the tradition al mystifications
in so far as it refuses to regard experience as an entity wh ich can
be analysed into its component parts, and refrains from construct-
ing a basis for it in a transcendental sphere on the hither side of all
actual experience. For Merleau-Ponty, experience is 'a process of
transcendence'. His phenomenological reduction does not render
us the given as it appears to common sense or naive science. The
reduction subverts the reifications of the natural attitude by
showing that the given is constituted in a primordial dialogue
between body-subject and world. The given wh ich is revealed by
this phenomenological reduction has a his tory and is part of a
whole network of relations; it is profoundly dynamic. Analytic
reflection and scientific induction are equally inadequate for
comprehending experience as disclosed by the phenomenological
reduction. Moreover, Merleau-Ponty hirnself approaches the given
obliquely, so to speak, by studying and describing the distur-
bances which arise from breakdowns in the priinordial dialogue.
As long as that dialogue proceeds smoothly, we take its results
for gran ted and consider them a 'natural' world. It is when the
dialogue is disturbed that its character as dialogue begins to
emerge and we see that the subjecl's way of living its body is
decisive for the manner in which it apprehends the world.
Merleau-Ponty's phenomenological description proceeds in a
Hegelian fashion: at each stage of his investigation, he summons
the traditional dogmatic positions and shows how they subvert
themselves. Through the conti nu al juxtaposition and dissolution
of these theories, Merleau-Ponty endeavours to establish that our
experience is neither a mechanistically determined process nor a
purely fortuitous construction, and that our various explicit rela-
tionships with the world are subtended by a primordial
background which cannot itself ever become entirely explicit. If
we attempt to tear our experience free from this background in
 Preface xvii

order to study it without its obscure roots, or alternatively, if we

try to force that background itself to cease being a background so
that we might circumscribe it completely, we only succeed in
distorting that fundamental pre-personal movement of existence
which are are and which our body continues to live despite our
intellectual contortions. Ultimately, as Merleau-Ponty notes in the
'Preface', 'we shall find in ourselves, and nowhere else, the unity
and true meaning of phenomenology'. As genuinely radical reflec-
tion, phenomenology recognizes that our primordial relationship
to the world 'is not a thing which can be any further c1arified by
analysis'; the dynamic, internal relation between body-subject
and world can only be brought to our attention. This bringing to
attention is itself, however, a 'creative act' which brings truth into
being by disc10sing behind reflection that mysterious perceptual
realm wh ich is our very 'access to truth,.18
Before considering Merleau-Ponty's step-by-step disc10sure of
that pre-reflective realm, it remains for me to alert the reader to a
few stylistic points and to express my gratitude to those who
helped to make this book possible. Regarding the former, the
reader will discover that my exegesis makes extensive use of the
masculine pronoun, that my paragraphs are occasionally rather
long, and that not all quotations are footnoted. After giving the
matter considerable thought, I decided that it would be best to
have my exegesis reflect Merleau-Ponty's own use of language;
hence the masculine pronoun predominates throughout. Merleau-
Ponty's particular manner of thinking found expression in ex-
tremely long paragraphs. In attempting to capture the essence of
that thinking in this book, it was not always possible to avoid
somewhat lengthy paragraphs myself. Since my exegesis is in-
tended to be read in conjunction with the Phenomenology of
Perception, I feIt it was unnecessary to footnote those quotations
which are drawn from the particular chapter under discussion.
Finally, I would like to thank all those whose support and labour
made this work possible. For their unflagging encouragement, I
thank my family and friends; for their many questions and oft
stated wish for such an exegesis, I thank my students; and for her
unfailing good humour and unstinting labour in transforming
messy inked pages into readable machine copy, I thank my
secretary, Sandra Chellew. To all those who have feIt frustration in
grappling with the Phenomenology of Perception, I dedicate this
book.
MONIKA LANGER
xviii Preface

Notes
1. Daniel Guerriere, Table of Contents of "Phenomenology of Pereep-
tion": Translation and Pagination', Journal o[ the British Society tor
Phenomenology, vol. 10, no. 1 Oan. 1979) p. 65.
2. I have altered Colin Smith's translation to bring it c10ser to the
Freneh original, whieh reads: ' ... la reduetion phenomenologique
est eelle d'une philosophie existentielle'. (Phinomenologique de la
perception (Paris: Editions Gallimard, 1945), p. ix.) It is also worth
noting that Mer!eau-Ponty equates phenomenology with 'concrete
thinking' and the latter with 'what others propound under the
name "existential philosophy": (See the 'Prefaee' of the Phenomeno-
logy o[ Perception and pp. 133-4 of Sense and Non-Sense (trans.
Dreyfus and Dreyfus (Evanston, BI.: Northwestern University
Press, 1964)).
3. Martin Heidegger, 'Letter on Humanism' (trans. Edgar Lohner;
original published 1947) in The Existentialist Tradition: Selected
Writings (ed. Nino Langiulli), (New York: Doubleday, 1974), pp.
237-8. My own interpretation of the story in the 'Prefaee' differs to
some degree from Heidegger's.
4. Ibid., p. 238.
5. See for example: Kierkegaard's The Present Age, Nietzsel1e's Twilight
o[ the Idols, Jaspers' Man in the Modern Age, Mareel's The Philosophy
o[ Existentialism and The Mystery o[ Being, Heidegger's Discourse on
Thinking, Sartre's 'Existentialism is a Humanism' and Being and
Nothingness, Camus', The Myth o[ Sisyphus and Other Essays,
Merleau-Ponty's Sense and Non-Sense, Phenomenology and Percep-
tion, The Primacy o[ Perception and Other Essays and Signs.
6. Kar! Jaspers, 'Philosophizing Starts with Our Situation', Philosophy,
vol. I (trans. E. B. Ashton; original German published 1932),
reprinted in The Existentialist Tradition: Selected Writings, pp. 158-61.
7. Jaspers, Man in the Modern Age (trans. Eden and Cedar Paul), (New
York: Doubleday, 1957) pp. 194-8.
8. Jaspers, The Future o[ Mankind (trans. E. B. Ashton), (University of
Chieago Press, 1961; orig. published 1958) pp. 330, 318, viii, 332,
333, vii.
9. Heidegger, 'Memorial Address' (originally given 1955), Discourse on
Thinking (trans. Anderson and Freund), (New York: Harper & Row,
1969) pp. 43-57.
10. Maurice Merieau-Ponty, 'The War Has Taken Plaee', (original
published October 1945), Sense and Non-Sense (trans. Dreyfus and
Dreyfus), (Evanston, Ill.: Northwestern University Press, 1964,
p.150.
11. Morris Berman, 'The Cybernetie Dream of the 21st Century', paper
presented at 'An International Conferenee on Sodal and Teehnolo-
gical Change: The University into the 21st Century', University of
Victoria, British Columbia, Canada, 4 May 1984, pp. 28-31.
An expanded version of this paper was published (under the
same title) in the Journal o[ Humanistic Psychology vol. 26 no. 2
(spring 1986) pp. 24-51.
 Preface xix

12. Merleau-Ponty, 'Eye and Mind' (trans. Carleton Dallery) in James

M. Edie (ed.), The Primacy oi Perception and Other Essays, (Evanston,
IIl.: Northwestern University Press, 1964) pp. 160-1. Quoted in 'The
Cybernetic Dream of the 21st Century', p. 30.
13. 'The Primacy of Perception and Its Philosophical Consequences'
(trans. James M. Edie), The Primacy oi Perception and Other Essays,
pp. 13,33.
14. My interpretation of Husserl is akin to Merleau-Ponty's; neverthe-
less, many Husserl scholars would reject this reading of Husser!.
For further discussion, see Phenomenology: the Philosophy oi Edmund
Husserl and Its Interpretation (ed. Joseph J. Kockelmans), (New York:
Doubleday, 1967) pp. 194ff.
15. Sartre, The Transcendence oi the Ego: an Existentialist Theory oi
Consciousness (trans. Forrest Williams and Robert Kirkpatrick),
(New York: Noonday Press, 1957) pp. 32, 98-105 (original text
published 1936-37).
16. Merleau-Ponty, The Visible and the Invisible: Followed by Working
Notes (trans. Alphonso Lingis and ed. Claude Lefort), (Evanston,
Ill.: Northwestern University Press, 1968) p. 35.
17. 'Preface', Phenomenology oi Perception, xv.
18. 'Preface', Phenomenology oi Perception, viii, xviii, xx, xvi.
 Acknowledgements

The author and publishers wish to thank the following who have
kindly given permission for use of copyright material: Routledge
& Kegan Paul Ltd and Humanities Press International, Inc. for the
extracts from Phenomenology 0/ Perception by Maurice Merleau-
Ponty, English translation copyright © 1962 by Routledge &
Kegan Paul Ltd; Philosophical Library, Inc., New York, for the
extracts from Being and Nothingness: a Phenomenological Essay on
Ontology by Jean-Paul Sartre, English translation copyright © 1956
by the Philosophical Library, Inc., Washington Square Press
edition published by arrangement with Philosophical Library Inc.,
1966; Northwestern University Press for the extracts from The
Primacy 0/ Perception and Other Essays by Maurice Merleau-Ponty
(English translation copyright © 1964 by Northwestern University
Press), The Visible and the Invisible: Followed By Working Notes by
Maurice Merleau-Ponty (EngIish translation copyright © 1968 by
Northwestern University Press), Sense and Non-Sense by Maurice
Merleau-Ponty (English translation copyright © 1964 by North-
western University Press), Signs by Maurice Merleau-Ponty
(English translation copyright © 1964 by Northwestern University
Press); Professor Morris Berman, for the extracts from 'The Cyber-
netic Dream of the Twenty-First Century' by Morris Berman ©
1984 by Morris Berman, published in an expanded version in the
Journal 0/ Humanistic Psychology, vo1.26 no. 2 (spring 1986).
Every effort has been made to trace all the copyright holders but
if any have been inadvertently overlooked the publishers will be
pleased to make the necessary arrangement at the first opportunity.
I am indebted to Ms Jude Hall-Patch for her assistance in
preparing the index for this book.
I am grateful to the University of Victoria for providing timely
grants to help me defray indexing and copyright permission
expenses.

MONIKA LANGER

xx
 Introduction: Classical
Prejudices and the Return
to Phenomena
 1
'Sensation'
The four chapters comprising the 'Introduction' of the Phenomeno-
logy o[ Perception are designed to provide a preliminary sketch of
dassical approaches to perception which will subsequently be
examined in detail. In these introductory chapters Merleau-Ponty
indicates why he considers the dassical approaches prejuqiced
and why he deemed it necessary to go back to our actual
experience. He also attempts to forestall possible misunderstand-
ings regarding the nature of his own inquiry.
Merleau-Ponty begins with a critical examina ti on of the notion
of sensation. 'At the outset of the study of perception', he says, 'we
find in language the notion of sensation, wh ich seems immediate
and dear.' In the course of this first chapter, that notion reveals
itself to be in fact 'the furthest removed from its original source,
and therefore the most undear'. It is significant that Merleau-
Ponty turns to language in commencing his study of perception.
He thereby alerts us to the fact that perception is not 'a primitive
function' underlying cultural acquisitions, as our 'natural attitude'
would have us believe. On the contrary, what both common sense
and the sciences mean by perception is itself a cultural construct
wh ich misses the phenomenon of perception.
Classical studies, Merleau-Ponty argues, have attempted to
understand perception by adopting an analytical approach. This
approach has resulted in the notion of sensation as the funda-
mental building-block of perception, and hence in the view that
perception is the summation of sensations. The meaning of
sensation varies according to the orientation of the theorists. It
may mean the manner in which one is affected and the experienc-
ing of astate of oneself. On such a view, sensation is an
'impression' produced in a subject; to see red, for example, is to
have an impression of redness. We might think here of Locke's or
Descartes' distinction between primary qualities such as exten-
sion and secondary qualities such as colour. Only the former
belong to the object itself; the object is deemed not to possess

3
4 Introduction: Classical Prejudices and the Return to Phenomena

colour qualities but to cause these to appear in the subject by

affecting the latter in a particular way. To make colours purely
subjective, however, is to render them indistinguishable, since
differentiation requires a distancing - and hence, an objectifying
- on the part of the subject. Pure sensation thus becomes the
experiencing of an instantaneous, undifferentiated 'impact'. As
such it is devoid of meaning and utterly foreign to our lived
experience which, no matter how elementary, is always charged
with meaning. Just as the addition of zeros never gets us beyond
zero, so the summation of meaningless elements never produces a
meaningful whole. Even the simplest sensory given has a figure-
background structure, without which it could not be a sensory
given. Pure, undifferentiated 'impressions' are thus impercep-
tible; they cannot be part of any imaginable perception. Conse-
quently, they have no place in an analysis of perception and their
retention as a theoretical construct only serves to obscure that
wh ich they are intended to illuminate - namely, the nature oE
perception. We will never understand perception by positing
something wh ich in principle can have nothing to do with it. The
only way to learn what it is to perceive is to examine the structure
of our actual perception.
In their attempt to do exactly that, many classical theorists
rejected the notion of pure impression as an element of the
perceiving consciousness and substituted the notion of deter-
minate quality as a property of the perceived object. On this view,
red is not asensation, but rather a quality of something extern al to
the perceiver. The error this time lies in making the world an
'in-itself' in which everything is determined; it is to replace one
extreme with another, to move from the radically subjective and
indeterminate to the radically objective and determinate. Such a
move is no truer to our actual experience; instead of attending to
the latter, this approach presupposes that the objects of experience
are solid 'chunks' delimited by dear boundaries and separated
from one another by physical voids. Perceptual experience is
considered to be analagous and hence, to consist of isolated or
isolable elements wh ich are themselves dear, determinate and
self-contained. This view pre-judges our actual experience of
perception, dismissing in advance everything which fails to fit the
model. Ambiguities are discounted on the grounds that they are
due to some deficiency in the perceiver - such as in attention -
rather than to a positive indeterminacy in the object perceived.
 'Sensation' 5

Having made quality a property of the object, empiricism (to use

Merleau-Ponty's label) feels called upon to explain how that object
can give rise to perceptual experience. It seems initially that
common sense and physiology can come to the rescue: common
sense declares that the sensory given is grasped by the senses,
while physiology supplies a detailed analysis of the senses as
instruments. The result is a reduction of perception to a causal
process in which sensation is the immediate consequence of an
excitation. The perceiver becomes a physical system undergoing
physic~hemical stimuli and responding in determinable ways.
Atoms of matter stimulate the sense organs, and the stimulation is
transmitted via the central nervous·system to the brain where it is
recorded and deciphered to produce an experience corresponding
to the stimulus. Minute particles of colour qualities, for example,
are thus claimed to be at the origin of the experience of colours;
hence the notion of sensation as instantaneous impression seems
to have been reinstated on a firm physiological footing - even if
only as an explanatory concept.
Physiology itself has in fact, however, been forced to renounce
its claim to have found an anatomical path connecting the sti-
mulus to the perceptual experience. Such a model is incapable of
accounting for the blatant lack of correspondence between sti-
mulus and phenomenon which characterizes so much of our actual
experience. Variations in pitch having to do with a sound's
intensity, the perceived inequality of lines objectively equal, the
grey resulting when red and green are presented together, the
change to a less differentiated structure following injuries to sight
are all cases in point. Merleau-Ponty therefore argues that that
which is perceived by its very nature admits of ambiguity and
belongs to a context - or 'fjeld' - wh ich shapes it. Hence we must
reject all attempts to decompose perception into sensations and to
reconstruct experience out of determinate qualities. We must
abandon the belief in an extern al world in itself, wh ich all the
sciences share with common sense. Instead, we must return to the
pre-objective realm if we are to understand what it really means to
see, to hear and to feel.
 2
'Association' and
'Projection of Memories'
In the previous chapter Merleau-Ponty pointed out the problems
encountered by those who invoke the notion of sensation in
analysing perception. Even the simplest sensory given, as we have
seen, must have a figure-background structure, and such a struc-
ture is irreducible to that absolute coincidence of the perceiver
with an impression or quality wh ich defines sensation in its
classical sense. In order to be perceived as a figure, that which is
perceived must stand out from a background, it must have a
contour, an outline. If that outline were merely another sensation,
it could not be an outline. We are then tempted to think that it
must be a collection of atomic sensations viewed simultaneously.
Thus we conceive the outline as a line, and the latter as the sum of
indivisible points having no intrinsic connection themselves. But
what makes the sensations arrange themselves in this way before
us, and why do we say that we are seeing a red patch? The
standard answer is that we recognize this particular distribution
of sensations because we have seen similar distributions in the
past and have learned to use the words 'red patch' with reference
to them. This response, however, is itself open to the same
question; hence, it has merely served to defer the problem rather
than to resolve it.
If sensory givens are themselves devoid of meaning, then
something must be invoked which will endow their summation
with the meaning of 'patch'. Empiricism assurnes that the appeal
to association and the projection of memories will supply such
meaning. However, as Merleau-Ponty notes, these operations not
only call for a consciousness for which empiricism cannot itself
account, but they also presuppose that which they are supposed to
explain. Wh at could possibly prompt the perceiver initially to
make of a conglomeration of 'pure impressions' the seeing of a
triangle, for instance? If we are not to become entangled in an

6
 'Association' and 'Projection 01 Memories' 7

infinite regress, association and memory must themselves be

grounded in a perceptual experience which is already inbued with
meaning. There must be something about the present perceptual
data which prompts the perceiver to put into play a certain
association, or call up a certain memory. The present perceptual
data therefore cannot themselves be meaningless; for such neutral
'building blocks' could never have any power to evoke others. A
certain arrangement of lines on a paper is seen as a tri angle because
it itself has the same meaning as the figure which we formerly
leamed to call'a triangle'. If this were not so, there would be no
reason why a past experience of a circle rather than a triangle
should not be called up. There must be something about the
present data which guides the evocation of memories.
The appeals to association and memory presuppose the present
recognition of a figure; consequently, association and memory
cannot serve as explanatory principles in the analysis of percep-
tion. Nor can the empiricist thesis of sensation be retained if our
experience is to be comprehensible. If we accept the idea that we
have sensations, we commit ourselves to the view that all expe-
rience is sensation, as even the apprehension of spatial or tem-
poral relationships must then be analysable into sensations.
Knowledge itself becomes no more than the anticipation of
impressions, and is itself constituted of such 'inexpressible im-
pressions'. The segregation of our perceptual field into identifi-
able things and spaces becomes no more than the unstable
configurations of extrinsically related qualities assembled by some
inexplicable 'associative force' operating according to the contigu-
ity and resemblance of stimuli. Things have no inherent substanti-
ality as things, and owe their unity entirely to a consciousness -
itself unaccounted for - which constructs them on the basis of past
experience. Once again, this merely transfers the problem from the
present to the past; that which prompts us to recognize something
as a thing in the first place, remains incomprehensible.
Sy clinging to the notion of sensation, we render ourselves
incapable of going beyond it; we reduce the whole of experience
to 'blind processes' consisting of mechanical recordings of, and
reactions to, arbitrary arrangements of meaningless units. To add
that these present processes are based on similar processes in the
past, in no way makes them any less opaque. Consequently, we
must discard the theory of sensation and the postulates cons-
tructed to salvage it. There is no 'associative force' wh ich operates
8 Introduction: Classical Prejudices and the Return to Phenomena

autonomously as an efficient cause of experience; and the alleged

'projection of memories' is simply 'a bad metaphor' which ob-
scures both the immanent meaning ['sens'] of the immediate
experience and the manner in wh ich the past is present to it.* The
thing perceived is not a conglomeration of sensations and memo-
ries, the latter projecting themselves independently upon the
former. By retuming to phenomena, we discover 'a wh oIe already
pregnant with an irreducible meaning'; and it is this whole, rather
than the a11eged sensations and memories, which forms the 'basic
layer' of a11 experience. The problem is thus no longer, as for
empiricism, one of explaining how the projection of a reco11ected
former arrangement of meaningless sensations can render a simi-
lar grouping of present sensations meaningful. Rather, it now
becomes a matter of describing the way in wh ich an inherently
meaningful present experience at every moment has access to a
past which 'envelopes' it. The relationship between past and
present must therefore be re-examined, and Merleau-Ponty indi-
cates that the past will need to be described as a 'horizon' or
'atmosphere' or 'fjeld', instead of as a co11ection of discrete
impressions or qualities. He concedes that this description will be
quite foreign to empiricism and that the latter can always resist
accepting it. Merleau-Ponty's discussion of this point is impor-
tant, as it is intended to forestall misunderstandings about the
status of his phenomenological investigation of perception.
Empiricism rejects as obscure and inadequate the evidence-
such as the horizon of the past - revealed by phenomenological
reflection. Instead, it insists on a theoretical reconstruction of such
evidence in terms of impressions, wh ich it regards as the ultimate
constituents of experience. Since any and a11 phenomena are
immediately subjected to the same sort of reconstruction, none can
serve to disprove empiricism. In general, one cannot refute think-
ing wh ich rests on the prejudice of the objective world, by
describing phenomena. As Merleau-Ponty points out, to those
already committed to an objectivist approach, physical or psycho-
logicalor intellectual atoms will invariably seem more real than
the phenomena of experience. Nevertheless, for the phenomeno-
logist our experience is 'the ultimate court of appeal'. Rather than
refutation, Merleau-Ponty therefore sees his task as being one of

• I am retaining MerJeau-Ponty's distinction between 'sens' and 'signification',

by altering the translation where necessary.
 'Association' and 'Projection 01 Memories' 9

attempting to make thought aware of itself. This will mean

awakening it to its own prejudice and to an appreciation of
perception as the first access to things and the foundation of all
knowledge. As justification for the phenomenological approach,
Merleau-Ponty points to the wealth of hitherto inaccessible phe-
nomena wh ich become comprehensible once it is adopted. Yet, as
Merleau-Ponty acknowledges, empiricism can always object 'that
it does not understand' such phenomenological descriptions. The
only recourse for the phenomenologist is 'to point out everything
that is made incomprehensible by empiricist constructions and all
the basic phenomena which they conceal'. The subsequent three
parts of the Phenomenology of Perception will provide this sort of
'inventory'; hence Merleau-Ponty contents himself with a short
preview of major points here.
We have already seen that empiricist constructions of percep-
tion deprive things of their inherent substantiality and unity by
depicting these as the products of a consciousness which operates
according to association and projection of memories. Now
Merleau-Ponty draws our attention to the fact that empiricst
constructions similarly deprive 'the "cultural world" or "human
world'" of its intrinsic cultural or human meaning - thereby
destroying its substantiality as a cultural or human world. The
perception of a co-worker's emotions or the distinctive atmos-
phere of a particular city becomes merely the products of trans-
ferences and projections of memories by 'an acosmic" thinking
11

subject'.
Moreover, by reducing the natural world to a sum of stimuli and
qualities, empiricism falsifies it too, and gives us under the guise
of 'nature' what is in fact a cultural object. Empirieist constructions
make incomprehensible the presence of the perceived world - and
the loss of that presence for the hysterical child. While retaining
the kernel of truth in empiricism, reflection will need to reconsider
'the whole problem of the presence of the object'. The natural and
the cultural world will need to be rediscovered and described.
As that description progressively unfolds in the subsequent
chapters, the inadequacy of empiricist constructions will become
increasingly evident.
 3
'Attention' and 'Judgment'
At the beginning of this 'Introduction', Merleau-Ponty already
pointed us ahead to the present chapter by noting that 'the notion
of attention ... is no more than an auxiliary hypothesis, evolved
to save the prejudice in favour of an objective world'. In the
preceding chapters, Merleau-Ponty criticized that prejudice in his
attack on empiricism. Now he proceeds to show that despite its
appearance to the contrary, intellectualism shares the same pre-
judice and is equally incapable of accounting for our perceptual
experience.
Empiricism takes the objective world as given and argues that
this world must impinge causally on the perceiver: the sense
organs are stimulated in such a way as to receive and transmit data
which are then somehow decoded by the brain so as to reproduce
a picture, or 'image', of the original external stimulus. This theory
involves the 'constancy hypothesis', according to which there is
'in principle a point-by-point correspondence and constant con-
nection between the stimulus and the elementary perception'.l As
we have seen, however, this theory fails to account for the
discrepancies between the apparent and the real size of objects, for
the perception of grey resulting from the presentation of red and
green together, and so on. The sensory given thus defies its
definition 'as the immediate effect of an external stimulus'.2
Instead of rejecting the presupposition of a world in itself,
empiricism attempts to save this prejudice by appealing to addi-
tional factors.
To account for those cases in which the percept obviously does
not correspond to the stimulus, empiricism therefore invokes the
notion of 'attention'. It argues that the 'normal sensations' are
present in all cases, but that they occasionally remain unperceived
because of lack of attention to them. Like a torch, attention can be
focused on the sensations to illuminate them. Why attention
occurs in some cases but not in others - why some stimuli 'trigger
off' the 'searchlight' while others do not - remains unexplained.

10
 'Attention' and 'Judgment' 11

If the relationship between perception and attention is an external

one, then the question involves us in an infinite regress because
that which 'triggers off ' attention must itself be 'triggered off ' by
something else, and so on ad infinitum. Since empiricism has only
extern al relationships at its disposal, attention remains inexplic-
able. Just what attention adds to the da ta so as to render confused
or illusory perceptions clear and viridical, is a mystery. As a purely
general power, or 'searchlight', attention presumably does not
create anything new in the data. Consequently, the elementary
perception already contains the structure required to make it an
image of the external object. In that case, how can it appear
confused? Moreover, since it deals with sensations, empiricism is
at a loss to account for this structure of perception - i\ structure
wh ich emerges only with attention.
In an effort to make of this incomprehensible empiricist posi-
tion something intelligible, psychologists turned to intellectual-
ism. Thus they argued that the constituting activity of conscious-
ness creates the structure of that which we perceive, and that this
structure is there whether or not we believe that we see it. Once
again, attention merely illuminates what is already present; and if
it is asked what is given prior to the structuring activity of
consciousness, the answer is 'chaos' or a Kantian 'noumenon'.
Attention does not involve a progressive clarification because
there is no indistinctness - there is only chaos or clarity. But as
Merleau-Ponty points out, if consciousness by its very activity
produces structures, it must possess them; hence, it becomes
incomprehensible how it can ever be deceived about anything.
Attention thus seems unnecessary, and illusions defy explanation.
By the same token, contingency is ruled out; there is no
accounting for our experience of exploring something, of learning
about the things which we perceive. If consciousness itself creates
perceptual structures, then it must already have them as soon as
we perceive what we take to be an object - hence there is nothing
more to explore or to learn. Nevertheless, our own experience tells
us otherwise. When we see something indistinct, we attempt to
make it more distinct by paying attention to it. In this case, we are
initially neither totally ignorant nor totally cognizant of what it is
we are seeing; yet empiricism in effect postulates the former while
intellectualism postulates the latter. Both role out any indeter-
minacy by their dogmatic adherence to that 'natural attitude'
shared by common sense and the sciences - an attitude which
12 Introduction: Classical Prejudices and the Return to Phenomena

takes the existence of an objective world to be seH-evident, either

'as a reality in itseH' or 'as the immanent end of knowledge'.
Empirieism offers us a world in itself which impinges causally on
the perceiver. Intellectualism counters this absolute objectivity
with an absolute subjectivity wh ich merely duplicates the empi-
rieist world by a conseiousness conceived as sustaining it. Both
approach es simply construct experience so as to fit their presup-
positions; neither is capable of grasping the 'living nucleus of
perception'.
Psychologists themselves began to challenge this dogmatic
belief in the world in itself, with the discovery that patients
suffering from certain disorders whose origin lies in the central
nervous system, cannot clearly locate a point on their body which
is being touched - yet they are not tota11y ignorant of it either.
What we have here is 'a vaguely located spot' which overtums the
empirieist and inte11ectualist notion of attention. In addition,
Merleau-Ponty points out that when infants begin to distinguish
detailed colours where formerly they perceived '''warm'' and
"cold" shades' or, even earlier, 'the coloured' and 'the colourless',
what has changed is the structure of their perception, the articula-
tions of their visual field. It is not, as psychologists claimed, that
the infants in fact saw determinate colours a11 along but merely
failed to pay attention to them. Attention is best understood on
this model because, as Merleau-Ponty notes, paying attention is
not merely elucidating pre-existing data. Attention progressively
articulates what is initia11y given as positively indeterminate, as a
'still ambiguous meaning'. There is at the start neither absolute
chaos nor perfectly distinct qualities; nor is there complete
transparency at the end of this development. Attention is creative,
but its creativity is motivated by what is initially only 'an indeter-
minate horizon'.
These points will be discussed in far more detail by Merleau-
Ponty in the body of his Phenomenology of Perception of course; the
introductory section merely serves to sketch out the directions
which the subsequent phenomenological description will follow.
In the same manner, Merleau-Ponty here mentions the exper-
imental manipulations which make of attention the act of
looking through a cardboard tube or telescope. Such manipula-
tions fundamentally distort our usual perceptual experience, by
presupposing a fully determinate and preeise world which is then
brought about artifieially. Believing that this 'sleight of hand'
 'Attention' and ,/udgment' 13

must not go unchallenged, Merleau-Ponty here reiterates that

'consciousness must be faced with its own unreflective life in
things and awakened to its own history which it was forgetting:
such is the true part that philosophical reflection has to play, and
thus do we arrive at a true theory of attention'. We must not
presuppose that the analytic reflection employed by intellectual-
ism will lead us back to that unreflective life just because it goes
contrary to the naive realism of the empiricist position. Merleau-
Ponty is concemed to show that both miss the mark.
As we have seen, neither empiricism nor intellectualism is able
to assign any comprehensible role to attention. Given the constan-
cy hypothesis, it is not difficult to see that something is needed to
link up the isolated qualities impressed upon the sense organs, so
as to produce an image of an object rather than a host of discrete
points. Not only can it provide just the sort of co-ordinating
function required here, but the faculty of judgement also seems to
be able to supply an explanation of illusions and more generally,
of any discrepancies between our retinal images and the perceived
object. When, for example, we declare that we see people on the
street below our window even though we objectively see nothing
but hats and coats, intellectualism explains that in fact we do not
really see people below, but merely judge that they are there.
Perception thus becomes an intellectual construction which uses
bodily impressions as primitive data to be interpreted, elaborated,
or used as premises for the further activity of drawing a conclu-
sion. In this way, all sensing experience becomes an activity of
judgement - all seeing or hearing becomes a judging that we see
or hear 'x'. This, however, runs contrary to our actual experience,
in which there is a distinction between sensing and judgement.
Intellectualism cannot account for the fact that a face or alandscape
seen upside down is unrecognizable. It is this sort of experience
which dictates the abandonment of the constancy hypothesis. If
we adopt intellectualism, the distinction between 'true' and 'false'
perception cannot ultimately be upheld. Since seeing means
thinking or judging that we see, it is nonsense to say that the
sufferer from hallucinations thinks he sees something which he
does not really see. After all, to say he sees it is - on this theory
- already to say that he thinks he sees itj hence we are forced to
conclude that he thinks he sees what he does not think he sees. If
one argues that the sufferer from hallucinations draws unwar-
ranted conclusions - that he judges in the absence of adequate
14 Introduction: Classical Prejudices and the Return to Phenomena

premises - the problem is merely pushed one step back. It will

still be necessary to explain how we are to distinguish between
those impressions whieh are adequate and those which are not.
This will force the dassieal theories to acknowledge the existence
of an immanent significance ('signification') in the elementary
sensible - and that is precisely what they have already ruled out.
The efforts to save the prejudiee in favour of an objective world
create irresolvable dilemmas for both empiricism and intellectual-
ism. Merleau-Ponty will show that far from being the primordially
given, sensory givens are the product of a scientifie approach to
perception. We get no further if, like Kant, we focus on the
conditions for the possibility of perception or if, like the early
Husserl, we turn to the abstract essences of perceiving, thinking,
and judging. All these approaches rest on a dogmatic belief in a
determinate uni verse and in an absolute truth. The overthrow of
'the naturalistic notion of sensation' already implies the ruin of
analytic reflection wh ich had adopted it; and as Merleau-Ponty
reminds us, it is the task of philosophy to embark on the
'authentie' or 'radical' reflection foreshadowed in the collapse of
the dassical theories. This phenomenological reflection will need
to return to, and elucidate, the 'perceptual origins' of our actual
experience instead of situating itself in the midst of a 'ready-made
world'. Such a new approach will require concepts (like motiva-
tion) whieh are 'fluid' enough to express a domain that is neither
'objective' nor 'subjective', where being is not fully determinate
and signifieance not entirely dear. Merleau-Ponty admits that
Cartesians will dismiss this new approach as lacking philoso-
phical import. Its vindication will require a theory of reflection in
whieh the facticity of consciousness is shown - so that thought
becomes cognizant of its inability to cut itself loose from percep-
tual experience in order to grasp itself absolutely. The chapter 'The
Cogito' will address itself explicitly to this task.
 4
The Phenomenal Field
In this final chapter of his 'Introduction' Merleau-Ponty retraces
briefly the major points which have emerged in the previous
chapters, discusses the need for the type of phenomenological
description which the subsequent chapters will provide, and
summarizes the direction which the latter will take.
By making sensing the possession of an inert quality, empiri-
cism reduced the world to a spectacle and our own bodies to mere
mechanisms. Sensing thereby lost that vitality, that mysterious
richness, which it in fact has in our common experience. Empiri-
cism rendered incomprehensible the primordial, pre-reflective
significance which the world has for us as incarnate subjects,
which makes of that world not a spectacle but 'a familiar setting of
our life'. It has therefore become necessary to reconsider the
nature of sensing and to tackle the problem of describing it as 'that
vital communication with the world', that 'intentional tissue'
which underlies and sustains a11 thought. Sensation, attention and
judgement as constructed by the classical philosophies can no
longer be accepted; the emergence of significant groupings can no
longer be reduced to a de facta co-existence or an intellectual
connection of meaningless impressions. Perception can no longer
be collapsed into knowledge; nor can the creating of connections
remain the perogative of the understanding. The prejudice of the
world in itself must be abandoned and, with it, many of the
concepts and distinctions employed by the classical philosophies.
A new dimension calling for new conceptions is thus opened up,
and Merleau-Ponty designates it Ja phenamenal fjeld' to indicate
that it is not a spectacle spread out before a disembodied mind,
but rather an 'ambiguous domain' in wh ich perspectival, incar-
nate subjects are situated. It is in this domain that perceptual
experience can be rediscovered.
What place should this perceptual experience be assigned
vis-a-vis scientific knowledge on the one hand, and psychological
and philosophical reflection on the other? Merleau-Ponty con-

15
16 Introduction: Classical Prejudices and the Return to Phenomena

tends that 'science and philosophy have for centuries been sus-
tained by unquestioning faith in perception'. Beginning with a
preconceived idea of the world and a corresponding ideal of
knowledge, science considered perception as providing access to
that world and so paving the way for scientific knowledge.
Consequently, instead of examining our actual perceptual expe-
rience of phenomena, science interpreted it with reference to the
theoretical constructs of pure bodies endowed with statistica11y
determined chemical properties and free from any force. Geome-
trical space and pure movement - both lacking any internal rela-
tionship to objects - replaced our lived experience of space and
motion, while events became the result of determinable physical
conditions. Objects were divorced from their relationship to any
particular perceiver and thereby stripped of a11 perspectivity,
ambiguity or indeterminacy. At least in principle, they were fu11y
determinate and identical for a11 perceivers, thus ruling out any
irresolvable contradictions within subjective or intersubjective
experience. Since perception was not regarded as a dialectical
process in which something comes into being, reflection consi-
dered a genealogy of being unnecessary. Moreover, the being
which science defined became the only conceivable being, ir-
respective of the value assigned to the principles of science. As a
result, the living body became an object like a11 the others, equa11y
reducible to physico-chemical properties and causal relations.
Emotions and attitudes were translated into impressions of plea-
sure and pain, and the latter linked to processes of the nervous
system. Similarly, gestures and actions were resolved into object-
ive movements explicable in terms of nervous functioning. Sens-
ing became a matter of stimulus-response: the body, reduced to
an object, mechanica11y received, transmitted, and reproduced
qualities of the extemal world.
Since the living body has ceased to be the visible expression of
our being-in-the-world and become instead a machine, subjectiv-
ity lost its anchor and became a disembodied consciousness
surveying the world. Perception of others and co-existence with
them became impossible. Since the body of the other, like our
own, had been converted into an automaton, we could at best inter
the existence of another consciousness which, like ours, was
disembodied (and hence lacked particularity). But this meant
constituting the other consciousness - thus reducing it to the
status of an object in our world. Solipsism was unavoidable and
 The Phenomenal Field 17

the consciousness of the scientist became the universal constitut-

ing subject for whom the entire world lay spread out. In short,
intersubjectivity and perception collapsed into solitary thought;
the self dissolved into the transcendental subject. Having accepted
uncritically the fundamental assumptions of classical science,
reflective philosophy found itself equally incapable of assigning
any status to the empirical self.
Scientific advances - such as those in quantum mechanics
- and the experience of two world wars undermined the classical
approach. Einstein's relativity theory and Heisenberg's uncertain-
ty principle challenged the classical dichotomy between a fully
determinate world in itself and an impartial human observer.
Space and time lost their absolute independence and an inherent
uncertainty replaced the absolute determinability of nature. The
classical assumption of an absolute stand point was no longer
tenable; the perceiver's situation could no Ion ger be ignored.
Nature ceased to be a spectacle; the perceiver became a parti-
cipator and science found itself forced to tolerate a measure of
indeterminacy. The notion of 'a truth in itself' had to be aban-
doned in favour of a truth relative to a human knower. Science was
compelled to discard its pure concepts and reflective philosophy,
wh ich had shared the same assumptions, had to follow suit.
Moreover, these theoretical challenges were strengthened by the
chaos of war, which overturned the classical conception of inter-
subjective life. As Merleau-Ponty shows in his moving essay 'The
War Has Taken Place', the concrete experience of barbarism
shattered the very premises of rationalism. Irresolvable ambigui-
ties and contradictions could no longer be ruled out; human
society could no longer be regarded as 'a community of reasonable
minds'; his tory could no longer be dismissed as unessential. The
actual experience of irrationality and unfreedom revealed the
contingency of reason and liberty, showing their dependence on
particular forms of human co-existence. Rationalism lost its al-
teged universality and became a philosophy rooted in a specific
historical context wh ich it ignored on principle. Similarly, the
absoluteness of classical science was shattered, disclosing the
latter as 'a form of perception' wh ich considered itself complete
5imply because it conveniently forgot its own origins. It is
therefore essential that we break with uncritical perception and
the cIassical presupposition of determinate being; that we go back
to our actual experience of the world and rediscover the dialectical
18 Introduction: Classical Prejudices and the Return to Phenomena

process of living experience whereby we ourselves, other people

and things come into being. Merleau-Ponty designates this
reawakening of perception and rediscovery of phenomena 'the
first philosophical act'.
Merleau-Ponty cautions, however, that returning to phenomena
does not mean embarking on introspective psychology nor intui-
tionism. Phenomena are not 'states of consciousness', nor is the
phenomenal field an 'inner world' accessible to the individual
subject alone. Merleau-Ponty's own position must not be confused
with that of the psychologists who in challenging the validity of
analysing experience in terms of physical concepts, nonetheless
retained the presupposition of the objective world. They merely
constructed, inside that world, arealm of 'psychic facts' and
'psychic energy' corresponding to the physical facts and mecha-
nical energy assumed to exist outside the psyche. Since extension
characterized physical data, non-extension became the trait of
their psychic counterparts. Lacking extension, the latter were
perceivable only by an act of intuition which was by definition
private and non-communicable; impressions were beyond the
reach of philosophical reflection. By contrast, the return to pheno-
mena res tores our lived experience of intersubjectivity and
establishes the foundation for authentie philosophizing. The criti-
cism of the constancy hypothesis involves the rejection not only of
sensation but also of the theory of consciousness based on
it - which Ryle so aptly described as 'the dogma of the Ghost in
the Machine,.3 Consciousness is then no Ion ger constructed of
impressions and the apprehension of 'mental life' - our own and
that of others - ceases to be a matter of 'some inexpressible
coincidence'. The dichotomy between 'interna!' and 'external'
experience disappears and, with it, the conception of 'mentallife'
as a mysterious 'inner' counterpart of 'outer' behaviour. The
immediate is no longer a meaningless atom of psychic Iife, but
rather the very structure of behaviour - our own and others'-
wh ich is a whole saturated with immanent significance. Others'
'mentallife' thus becomes immediately accessible in the unfolding
of their behaviour, rather than having to be inferred by introspec-
tion. Moreover, introspection ceases to be a privileged surveying
of alleged 'states of consciousness' and becomes instead a rend-
ering explicit of the meaning immanent in any behaviour. Once
we reject the notion that consciousness is a psychic entity encased
in a machine, the body ceases to be a barrier to consciousness and
 The Phenomenal Field 19

beeomes, on the eontrary, that whieh makes others immediately

present to us in living experienee.
In breaking with the psychologieal atomism of introspective
psychology to describe the Gestalt's irreducible meaning, Gestalt
psyehology made a significant advance. However, Merleau-Ponty
eriticizes its tendeney to treat consciousness as an assemblage of
'forms' and to adhere to the ideal of an explanatory psyehology. He
wams that uncritical aeeeptanee of Gestalt psyehology can lead
onee again to the distortions of c1assical transcendental philoso-
phies. Psychologists' reflection on the primaey of phenomena
prompts them to consider these as constituting the objective
world. From there, it is but a small step to the postulating of a
universal constituting agent - the solitary thinking ego - which
constitutes not only the objective world but also that of living
experience. The phenomenal Held thus turns into a transeendental
Held; unreflective experience loses its fundamental faeticity to
become a mere anticipation of reflection and the latter aehieves
complete self-transparency. In short the world, other people and
we ourselves as individuals all collapse into a Hegelian Reason,
while the dogmatism of idealism replaces that of empiricism. Even
Husserl's transeendental phenomenology as deseribed in works
dating from his last period presents this absorption of 'the
"lived-through" world' into the transcendental ego. Despite its
claims to the contrary, such an approach is ultimately uncritical. In
eountering it, Merleau-Ponty reminds us of the meaning of
phenomenology and transcendental field.
Phenomenology does not study the actualizing of a pre-existing
reason or the conditions for the possibility of a world. Rather, as
the word itself indicates, phenomenology studies the appearing of
being to eonseiouness. Moreover, in deliberately employing the
word field, phenomenology emphasizes the irreducibility of the
world and the perspectivity of refleetion. Refleetion thus under-
stood is not the surveying of a world spread out as a speetac1e for a
disembodied, all-encompassing Thinker. It is, rather, an activity of
an individual philosopher and is always eonditioned by the
latter's eonerete situation in the world. If it is to be truly radical,
phenomenological refleetion will need to reflect on itself, maintain
a eonstant awareness of its own souree in an unreflective expe-
rience and recognize that it invariably transforms that unreflective
experience in submitting it to refleetion. Philosophy becomes
authentically transcendental, or radical, by questioning the pres-
20 Introduction: Classical Prejudices and the Return to Phenomena

umption that refleetion ean, so to speak, 'eateh itself by the tail' and
make knowledge completely explicit. As Socrates understood so
weIl, philosophy's eore 'lies in the perpetual beginning of reflec-
tion, at the point where an individual life begins to refleet on
itself'. There is thus no unbridgeable ehasm separating naive
eonsciousness from radical reflection; however, 'the prejudice of
the objective world' makes the naive consciousness forget that
living experience in wh ich both it and philosophical reflection are
rooted. Stripped of psychologism, the psyehological description of
the phenomenal field ean provide a bridge by reviving perceptual
experienee and thereby eventually inducing consciousness to
embark on a radical reflection.

Notes
1. Phenomenology of Perception, p. 7.
2. Ibid., p. 8.
3. Gilbert Ryle, The Concept of Mind (Harmondsworth, Middlesex:
Penguin, 1976) p. 17.
 Part I
The Body
 Experience and
Objective Thought:
the Problem of the Body
As we have seen, objective thought takes the form of realism
('empiricism') or idealism ('intellectualism'). In this prefatory
section, Merleau-Ponty outlines how it is that 'objective thought'
arises at all and how space, time, and the body figure in such
thinking. He also points out the need for a description of 'the
emergence of being' which will show that objective thought is a
mere moment of experience rather than its foundation. Since our
perception leads to objects, we tend to overlook the origin of these
objects - the fact that they have their source 'at the very centre of
our experience'. Thus we neglect the crucial part which we
incarnate subjects play in the constitution of the objects of our
perception, in their coming into being as objects for uso Instead of
recognizing our own role, we consider them to be objects in
themselves. Alternatively, we go to the opposite extreme by
distorting our own contribution in perception so as to make of it a
power of creating ex nihilo. In this way we overlook the fact that
while objects are 'for us', they are so only as 'in-themselves for us'.
Objects are not mere projections or constructions of our minds;
rather, they are objects to be encountered or discovered. In short,
they are things offering a certain resistance to our touch and a
depth to our gaze.
To indicate how we are tempted into the modalities of objective
thought, Merleau-Ponty invokes the example of perceiving a
house. We see the house next door as we walk past it to our own:
we see it first from the one side as we approach it, then from the
front as we pass it and finally from the other side as we walk up
the path to our own door. If we were to enter our neighbour's
backyard, if we were to go in his front door and see the inside of
his house, or if we were to fly over his roof in a helicopter we
would see the house differently. Since the house is seen differently
from one angle than from another and since we are nevertheless
aware of seeing the same house from different positions at
different times, rather than six different houses, we all too easily

23
24 Part I: The Body

conclude that it itself is an 'in-itself ' - that it exists independently

of any perspective. However, such realism subverts itself as so on
as we pause to consider its implications. If the house itself is
indeed independent of any perspective then it must be a house
'seen from nowhere' or, what amounts to the same thing, seen
from all possible perspectives simultaneously; but that involves a
contradiction in terms. To see is, after all, 'always to see from
somewhere'; hence the house allegedly 'seen from nowhere' or
'seen from everywhere' cannot be really seen - it must be in-
visible. Yet as we were prompted to attribute autonomy to the
house itself, we continue to claim that it exists. Consequently, we
have a house which, though invisible, nonetheless exists; it must
then belong to the realm of ideality rather than to that of reality.
The house itself is now no Ion ger a spatio-temporal thing but an
idea. By a curious reversal, the naive realism with which we began
has transformed itself into a full-blown idealism. Merleau-Ponty
therefore sets hirnself the task of tracing both these positions back
to their origin in experience.
As we have seen, the perspectivity of vision was what prompted
us to posit the house itself. Given that we could see the same house
from different places at different times, we were led to condude
that the house itself exists independently of any perspective. In
this brief introduction, therefore, Merleau-Ponty begins to
examine the spatio-temporal structure of perception. The key
concepts in this examination - perspective, field and horizon-
are internally related. The adopting of any particular perspective
can take place only in a perceptual field and that field, in turn, is a
field only insofar as it has horizons. When we perceive a house,
we perceive it perspectivally and, as we have seen, by taking up
any particular position from which to view it we imply the
possibility of taking up others. In short, the house lends itself to
exploration and invites our gaze to move around it. We can
comply only insofar as the house is part of a certain 'setting' whose
ultimate horizon is the world. The latter is the 'horizon of
horizons', the general setting of a11 perceptual experiences. In our
eX3mple of the house, the particular horizon may be the street, the
town in which it is located or the surrounding countryside. These
are what Merleau-Ponty calls the 'outer' horizons of the house;
correlatively, the 'inner' horizons enable our gaze to explore the
interior of the house from a variety of positions. However, we
cannot simultaneously 'open up' the outer and inner horizons of
 Experience and Objective Thought: the Problem o{ the Body 25

the house; focusing our gaze on any particular object inevitably

means allowing the others to retreat to the fringes of our visual
field to become part of the background. These surrounding objects
nonetheless continue to count in our vision and we are free to
draw any one of them into the foreground if we choose to let the
object of our present focus retreat to the periphery. Thus we are
never imprisoned in a particular perspective; nor need we fear
that our concentration on any particular object will entail the
others' loss of identity. Moreover, those others have horizons in
which the object of our present focus is implied, thereby guaran-
teeing that this object too will retain its identity while we explore
its various aspects. Such exploration is not an intellectual opera-
tion and there is no need to know anything about the eyes' retinal
structure for it to occur. Nor is there any need for explicit
recollection or conjecture, since the object's identity is not con-
structed from images.
Identity implies temporality; therefore the 'object-horizon
structure, or the perspective', is not merely spatial but spatio-
temporal. As such, it has an inherent openness which makes it
impossible for an object of experience ever to be absolute - for
that would require the compressing of an infinity of different
perspectives 'into a strict coexistence'. This notion of 'an absolute
object' is based on the perspectivism of experience; but in
bringing in the idea of the co-existence of an infinity of different
perspectives, we destroy temporality - and thereby the very expe-
rience underlying the notion of an absolute object. In place of that
experience, this sort of thinking substitutes a reconstruction based
on 'the prejudice of the objective world'. In this 'freezing' of
experience the living body is reduced to an object among other
objects. Yet our body is in fact the sine qua non of perceptual
experience and we thus encounter considerable difficulties in
regarding it as an object. Conversely, the objectification of our
body is decisive in bringing the objective world into being; hence
the collapse of the former leads to the downfall of the laUer. To
restore 'the perceiving subject as weIl as the perceived world',
Merleau-Ponty therefore begins the Phenomenology proper with a
critical examination of 'the body as object and mechanistic physio-
logy' . When the body becomes our 'point of view upon the world'
instead of an object, the spatio-temporal structure of perceptual
experience will be revived and objective thinking in general
undermined. The problems posed by objective thought will lead
26 Part I: The Body

us to recognize the body as a project rather than an in-itself.

Further, such a recognition will necessitate a re-examination of
those perceptual objects wh ich form the goal of the bodily tran-
scendence. The resultwill be a radical modification in the subject-
object structure impIicit in the very notion of a 'project'.
 1
The Body as Object and
Mechanistic Physiology
Objective thought, as we have seen, posited a world of objects in
which different objects as weIl as different parts of the same object
were related in a purely extern al manner. Mechanistic physiology
incorporated the living body into this causal system by converting
human behaviour into a pattern of stimulus-response. Thus the
stimulus was thought to impinge on a particular sense organ
wh ich in turn transmitted sensations to the brain and thereby
produced a predictable perception. However, neural physiology
found itself forced to abandon this purely mechanistic approach
when it became evident that damaging centres or conductors
resulted in subjects' loss of discrimination - frequently progress-
ive - among stimuli rather than in an outright loss of 'certain
qualities of sensation or of certain sensory givens'. What was at
stake in such injuries was the organization of the sensory fields,
the modification or collapse of figure-background structures.
Consequently, modern physiology itself replaced the mechanistic
stimulus-response model with the notion of an organism which
meets and relates to stimulation in a variety of ways. Since the
stimulation of a sense organ did not in and of itself invariably
produce a perception, it became necessary to speak of an 'attu-
ning', or disposition, of the organism to the excitation and to
regard perception as a 'psychophysical' rather than a purely
physical and physiological event. Nonetheless, adopting this more
sophisticated 'psychophysical' model did not necessarily mean
discarding causality and third person processes altogether. There
was a tendency to regard the organism's shaping of stimuli as the
product of an objective body whose internaiorgans send messages
to the brain. Our experience of the body was thereby reduced to a
'representation' or 'psychic fact' resulting from objective events
occurring in our 'real body'. Thus the model which began with a
confusing mixture of physical and psychological factors - excit-

27
28 Part I: The Body

ation and 'attuning' - ended by collapsing the alleged psycholo-

gical aspect of the event back into complicated physiological
processes. In doing so, it ultimately encountered the same
problem wh ich it had been designed to resolve - namely, the
problem of inadequacy in accounting for actual experiences.
To illustrate the shortcomings of the tradition al views, Merleau-
Ponty discusses the phenomena of the phantom limb and ano-
sognosia. A strictly physiological account fails to explain how a
limb which in fact is no longer physically part of the body can
nevertheless be experienced and, altematively, how a limb which
has become paralyzed can be systematically left out of account
even though it is still part of the body and has not actually become
anaesthetized. Nor can a purely psychological account elucidate
the phenomena, since it cannot explain why the phantom limb
disappears when the nerves to the brain are cut, or how the
anosognosic evades his handicap without simply forgetting it or
failing to see it. It must be remembered here that Merleau-Ponty's
criticisms throughout the Phenomenology are directed against
'empiricism' and 'intellectualism'. The psychological account
which is under attack above belongs to the intellectualist approach
and seeks to explain phenomena in terms of the presence or
absence of determinate mental contents. The phenomenon of the
phantom limb is indisputably bound up with the personal his tory
of the subjects in question, since such a limb can come into being
through emotions or circumstances recalling those in which the
injury occurred. Nonetheless, emotion and recollection are not to
be understood as intellectual operations here but rather, as pre-
objective ways of relating to the world. Similarly, the personal
history is irreducible to a collection of memories or brain 'traces',
since that would preclude the disappearance of the phantom li mb
in the absence of brain injuries (which would presumably damage
or destroy the brain's alleged contents).
Explanations in purely physiological or purely psychological
terms evidently cannot account for phenomena such as anosogno-
sia and the phantom limb. Yet such phenomena can be related to
both physiological and psychological conditions; consequently, it
would seem that we could arrive at an adequate explanation by
mixing these conditions. However, such a hybrid theory likewise
remains fundamentally unsatisfactory. If we begin with a radical
distinction between the 'physiological' order on the one hand and
the 'psychic' on the other, any subsequent attempt to establish an
 The Body as Object and Mechanistic Physiology 29

intrinsic connection between the two is bound to fail. Given the

complete antithesis between a being which is purely 'in-itself'
and one which is exclusively 'for-itself', any meeting point is
utterly inconceivable. Such a point of contact would require a
combination of the essential features of being-in-itself and being-
for-itself; yet this sort of combination has already been ruled out
in the very positing of these two fundamentally opposed kinds of
being.
Descartes' unsuccessful struggle to establish the union of body
and soul (or mind) remains the most famous of such attempts to
amalgamate mechanistic being and translucent consciousness.
Since the Cartesian position is also the clearest instance of what
Merleau-Ponty refers to throughout the Phenomenology as 'intel-
lectualism', it is worth presenting Descartes' view in some detail at
this point. Descartes '[begins] by observing the great difference
between mind and body. Body is of its nature always divisible;
mind is wholly indivisible,.l He notes that 'although the whole
mi nd seems to be united to the whole body,' if one loses a limb
one is 'not aware that any subtraction has been made from the
mind,.2 Thus Descartes is led to assert 'the total difference bet-
ween mind and body' and to 'observe that [the] mind is not
directly affected by all parts of the body; but only by the brain, and
perhaps only by one small part of that - the alleged seat of
common sensibiIity,.3 Moreover,

since any given disturbance in the part of the brain that directly
affects the mind can produce only one kind of sensation ...
man as a compound of body and mind cannot but be sometimes
deceived by his own nature. For some cause that occurs, not in
the foot, but in any other of the parts traversed by the nerves
from the foot to the brain, or even in the brain itself, may arouse
the same disturbance as is usually aroused by a hurt foot; and
then pain will be feIt as [though] it were in the foot, and there
will be a 'natural' illusion of sense. 4

That Descartes hirnself recognized the inadequacy of this account

is evident from his correspondence with Princess Elizabeth. In
writing in response to the latter's request for clarification regard-
ing the soul's power of moving the body, Descartes acknowledges
that he has 'said almost nothing' about it and tries again 'to
explain ... the union of soul and body and how the soul has the
30 Part I: The Body

power of moving the body,.5 That explanation consists of no more

than the observation that the union in question is a 'primitive
notion' and that the soul's way of moving the body is to be
conceived by analogy with gravity.6 When Princess Elizabeth
replies that she finds this response incomprehensible, Descartes
can only answer that 'the similie of gravity .... is lame', that 'the
human mind is incapable of distinctly conceiving both the distinc-
tion between body and soul and their union, at one and the same
time'; and that 'finally, it is just by means of ordinary life and
conversation, by abstaining from meditating and from studying
things that exercise the imagination, that one leams to conceive
the union of soul and body' because 'what belongs to the union of
soul and body can be understood only in an obscure way either by
pure intellect or even when the intellect is aided by imagination,
but is understood very dearly by means of the senses,.7 Despite
repeated attempts to do so, Descartes dearly found hirnself unable
to reconcile his 'ordinary life' experience with his philosophical
view of the relationship between body and soul. The former forced
hirn to admit 'that I am not present in my body merely as a pilot is
present in a ship; I am most tightly bound to it, and as it were
mixed up with it, so that land it form a unit'.s Descartes'
'meditating' prompted hirn to 'consider the human body as a
machine fitted together and made up of bones, sinews, musdes,
veins, blood and skin' as opposed to 'a conscious being; that is a
mind, a soul (animus), an intellect, a reason,.9 Having recognized
'only two summa genera of realities: intellectual or mental (cogitati-
varum) realities, i.e. such as belong to a mind or conscious
(cogitantem) substance; and material realities, i.e. such as belong to
an extended substance, a body', Descartes necessarily failed to
establish 'a dose and intimate union of body and mind,.l0
Traditional attempts to explain the phenomena of human expe-
rience in purely physiological or purely psychological terms have
shown themselves to be inadequate, as have those approaches
which, like Descartes', merely sought to mix the two kinds of
explanations while leaving both fundamentally intact. Conse-
quently, such efforts must be abandoned for a phenomenological
description wh ich situates human existence between the 'physio-
logical' and the 'psychic'. It is this sort of description wh ich
Merleau-Ponty hirnself endeavours to provide. By way of a pre-
liminary step in this direction, he points out that even in reference
to the non-human order the 'physiological' has traditionally been
 The Body as Object and Mechanistic Physiology 31

conceived far too narrowly. At the level of the insect for example, it
is blatantly rtdieulous to speak of phenomena such as 'repression',
'refusal to accept mutiliation' and the like. But here too we cannot
account for the phenomena if we regard the insecrs body as an
object obeying the laws of mechanistic physiology. Mechanistie
physiology will ne ver explain the insect's substituting a sound leg
for a severed one but not for a leg whieh has only been tied.
Although there is here no conscious substitution aiming at some
goal, there is no purely automatie substitution either. Even at this
lowly level therefore, it is necessary to describe the body - the
insect's in this case - in a way whieh transcends the traditional
alternatives of 'physiological' and 'psychic'.
We must discard the well-entrenched idea that reflexes are
'blind processes' ; instead, at all levels of life we must speak of a
certain manner of 'being-in-the-world'. In the case of the insect, of
course, it is a matter of 'an apriori of the species and not a personal
choice', since insects of the same species all respond to mutilation
in roughly the same way - whereas at the human level the
response is much more varied and complex. In both cases,
however, bodily injury brings to light what can only properly be
called a 'global' or bodily intentionality having to do with a
pre-objective 'orientation towards a "behavioural setting" '. Inso-
far as it is a pre-objective view, being-in-the-world is equally
irreducible to either of Descartes' 'two summa genera of realities' -
pure thought or extended being; as a result, being-in-the-world
can unify the 'physiologieal' and the 'psychie'. It does so by
reintegrating them into existence in such a way that 'they are no
Ion ger distinguishable respectively as the order of the in itselJ, and
that of the Jor itself, and that they are both directed towards an
intentional pole or towards a world'.
By invoking the notion of being-in-the-world, we are able to
comprehend the ambiguity whieh characterizes such phenomena
as the phantom limb and anosognosia. It is no longer a question of
a stock of 'representations' still present after the amputation of a
limb or unaccountably absent despite the persistence of a limb
whieh has been crippled. Further, since the subject can describe
the peculiarities of his phantom limb, he cannot be unconscious of
its existence; yet his awareness of it does not prevent his attempt-
ing to walk on the missing leg. For the subject, the awareness of
the missing or the crippled limb is not 'dear and artieulate' but
rather, 'undear', ambiguous. As Merleau-Ponty notes, the subject
32 Part I: The Body

who continually substitutes his right arm for his crippled left arm
does not engage in deliberate decision-making. Rather, he con-
tinues to project hirnself through his body towards his habitual
world. From this phenomenological perspective, bodily expe-
rience is not reducible to an actual momentary interoceptivity
occurring in a particular instant of the present. The amputee's
phantom leg and the anosognosic's paralyzed arm bring to light a
bodily temporality wh ich is not of the order of 'objective' time.
The body is seen to comprise 'like two distinct layers', the
'habitual body' and the 'present body'. The former signifies the
body as it has been lived in the past, in virtue of which it has
acquired certain habitual ways of relating to the world. The
'habitual body' already projects a habitual setting around itself,
thereby giving a general structure to the subject's situation. Since
it outlines, prior to all reflection, those objects which it 'expects' to
encounter at the other pole of its projects, this body must be
considered an 'anonymous', or 'prepersonal', global intentionality.
As such, it draws together a comprehensive past which it puts at
the disposal of each new present, thereby already laying down the
general form of a future it anticipates. With its 'two layers' the
body is the meeting place, so to speak, of past, present and future
because it is the carrying forward of the past in the outlining of a
future and the living of this bodily momentum as actual present.
This is why the anosognosic continues to perceive objects as being
rnanipulatable for hirn although his handicap precludes his mani-
pulating them any longer. Similarly, by projecting his customary
situation around hirn, the amputee's habitual body may prompt
hirn to try to walk on his missing leg. Usually, subjects gradually
accept their disability as they build up a modified habitual body.
The latter then ceases to project the formerly habitual setting to
wh ich those subjects are now no longer able to respond effect-
ively. As Merleau-Ponty notes, the very fact that their habitual
body - at least initially - continues to outline a 'customary world'
in which they can no longer act in their habitual way, continually
reveals their handicap to them. Yet that awareness need never be
made explicit; it may weIl remain paradoxically present and
absent simultaneously. Thanks to their customary body, subjects
may remain indefinitely open to a future which has in fact been
ruled out by their injury. Inasmuch as their daily activities were
not preceded by reflection in the past, no reflection is now
 The Body as Object and Mechanistic Physiology 33

required to keep their customary world 'alive' - and no explicit

awareness will automatically bring about its collapse.
Experiences like those of anosognosics or those of persons with
phantom limbs - or, in general, those of patients with any of a
whole variety of complexes - bring to light the temporal structure
which characterizes our existence as incarnate beings. The
psychoanalyst's patient typically suffers from a 'complex' - such
as a particular phobia - whose origin lies in a traumatic expe-
rience in that patient's past. Because the experience was so painful
for hirn, the patient 'repressed' his 'conscious' awareness of it,
thus banishing the memory of his experience into the 'uncon-
scious'. Although ousted from consciousness, the experience thus
continues to exist at the unconscious level and from there over-
shadows and poisons the patient's present. He thus remains the
prisoner of his past, so that the structure of his subsequent
experience is frozen even though its content changes. In order to
release hirn from the clutches of his past, the psychoanalyst
typically prompts the patient to bring the experience back into
conscious awareness and by analysing it, to purge it of its
traumatic aspect. Thus the patient is finally able to leave the past
experience behind hirn and become genuinely open to his actual
present.
This haunting of the present by a particular past experience is
possible because we all carry our past with us insofar as its
structures have become 'sedimented' in our habitual body. There
is thus an 'organic repression' which is part of our human
condition and wh ich constitutes so to speak 'an inbom complex'.
This 'organic repression' underlies any more specific repression of
the type discussed above. To the extent that it is rooted in
biological existence, our personal existence is inherently preca-
rious; yet we hide this precariousness from ourselves by mostly
repressing the organism and reducing the past to a collection of
ideas or images. Such phenomena as the phantom limb can
reawaken us to the actual character of the past and thus to an
appreciation of the role which our body plays in our being-in-the-
world. Since emotion and memory can bring ab out the phenome-
non of the phantom limb, it is evident that the patient is
experiencing 'a former present' rather than merely recollecting it
or having an idea or image of it. The phantom limb is therefore
analogous to the repression of a traumatic experience discussed
34 Part I: The Body

above; in both cases the subject remains emotionally involved in a

particular past experience to such a degree that it imposes itself on
the actual present. By reopening time memory evokes a certain
past, inviting us to relive it - rather than simply to imagine or
rethink it. In responding to this implicit summons, the amputee
can cause his missing limb to appear as 'quasi-present', but this
phenomenon is not to be construed as involving either a 'physio-
logical' or a 'psychic' causality. Instead, it is a matter of the
patient's taking up an 'existential attitude' which 'motivates' the
appearance of the missing limb. The fact that the patient can no
longer 'call up' the limb if his afferent nerves are cut, confirms the
extent to wh ich being-in-the-world is based on bodily existence.
As we have seen, however, bodily existence is not reducible to the
laws of mechanistic physiology but is itself imbued with meaning
by our being-in-the-world. Consequently, it is not a question of
joining a soul to a mechanistic object, as Descartes tried to do, but
of recognizing the dialectical movement of our existence.
That movement ceaselessly carries anonymous biological
existence forward into personal existence in a cultural world and
conversely, allows the personal and the cultural to become sed-
imented in general, anonymous structures. This sedimentation is
essential insofar as it frees us from the necessity of having to pay
strict attention to every single thing we do, no matter how simple
it may be. We thereby attain the 'mental and practical space' that
enables us to build a personal existence and a human world. On
the other hand as we have seen, the acquisition of general
structures by the habitual body opens the possibility of our
becoming fixated in a past experience. Thus the dialectic of
freedom and dependence is part and parcel of the dialectical
movement wh ich characterizes our existence as incamate beings.
Since tradition al approaches have distorted our existence by
reducing it to mechanistic physiology or to intellectualistic
psychology, Merleau-Ponty endeavours to restore its dialectical
nature by showing up the inadequacies of such approaches.
Having examined existence via physiology in this chapter, he
proceeds to consider it by way of psychology in the next.
 The Body as Object and Mechanistic Physiology 35

Notes
1. Descartes, 'Sixth Meditation', Meditations on First Philosophy in
Elizabeth Anscombe and Peter Thomas Geach (trans. and eds),
Philosophical Writings (London: Nelson and Sons Ud, Nelson's
University Paperbacks for The Open University, 1970) p. 12l.
2. Ibid., p. 12l.
3. Ibid., p. 121.
4. Ibid., pp. 122, 123.
5. 'Letters illustrative of Descartes's Philosophy 1630-1647', Philo-
sophical Writings, pp. 274-5.
6. Ibid., pp. 275, 276, 277.
7. Ibid., pp. 277-82.
8. 'Sixth Meditation', Philosophical Writings, p. 117.
9. Ibid., p. 120; 'Second Meditation', Philosophical Writings, p. 69.
10. 'Extracts from Principles oi Philosophy i1lustrating Descartes's Use of
certain Terms and his Principles in Physics', Philosophical Writings,
pp. xlviii, 190, 191.
 2
The Experience of the
Body and Classical
Psychology
Classical psychology's own characterization of the body indicated
crucial structural differences between the latter and objects; yet
because of their commitment to the standpoint of an impartial
ob server, psychologists failed to appreciate the philosophical
significance of these fundamental differences. Classical psycho-
logy recognized, for example, that the body itself has a perma-
nence which is unlike that of objects. We establish an objecrs
perman~nce by exploring it from diverse perspectives in space
and time and determining whether it persists throughout the
exploration. Moreover, an object can be removed from our percep-
tual field altogether. We cannot, however, detach ourselves from
our body; hence we can neither take up various perspectives on it
nor dislodge it from our perception. In short, our body is perma-
nently present for us without our ever being able to observe it like
an object; the angle from which we perceive our body is unalter-
able. Yet this permanent and invariable presence of our body is
what enables us to observe objects; it is the prerequisite for the
latters' variability and potential absence. Once again, the dialec-
tical relationship between freedom and dependence comes to
light: we have the freedom to choose and to vary our perspective
on objects only on the condition that we cannot do the same
vis-a-vis our body. There can be objects for us only because our
body is not itself an object for us; our body's permanent presence
is a metaphysical necessity if objects are to be physically present
and relatively permanent for us at all. Consequently, the difference
between the perspectivity and permanence of the body on the one
hand and objects on the other is not a difference in degree but
rather in kind. It is not a question of the body being more
permanent in the sense of impinging on the receptive nervous

36
 The Experience of the Body and Classical Psychology 37

systema1l the time whereas objects would do so only some of the

time. The body's permanence is primordial and the lack of it
inconceivable. Similarly, the body's perspective constitutes our
bond with the world, our fixed opening onto it, rather than one
among many perspectives seen from some ideal stand point out-
side the world. In short, were it not for the permanence and
perspectivity of our body, the relative permanence and the
perspectivity of objects would be utterly inconceivable.
Merleau-Ponty acknowledges that we can see some parts of our
body with our eyes, that mirrors enable us to see ourselves from
top to toe as weH as from the rear, and that we can even see our
own eyes by using a mirror. Nevertheless, this does not refute
Merleau-Ponty's claim that we cannot observe our body as we can
an object, because even a three-way mirror does not enable us to
keep our body fixed while changing our point of view. Moreover,
we cannot perceive our body perceiving; we can touch with one
hand the other while the latter touches something else, but the
activity of touching cannot itself be touched. The touched hand is
not our hand actuaHy engaged in touching something; nor are the
eyes seen in the mirror our own eyes in the process of exploring
the world. As Merleau-Ponty notes, we can neither see nor touch
our body 'in so far as it sees or touches the world'. Although we
can regard apart of our body as an object, its active being thereby
escapes uso
Classical psychology recognized our body's peculiar power to
give us 'double sensations'; it noted that the body can alm ost catch
itself in action as it touch es or sees. Our hands pressing against
each other rapidly alternate back and forth between touching and
being touched, while our eyes looking at the mirror see them-
selves 'from the outside' as it were and likewise alternate between
looking and being looked at - yet the active and passive roles of
our body never completely coincide. Moreover, as Descartes
already conceded, our relationship with our body is not like that of
a ship's pilot who observes the condition of his ship. We feeZ pain
in our foot when we step on a nail- we do not regard the hurt foot
as an extern al object wh ich acts on our nervous system so as to
produce an external impression. Accordingly, in its description of
the body, classical psychology distinguished the latter from 'ex-
ternal things' by noting 'that the body is an affective object'. In
addition, this psychology invoked the notion of 'kinaesthetic
sensations' to indicate the difference between moving our body
38 Part I: The Body

and moving external objects. If we decide to move a particular

book from the shelf to our desk we must first locate the book, reach
for it, grasp it and transfer it from its former position on the shelf
to its new place on the desk. By contrast, we have no need to locate
our arm and hand in order to reach for the book; our decision to
reach is immediately implemented since our body is not an
external object to be located and grasped like the book. With the
term 'kinaesthetic sensations' classical psychology sought to
express this immediate awareness in which bodily movements
are executed without the need of any intermediate steps to link
intention and action.
The description which classical psychology gave of our body thus
already assigned it a special status; nevertheless, psychologists
either failed to distinguish our body from objects or saw no
philosophical implications in making such a distinction.
Typically, their detached approach led them to regard the funda-
mental differences between objects and the body as no more than
contingent peculiarities of our experience. The experience of our
body they reduced to the status of a representation - a psycholo-
gical fact corresponding to the physical facts studied by the other
sciences. Unlike the other scientists however, the psychologists
were ultimately studying their own experience in examining our
experience of the body. Consequently, they were inevitably led
back from experience as a representation - an object - to expe-
rience as a phenomenon, that is, as our pre-objective presence to
our body and to the lived-through intersubjective world. In short,
despite their attempt to consider human experience as an object,
the psychologists' implicit awareness of their own subjectivity
invariably interferred with their spectator's attitude. They were
the subject and object of their own study and this equivocal status
of being both ob server and observed obliged them to rediscover
the lived relationships underlying and anterior to any subject-
object differentiation. By noting the distinctive features of the
body, classical psychology thus unwittingly pointed the way for a
'return to experience'. In the following chapters Merleau-Ponty
will examine in more detail the features of our body which
prompted this return.
 3
The Spatiality of the Body
Itself and Motility*
In the previous chapters we saw how the problems encountered
by mechanistic physiology and the observations made by classical
psychology prepared the way for a phenomenological description
of the body. Merleau-Ponty now pursues that description with an
investigation of spatiality, since 'the primary condition of all
living perception' is spatial existence.
Our experience shows that the parts of our body are not related
to one another as objects occupying a place in objective space. It
would be bizarre to speak of one arm as being eighteen inches to
the left of the other, or of our head as being three feet above our
knees. In performing an autopsy on a corpse, we might regard the
latter as a collection of limbs and organs, but we do not experience
our body as being such an assemblage. If for some reason we
regard our body in the manner of a corpse or of an intricate
machine, such a view remains entirely abstract; it is no more than
an intellectual construction or a manner of speaking which leaves
untouched the lived presence of the body itself. The body is
immediately present to us because we are our body; but how is
this immediacy to be understood? We know where our limbs are
without having to look for them, because we possess 'a body image'
which includes them all. The meaning which Merleau-Ponty gives
to this notion, however, needs to be distinguished from that
assigned to it by traditional psychology.
Initially psychologists used the term 'body image' to designate
the habitual associations of images accompanying various stimuli
and bodily movements. BuHt up in the course of recurrent expe-

• It should be no ted that Merleau-Ponty used the word 'motricitt? rather than
'motilih?'; nevertheless, I have decided to follow Colin Smith in translating
'motricih?' as 'motility', since the alternative 'motority' is so uncommon. However,
I have translated 'le corps propre' as 'the body itself', since this captures
Merleau-Ponty's meaning better than does 'one's own body' or 'the personal body'.

39
40 Part I: The Body

rienees, the body image was a de facto totality of impressions

whieh indicated the loeation of loeal stimuli and the position of all
parts of one's body at every instant. Thus understood, it was
inadequate to explain disorders sueh as the referral of sensations
to the wrong part of the body or the phenomenon of the phantom
limb. Psyehologists themselves were therefore prompted to go
beyond the assoeiationist definition of the body image to invoke
the notion of'a eomprehensive bodily purpose', thereby rendering
the body image inherently dynamic. In the psyehologists' investi-
gation of the phantom leg and the paralyzed arm, it beeame clear
that the body image ean include a limb whieh has become actually
non-existent or omit a limb still extant. The decisive faetor in sueh
eases was the project in which the subject feIt engaged; henee the
body image proved to be irreducible to a mere eopy of the
objective body or to aglobai awareness of its existing parts. The
psyehologists themselves failed, however, to draw any philoso-
phieal eonsequenees in implicitly developing this notion of the
body image as inearnate intentionality. It was ineumbent on
MerIeau-Ponty therefore to take up the developed definition of the
body image and point out its philosophical implieations.
The implicit change in the notion of body image from a mosaie
of associations to one's awareness of the body as inearnate
intentionality, implies a erucial shift from the body as object to the
body as experieneed. The latter - the 'lived body' - eannot be
divoreed from the worId as experieneed, beeause the notion of
inearnate intentionality already implies the pole of that global
bodily purpose. As the setting of aetual and potential tasks to be
aeeomplished, the worId eannot be left out of aeeount; it is the
horizon always already outlined in the very manner in whieh the
body exists. UnderIying the various partieular projects whieh I
implicitly or explicitly set mys elf is the eomprehensive pre-
personal projeet of the body as being-in-the-worId. The latter
gives my partieular personal projeets their style and they in turn
play their part in shaping it. The body image provides me with a
pre-reflective knowledge of the loeation of my limbs, but this
loeation is not a position in objective spaee. Rather, it is a loeation
with referenee to the way in wh ich my limbs enter into my
projects; thus it is not 'a spatiality of position but a spatiality of
situation'.
The lived spatiality of the body as an organic unity polarized by
tasks, eonstitutes the basis of that objective spaee which has to do
 The Spatiality 01 the Body Itsell and Motility 41

with external coordinates and determinate positions such as

'front', 'back', 'bottom', 'inside', 'outside', 'left' and 'right'. As
Merleau-Ponty showed in earlier chapters, perception is always
perspectival and has to with figure-background structures. To see
is to see from somewhere, and this 'where' can be described as a
position of the objective body with reference to external objects.
Thus I see the house across the street from my kitchen window for
example, and my position in my kitchen can be specified pre-
cisely; yet it is the lived body which enables me to take up such a
position in objective space. It is this phenomenal body which
makes the house stand out for me against the background of the
sky or, alternatively, enables me to shift my gaze to a bird flying
across my visual field so that the bird momentarily becomes the
figure while the house recedes to form the background. Since it is
the very condition for the possibility of figure-background struc-
tures coming into existence for me at all, the lived body cannot
itself be another one of these structures. Hence it is what Merleau-
Ponty calls 'the third term, always tacitly understood, in the
figure-background structure, and every figure stands out against
the double horizon of extern al and bodily space'. Bodily space
envelops my limbs in such a way that I know where they are
without having to think about them or look for them. Moreover,
my awareness of my body is inseparable from the world of my
perception. The things wh ich I perceive, I perceive always in
reference to my body, and this is so only because I have an
immediate awareness of my body itself as it exists 'towards them'.
The body image thus involves a primordial, pre-reflective orienta-
tion and motility insofar as I am immediately aware of where my
limbs are as my body projects itself towards the world of its tasks. I
am always already situated in the world and it is my mann er of
engaging in particular projects which reveals most dearly the
nature of my bodily spatiality. An analysis of motility conse-
quently serves to elucidate the phenomenological description of
spatial existence.
Normally we take for granted the basic 'power of projection'
which forms such an integral part of our pre-reflective experience.
Indeed, the nature of this fundamental motility tends to elude us if
we concentrate exdusively on the behaviour of normal subjects.
Merleau-Ponty therefore turns his attention to an examination of
pathological motility in order to illuminate our usual mode of
orienting ourselves in the world. Gelb and Goldstein's case study
42 Part I: The Body

of Schneider provides a convenient starting point for the discus-

si on of impaired motility. Since being injured at the back of the
head by a shell splinter, Schneider has suffered from a whole
variety of disorders including visual, motor and intellectual dis-
turbances. His visual data are unstructured, 'almost amorphous
patches' among wh ich he distinguishes people from cars for
example, by the fact that the former look longer and thinner. In
order to recognize things, Schneider must sketch in their contours
by moving his body in various ways. He has no difficulty
performing concrete movements such as blowing his nose or
cutting the leather which he uses in his job as a wallet manufac-
turer, and can do these things even with his eyes closed. Never-
theless, he cannot form any image of objects not actually in sight,
and has great difficulty in performing abstract movements (such
as raising his arm on command) if ordered to keep his eyes shut.
Schneider succeeds in performing these movements 'which are
not relevant to any actual situation' only if he is allowed to watch
his limbs or to engage in preparatory movements involving his
entire body. He cannot describe the position of his limbs, identify
characteristics of objects placed against his flesh or determine
which part of his body is being touched; yet he has no problem
slapping a mosquito which bites his chin. If ordered to point to his
chin, Schneider can comply only if allowed to grasp it. His various
difficulties make it clear that there must be a difference between
'bodily space as the matrix of [one's] habitual action' and bodily
space as a determinate place in the objective world.
Schneider has a body image in so far as he goes about his daily
activities without having to search for his limbs, and can imme-
diately slap a mosquito without reflecting or needing to locate
either his chin or his hand in objective space. Here he directly
experiences his chin as itching and his hand as having the
potential to assuage the itch; hence he has not entirely lost the
pre-reflective awareness of his body as apower, as incarnate
intentionality. For his daily tasks, his familiar setting serves to
mobilize his limbs; the customary concrete situation calls for
certain movements in the interest of the task to be performed, and
the phenomenal body responds with its habitual gestures. Yet
curiously enough, Schneider does not feel hirnself to be the author
of his activities; instead they seem to hirn to be 'triggered off ' by
the situation. As he says, he experiences hirnself and his move-
ments to be merely 'a link in the whole process' of events. When at
 The Spatiality of the Body Itself and Motility 43

rest, his body is a formless mass. Not only abstract movements but
imaginary situations pose tremendous problems for Schneider,
precisely because he does not experience his body as a 'power of
action'. Thus although he clearly understands wh at he is to do, he
cannot 'convert the thought of amovement into actual movement'.
His only recourse is to set his body in motion blindly until
distinctions take shape in its 'amorphous mass', bringing his
limbs into objective existence for hirn and fortuitously producing
an approximation of the requested gesture. As indicated earlier,
one's experience of the body goes hand in hand with one's
perception of the world. For Schneider, both body and world are
essentially congealed, thus ruling out any creativity on his part.
He cannot project hirnself beyond the actual so as to organize the
world in light of a personal goal; for hirn everything is experienced
as ready-made. He succeeds in grasping apart of his body or
cutting leather for his job because unlike abstract movements,
these remain within the realm of the given. The crux of Schnei-
der's illness lies in the collapse of that crucial power of 'projection'
which is rooted in one's experience of the body as a 'motor
project'. Schneider therefore lacks that specifically 'human space'
which enables us to envisage possibilities, create meanings, and
shape our situation.
Merleau-Ponty takes care to point out that morbid motility-
and illness in general - is a total way of being-in-the-world.
Hence the difference between Schneider and healthy persons is
not to be found in some characteristic or set of facts. Any causal
explanation, moreover, merely obscures the phenomenon. Al-
though his illness is of course linked to his occipital injury,
Schneider's morbid motility is not a matter of an intellectual or
physiological defect. He not only understands the various orders
but is also anxious to comply, and his success with concrete
activities makes it evident that there is nothing physiologically
wrong with his eyes or limbs. Yet even in his habitual tasks, as we
have seen, Schneider never feels that he is acting freely; on the
contrary, he experiences his actions as being determined by the
world. Despite not having to look for his limbs in performing
these customary activities, Schneider in effect regards them as
third person processes when prompted to consider them under
questioning. As we have seen, abstract movements are purely
intellectual notions for Schneider and then, as he struggles to
actualize them, they become for hirn simply third person pro-
44 Part I: The Body

cesses performed by his body apprehended as an object in

objective space. Normal persons, on the other hand, neither feel
coerced in concrete movements nor require laborious mental
deductions and blind physical motions to perform abstract move-
ments. They are open to abstract and imaginary situations. Their
body image has a 'horizon of possibilities' because they expe-
rience the body as a 'motor intentionality'; and for them every
movement is inseparably consciousness of movement and move-
ment. It is not a matter of a positional consciousness of the world
and the body, but of a motor significance which 'speaks to' their
body. Their pre-reflective experience of the body as a 'power of
action' enables them to transcend the given and structure their
world in accordance with personal plans, or to lend their body
freely to the realm of the imagination. Normal persons, in short,
project around themselves that human space which Schneider
lacks.
Neither empiricist nor intellectualist psychology is able to
elucidate this fundamental power of projection which dis-
tinguishes normal from pathological motility. Their failure here
on ce agains calls into question the psychologists' reliance on
either positivistic induction and causal explanation, or on purely
rationalistic analysis and reconstruction. Empiricist psychology
typically tries to explain the behaviour of patients like Schneider
by regarding it as a function of some deficiency in one or other of
the senses. Schneider's difficulty in recognizing objects or per-
forming abstract movements with his eyes closed, prompts the
empiricists to assign primacy to visual representation and to
attribute the motor disturbances to a loss of visual qualities. But
what about those patients who, while knowing how to knock at a
door, cannot perform the action on command if the door is out of
their reach - even though they are looking directly at it? It would
seem then that tactiIe perception rather than visual representation
ought to be considered primary, and morbid motility explained by
a loss of 'the sense of potential touch'. However, neither explana-
tion is conclusive; it is just as plausible to maintain that the door
must be within these patients' reach precisely because a deficien-
cy in their sight renders vision inadequate to provide by itself the
requisite background for action, thus making touch necessary as
weIl. Which of the two - visual representation or tactile percep-
ti on - is to be deemed the cause of abstract movement in normal
persons? The question is unanswerable definitively within the
 The Spatiality af the Bady ltself and Matility 45

empiricist framework, and it is totally misconceived from the

viewpoint of existential analysis. As Merleau-Ponty notes, in the
study of human behaviour 'it becomes clear that the facts are
ambiguous, that no experiment is decisive and no explanation
final'. Empiricism's approach is faulty in that it attempts to
juxtapose the senses, focuses exclusively on their contents which it
reduces to collections of sense data, and considers the pathology to
be caused by a deficiency in one sense deemed primary. As a
result, empiricism obscures the central phenomenon - namely,
the power of projection - wh ich is irreducible to any sense or
inner sensibilities, although manifested in all. Existential analysis,
drawing on the insights of Gestalt psychology, shows that content
cannot be divorced from form and reduced to collections of
sensible qualities. Moreover, the various senses cannot be isolated
from each other and related to behaviour as variables to a function.
Instead, they are mutually implicatory and inseparably integrated;
as such, they establish a spatial organization. The normal subjects'
way of structuring their environment differs from that of patients,
and in both cases we are dealing with an experience which cannot
be reduced to a summation of sensory contents. Consequently, as
Merleau-Ponty says, 'psychological blindness, deficiency of sense
of touch and motor disturbances are three expressians of a more
fundamental disturbance through which they can be understood
and not three component factors of morbid behaviour'. As we
have seen, that fundamental disorder has to do with apower of
projection which determines one's entire way of being-in-the-
world.
Intellectualism, for its part, obscures this power of projection by
focusing exclusively on form and seeking to establish 'a reasan or
intelligible condition of possibility' for the patient's various
disturbances. In positing an entirely transparent consciousness,
the intellectualists are forced to reduce error and illness to mere
appearance. Such an intellectualist approach distorts even intellec-
tual activity itself as it is found in the normal subject. Intellectual-
ism considers thinking to be primarily a categorial operation; but
'living thought' in normal persons does not consist in performing
purely logical operations. On the contrary, the need to engage
explicitly in such operations is precisely what distinguishes im-
paired thought like that of Schneider from normal thinking.
Healthy persons are object-orientated body-subjects who have an
already acquired 'world of thoughts' at their disposal and can use
46 Part I: The Body

this acquisition spontaneously in order to express something new

in the course of a conversation, without needing to re-synthesize
concepts and judgements continually. Unlike Schneider, normal
persons do not perceive almost-amorphous patches to which they
then laboriously assign significances through an act of the un-
derstanding. Rather, they discover a significance which permeates
the object and they engage in an ongoing 'subject-object dia-
logue'. Schneider can arrive at intellectual significances by his
painstaking analyses, but he lacks that 'primary [significance]
reached through coexistence'. Hence, despite the fact that he
possesses thoughts and words, he cannot use these freely to arrive
at religious or political opinions; nor can he speak extempora-
neously. He is totally caught up in the present, and cannot
consider his past as a whole nor envisage his future as anything
more than a 'shrunken' extension of the present. Thus it is the
entire 'intentional arc' which has gone limp in Schneider.
This intentional arc is neither that reflex arc posited by mechan-
istic physiology nor that pure power of representation invoked by
intellectualist psychology. It is anterior to the traditional distinc-
tions, being inseparably vision, comprehension and motion. It is
the living body which at this primordial level projects, appre-
hends and understands significances; and it does so in that
fundamental dialectic between body-subject and world of which
Merleau-Ponty spoke in the 'Preface'. At the dawn of perception in
earliest infancy the living body, wh ich is an anonymous synthesis
of sensori-motor powers, outlines those 'indeterminate horizons'
which signal the emergence of a world for uso As fundamental
project our body has a temporal structure enabling it to carry this
primitive acquisition of horizons along, so that a more deter-
minate world of objects can begin to exist. The intellectualist
analysis completely misses the being of this living body by
insisting on an 'all or nothing' approach. If significance is entirely
on the side of consciousness conceived as 'Mind' , then the body
can be no more than essentially meaningless matter. Disorders of
the sort discussed above become incomprehensible since con-
sciousness does not admit of degrees. Consciousness either cate-
gorizes data - in wh ich case the person is healthy - or it ceases to
exist altogether; patients become mechanistic objects. The intellec-
tualist interpretation of human existence (as an activity of pure
thought somehow informing a bodily mechanism) must therefore
be rejected.
 The Spatiality of the Body Itself and Motility 47

The rejection of empiricism on the one hand and intellectualism

on the other, does not of course dictate an uncritical adherence to
common sense. The world is not ready-made as common sense
supposes it to be; rather it is 'built up', and the dialectical
movement whereby it takes shape cannot be broken apart into so
many self-contained fragments. The consideration of habits re-
veals this especially weIl. As Merleau-Ponty points out, to learn to
type or play an instrument, to become accustomed to a vehicle or a
cane or a feathered hat, 'is to be transplanted into them, or
conversely, to incorporate them into the bulk of the body itself '.*
Acquiring such habits is neither a matter of intellectual analysis
and reconstruction nor a mechanical recording of impressions, as
the adjustment to an unfamiliar car or keyboard makes evident. It
is a question, rather, of the bodily comprehension of a motor
significance which enables me to lend myself completely to
expressing the music without having to think about the position
of my fingers, or to manoeuvre my car successfully through a
narrow street without having to compare the width of my vehicle
with that of the driving lane. Merleau-Ponty's existential analysis
of habits thus draws our attention to a new meaning of both
'knowledge' and 'meaning' wh ich eludes the traditional
approaches. The bodily knowledge and bodily significance which
become evident in the study of habits reveal that 'the body is
essentially an expressive space' in virtue of wh ich particular
expressive spaces (such as those of the piano which I have learned
to play and the typewriter which I have mastered) can come into
existence and be incorporated into it. Bodily spatiality, inherently
dynamic, is the very condition for the coming into being of a
meaningful world. Thus it subtends our entire existence as human
beings.

• I have altered Colin Smith's translation in accordance with the French text.
 4
The Synthesis of the Body
Itself*
and

5
The Body in its
Sexual Being
We have seen that the body as incarnate intentionality inhabits
space and projects itself towards a perceptual world. In perception
the various senses do not function as factors to be co-ordinated,
but as indivisible powers structuring the world in a unified
experience. Further, just as bodily spatiality is constitutive of the
very being of the phenomenal body, so the spatiality of perceived
things is inseparable from their being as things. Subject and world
form an organically related whole, as the existential analysis of
habit reveals so weIl. The consideration of our lived experience
shows us that the body is not a mechanistic system consisting of
parts externally related to one another in objective space. The
body's parts do not impinge upon each other in a stimulus-
response chain reaction; nor are they 'hooked up' into various
patterns by the synthesizing activity of an intellect. While it is true
that we can experience our body in this fashion, we have seen that
such experience is abnormal, and that it is itself based on a
primordial experience of the body as pre-objectively present to the
world. At this pre-objective level, there is a fundamental dialectic,

• As in the previous chapter, I have translated 'le corps propre' as 'the body
itself '.

48
 The Synthesis of the Body Itself ... 49

a to-and-fro movement of an as-yet anonymous existence which is

the living body and which comes into being as a body only in this
very movement. Thus the living body is first of a11 an organic unity
of sensibilities wh ich already point beyond themselves in so far as
they imply that which can be sensed and are already drawn
towards it. Merleau-Ponty speaks of a 'force', 'momentum' or
'motivation' here. The body, as synthetic unity of sensory powers,
solicits that which can be sensed and is itself attracted by the
sensible as that in wh ich these sensory powers are actualized.
Bodily existence is thus already primordial transcendence towards
something; and it implies both spatiality and temporality. As
primitive project, bodily existence is precisely that movement
which lays down spatio-temporal axes with reference to wh ich
particular sensibles are oriented. Bodily spatiality is not an ac-
quired characteristic but rather, the very 'way in wh ich the body
comes into being as a body'.
Existence is never utterly blind; there is always already an
amorphous pre-personal awareness of this primordial movement
of the body towards the world. The body experiences itself to the
extent that it perceives something else; and this anonymous
self-reference is what makes possible the more explicit self-
reference of specifica11y personal existence. The lived body is a
system of equivalences. This means that its parts - or powers-
are not externa11y but rather internally related through mutual
implication. They do not mechanically trigger each other off, nor
are they coordinated in some inte11ectual fashion. Each power is a
power only in virtue of its position in the bodily schema; thus
each power is already inherently related to a11 the others. The
actualization of any one power implies any of a variety of ways in
which the others can re-group themselves accordingly. The unity
of the body involves an 'implicatory structure' in which powers
can spontaneously compensate for - though not entirely replace-
each other if the need arises. If my gaze is attracted by a vase on
my desk, for example, the way in which my eyes move in
examining it already indicates the mann er in which my fingers
can explore it; moreover, the former solicits the latter. If my fingers
respond to this solicitation, the rest of my body spontaneously
re-arranges itself around this new task - for example, my torso
moves forward and my right arm straightens out as it reaches
across the desk. Alternatively, if my arm is broken and in a pIaster
cast, my left arm can do the reaching; or I can stand up, walk
50 Part I: The Body

around to the other side of my desk, re ach down and pick the vase
up. Adescription of such actions, or of habitual ones like picking
up a pen to write, elucidates the general synthesis of the body.
Nevertheless, such a description in dealing with our customary
world fails to illuminate that 'primary process of signification'
whereby the world comes into being for uso Any description of the
body's relationship to things in the world tends to present those
things as already constituted, as existing in themselves indepen-
dently of any bodily transcendence. Thus the relationship be-
tween bodily transcendence and the thing is all too easily reduced
again to an epistemological problem - namely, that of determin-
ing how the human subject knows an already constituted object.
Mind and body, subject and world, consequently fall apart into the
traditional dualisms. We must therefore ask ourselves whether
there is any area of our experience in which we can recapture that
fundamental dialectic whereby something begins to exist for us,
begins to have meaning for us to the extent that our body is a
power of transcendence towards it. At this primitive level there is
a primordial flow of existence in which something becomes
significant to the extent that it attracts our body in a movement
towards it, and our body comes into existence as a body in this
very movement, so that the significance of the thing and that of
the body come into existence together and imply one another. The
body shows us this fundamental dialectic most adequately if we
consider it in its sexual being.
It is a commonplace that a being who attracts us, who has for us
a sexual significance, may not have such a significance for
someone else. Consequently we are less tempted to consider the
significance here as being already constituted, as belonging to that
being in the manner in which hair belongs to the body. We will
see here that the sexual significance of that being comes into
existence for us and by us, rather than ex nihilo; but it does so only
insofar as it is already outlined there in that being. The being who
attracts us is apower of projection appealing to our incarnate
subjectivity. In sexuality we are therefore best able to appreciate
that significance is neither something given, or inert, in the
manner of a traditional sense-datum, nor something simply con-
ceived and imposed by a pure consciousness. Sexual significance
is created in a living dialogue in which my body begins to exist for
me in a new way in responding to another incarnate subjectivity.
Any causal account of sexuality distorts the phenomenon. To the
extent that a being appeals or beckons to me, that being cannot be
 The Synthesis of the Body Itself ... 51

utterly inert; and to the extent that I feel myself drawn towards that
being, I cannot be a pure consciousness. The investigation of
human sexuality will therefore bring to light the body as neither
passivity nor activity but a third sort of being, by and for whom a
third sort of significance comes to exist. We will then be in a better
position to understand human relationships in general and, by
extension, the life of society and the meaning of his tory as it
ceaselessly comes into being by and for human beings. In focusing
on the body in its sexual being we shall not lose what has already
been gained up to this point - namely, the synthesis of the body,
its implicatory structure. Quite the contrary will be the case, for in
sexuality the 'gearing' of tactile, visual and motor powers into one
another emerges more clearly than before.
As usual, Merleau-Ponty proceeds by an examination of the
breakdown of the body's sexual being, in order that the normal
body's sexual being might be thrown into relief for uso Our subject
again is Schneider, whose troubles ultimately arise from an injury
at the back of his head. If we adopt a mechanistic-physiological
view of sexuality and conceive it as an autonomous reflex appa-
ratus - a matter of the stimulation and response of a sex organ
anatomically defined - it is difficult to account for the breakdown
of sexuality in Schneider. Since his genitals are intact, it is hard to
see why a head injury should inhibit sexual activity. As Merleau-
Ponty notes, one would in fact expect the opposite - heightened
sexual activity - to occur insofar as any intellectual constraints
have become inoperative. On the other hand, if one adopts a more
sophisticated mechanistic-physiological view, one might argue
that sexuality is not a matter of an autonomous reflex apparatus,
but rather involves a more complicated circuit going to the brain
and having something to do with the back of the skulI. However,
on this account one would expect all forms of sexual activity to
break down completely in Schneider. It thus becomes difficult to
account for such phenomena as nocturnal emissions or to under-
stand how Schneider can still take part in intercourse and even
achieve orgasm, provided that his partner takes all the initiative. A
purely physiological account could only explain either a heighten-
ing of sexual activity or a complete cessation of such activity. It is
at a loss to account for a fundamentafchange in the very structure
of erotic experience, such as we find in Schneider's case.
If we therefore adopt the intellectualist rather than the physiolo-
gical view of human sexuality and emphasize the role of represen-
tations, we find ourselves no more capable of understanding
52 Part I: The Body

Schneider's condition. We may argue, for example, that sexuality

is primarily a matter of associating psychological or emotional
states like pleasure and pain, with certain ideas or representations,
such that the latter can call up the former. An idea or mental image
of an erotic object or situation would then bring into existence the
erotic pleasure with which it has formerly been associated.
However, apart from accounting for the phenomenon of associa-
tion itself, this intellectualist approach runs into difficulty as soon
as it tries to argue that what Schneider has lost is a certain
collection of images or representations roughly labelled 'sexual'.
The problem here is that we can present Schneider with what he
has supposedly lost - we can show hirn ob scene pictures or nude
bodies; we can present hirn with erotic films; we can present hirn
with 'sexual' ideas by talking to hirn ab out sexuality - but none of
this has the power to arouse sexual des ire in hirn. The fact is that
Schneider for example still sees a nude woman and still feels the
touch of her lips as she kisses hirn; but what he sees and feels no
longer has the same meaning for hirn - it lacks a sexual signifi-
cance. The female body no Ion ger attracts hirn; he no longer
apprehends it as an appeal. This happens precisely to the extent
that Schneider's own bodily being has ceased to be an active
transcendence. For Schneider, female bodies are indistinguishable
physically; and to the extent that he considers a woman attractive,
it is merely a matter of her character. This indicates to us that
normal human sexuality involves a physical aura which makes it
irreducible to an intellectual significance. For healthy persons, all
bodies do not have the same significance, despite the fact that they
all have roughly the same physiological features. Sexual signifi-
cance must therefore be inseparable from, but irreducible to, the
physicality of the human body. For normal persons, that body is
subtended by a strictly individual 'sexual schema'. In so far as
sexual significance is not a given datum for a disembodied
consciousness, its apprehension requires that we not rest in the
actual, in the already constituted realm of things, but that we
actively project ourselves - in our bodily being - beyond the
given in order to endow it with significance. As we have seen,
Schneider has lost this ability to use his body freely to project
around hirnself a situation into which he can throw hirnself. Since
he 'can no longer put hirns elf into a sexual situation', he cannot
apprehend such a situation either, because transcendence and
apprehension are inseparable moments of a fundamental dialectic.
 The Synthesis 01 the Body Itsell ... 53

We are now in a position to understand what Merleau-Ponty

means when he says that the body is comparable to a work of art
because expression and what is expressed are indistinguishable in
both cases. The sexual significance of the body is a certain style of
bodily existence and is irreducible to any intellectual conception.
In an analogous fashion, significance pervades a painting or
musical composition and comes into being for us if we use our
eyes or ears respectively in such a way that the colours or notes
assume their unique style. Similarly, the sexual significance of
another body comes into being for us only insofar as we use our
sensibilities in such a way that that body's features assume for us
a certain sexual style. The apprehension of sexual significance thus
requires an active transcendence in which the various sensibilities
of the body-subject participate; hence it might be objected that
Merleau-Ponty's account makes sexual significance synonymous
with existential significance in general, and absorbs sexuality into
existence. Yet as Merleau-Ponty himself notes, impaired sexuality
does not rule out an effective political life forexample, nor does
technical virtuosity in sex necessarily imply any particular perfec-
tion or vigour in other areas of one's life. Sexuality is not reducible
to existence, nor existence reducible to sexuality. Existence is a
more general current which structures itself in various ways, and
'the sexuallife is a sector of our life bearing a special relation to the
existence of sex'. As we have seen, there can be no question of
reducing sexuality to the genital or relegating it to a psyche
understood as pure consciousness or spirit. Indeed, Merleau-
Ponty's phenomenological description of the body has shown us
the need to replace such conceptions as the 'purely bodily' and
'purely psychic' with the notion of an incarnate subjectivity in
whom a11 sectors of experience 'interfuse' in such a way that each
remains distinctive while none is entirely isolable. The traditional
notion of the unconscious has no place here; incarnate existence is
not a matter of 'distinct representations' supported and explained
by 'unconscious representations'. The body is the expression of
existence, but this does not mean that the former is a mere
accompaniment to the latter, or that either is 'the original of the
human being'. Each presupposes the other in that primary process
whereby meaning comes into being and an original style emerges.
As a form of this primary process, sexuality is a particular
dialectic expressing existence. Merleau-Ponty bases himself on
Sartre's discussion of being-for-others in Being and Nothingness to
54 Part I: The Body

draw our attention to the nature of this dialectic and its metaphy-
sical significance. In the experience of shame as Sartre shows, we
are uncomfortably aware that another person has reduced us to the
status of an object by his look. The fact that we have a body makes
such objectification an ever present possibiIity on the one hand
and, on the other, enables us to break free and reassert our
subjectivity by submitting the other person to a similarly alienat-
ing gaze. But as Hegel noted, this master-slave dialectic is inhe-
rently self-subverting in so far as only another subject can accord
us the kind of recognition we seek. Sexual desire displays the
same dialectic to the extent that we use our body to fascinate the
other, only to discover that what we desire eludes uso We want to
possess 'not just a body, but a body brought to life by conscious-
ness'; yet the effort to gain possession strips the other of that very
consciousness in reducing hirn to the status of a thing to be
grasped. Sexual li fe thus brings to light the fundamental ambigu-
ity of the human body and expresses those aspects of freedom and
dependence which characterize human existence in general.
Existence can absorb itself to a greater or lesser degree in the body,
as shown by Merleau-Ponty's example of the patient who lost her
voice when forbidden to see her lover, or as shown in attempts to
make oneself into a fascinating object in order to entice and
ensnare the other's freedom. However, the body can never shut
itself off from the world altogether, or become completely reduced
to an object. As a synthesis of powers the body is always already to
some extent a transcendence, a project in which existence, body
and world are inseparable. The body is a body instead of a corpse
only because existence animates it and conversely, existence must
incarnate itself and in so doing it already brings about an
incarnate meaning.
Incarnate existence is characterized by an inherent ambiguity, a
basic indeterminacy, because it is a continually composed syn-
thesis of powers, 'a nexus of living [significances]'. The bodily
project always involves the coming into being of meanings which
cannot be separated out because they are mutually implicatory
and already point beyond themselves. The ambiguity and indeter-
minacy of incarnate existence is especially evident in sexuality
where, as we have seen, an inherent instability characterizes our
experience of the body as both a subject for us and an object for
someone else. Sexual significance manifests itself in the whole
manner of the body-subject - in the bearing, the gestures, the
movements, the voice - and the interfusion of visual, motor,
 The Synthesis 01 the Body Itsell ... 55

auditory, and tactile aspects is singularly evident in its coming

into being. Yet for the most part, that significance is not clear-cut
but rather exists as 'an ambiguous atmosphere' which lends itself
to a variety of significances in that dynamic co-existence wh ich is
the very fabric of human life. As we have seen, the apprehension
of a sexual significance presupposes the ability to put ourselves
into a situation; this fundamental power simultaneously enables
us to take up and transform a de facto situation, so that 'what had
only a sexual meaning assurnes a more general significance'. *
However, as transcendence, incarnate existence never outstrips
that which it transcends; neither is it ever reducible to that which
is transcended. In either case, transcendence would cease to be
transcendence - but since existence is transcendence, this would
in fact speIl death. It is in this sense that Merleau-Ponty contends
that 'no one is saved and no one is totally lost'.
Because we are body-subjects, we can neither leave behind our
bodily being nor discard our subjectivity. Furthermore, bodily
being is not a purely factual physicality, and subjectivity is not a
purely translucent consciousness. We are not an uneasy alliance of
matter and mind, but a third kind of being. Salvation would mean
a definitive escape from ambiguity; yet in so far as our existence is
dialectical, ambiguity is of its essence. Damnation, on the other
hand, would involve the permanent sealing of our existence into
one definitive significance. This too is ruled out in so far as
openness is part and parcel of transcendence; as movement
beyond, transcendence is incompatible with reduction to any given
X. It is always an act involving relation and incorporation - thus a
continual transformation of the given. In short, the apprehension
of any significance whatsoever presupposes existence as transcen-
dence, and transcendence always already transforms everything
with which it is presented - precisely because it takes it up and
assigns it a place in the general dialectic of existence. Moreover,
as the phenomenological account of the body in its sexual being
has shown, transcendence is not a solitary project. Human
existence is essentially co-existence; there is a web of interacting
transcendences eliciting, apprehending and carrying forward
multi-faceted meanings in all dimensions. Now that we have
considered sexuality as an expression of existence, we must
examine expression itself more closely.

• I have altered Colin Smith's translation to bring it into line with the original
text.
 6
The Body as Expression
and Speech
If we examine our pre-reflective lived experience, so Merleau-
Ponty has argued, we realize that our body is not a system of
externally related parts but rather, that it displays a spontaneous
synthesis of powers, a bodily spatiality, a bodily unity, a bodily
intentionality, wh ich distinguish it radically from the scientific
object posited by tradition al schools of thought. In the last chapter
Merleau-Ponty described how the apprehension of sexual signifi-
cance reveals a pre-reflective bodily intentionality such that some-
thing begins to exist for us precisely to the extent that the body is a
power of transcendence towards it. One might still contend,
nonetheless, that this talk of a bodily intentionality is really no
more than a metaphor based on a genuine intentionality which is
to be found exclusively in the realm of thought. One would insist
that after a11 we should turn our attention to the fact that we are
thinking ab out our lived experience. We will see then, so one might
argue, that there is arealm of subjectivity quite distinct from that
of our bodily experience, and that this realm of thought, or
consciousness, or reflection is the realm of significance and
intentionality in their proper sense. The domain of subjectivity
will thus be declared to be quite distinct from that other realm of
the body, or objectivity. We thereby return to the traditional idea
of an 'inner life' contingently linked to the body - in short, to the
old mind-body or subject-object dualism. Merleau-Ponty must
therefore show that the realm of thought is 'of a piece' with the
pre-reflective experience of the body. Otherwise, his phenomeno-
logical descriptions up to this point might be taken to indicate
merely that there is no body-world dichotomy, but not that the
tradition al distinction between mind and body is inappropriate.
The body would then take up its traditional position among things
in the world and thought would once more become the proper
realm of philosophical investigation. To rule this out, Merleau-

56
 The Body as Expression and Speech 57

Ponty must be able to point to an internal, or essential, relation-

ship between thought and the body.
It is usually conceded that there is such an essential relationship
between hearing and the eardrums, or between speaking and the
vocal chords, and that the brain likewise plays a crucial part in
such communication. Most of us thus have no difficulty in
granting that hearing and speaking have to do with the body. The
problem comes when we consider the relationship between
thought and the body, because we usually assume the existence of
an 'inner life', or realm of pure thought, and consider the connec-
tion of this with wh at is spoken or heard to be one of translation or
interpretation. In short, most of us tend to think that to speak is to
translate our thoughts into words, while to hear is to interpret the
words of another so as to arrive at an understanding of the
thoughts lying behind them. We allegedly attempt to 'figure out'
wh at others 'have in mind' by inference based on the words which
we hear them say. It is evident that this sort of position rests on a
fundamental mind-body dualism. It thus calls for a re-
examination; and since speaking and hearing incontestably in-
volve language, it is language itself which Merleau-Ponty must
reconsider in the present chapter.
The inadequacy of traditional approach es once again emerges
most clearly through the study of pathological cases. Psychologists
initially argued that amnesia involved the loss of physical or
psychic 'traces' of words imprinted on the brain or psyche in the
course of linguistic experience. Possessing such 'verbal images'
constituted possessing language; and articulation was produced
automatically by a purely physical stimulus-response circuit
which revived the verbal image, or through acquired mental
associations. Both views reduced speech to a third person pheno-
menon consisting of a stream of words wh ich were themselves
bereft of meaning or power. Such mechanistic theories failed to
account for the fact that patients who readily produced the
requisite words in the context of 'concrete language', failed to find
those same words in 'gratuitous language' when confronted with
exercises lacking emotional or vital import. Most cases of aphasia
proved to be inexplicable in terms of the loss of verbal images;
rather, the decisive factor seemed to be the function of the words -
whether they served as instruments of action or were ca lIed upon
simply for disinterested specification. Psychologists further dis-
covered that patients who could not produce the names of colours
58 Part I: The Body

with which they were confronted, likewise were unable to classify

the colours when requested to sort sam pIes. The problem thus
seemed to lie in a disorder of thinking which restricted these
patients to 'the concrete attitude' - making it virtually impossible
for them to transcend the individual sensory given, so as to
recognize it as subsumable under a category and to name it
accordingly. This disturbance of thought could not itself be
explained as resulting from a loss of verbal images; therefore it
seemed that language must depend upon thought; accordingly,
psychologists constructed intellectualist theories of language and
sought to explain the divers cases of aphasia as resulting from a
breakdown of the categorial operation. Words became merely the
external trappings of an internal thinking; on ce again, the words
themselves had no meaning or power. Language was simply a
contingent container into which the thinking subject poured
thought and it was thought which had the meaning. Everything
rested on the categorial activity of thinking; articulation remained
an involuntary action - the product of a physiological or psychic
mechanism. In the intellectualists' view, as in the case of the
empiricist psychologies, there was no speaking subject. Language
was now only the accompaniment of a purely cognitive operation
which it presupposed and which was essentially self-sufficient.
However, whereas empiricism had been perplexed by patients'
inability to find in gratuitous language words available to them in
concrete situations, intellectualism was bewildered by cases in
which patients were unable to categorize colour sampIes while
nonetheless able to name the colours.
Merleau-Ponty goes beyond the empiricist and the intellectual-
ist theories by declaring that 'the word has a meaning'; in place of
the traditional positions, he outlines a phenomenological
approach and develops wh at he calls 'an existentialist theory of
aphasia'. Despite its appearance to the contrary, intellectualism
was no more satisfactory than was empiricism in accounting for
various forms of aphasia; moreover, neither approach provided a
theory of language which was true to our actual experience.
Merleau-Ponty points out that thought does not itself suffice for
recognizing things; nor does speech presuppose thinking. In fact,
there can be no pure thought prior to speech. Lacking all supports,
such thought would vanish instantly and we could never be aware
of it. Our experience shows us that even familiar objects appear
indeterminate until we remember their names; consequently,
naming is recognition. In our actual denomination of objects, we
 The Body as Expression and Speech 59

do not have in mind a concept under wh ich we would subsurne

them; instead, the names themselves bear the meaning and we are
aware of reaching the objects in imposing their names. We
ourselves do not know our own thoughts until we formulate them
in 'internal or external speech'; hence, it is evident that speaking
accomplishes thought rather than merely translating an already
accomplished thought.
Authentie speech is the presence of thought in the world - not
its garment, but its body. Communication with others would be
impossible if authentie expression were not identical with think-
ing; unless the listener can learn something from the speaker's
words themselves, communication becomes an illusion. Yet our
own experience belies the view that others' words are merely
mechanisms for arousing thoughts wh ich we ourselves possess all
along. It is true, of course, that communication presupposes a
shared language; but such a language must itself have come into
existence at some time - it is not a natural endowment. If we are to
avoid an infinite regress - which would make the actual existence
of a common language incomprehensible - we must acknowledge
that originating speech possesses an immanent 'gestural [signifi-
cancer. To bring this significance to light, Merleau-Ponty draws
our attention to the experience of saying and thinking, or hearing,
something new. The speaker does not precede or accompany his
speech by thought; he neither visualizes his words nor concep-
tualizes their meaning. He simply uses a common language in
such a way that a new significance comes into being as he speaks.
His speech is not a sign of some internaioperation; rather, it is his
thought. Likewise, the listener neither decodes signs nor concep-
tualizes what he hears; he understands the other's new signifi-
cance as it emerges and unfolds. There is no thinking paralleling
or following his listening; his listening is his thinking. Speaker
and listener are subjects inhabiting a shared linguistic world; and
just as they have no need to visualize either their limbs or external
space in moving around in the natural world, so they have no need
in communication to visualize the words located in their linguistic
world. In both cases they are situated in a world and their activity
realizes a potential use of their body. The consideration of
authentie speech thus alerts us to the existential significance
which underIies the conceptual significance of language.
This existential significance permeates the words themselves
and is imparted by them, just as the musical significance of a
concerto inhabits the sounds which bring that significance into
60 Part I: The Body

being for the concert goer. Despite the fact that speech is uniquely
capable of constituting 'an acquisition for use in human relation-
ships', it is just as erroneous to regard thought as divorceable from
its expression in speech, as to regard music as detachable from its
expression in sounds. Speech is no more an envelope or 'outer
covering' of thought than are the notes of the music or the marks
made by the brush on the canvas merely extern al accessories of the
concerto or the landscape painting respectively. In speech, as in
music or painting, it is successful expression wh ich brings a new
significance into being and opens up new possibilities for our
experience. Our usual tendency to regard speech as incidental to
an autonomous thought, arises from our failure to distinguish
adequately between originating speech and 'second order' langu-
age. That wh ich we commonly consider silence or 'pure thought'
is in fact replete with words. The so-called 'silent inner Iife' is
actually a monologue in which we formulate our thoughts by
employing the already constituted significances created by former
acts of expression - whether our own or those of others. UnIike
first order expression, our everyday speech remains within the
circuit of acquired significances; it does not eIicit any new
thoughts, but merely reinforces the already existing ones. Second
order speech thus conceals from us the phenomenon of authentie
expression by giving us the illusion that we possess thoughts
which do not depend on any words whatsoever.
If we are to appreciate the nature of originating speech, we must
go beyond the realm of constituted speech and become aware of
that inchoate primordial silence from which the latter on ce arose.
Merleau-Ponty insists that the 'spoken word is a genuine gesture,
and [that] it contains its meaning in the same way as the gesture
contains its'. Modern psychologists have shown that contrary to
what had been thought, the understanding of gestures does not in
fact require any introspection. Moreover, such introspection
would fail to furnish an association between the alleged inner
states and their outward manifestations, because the latter elude
the actor. Besides, our experience reveals that we do not appre-
hend gestures as signs of psychic facts. For example, gestures do
not for the viewer represent concealed emotions; they are those
emotions. The fist shaken under my nose does not prompt me to
think of anger; it is the anger and I immediately apprehend it as
such. This is not to say, however, that we perceive the meaning of
gestures as we perceive colour quaIities, since we fail to under-
 The Body as Expression and Speech 61

stand the gestures of animals or even of people belonging to a very

different culture. The meaning of gestures is understood, rather
than being given like a physical phenomenon. Communication
and comprehension of a gesture are achieved through the
establishing of a reciprocity between the other's intention and my
own. Neither his intention nor mine is thematized; in both cases it
'inhabits' our body. Our interaction involves neither a mechanical
process nor an inteHectual operation, but a pre-reflective act of
structuring the world on the part of one body-subject and a
corresponding pre-reflective act of recapturing the meaning of that
structuration on the part of the other incarnate subject. What we
have here is a pre-reflective dialogue involving an invitation to
concur with a certain way of perceiving the world, and a response
to that invitation by an adjusting of the body's powers so as to
overlap the intentional object outlined by the other's gesture. In
the case of originating speech, the listener's comprehension thus
involves a modulation of his own being in response to the
speaker's 'sense-giving intention' ['l'intention significative'].
Neither one knows just where the speech will lead, since what is
being created and communicated is precisely not a ready-made
content. The speaker feels the need to speak without knowing
exactly wh at he will say, and the listener takes up this intention by
adjusting his own being to the speaker's style of being-in-the-
world. Expression and comprehension are achieved tlirough the
body first and foremost; any inteHectual clarification comes later.
Communication thus understood is no more mysterious than is
the perception of objects, for in both cases we experience a 'bodily
presence' which is prior to any scientific conception of the event.
Merleau-Ponty acknowledges that, given the plethora of exist-
ing languages, the connection between the word and its signifi-
cance seems purely arbitrary. TraditionaHy, speech has therefore
been distinguished from gesture by designating the former 'a
conventional sign' and the latter 'a natural sign'. However, if we
go beyond the conceptual to the emotional- or gestural- mean-
ing of words, we discover that they too possess an immanent
significance. In poetry we see most readily that the words them-
selves express the emotional essence of that which they designate.
Different languages express different ways of being-in-the-world;
hence the nuances - 'the Juli meaning' - of one cannot be rendered
by another, as translators know only too weH. The meaning is
inseparable from the particular language; this is not, however, to
62 Part I: The Body

adopt the opposite extreme of the traditional conception of langu-

age by declaring it to be a system of natural signs instead of mere
convention. In fact, it is neither for the simple reason that both
conceptions miss the essence of the human world. The dawn of
language lies in emotional gesticulation; but the latter - contrary
to popular belief - is itself not 'natural' in the sense of being given
with the structure of the human body itself. As Merleau-Ponty
points out, a comparison of a Japanese with an Occidental shows
that 'it is no more natural, and no less conventional, to shout in
anger or to kiss in love than to call a table "a table" '. Neither
thought nor emotion is divorceable from the body; yet both are
irreducible to its anatomical makeup. There is no transparent,
self-subsistent thought translatable into divers languages; nor is
there a pure emotion disclosable by identical or different gestures.
Thought and emotion are modes of being-in-the-world, and the
differences between the language and gestures of one people and
those of another testify to their different ways of perceiving
stimuli and responding to situations. Thus 'the difference of
behaviour corresponds to a difference in the emotions them-
selves', although any attempt to separate the one from the other is
fundamentally wrongheaded. The biological body does not come
equipped with a ready-made, im mutable human nature; there is
no 'natural' behaviour subtending cultural 'conventions'. A fun-
damental ambiguity distinguishes human life from animal life,
such that everything in the former is simultaneously 'natural' and
'cultural' - nothing is absolutely independent of 'purely biological
being', yet everything transcends it. Like the significance of other
forms of behaviour, the significance of speech is both immanent
and transcendent - it is immanent in the behaviour itself, but
irreducible to the anatomical apparatus as such. Like everything
else, speech is a way of living one's body in the world, and it too
involves a simultaneous modulation of both. Our usual concep-
tions of necessity and contingency are inadequate to capture the
being of verbal gesticulation, just as they are inappropriate for
comprehending the character of sexual being. In both cases, it is a
question of appropriating and transforming a given situation by a
kind of 'escape' which ensures our freedom - while precluding its
ever being absolute. Nothing in human existence is utterly fortui-
tous or totally conditioned, and despite their appearance to
the contrary, neither linguistic nor other gestures constitute
exceptions.
 The Body as Expression and Speech 63

The phenomenological approach thus reveals speech to be a

particular form of that fundamental project which the previous
chapters have already shown to define our very existence as
human beings in the world. This primordial power of transcen-
dence involves the apprehending of the creating and communicat-
ing of a meaning wh ich comes from nowhere and is irreducible to
anything else. The primacy of the linguistic meaning has to do
with its ability to become sedimented into an intersubjective
acquisition for future use in the quest for truth - a never-ending
quest whose origin lies in speech itself. The open-ended nature of
experience which the very notion of transcendence already im-
plies, is perhaps nowhere more evident than in linguistic expres-
sion - and disorders affecting such expression most readily bring
it to our attention. The modern theory of aphasia, developed by
such psychologists as Grünbaum and Goldstein, confirms this
phenomenological conception of language and overcomes the
problems encountered by the empiricist and intellectualist
accounts. According to Merleau-Ponty, these modern psycho-
logists are in fact attempting to formulate wh at he calls 'an
existential theory of aphasia' in which extern al language and
thought are considered manifestations of the fundamental project
described above. In aphasia these phenomena lose their existen-
tial significance for the patient, thereby indicating a breakdown in
the basic activity of transcendence itself. Earlier we saw that
patients suffering from amnesia regarding colour names are like-
wise unable to classify colour sampies. Intellectualism considered
the disturbance in categorial activity to signal a disorder of
thought, wh ich it deemed primary. The existential theory of
aphasia goes beyond this sort of explanation by basing itself on
the modern psychologists' concrete descriptions of such cases. The
latter reveal that the disorder has to do with the very way in which
the patients relate themselves to the world and accordingly, with
the style or shape of their experience itself. This prompts us to
recognize that the categorial activity is not simply or primarily a
matter of thinking or judging. Prior to its being a thought or a
form of cognition, it is a way of situating oneself in the world and
concomitantly, structuring one's experience. Whereas the normal
subjects' perception organizes itself into figure-background struc-
tures in keeping with the required task, the patients' perception
remains essentially passive - with the result that each item stays
shut up in its own individual being. Consequently, for the latter
64 Part I: The Bady

objectively simiIar colour sam pIes need not appear to be simiIar at

all; the patients' gaze might be arrested by the degree of warmth
in one sampIe and by the basic shade in another. The patients'
entire attitude towards the world differs from that of normal
subjects; unlike the latter, the former faiI to detect any intention in
the perceptible world.
As we have seen, the loss of this power to apprehend an
existential significance corresponds to a breakdown 1 in the
patients' power to create and communicate such significance. The
basic intentionality of the body itself has bogged down; and the
disturbances of speech and thought are not an ultimate fact but
rather, are themselves rooted in this principal inertia. The psycho-
logists' studies disclose that many patients who are unable to
classify colours are nevertheless able to repeat the colour names
and associate ideas. It therefore becomes evident that their diffi-
culty in categorizing colours is not due to a loss of words or
extrinsic connections of meaning but rather, that it has to do with
a loss of that living meaning wh ich normally inhabits words. Thus
the real link between language and thought becomes severed,
leaving patients with colour names which no longer signify
anything for them. By contrast, normal subjects' categorial behav-
iour and use of words point to a radically different manner of
being-in-the-world. Unlike the psychologists' patients, they expe-
rience a bodiIy intentionality wh ich opens them to the perceptible
world, enabling them to discern its significance and to structure it
according to present demands. This pre-reflective incarnate inten-
tionality further allows normal subjects to project themselves
towards a world of 'the mind' or the imagination, and to parti-
cipate actively in culturallife. Language is inseparable here from
this basic activity of transcendence, so that their language is their
'taking up of a position' in this 'mental' or cultural world.
Merleau-Ponty stresses that just as for normal subjects a pattern of
their bodily behaviour invests the surrounding objects with a
particular significance for themselves and others, so their 'phone-
tic "gesticulation" , - their speech - brings about a certain inter-
subjective co-ordinating of experience. The analysis of aphasia
and the normal experience wh ich it brings to light by contrast,
make it clear that speech is not reducible to either motility or
intelligence. Instead it is both simultaneously, and is itself part of
that fundamental power whereby normal human beings transcend
a de facta situation and project themselves towards other people.
 The Body as Expression and Speech 65

As we have seen, linguistic disorders take a whole variety of

forms, sometimes affecting only a particular aspect of linguistic
experience (the visual or the conceptual or the verbal) but some-
times altering the structure of experience in its entirety. Yet no
matter how specific or how general the disturbance, it always
touches the meaning of language and involves some sort of
congealing of existence, thus impairing or destroying the normal
openness of experience. In Schneider's case this congelation
manifests itself in all areas: he cannot throw hirnself into an
imaginary or creative situation, he cannot initiate sexual activity,
he cannot use language to describe a merely possible experience,
he cannot become involved in discussions on religious or political
topics, he cannot speak unless he has prepared his speech, and he
never experiences any need to speak. In short, he is incapable of
an act of authentic expression - he cannot create any opening in
being because his own experience totally lacks openness; for hirn,
it is characterized by 'self-evidence and self-sufficiency'.
The striking contrast between the closed character of Schnei-
der's experience and the essential openness of normal experience,
paralleis the radical difference between the traditional Cartesian
conception of the body and soul on the one hand, and the
phenomenological notion of incamate subjectivity on the other.
Indirectly drawing to our attention the enigmatic nature of the
body itself, the consideration of speech and expression has defi-
nitively undermined the old view of the body as an agglomeration
of self-enclosed particles or a network of third person processes.
Speech and mute gestures have admittedly always been recog-
nized as transfiguring the bodYi yet such transfigurations were
deemed to be a disclosing of the thought or soul, which was itself
considered to be essentially incorporeal. Though so to speak
shining through the body and illuminating it, mi nd or soul was
not 01 the body and was at best a temporary resident within it. As
Merleau-Ponty points out however, speech or gesture could never
express thought unless the body itself were that thought rather
than its merely extemal indicator. In the absence of any immanent
meaning, the body would be utterly incapable of projecting and
communicating meaning. The Cartesian tradition has taught us to
juxtapose thought and body, and to purge them of all ambiguity.
We have thus long persuaded ourselves that we are composed of a
transparent consciousness and a mechanistic object, both being
entirely clear and self-enclosed yet somehow extrinsically linked
66 Part I: The Body

together. Nevertheless, we have seen that even Descartes hirnself

was ultimately at a loss as to how to conceive the union of mi nd
and body thus defined; moreover, he clearly recognized the
tremendous disparity between his own dualistic thesis and his
actual experience of the body. Religious belief prompted Descartes
to ascribe primacy to the former rather than the latter, and to rest
his ca se on a non-deceiving God. For Merieau-Ponty, such an
uncritical approach is quite unacceptable. Instead, he urges us to
bring our conception of thought and the body into line with our
pre-reflective experience. If we take seriously the phenomenolo-
gical rediscovery of the body itself, we will be forced to recognize a
third kind of existence wh ich the Cartesian analysis systematically
excludes. As soon as we relinquish our stubborn adherence to the
Cartesian idea of the body and reconsider the lived body itself, we
are compelled to acknowledge 'an ambiguous mode of existing'
which overturns the traditional subject-object or mind-body cate-
gories. We must then discard the idea of causal connections
among bodily functions on the one hand, and between the body
and the 'external world' on the other. In place of such connections,
we will be prompted to recognize fundamental relations of mutual
implication having their roots in that central phenomenon of
incarnate signification which the phenomenological description
has brought to light. Mind or thought and body are themselves
abstract moments of this central phenomenon. In abandoning the
traditional procedure of detaching mind from body and subject
from object, we reinstate the embodied subject as one who is
'never hermetically sealed' but rather, always already intentionally
related to the world in some measure. Consequently, the rediscov-
ery of incarnate subjectivity will lead us to revise as weil our
conception of the sensible world as a whole.
 Part 11
The Perceived World
 The Theory of the Body
Is Already a Theory
of Perception
Merleau-Ponty's phenomenological description of the body has
shown us the need to break with the entrenched dogmatisms and
to recognize the body itself as inherently expressive of existence as
a whole. We have traditionally tended to adopt either of two
approaches: we have detached subjectivity from the body and
made of the latter an object existing in-itself and reducible to the
sum of its parts; or we have put the primacy on a thought which
strips the body of its perspectivity and, in an allegedly clear and
distinct idea, offers it up as an absolute object to the disinterested
gaze of a disembodied consciousness. In either case, we have
bypassed our actual experience and have chosen to ignore the fact
that the body is ourself. By the same token, we have reflectively
ejected ourselves from the perceived world and considered the
latter a collection of self-enclosed objects existing independently
of any perceiver; or we have purged the perceived world of its
appearance and allegedly captured its reality in the clear and
distinct ideas of an incorporeal, non-perspectival subject. Both
views fundamentally distort our actual experience of being-in-the-
world; but instead of renouncing these theories, we have for the
most part chosen to discredit our experience. However, the
difficulties which arose in attempting to account for various
disorders have prompted us to question this traditional dis para ge-
ment of experience and to revise our traditional conceptions. We
have been led, for example, to transform the notion of body image
so as to accommodate the findings of the psychologists, thereby
relinquishing the idea of the body as mechanistic object and
recognizing a bodily intentionality whose pole is the perceived
world. We have thus reinstated the essential link between our
body and the world; further, our study of sexuality, expression
and speech has induced us to restore subjectivity to the body
itself. Since the perceived world has emerged as a pole of bodily
experience, and since the subject has recovered its body, the vital
connection between body-subject and world has already impli-

69
70 Part II: The Perceived World

citly been re-established. As the title of this introductory section

indicates, 'the theory of the body is already a theory of percep-
tion'; consequently, we will need to revise explicitly our view of
the perceived world so as to bring it into line with our amended
conception of the body itself. Neither body nor world are extrinsic
to the perceiver; rather, these terms are mutually implicatory. The
unity of the perceptual world and the identity of any particular
object seen from different perspectives successively, depend on
the pre-reflective awareness of our motility as perceivers, and of
our bodily identity through that motility. The very notion of
objects having a position and an identity presupposes our bodily
experience. Moreover, the latter is not a poor approximation of a
comprehensive intellectual grasp of the object - on the contrary,
such an all-encompassing grasp is an extravagant pretension
predicated on that very experience itself. Prior to any intellectual
conception of it, we experience the unity of the object as correlated
to that of our body; and we experience our being in the world
before we ever arrive at the idea of an external world.
Although it might seem that we destroy the objectivity of the
object by reintegrating it into our bodily experience, this is in fact
not so. It is true that we never experience all si des of a cube as
equal- but this does not mean that the 'real' cu be eludes our
experience and that the latter must be interpreted in order that an
intellectual reconstruction might render us the cube as it really iso
Nor is the cube's meaning to be arrived at by a purely intellectual
consideration. Any attempt to detach the object from the condi-
tions under which we actually perceive it, is fatally flawed; the
so-called 'real' cube consisting of six simultaneous and equal sides
would be utterly inconceivable in the absence of our perceptual
experience as embodied subjects. Underlying that reflective proce-
dure which te ars the subject away from its body and its world, we
find a pre-reflective experience in which our body, things and the
world are immediately present and interrelated in a 'living con-
nection', just as are the parts of our body itself. Our conception of
the thing and of the world ultimately rests on their perceptual
self-evidence, and the latter is in turn inseparable from our
pre-reflective awareness of the body itself. The pre-reflective
synthesis of the body itself brings about the synthesis of the
perceived object prior to any reflective reconstruction; moreover,
these two syntheses are not two separate acts, but rather two
aspects of a single act of perception. The structure of the pheno-
 The Theory 01 the Body Is Already a Theory 01 Perception 71

menal body already implies the structure of the entire perceptual

field. It remains for us to suspend our traditional detached
knowledge of the thing and the world in order that we may
become aware of our actual perceptual experience.
 1
Sensing*
Empiricism and intellectualism presuppose a ready-made world
in their analyses; consequently, both are oblivious to the subject
of perception. The empiricist regards perception as merely one
event among others occurring in the world, its locus being the
perceiver. In studying the sensations wh ich make up this occur-
rence, the empiricist adopts an impersonal approach - thereby
totally neglecting the fact that he lives perception and is the
perceiving subject even in his very study of perception itself. This
detached approach which relegates perception to the status of a
fact in an objective world, fails to recognize that perception is on
the contrary the condition of there being any facts for us at all. The
empiricist analysis belies that upon which it itself rests - namely,
the lived transcendence which creates an opening in being and
thereby brings about the presence of a perceptual field. Whereas
the empiricist overlooks his own role in his analysis of perception,
the intellectualist accords himself a role which makes his lived
perception equally incomprehensible while depending upon it
just as surely. The empiricist leaves no room for consciousness;
the intellectualist subordinates everything to a universal constitut-
ing ego. The second position merely reverses the first in replacing
being-in-itself by being-for-itself. The transcendental ego is not
itself involved in perception; in constituting the world it remains
beyond that worid rather than within it, and establishes causal
connections among the world, the body, and the empirical seif.
Since these are spread out before the thinker, the intellectualist
cannot account for their never actually being perfectly explicit or
compiete for uso Like empiricism, intellectualism misses the per-
ceiving subject and rules out perception as we actually live it.
Inducive psychology can help us to reinstate the latter by challeng-

• Like Guerriere, I have decided to translate 'Ie Sentir' as 'Sensing', rather than as
'Sense Experience'. (See Journalot the British Society tor Phenomenology, voJ. 10,
no. 1 (Jan. 1979) p. 67.)

72
 Sensing 73

ing both the empiricist and the intellectualist views of sensation

as, respectively, astate or quality, and the consciousness of such a
state or quality.
As we might expect, the true nature of sensation emerges most
clearly through the study of experiments involving patients suff-
ering from disorders - in this case, 'diseases of the cerebellum or
the frontal cortex'. Psychologists discovered that alterations in the
colour of the visual field brought about corresponding changes in
the amplitude, direction, and accuracy of the patients' arm move-
ments. The outward sweep or inward bend, the smoothness, the
speed and so on, varied according to the colour - each colour
always giving rise to the same tendency. One might be tempted to
invoke a causal explanation, reducing the motor reaction to an
effect mechanically produced by a physical phenomenon imping-
ing on the objective body. However, such an explanation is
precluded by the fact that colours wh ich were created by contrast,
possessed the same motor value as their actual colour counter-
parts. Yet this does not authorize us to adopt the opposite
approach and decare that consciousness constitutes the colour's
motor physiognomy out of some sort of mental stuff, or 'hyle'. In
the latter case, the influence of colour on behaviour becomes
inexplicable, as does the finding that the subject may be quite
unaware of such influence even while reacting to it. A constituting
consciousness would by definition be aware of wh at it was
constituting and would presumably counteract any potential effect
on behaviour; thus the constituting activity of consciousness not
only renders the actual findings inexplicable, but is itself in-
comprehensible. We must cease to consider colour a purely
physical phenomenon or an intellectual construction; instead, we
must recognize sensation as a living dialogue between the body-
subject and its existential environment.
Colour prompts the pre-reflective adoption of 'a certain bodily
attitude'; the amplification or contraction of movements is part of
that attitude and indicative of the particular hue. The terms of this
dialogue are neither mutually external nor reducible to one
another. Colour is a certain manner of being-in-the-world wh ich
implies the actual presence of a particular atmosphere and the
body-subjecl's power of responding to it. Consequently, the
presentation of a colour does not mechanically trigger off the
adopting of the corresponding bodily disposition; nor does the
taking up of a particular bodily attitude suffice for seeing the
74 Part II: The Perceived World

colour if the environment fails to offer the solicitation. Sensing is

not an inexpressible coinciding with a sensible or an invasion by
the latter; nor is it a purely subjective creating of an appearance or
an inte11ectual positing of a meaning. The bodily intentionality
wh ich we have already encountered in previous chapters mani-
fests itself here: it is not a disembodied ob server but rather, a
body-subject who sees and hears and touch es the sensible. Sens-
ing is neither a passive registering nor an active imposing of a
meaning; to sense something is to co-exist or 'commune' with it,
to open oneself to it and make it one's own prior to any reflection
or specifica11y personal act. If we insist on regarding the world as
pure matter and the subject as transparent consciousness, the
phenomenological description of sensation as a form of co-
existence, or communion between a body-subject and a being
located beyond it, will seem confused at best. But as we have seen,
it is the traditional dichotomy between being-in-itseH and being-
for-itself which, given the findings of psychology and our own
experience, is itself unintelligible. If we suspend our philosophical
prejudices, we will acknowledge readily enough that there is no
thinker standing behind our ears or hands when we hear or touch
something, or when we stretch out on the grass or the sand and
lose ourselves in the azure sky overhead. Who among us has not
had the experience of becoming one with the sky or the sea on a
cIear summer's day? Why should we dismiss that experience as a
confusion or an illusion?
The subject of sensation is not that personal seH which has
opinions and makes decisions; rather, it is the pre-personalliving
body whose sense-powers are themselves so many 'natural
selves'. By virtue of having a body, we are already in possession of
sensory fields - that is, we open onto a sensible world within
whose horizons a11 particular sensory givens are located, lending
themselves to unending exploration. Sensing is thus an anony-
mous open-ended activity anterior to, and presupposed by, speci-
fica11y personal existence. We commonly distinguish among the
different senses, relegating vision to the eyes, audition to the ears,
olfaction to the nose, taste to the taste buds of the tongue, and
touch primarily to the hands. Indeed, Merleau-Ponty hirnself
asserts that 'the seH which sees or the seH which hears is in some
way a specialized self'. 00 the various senses nonetheless com-
municate, and is there a unity of the senses? As we have seen,
intellectualism subordinates everything to a constituting con-
 Sensing 75

sciousness; in doing so, it effectively transcends the plurality of

the senses. Although it distinguishes contingent matter from
necessary form in analyzing knowledge, intellectualism considers
matter to be inseparable from form in the actual act of knowing.
On this view, knowledge is always knowledge of objects - broadly
speaking - and space is 'the form of objectivity'. Consequently,
the senses are all spatial since they provide access to objects;
moreover, each sense opens onto the same all-embracing space.
The absence of such a common space would predude the plenti-
tude of the object - and hence, its very being as an object for
consciousness.
In attempting to refute this position, empiricism presupposed
its own condusion that the senses are separate. On the basis of
experiments using subjects afflicted with psychic or real blindness
it dedared, for example, that vision is spatial whereas touch by
itself is not. In doing so, the empiricists assumed that the patients'
disorder had left their tactile experience unchanged - but this
assumption presupposed that the allegedly 'pure data' of each
sense can be separated out from the total experience. As Merleau-
Ponty points out, no experiment whatsoever can be invoked
against the intellectualists' view of the spatiality of the senses, for
the simple reason that all experiments already involve an interpre-
tation of the 'facts' which colours the conclusion. The issue must
therefore be decided at the level of reflection. The traditional
intellectualist reflection however - such as that presented by Kant
- is itself based on presuppositions in its thematizing of con-
sciousness and the object. The former, as we have seen, thereby
becomes pure being-for-itself while the latter, as pure being-in-
itself, becomes universally accessible. But why should we assurne
that there is such a translucent subject and plenary object, and
'that the world must be capable of being thought' as Kant claims?
A genuinely radical reflection is therefore required.
Instead of beginning with an idea of the subject and object, we
must return to the pre-reflective experience underlying our ideas
and must seek to describe its actual features by our reflection. Kant
hirnself began his Critique of Pure Reason with the declaration that
'there can be no doubt that all our knowledge begins with
experience'; however, he went on to say that we can 'eliminate
from our experiences everything which belongs to the senses' and
arrive at 'knowledge absolutely independent of all experience'.
This apriori knowledge, according to Kant, gives us 'true univers-
76 Part II: The Perceived Warld

ality and strict necessity, such as mere empirical knowledge

cannot supply'.l The phenomenological reflection challenges these
claims concerning a priari knowledge thus defined, by pointing
out that if experience is the start of knowledge - as Kant declared
- then it is impossible to distinguish between factual truths and a
priori truths, between 'what is' and what 'must necessarily be so,
and not otherwise'.2 Prior to this chapter, Merleau-Ponty alerted
us to the need to revise our ordinary notions of contingency and
necessity; now, he elaborates the phenomenological definition of
the a pasteriari and apriori as respectively, 'the isolated and
implicit fact' and 'the fact understood, made explicit, and followed
through into all the consequences of its latent logic'. The tradi-
tional distinction between content and form clearly disappears
here and with it, any pretension to a knowledge utterly indepen-
dent of experience.
Radical reflection thus begins with the recognition of our actual
inherence in being. Instead of citing, as does the critical reflection,
the conditions wh ich render the world thinkable, the phenomeno-
logical reflection expresses our primordial contact with the de facta
world wh ich envelopes us and which is the only one that can be
thought about consequentially. It becomes impossible to cut our
knowledge loose from that primordial perceptual experience in
which it is rooted; for the phenomenologist there is no necessity
extern al to our senses which dictates their unity. Sensation ceases
to be some inert quality or state, or the consciousness of these, and
becomes a structure of our being-in-the-world; hence spatiality is
inseparable from sensation and it becomes unintelligible to regard
any of the senses as non-spatial. Phenomenological reflection on
our actual sensory experience reveals the unity and diversity of
our senses in that co-existence with the sensible which is prior to
any reflection. Instead of positing a single space as the necessary
condition which makes qualities thinkable, the radical reflection
draws our attention to that lived spatiality which is inseverable
from our experience of qualities as particular modes of being-in-
the-world. In sensory experience, as we have seen, the sensible
beckons to the incarnate subject and the latter responds by
shaping existence accordingly, thereby absorbing itself to a
greater or lesser degree in one of the senses. The diversity and
unity of the senses are thus two aspects of sensing; each sense has
its own peculiar world while also gearing into the larger world of
our integrated experience.
 Sensing 77

Our rootedness in a single all-embracing space as incamate

subjects opening onto the de facta world, is what enables us to
shift from the spatiality characterizing one sensory realm to that of
another and back again without losing our hold on the world.
Thus we can take up our abode in visual space and then, by simply
closing our eyes, abandon ourselves to the vastness of auditory
space as we settle back to enjoy the symphony in the concert hall,
knowing full weIl that we can move back into visual space when
the music ends - or earlier if we so desire. Likewise, blind persons
who see for the first time following the removal of their cataracts,
thereby enter a visual realm whose spatiality differs from that of
the tactile or auditory realms to which they have been accustomed.
Yet the interplay of the various sens es makes it dear that while
each is spatial in a unique way, all contribute to a single compre-
hensive space. After the cataract operation, convalescents typically
initially reach out their hands towards any objects shown them
and may try to touch even a sunbeam falling across their pillow.
Evidently their tactile experience must be spatial- else they
would not reach out to touch whatever is presented; at the same
time it is apparent that the structure of their world has differed
from that of sighted persons. As they learn to use their eyes, the
convalescents bring about a restructuring of their experience and
gradually establish an intersensory world in which their. vision
communicates directly with their touch. In normal experience
then, all the sens es co-exist and interact so that the contribution of
each becomes indistinguishable in the total configuration of
perception.
Sensory experience is foreign to natural perception and inhe-
rently unstable, insofar as it requires an extremely particularized
approach to experience the senses separately or to make adefinite
sensible quality stand out from the perceptual field. Such an
approach makes us oblivious to that 'primary layer' of sensing
wh ich is anterior to any separation of the senses. Und er the
influence of mescalin, this original synaesthetic experience be-
comes dramatically prominent because the drug prompts its user
to suspend that analytic attitude wh ich atomizes the world and
instead literally to see sounds, hear colours, and feel these vibrate
in his own body. If we insist on retaining the constancy hypothesis
(which restricts each stimulus to a single sensation) then such
experience remains incomprehensible. Yet we must endeavour to
account for it, because synaesthetic perception is not unique to
78 Part II: The Perceived World

mescalin users; the scientific attitude of our times has merely

made us unaware that such perception is in fact the rule rather
than the exception. By drawing our attention to the phenomenal
body, whieh is the ac tu al subject of perception, phenomenological
refleetion prompts us to rediseover the true nature of pereeption
prior to any scientific reconstruetion of our experience.
If we suspend objective thought and examine our aetual expe-
rienee, we diseover an intereommunieation of the senses whieh
our preconceptions had ruled out. When we consider, for example,
a glass vase, a knife blade, a birch branch, or a fold in red velvet,
we realize that an object's form and the brilliance or duIlness of its
colour are indicative of its texture, its flexibility, its warmth or
coldness, its weight, its mann er of lending itself to movement, its
sonority when struck, and so on. In its own way, each of the senses
reveals the objeet's inner eore, or structure, and thereby eommuni-
eates with the other senses as weIl. However, we must guard
against the temptation to reduce the object's essential nature to a
Kantian noumenon. The pereeptual synthesis whieh aeeomplishes
the unifieation of our sensory experienees is fundamentaIly diffe-
rent from an inteIlectual synthesis and must not be regarded as
being merely a step on the way to the latter. The perceptual
synthesis is akin to binocular vision's grasp of a single object. Our
actual experience of transferring our gaze from a distant objeet to
one nearby, shows that binocular vision is neither an automatie
physiologieal process nor amental synthesizing of images. The
convergence and merging of two monocular images into the single
object seen, is the outcome of a bodily intentionality; it is the
phenomenal body whieh experienees diplopia as imbalanee and
whieh foeuses its eyes so as to achieve visual equilibrium. It is not
a matter here of an epistemological synthesis effeeted by a
transparent eonsciousness. The perceptual synthesis is rooted in
the prelogieal unity of the body itself and neither the latter nor the
transeendent object which invites its gaze is ever completely laid
bare. Just as there is no thinking subject which stands behind the
synthesis of double images in normal vision, so there is no
tran seen dental ego whieh subsurnes the senses and thereby effeets
their unity. The unifieation of the senses comes about through
their ongoing integration into that synergie system whieh is the
phenomenal body itself. Hearing eolours or seeing sounds is no
more - and no less - mysterious or miraeulous than is the coIlabo-
ration of the two eyes in normal vision. As Merleau-Ponty
 Sensing 79

observes, we can become abruptly aware of the interaction of the

senses in perception when the sound of a film we are watching
breaks down momentarily, thereby congealing the gestures them-
selves and altering the whole tenor of the spectacle. The intercom-
munication of the senses in experience is based on 'a project
towards movement' which is inseparable from the very existence
of the body itself as primordial expression.
The phenomenal body gives meaning even to cultural objects
such as words, as shown by experiments in which subjects who
were presented with words too briefly to read them, nevertheless
adopted the corresponding bodily attitude. The body thus gen-
erally symbolizes the world and enables us to comprehend the
latter prior to any conceptualization on our part. At the primary
layer of sensing, we discover the unity and opacity of the temporal
subject and the intersensory unity of the transcendent object. In
accomplishing the perceptual synthesis, the body-subject creates
time by bringing a past and future into existence and uniting them
with a present. If we are to appreciate the impersonal nature of
perception, we must give up the critical attitude which objectifies
sensation and purges consciousness of its essentialopacity. In
place of such intellectualist reflection we must engage in that truly
radical reflection wh ich recovers the unreflected experience un-
derlying any positing of object or subject. Such radical reflection
recognizes sensation as being 'the most rudimentary of percep-
tions' and restores it to the perceptual field, while simultaneously
reinstating primitive perception as a non-positing, pre-objective,
prepersonal experience.

Notes
1. 'Introduction', Critique 01 Pure Reason, Norman Kemp Smith
(trans.), (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1965) pp. 41-3.
2. Ibid., p. 42.
 2
Space
In the previous chapter, Merleau-Ponty overturned the traditional
conception of objectivity by bringing to our attention the pheno-
menal body as 'a natural seH' and as 'the subject of perception'.
We have seen that the experience of the body itself is inseparably
the outlining and perceiving of a certain sort of world in wh ich
each bodily sense has a spatial realm which overlaps, but does not
coincide, with the others. In this chapter, Merleau-Ponty examines
more closely the meaning of such spatial realms wh ich form a
wh oIe human, or cultural, world around a sensible core.
Traditionally, space has been regarded as a container for, or a
common characteristic of, the objects of experience. Alternatively,
it has been conceived as the form which, constituted by a transcen-
dental subject, makes external experience possible. In short, space
has been considered to be either objective or subjective - either
part of the 'real' world 'out there', or a principle of unification 'in'
the subject of experience. Merleau-Ponty's phenomenological
descriptions, however, have revealed that subject to be an incar-
nate subjectivity; rather than a transcendental ego, the subject of
experience is the phenomenal body inseparably bound up with
the world. It is obvious, therefore, that the traditional notion of
space will need to be rethought, and that the unity of experience
can no longer be considered to He 'out there' or 'in here' but must,
rather, originate in that dynamic relationship between body-
subject and world through which 'objects' and 'subjects' come into
being for uso Consequently, that relationship itseH must be
pre-objective; and if we wish to retain the terms 'objective' and
'subjective' at this primordiallevel, we shall have to say that this
primary perception is immediately 'subjective-objective' or-
which comes to the same thing - 'objective-subjective'. We have
become so accustomed to thinking of space in the traditional way,
that we require a detailed investigation involving a whole new
description of spatiality, in order to break with our entrenched
preconceptions. Once again, we will need to question our estab-

80
 Space 81

lished notion of the world and to rediscover the actual pre-

reflective experience from which it arises. The final 'court of
appeal' concerning the being of space can be no other than our
re-awakened experience of space. In our everyday lives, the
primordial experience of space is already overlaid by its own
acquisitions; hence our investigation must not stop there. If we
are to capture the genesis of space, we must consider breakdowns
of our normal experience because - as we have seen in earlier
chapters - it is in such disturbances that our already constituted
world disintegrates, revealing the threads which compose the
fabric of our ordinary experience. Merleau-Ponty consequently
examines the findings of experiments like those of Stratton, in
which special glasses are used to make a subject see without the
normal retinal inversion. In this case, the subject initially expe-
riences objects as inverted and unreal, then begins to see objects
right-side-up again but experiences his body as inverted, and
finally - especially when active - experiences both objects and
body as real and right-side-up. What are we to make of these
findings?
Neither intellectualism nor empiricism can provide a satisfac-
tory account for Stratton's findings. For the intellectualist, spatial
position is simply the result of a transparent constituting activity;
hence it lies exclusively on the side of the subject. The intellectual-
ist is therefore at a loss how to explain the subject's actual
experience of inversion: since he knows that he is wearing
correctional glasses, the subject should (in the intellectualist
account) make allowance for this when constituting the form of his
visual field. Thus he should continue both to see objects and to
experience his body as 'real' and as right-side-up. The empiricist,
on the other hand, is at a loss how to explain the fact that
everything gradually rights itself even though the subject con-
tinues to wear the correctional glasses. According to empiricism
everything should remain inverted, since space is a property of the
'real external' world and, as such, impinges on the subject in the
same way for the duration of the experiment. Stratton's findings
raise a crucial question regarding the meaning of inversion: with
reference to what does the subject experience the visual field to be
either inverted or upright? It will not do to ans wer that it is the
objective body wh ich provides the stable point of orientation,
because the body is itself experienced, at least for a time, as
inverted. Evidently, space is not simply provided together with
82 Part II: The Perceived World

the content of sensing; it is neither an objective relationship

passively registered by the retina, nor an intellectual construction
by a non-spatial ego. The experiment reveals that the content of
experience is not orientated in itself; however, if 'up' and 'down'
are relative, then to what are they relative and how is it that we
ever come to experience directions like these at all? What is that
'absolute within the sphere of the relative' which enables the
subject of Stratton's experiment to characterizing his own body
and his surroundings as either upright or inverted? As Merleau-
Ponty points out, this absolute must be a third kind of spatiality
underlying any distinction between form and content. Werthei-
mer's experiment involving a mirror wh ich tiIts the room in which
a subject is located, shows that directions can be redistributed
almost immediately even in the absence of any motor exploration
on the part of the subject; and this new orientation is not that of
the body axis. In such cases and in general, what counts is not the
body as an object occupying objective space; rather, it is the body
as potentiality of actions and vehicle of one's being-in-the-world.
The situation and task define the existential 'place' of this
phenomenal body; hence, the tilted spectacle rights itself even for
an immobile subject as soon as he experiences it as making
demands on hirn. His body gears itself to this new wOrld in such a
way that he experiences the former as the comprehensive potenti-
ality of the latter. In short, the subject begins to inhabit his new
world and, instead of feeling hirnself in the world of his actual
body, he 'feeis that he has the legs and arms he would need to
walk and act in the reflected room'. Nagel's experiment with
variations in muscular tonicity reveals the other side of this
body-subject and world dialectic, by showing that if the spectacle
remains stationary while body tonicity is changed, the subject
modifies his bodily position accordingly. Instead of a mechanistic
deterministic relationship of causality, we have an organic relation
of motivation between subject and world, such that the body
possesses the world in a certain way while gearing itself to that
world. In our normal daily experience, our ac tu al body is at one
with our virtual body - the latter being the one which the spec-
tacle requires - and the actual spectacle is at one with the setting
wh ich our bodily attitude projects around it. Consequently, it is
only when one term of the dialectic is upset that the part usually
played by both terms becomes visible, revealing simultaneously
that direct power which the world holds over our body and the
 Space 83

reciprocal power which the body has in anchoring itself in a

world, in demanding 'certain preferential planes'.
The body is a potentiality of movement, and the perceptual field
is an invitation to action; by responding to this invitation, the
incarnate subject receives what Merleau-Ponty calls 'the enjoy-
ment of space' through the existential constitution of 'a spatial
level'. The criterion for this dialectic lies in the 'maximum sharp-
ness of perception and action'; hence, the utmost possible varia-
tion and clarity of articulation in the spectacle perceived, and the
world's confirmation of the body's unfolding motor intentions,
indicate the gearing of the body to the world. This reciprocal hold
of the body on the world and the world on the body, is that
perceptual ground, that absolute within relativity, from which
particular directions like 'up' and 'down' ultimately spring. To ask
why clarity and richness of perception and action require an
orientated phenomenal space, is to adopt the position of a non-
situated spectator floating somewhere above a world in itself
already absolutely orientated. This sort of question presupposes
that subject and world are essentially indifferent to space and
merely happen to be orientated. In fact, however, our perceptual
experience discloses that to be is to be situated; that our primor-
dial co-existence with the world 'magnetizes' experience and
induces a direction in it. The double meaning of the French word
'sens' is significant in this connection: if there is to be meaning,
there must be direction; meaning and direction go hand in hand.
By virtue of being incarnate subjectivities, we thus always already
find ourselves in a world which is primordially meaningful prior
to any explicit taking of a stand by the personal self.
We saw in the last chapter that objectivity has its genesis in a
pre-objective dialectic which overturns the tradihonal concep-
hons; and it now becomes evident that this coming to be of
objectivity is the coming to be of orientated being. To be an object
is to be such for a bodily gaze or grip. Spatial direction is not a
merely contingent trait of an object but rather, the means for
recognizing it and being conscious of it as an object. This is so
because the subject of perception is the phenomenal body, which
can structure the world into figure-background configurations
only insofar as it has a grip on things - and this taking of a grip is
possible only insofar as things have a general direction. All
perceivable and all conceivable being (the latter always based on
the former) is orientated; we can never get beyond orientated
84 Part II: The Perceived World

being in order to provide it with a non-orientated foundation. Our

express perception can never reach and thematize that primordial
laying down of directions whereby we become situated in the
world. To be aware of ourselves as incarnate subjectivity is always
to find ourselves already situated - that is, already orientated.
Reflection invariably encounters a spatiality which is already
acquired, indicating that there must be apre-personal existence
underlying our personal his tory. This pre-reflective existence can
only be that of our body as a generalized, anonymous, naturalself.
Of course, this is not that 'momentary body' of our personal
decisions but rather, the 'customary' or 'habitual body' of which
Merleau-Ponty has already had occasion to speak. The primordial
communication with the world which the habitual body inau-
gurates and perpetuates, opens up arealm of freedom and a
specifically human world in which reflection can take up its
abode. Yet that primordial contact itself, being nothing other than
our facticity, remains radically impenetrable for reflection.
Merleau-Ponty's disclosure of primordial spatiality as insepar-
able from our very being in the world, enables us to comprehend
why the awareness of our contingency prompts giddiness, 1055 of
secure foundations, horror, nausea (as described in Sartre's fa-
mous novel of the same title) and - if it engulfs us sufficiently lang
- the schizophrenia which finds everything 'amazing, absurd, or
unreal'. Between the disorientation of madness and the unques-
tioned security of the natural attitude to the world, lies the re alm
of philosophical interrogation wh ich attempts to understand both
without succumbing to either. The natural attitude of course is not
entirely closed in upon itself - if it were, interrogation could never
even begin. Now in the case of spatiality, philosophical interroga-
tion finds for its inquiry a foothold, so to speak, in the notion of
depth. As Merleau-Ponty points out, depth is more 'existential'
than the other spatial dimensions because it clearly is neither
simply a property of the object nor an intellectual construct;
therefore its consideration prompts us more directly to repudiate
our preconceived notions and re-discover the primordial expe-
rience of the world.
Traditional theories attempted to reduce depth to breadth seen
from the side, but this so to speak 'flattened it out' and failed to
account for our lived experience of depth. Even these traditional
theories thus could not dispense with the notions of distance,
relationship, size and motion in their analyses of depth. To say
 Space 85

that depth is merely breadth seen from the side, is to acknowledge

that the breadth is further away from me when I take a frontal
view of the object in question. Even here therefore, distance from
a perceiver is already induded. Moreover, if we ask how we
become aware of distance, the reply will be that objects change in
apparent size as they move doser to or further away from uso Here,
just as in the case of verticality, the question of an absolute
criterion arises: with reference to what are objects to be judged
bigger or smaller? It cannot simply be a matter of ascertaining size
with reference to other objects in our visual field, for that would
involve us in an infinite regress. As Merleau-Ponty shows, the
absolute here is that wh ich our earlier discussion of space already
revealed to us - namely, that 'gearing of body-subject and world
which brings about the maximum richness and darity of percep-
tion. Distance is not an external relationship between things;
rather, it is a dialectical relationship between the phenomenal
body and its world. To say that something is dose, is to say that
the body has a 'full' or 'complete' grip on it; to say that it is further
away is to say that it is slipping from our grip; and to say that it is
distant, is to say that our gaze now has merely a 'loose and
approximate grip' on it, such that the object's richness is no longer
clearly articulated and that it lends itself less to our exploration. In
this lived distance, motion and temporality are already implied
insofar as the body is apower of exploration. To say that
something is either no longer or not yet clearly visible, is to invoke
temporal horizons of past and future around a field of presence;
and it is to disdose the overlapping, interlocking style of being
which characterizes these temporal dimensions. To say that some-
thing becomes sm aller or larger, increasingly indeterminate or
determinate, only makes sense if that thing has an identity - if it
is not a matter of constant creation ex nihilo or radical disappear-
ance. Merleau-Ponty therefore examines the traditional accounts
of motion, for it is motion wh ich encompasses simultaneously
position, temporality and identity.
The examination of the dassical logical and psychological con-
ceptions of motion reveals a more primordial, pre-objective mo-
tion which is nothing other than a variation of the phenomenal
body's hold on the world. Since primordial spatiality is that
pre-objective experience in which the body-subject fastens itself
on to its environment, and since primordial motility is a modality
of that grip on the world, it becomes evident that spatiality and
86 Part II: The Perceived World

motility are intemally related, being mutually implicatory. The

birth of movement for us is part of the genesis of the phenomenal
world; consequently, the phenomenological description of the
latter involves that of the former. As usual, the shortcoming of the
traditional approaches lies in their uncritical acceptance of the
prejudice of the objective world. In the case of the logicians, it is a
matter of presupposing an object in-itself which remains the same
while moving from one objective location to another. On this
account, motion is merely an intellectual judgement and Zeno's
famous paradoxes become unavoidable. We have a perception of a
static object occupying successive positions but never really
moving. And yet, we actually have an experience of movement
when we dance or walk or use our body in some other way; hence
movement cannot be merely an addition of static points in space
and time. The logician argues that the perception of movement
requires an extemallandmark relative to which an object is judged
to be in motion - that is, to change its position. However, our own
pre-reflective bodily experience of motion refutes the logician's
claim. My body is not for me an object in-itself; I cannot jump
outside it in order to see it occupy successive positions in
objective space. Stroboscopic movement also discloses that the
perception of movement does not require an identical moving
object or an extemallandmark. The psychologist therefore main-
tains that the awareness of 'global movement' involves neither a
moving object nor a particular position of such an object. Yet in
discarding all identity and all relativity, the psychologist forgets
that motion is perceived by someone who lives through it.
The perception of movement cannot entirely dispense with the
notion of identity; but the latter is not the identity of an already
totally determinate object underlying the phases of motion. Move-
ment is not an accidental property of an essentially static object;
instead, there is a mobile being whose identity lies in the
movement rather than beneath it. As Merleau-Ponty notes, 'it is
not because I find the same stone on the ground that I believe in
its identity throughout its movement. It is, on the contrary,
because I perceived it as identical during that movement ... that I
go to pick it up and recover it'. This identity is pre-objective; it is
not the persistence of a cluster of determinate attributes, but a
style of existence characterizing a pre-objective entity which is
experienced by a relative, pre-personal subject. Relativity here
must not be supposed to indicate an extemal relationship between
 Space 87

two terms, it being a matter of indifference which term is varied.

Motion is, rather, a structural phenomenon having to do with the
articulation of our perceptual Held into figure-background; and
the way in which the body, as subject of perception, establishes its
relation with the world is what determines part of the perceptual
Held to count as the background and another part to count as a
moving object. The context in which the phenomenal body
anchors itself and wh ich it inhabits, becomes the background
against which movement can stand out; consequently, movement
presupposes that inherence in the world which is established and
maintained by the habitual body. It is this pre-Iogical gearing of
subject and world which provides the foundation for the absolute
or 'global movement' depicted by the psychologist - but the
latter's prejudice precludes the recognition of this 'primordial
anchorage' .
The anchoring of the body as a 'natural seH' institutes a
physical or 'natural' space and thereby opens up a 'human space'
which encompasses the world of emotions, dreams, myths and
madness, as weH as the world of reflection. The description of this
human space overturns our tradition al distinctions - such as
those between form and content, clarity and ambiguity, reality
and appearance - and revolutionizes the role of philosophy itself.
 3
The Thing and the
Natural World
We saw in the last chapter that space has traditionally been
considered to be a form genera ted by the subject as the condition
of there being any objects at all; or, on the realist side, that it has
been regarded as a giant container in which things are located.
Merleau-Ponty rejected both these traditional conceptions of space
and described the genesis of space in a dynamic pre-objective,
pre-Iogical interaction of body-subject and world. The foundation
or ground of spatiality therefore shifted from the constituting
activity of a transcendental ego posited by intellectualism, to the
reciprocal hold of the phenomenal body and world as described by
phenomenology. It emerged that objects are neither purely con-
structed by the subject nor simply encountered as absolutely
independent existents. Rather, there is a genesis of objectivity in
an anonymous body-world dialectic, such that objectivity comes
to be only as orientated being for a bodily gaze or 'grip'. In short,
we saw that lived spatiality is inseparable from objectivity, since
such spatiality is the means whereby we recognize and are aware
of objects as objects. We saw that objects are always objects for us
- but that this 'us' refers first and foremost to the body as natural
self and subject of perception, through whose activity objects
come into being.
Since the traditional conceptions of space as transcendental
form or in-itself container have been thus overturned, it is
encumbent on Merleau-Ponty to give an account now of that
which was encompassed by, or contained in, the tradition al space.
The conception of the world as a totality of things contained in
space will therefore need to be questioned - and what better way
to begin this interrogation than by examining what it means to be
a thing? Merleau-Ponty's rejection of the traditional conceptions
of objectivity and his attempt to develop a new approach to it in
his descriptions of sensing and space, would seem at first glance to

88
 The Thing and the Natural World 89

rule out objectivity or 'thinghood' altogether. Has Merleau-Ponty

destroyed the independence of the thing and absorbed it into the
subject of perception by making objectivity the outcome of a
body-world dialectic whose foundation is the body-subject's
power of anchoring itself in a pre-objective world through the
exercise of its sensory organs? In having collapsed the notion of
space as transcendental form or in-itself container, has he not in
fact collapsed everything in that container and precluded the unity
and objectivity of the world? In having rejected the notion of
identity as a collection of determinate characteristics wh ich persist
as properties of the thing despite contingent changes of time or
pi ace, and in having described identity as a dynamic 'style of
existence', has Merleau-Ponty not sacrificed the very existence of
anything whatsoever? Has he not substituted a radical subjectiv-
ism in place of the traditional positions? Merleau-Ponty hirnself is
only too aware of such questions and the dangers to which they
refer. In this chapter he therefore addresses hirnself directly to
dispelling such fears.
Traditionally, 'things' have been considered to have stable
properties wh ich give them their reality as things. If, for example,
a tree twig is put under a magnifying glass, or dropped into a glass
of water, or flooded with red light we say that it appears success-
ively as huge, bent, and strangely dark or coloured. Despite these
appearances, we say that 'in reality' the twig is tiny, straight and
dull brown; in other words, it has its size, its shape, its colour, all
of wh ich remain despite the apparent changes brought on by the
magnifying glass, water, and coloured light. Once these are
removed, the twig can again be seen as it 'really' or 'truly' is; in
short, the thing which we call'the real twig' is considered to have
a constancy of size, shape, colour, and so on. Merleau-Ponty
therefore sets hirnself the task of describing the phenomenon of
reality via a phenomenological investigation of the phenomenon
of perceptual constancy. As usual, he proceeds by examining the
traditional approaches to the question.
Psychology considers 'constant' or 'true' size and shape to be a
convention, arguing that no single size and shape is truer than
others, since they all vary according to one's perspective. For the
sake of convenience, it is simply agreed that the object's size when
it is within reach, and its shape when it is in a plane paralleling
the frontal elevation, will be called its 'true' or 'real' size and
shape. However, despite the fact that psychology acknowledges
90 Part 11: The Perceived World

the body's active role in the production of sizes and shapes, this
sort of approach presupposes precisely what needs to be exa-
mined. Psychology begins with the assumption that the given is a
collection of already determinate sizes and shapes, and then tries
to explain why a particular one is regarded as 'real' or 'constant' in
preference to all the others. Yet what needs to be shown is how a
determinate size or shape can become crystallized in our expe-
rience - that is, how constancy comes into being for us, or in
short, how there can be objectivity at all. It should be noted here
that the question is not why, but hOWi for to ask why our
experience crystallizes at all, would be to adopt an acosmic stance
and pretend that experience would still be experience in the
absence of all objectivity. Merleau-Ponty has already criticized
this sort of question - most recently, in his discussion of space,
where the questioner assurnes that orientation is merely an
accidental attribute. The psychologist presupposes objectivity and
hence faHs to describe its genesis in our lived experience.
The intellectualist's approach fares no better than does the
psychologist's. In an effort to avoid the latter's problem of decid-
ing which of a whole series of appearances is to be called the
objecl's reality, intellectualism tri es to evade the issue of objectivity
altogether. Instead of underlying the object's various appearances,
the 'real' object is considered to be the totality of all its actual and
possible appearings. Thus, to appear is to be - being is appearingi
however, this is not a reduction to any single appearance but
rather, the sum total of all possible appearances as these are
foreshadowed in any actual, specific appearance. By thus collaps-
ing the distinction between the object and its appearances, intel-
lectualism renders appearance as appearance imcomprehensible.
In its attempt to get beyond the traditional dichotomies of crode
realism, it becomes itself enmeshed in an infinite regress, as Sartre
explained in Being and Nothingness. 1 What, after all, is it that is
appearing? What is the being of that appearing? Is it an appear-
ing? If so, then what is the being of that appearing? The intellec-
tualist thus gets caught in this infinite regress and never manages
to show what it is to appear. Nevertheless, this position has a
positive insight in stipulating that there is a 'tightly knit system'
of phenomena and the body, and that shape and size have to do
with 'the relations between the parts of the phenomenal field'.
However, intellectualism distorts this insight by conceiving these
relations as being mental oneSi thus it considers the constancy of
 The Thing and the Natural World 91

real size or shape to be merely an apriori law goveming the

variations of apparent size relative to apparent distance. In treat-
ing appearance, distance, and orientation as variables in a con-
stant law, the intellectualist assurnes that these are already deter-
minatei consequently, intellectualism brings us no further in
understanding how determinate shapes and sizes come into being
for uso
By reducing perception to thought, intellectualism blinds itself
to our pre-scientific experience and fails to account for it - while
covertly presupposing that pre-thetic experience in its own
analyses. More specifically, it cannot account for our actual expe-
rience of perceiving the object either far away or up elose.
Intellectualism is forced to regard an apparently small object at a
great distance as indistinguishable from the same object seen up
elose as large, because for it the object is the constant product of
the apparent size multiplied by the distance. Yet in our lived
experience, the object at a distance is not as real and present as it is
when elose to uso Far from a neutral ratio, our lived experience
reveals distance as tension, orientation (of the object) as the
balance between inner and outer horizons, and variations in
appearance as articulation. Intellectualism cannot account for the
experience of tension, or imbalance or unelaritYi nor can it make
comprehensible the fact that there is one culminating point of the
perceptual process 'which simultaneously satisfies these three
norms'. According to the intellectualist position, no one percep-
ti on is more crucial than any other; hence there can be no
optimum distance and orientation wh ich provide the perceiver
with maximum visibility. Nonetheless, we know perfectly well
that when looking at pictures in an art gallery, for example, we
move forward or backward a few paces for each picture which we
really wish to view. Our body here understands that there is for
each picture an optimum distance and direction from which to see
it. As usual, moreover, the intellectualist approach reverses the
actual relationship of 'Fundierung'; thus it reduces the thing to
constant relationships, instead of recognizing that the latter are
themselves based on the perceptual self-evidence of the thing. It is
the thing's self-evidence in our lived experience which must
therefore be described.
We have already seen that the primordial ground of spatial
directions lies in the comprehensive, reciprocal hold of the pheno-
menal body and the world. This anchoring of the body-subject in a
92 Part II: The Perceived World

world, and the anonymous body-world dialectic to wh ich it

ceaselessly gives rise, is the source of objectivity. Since we are
involved in the world through our body, the appearance of objects
is always inseparable from a particular bodily attitude. The
constancy of things can no longer be regarded as a mechanical or
intellectual function, but must be acknowledged to be inseparable
from the fundamental dialectic whereby the incarnate subject
assurnes his place in the world. There is a telos or decisive
perception in the perceptual process precisely because that pro-
cess has to do with the way in which the body gears itself to the
world so that, as Merleau-Ponty says, 'sizes and shapes merely
provide a modality for this comprehensive hold on the world. The
thing is big if my gaze cannot fUllY take it in, small if it does so
easily'. In the past chapter, we saw that things appear unreal when
the primordial, anonymous body-world dialectic is disturbed
with the aid of correctional glasses or mirrors, and that reality is
re-established when the body adjusts its hold on the world in
accordance with the requirements of the altered situation. It is this
comprehensive grip on the world which brings a perceptual field
into being, so that the anchoring of the body-subject in the world
is simultaneously finitude, incompleteness, and openness. In
short, to have a hold on an object through one's comprehensive
grip on the world, is to be perspectival- though not sealed into
any particular perspective, because one is a comprehensive power
of world-modalities (that is, apower of ceaselessly modifying the
specific forms which that primordial hold of the body on the world
takes). In the present chapter, Merleau-Ponty eneavours to show
that the self-evidence - and hence the constancy - of things is
rooted in that of the body itself as a comprehensive hold on a
world.
A thing's constancy has to do not only with its size and shape,
but also with features such as colour; hence it is important to
consider what it means for a colour to be 'real'. What does it mean
to say that an object has its own colour, which it retains through-
out 'apparent' transformations brought about by changes in
position or lighting, for example? It is not enough to say that the
'real' or 'constant' colour of an object is simply that colour wh ich it
'normally' assurnes - in daylight, at a certain distance, etc. - and
that the perceiver remembers this colour when viewing the object
under other conditions. This sort of position again presupposes
precisely that which calls for elucidation; namely, how a colour
 The Thing and the Natural World 93

comes to crystallize in our experience at a11. The appeal to memory

assumes that determinate colours are given, and chooses one of
these to be consigned to memory for future reference. Such a
procedure once more reduces perception to thought about percep-
tion - and from our earlier discussion we are already acquainted
with the fa11acies involved in adopting this kind of approach. In
reducing colour to a fixed quality, empiricism and intellectualism
both distort the phenomenon of colour in our experience. Colour
constancy is not a matter of such a quale constructed by reflection
post facto; rather, it has to do with a colour-function. The latter is
not an incidental coating added to a colourless substratum; it is,
instead, the way in wh ich the thing draws the incarnate subject's
gaze, the sort of resistance wh ich it offers to visual exploration.
Physics and psychology have distorted this colour-function by
dissecting colour into 'atoms' or 'patches' of colour. It is true that
we can see coloured areas by squinting our eyes or engaging in
experimental manipulations of vision; however, the colour-
function changes in such cases so that the objectivity, or reality, of
the coloured thing is lost. Besides, coloured areas are only one of
the many possible structures of colour - others, such as glow,
gloss, the colour of transparent things or of lighting, are omitted in
such an account of colour. No more than spatial direction is colour
an inert component of an absolute object. To show this, Merleau-
Ponty embarks on a detailed discussion of lighting.
Lighting has usually been regarded as something essentially
insubstantial, while colour has been considered part of an object
in itself. However, traditional painting reveals that lighting itself
solidifies into a thing as soon as it is focused upon instead of
being taken for granted. If it is to function as lighting, it must not
itself be the object of our gaze but rather, that wh ich draws our
gaze in such a way as to see the rest. In the previous chapter, we
saw that in order to apprehend movement, the perceiver must
focus on the figures rather than on the background of his pheno-
menal field. We see now that the reverse is true of the structure
lighting-object lighted: in order to apprehend lighting as lighting,
the perceiver must not seize on it with his gaze, but must allow it
to stay in the background. In its function as lighting, light has a
direction and meaning ('sens') which the body understands and to
wh ich it responds without any need for reflection. Merleau-Ponty
showed in his earlier discussion of speech that meaning is not a
property of discrete words or speech elements but rather, that
94 Part II: The Perceived World

words have a meaning only insofar as they form part of an

organically related system. The same is true of colour: things have
a colour not because they are isolated in-itselfs, but because they
are essentially related to one another as parts of a perceptual field.
Already in the 'Preface' and the 'Introduction' to his Phenomeno-
logy, Merleau-Ponty pointed out that perception as such requires
figure-background articulations; moreover, from the last chapter
we know that such articulations involve spatial dimensions like
depth, which have their source in the lived spatiality of the
phenomenal body. In the present chapter, we become aware of the
role played by lighting in the articulation of the perceptual field.
Lighting is that which enables coloured things to stand out, or
figure, in our vision; hence it is itself prior to 'the distinction
between colours and luminosities' (being that whereby these
come into being for us). In the previous chapter, we saw that the
distortions of spatiality induced by glasses or mirrors do not cease
to be distorting until the subject begins to inhabit the new
spectacle through the adjusting of spatiallevels. The same applies
now to lighting: to function as such, lighting must cease to be an
object confronting us and become instead our environment in
which we take up our position. When lighting is allowed to
function in this manner, a new colour level is established. If we
switch on our electric lamp, the light initially appears yellow;
however, it soon assurnes the function of lighting and thus creates
a 'new atmosphere' in which colours are distributed in accordance
with the degree and kind of resistance which the various objects
offer. A blue paper looks blue in gaslight even though it transmits
exactly the same mixture of rays to the retina as are transmitted in
daylight by a brown paper. Far from being given as fixed qualities,
colours come to be determinate in relation to a level constituted by
the phenomenon of lighting; moreover, that level is itself variable,
being the structuring of our visual field in one of a whole variety
of ways.
The genesis of determinate colours therefore depends on colour-
functions which enable colours to become determinate in relation
to a level of lighting. As Merleau-Ponty stresses, 'the level is laid
down, and with it all the colour values dependent upon it, as soon
as we begin to live in the prevailing atmosphere and re-allot to
objects the colours of the spectrum in accordance with the require-
ments of this basic convention'. The only way of inhabiting this
new setting is through 'a bodily operation' which directs our gaze,
 The Thing and the Natural World 95

via the agency of lighting, in such a way that we apprehend the

thing as 'real'. Lighting endows things with their 'true' colours
through an interaction of all parts of the visual field; consequently,
lighting is not incidental, but essential to vision. The 'logic of
lighting' is wh at makes possible the emergence of a coherent
spectade.
We have seen that colour is not first and foremost a determinate
quality, but the way in which an object modulates light in coming
into being as an object for uso Since such modulation has to do
with a total configuration involving all the other objects in our
visual field, it is dear that colour constancy is inseparable from the
constancy of things and, further, from 'the primordial constancy of
the world' as the horizon of our visual field and, of course, of all
our experiences. Colour constancy - and more generally, percep-
tual constancy - is not a matter of a thing's possessing stable
characteristics. Rather, it is that self-evidence in wh ich the thing
as 'intersensory unity' speaks to Our perceptual powers in such a
way that we, as incamate subjectivities, understand its style in an
apprehension wh ich simultaneously gives us a certain darity and
a certain richness of perceptual detail. In order to appreciate the
significance of this condusion, we must consider more dosely the
meaning of modulating light.
We have seen that Merleau-Ponty speaks of this modulation in
terms of the resistance which the object offers to light. It is
therefore readily understandable that the modulation of light,
which brings about the structuration of a visual field, has to do
with the texture of the thing. Colour and texture are consequently
inseparable; the visual and tactile powers of the perceiving subject
are mutually implicatory and ge ar into one another. In the ca se of
touch, the part played by movement and time is more apparent
than in the case of vision, because in seeing we have the illusion
of attaining everything simultaneously and instantaneously-
whereas in touching we are aware of the time unfolded in the
movement of our hand over the tactile object. It is important to
notice, moreover, that the notion of resistance already implies the
other sensory realms as well- for example, the thing's texture
offers a certain resistance to sound (muffled or not) and connotes a
certain smell and taste. In short, the thing has an intersensory
unity corresponding to that synthetic totality of sensory powers
wh ich is the incamate subject. That balance of darity and richness
wh ich we encountered with reference to vision, must therefore be
96 Part II: The Perceived World

extended to include the other sensibilities. Thus the thing is self-

evident or 'real' when the body, as comprehensive synthesis of
intersensory powers, has a hold on the thing as intersensory
object. There is therefore a general perceptual optimum which has
to do with the balance of clarity and richness in all the sensory
fields as they gear into one another.
FinaIly, it should be noted that although the thing is inseparable
from the perceiver - being constituted as a thing in the latter's
grip on the world - nevertheless, it is a thing in-itself for uso The
thing has a resistance, indicating a non-human core which pre-
vents its ever being absorbed into the perceiving subject. If we
take seriously the various sensory resistances of the thing dis-
cussed above, as weIl as the intersensory unity of the thing, then
we will have no difficulty in countering idealism. Further, we
must dispense with that prejudice according to wh ich objectivity
is equated with completeness. The coming into being of the thing
for the perceiver involves a modulation which is incomprehen-
sible in the absence of time. Merleau-Ponty therefore shows that
the thing's objectivity is inseparable from its open-ended nature,
and hence also from that fundamental ambiguity which is in-
volved in the richness of perception.

Notes
1. Sartre, 'Introduction': 'The Pursuit of Being', Being and Nothingness:
a Phenomenological Essay on Ontology, Hazel Barnes (trans.), (New
York: Washington Square Press, 1966) pp. 3ff.
 4
Others and the
Human World*
In the previous chapters of this part of the Phenomenology,
Merleau-Ponty has presented a detailed phenomenological descrip-
ti on of the genesis of objectivity. We have seen that far from
being given, objectivity comes into being through a body-world
dialogue whose foundation is the body-subject's primordial
power of anchoring itself in a pre-objective world through the
exercise of its sensory organs. We have seen that things become
'real' when the body-subject, as a comprehensive intersensory
power, has a grip on them as intersensory objects. We have seen
that this 'hold' involves a gearing of the body to the world and
moreover, that it implies motion, temporality, incompleteness and
ambiguity. We have seen that although things are inseparable
from the perceiver, being constituted in the latter's hold on the
world, they are nonetheless objective. Things thus have an inde-
pendence - but not an absolute independence; they are in-
themselves for uso Things have a constancy, an identity; yet we
have seen that it is not a matter of their possessing stable inert
properties. Rather, the thing's identity is a dynamic 'style of
existence' which emerges in the way in which that thing invites,
and responds to, perceptual exploration. Thus colour, for example,
is not a fixed quality; instead, colour constancy has to do with the
manner in wh ich the thing draws the body-subject's gaze and the
kind of resistance it offers to visual exploration. We have seen that
the thing's way of modulating light is also indicative of its texture,
its flexibility, its weight, and its sonority when struck. The thing
'speaks' to the various sensory powers without ever collapsing
into the perceiver; objectivity and perceptual experience are
simultaneously inseparable and irreducible. Thing and perceiver

• In an effort to remain as e10se as possible to the original text, I am translating

'Autrui' as 'Others', rather than as 'Other Selves'.

97
98 Part 11: The Perceived World

gear into one another without either becoming absorbed into the
other. Far from being found ready-made, determinate sizes,
shapes and colours come into being from a general atmosphere
established by those 'levels' which the body-subject lays down in
taking anchorage in a world. The emergence of objectivity re-
quires the inhabiting of this general atmosphere by the 'natural
self '. Since our perception is not restricted to things and the
natural world, however, it is not enough to show that objectivity is
the outcome of apre-personal dialogue whose terms are the
phenomenal body and the pre-objective world. In this final
chapter of 'The Perceived World', Merleau-Ponty therefore
examines our perception of others and the cultural world. It is now
a question of describing the genesis of subjectivity - that is, of
showing how specifically cultural objects and other people co me
into being for us, how they manifest themselves in our re-
awakened experience. We will find the same basic features in the
phenomenon of subjectivity that we have already discovered in
the phenomenon of objectivity; and if we have understood the
latter, then the former will not pose any difficulty for uso The
transition is readily apparent: we are proceeding from a consider-
ation of how we perceive objects, to a consideration of how we
perceive cultural objects - how, despite their 'non-human core',
objects can manifest an element of humanity. This will bring us to
the more general question of how humanity comes into being for
us - that is, how other subjectivities make their appearance in our
experience.
Traditionally, the entire issue has been dealt with as 'the
problem of other minds'; and in the very way in wh ich this has
been phrased we can already detect the source of the dilemmas to
which it has given rise. If subjectivity is reduced to mind - or
constituting consciousness - then the existence of any subjectivity
other than one's own becomes utterly incomprehensible. It is of no
avail to protest that the ego can posit other consciousnesses as
simultaneously engaged in constituting the world; for its very
positing of those consciousnesses renders the ego supreme by
collapsing the others into mere moments of its own activity.
Solipsism is therefore the price one pays for reducing subjectivity
to mind which, as a constituting consciousness, is characterized
by transparency and completeness. However, solipsism is an
untenable position because its very articulation requires the use
of an intersubjective language which belies the claims it is
 Others and the Human World 99

propounding. Besides, the pre-reflective experience and the

behaviour of the declared solipsist continually subvert his alleged
solipsism - thereby making it not only an untenable position but
also a dishonest one, insofar as it always already surreptitiously
presupposes that which it attempts to deny.
How, then, has traditional philosophy tried to account for our
actual experience of living in a world with other subjectivities?
The typical approach has been to invoke the 'argument from
analogy', according to wh ich I deduce the existence of others from
the behaviour of the bodies which I perceive, by reasoning via
analogy from the correlation between my own 'conscious states'
and the behaviour of my body.l As we might expect, there are
several problems in seeking to base intersubjectivity on analogy.
Since the argument is predicated on the old mind-body dualism,
it falls prey to all the difficulties of dualism wh ich Merleau-Ponty
has already discussed in detail in his earlier chapters. At the co re
of these difficulties, as we have seen, is the lack of any common
ground between consciousness conceived as pure 'for-itself' and
body considered as pure 'in-itself '; moreover, the argument from
analogy presupposes what it sets itself to explain. The argument is
formulated in language and presented for someone; hence, it
tacitly presupposes the existence of others. In addition, the com-
parison of others' emotional expressions with our own assurnes
that self-perception is anterior to, and the basis for, the perception
of others; yet the reverse is in fact the case. Consequently,
self-perception cannot serve as the foundation for an argument
about the existence of 'other minds'. Merleau-Ponty's reference to
the behaviour of small children is especially relevant here. As he
points out, a fifteen-month-old baby opens its own mouth if
someone pretends to bite one of its fingers. Clearly, it is not a
matter of the baby's first perceiving its own expression on the
occasion of intending to bite something, then perceiving the
expression of the body whose mouth is moving towards its finger,
and finally, reasoning by analogy that there is behind this
approaching mouth a consciousness with intent to bite. Instead of
such an elaborate reasoning procedure by a transparent, self-
sufficient consciousness, we have here an incarnate subject who,
as incarnate intentionality, perceives other incarnate intentionali-
ties directly because it and they are internally related.
In the chapter 'The Body as Expression and Speech', we saw that
intentions are not mental entities essentially independent of a
100 Part II: The Perceived World

mechanistic body; we discovered instead a bodily intentionality

which 'speaks to' other phenomenal bodies and is comprehended
by them prior to any reflection on either side. Thus in the present
example, the baby does not thematize its own intentions but
perceives them directly in Hs body - it simply feels its mouth as
an apparatus for bHing. By the same token, the baby neither posits
the existence of others nor deduces their intentions by analogy
with Hs own; rather, H perceives others' bodies wHh its own
phenomenal body and thereby directly perceives their intentions.
Others' intentions and Hs own form a single pre-reflective inter-
subjective system in which there is no need for any translation. Of
course, it is always possible for the adult to engage in reasoning by
analogy; but such reasoning is the exception rather than the norm
and is employed precisely when the intersubjective world some-
how breaks down or is deliberately put in abeyance. For the child,
there is no 'problem of other minds' because the intersubjective
world is seH-evident; in fact, the child's experience is at the
opposHe extreme insofar as he is totally oblivious to the perspec-
tivity of incarnate consciousness and to the meaning of private
subjectivHy. It is important therefore to describe the genesis of
subjectivity in terms of the emergence of human personality from
that pre-personal existence of the body which is its foundation.
The notion of 'body image' plays a crucial role in the phenome-
nological description of the pre-personal realm of our existence.
As we saw in the first part of the Phenomenology, classical
psychology has employed the term to designate a representation
of the various points of the body as a system of externally related
parts ('partes extra partes'); however, this mechanistic conception
proved to be at odds with our actual experience as highlighted by
the breakdowns which Merleau-Ponty considered. Consequently,
the notion of body image had to undergo a radical transformation
involving a distinction between the 'customary' or 'habitual body'
and the body lived at a particular moment on the basis of such an
acquired body. Thus the habitual modes of interacting with the
world were shown to sediment themselves in the body and
become that crucial acquisition without which the freedom that is
characteristic of personal existence would be precluded. For phe-
nomenology, the body image was not amental representation of
the physiological body considered as a mechanistic system merely
externally related to its environment. On the contrary, phenome-
 Others and the Human World 101

nology disclosed the body image as the pre-personal awareness of

the phenomenal body polarized by the world of its habitual tasks.
In the present chapter, we see that this revised body image
encompasses not only the natural world, but also other human
beings and the cultural world.
The child is already situated in an intersubjective cultural world
and from infancy on develops habitual modes of relating to this
human world through his bodily powers. It is in and through such
pre-reflective interaction that the child gradually develops a con-
cept of subjectivity. Language is an important part of this human
world and the child appropriates it before ever using it con-
sciously to articulate his selfhood. Further, as Merleau-Ponty
emphasizes here, pre-personal existence - whether that of the
child developing into a person or that of the adult situating
hirnself in the pre-reflective realm of his tasks - is characterized
by dialogue. Others and the cultural world become part of the
body image and are understood prior to any reflection. We have
already seen that the body is primordially expressive, and it is so
by and for human beings. It is the phenomenal body wh ich
comprehends, appropriates, and sediments the human world into
its own dynamic structure. Moreover, the apprehension of the
intersubjective world poses no more problem at the pre-reflective
level than does the apprehension of one's own limbs; for just as
the body's different sensory realms gear into one another and
open onto an intersensory field, so the intersensory fields of
different individuals gear into each other and open onto an
intersubjective world. Since personal existence, being inherently
temporal, is fraught with ambiguity and opacity, the opacity and
ambiguity of interpersonallife should come as no surprise. Just as
I am outrun by my own past and future and supported by an
anonymous bodily existence, or 'natural self " so too I am outrun
by others and they by me. Thus the 'kernel of truth' in the solipsist
position is that of non-coincidence - I am unable ever to coincide
with others, to experience their experiences as they themselves do.
But on the other hand, I never entirely coincide with mys elf either,
because self-awareness on principle implies a distancing and
because my own experiences are continually remade by time. All
attempts to reconstruct my own past as I actually lived it, are
doomed to failure; henceforth that past eludes me and can exist
only in an 'ambiguous presence'. Yet in both cases - and this is
102 Part II: The Perceived World

wh at the solipsist fails to acknowledge - I am essentially open; I

am open to my own past and to other people, lexist with others in
a common world in which my experience interweaves with theirs.
It should be noted that the refutation of solipsism does not in
and of itself suffice to establish this primordial reciprocity with
others in an 'interworld' which we all inhabit. Sartre, for example,
rejects solipsism but presents a phenomenological description of
our 'concrete relations with others' wh ich contrasts sharply with
that provided by Merleau-Ponty. Sartre declares that the expe-
rience of conflict with the other is the basis of our consciousness of
others. Far from being 'an ontological structure of human-reality',
the experience of being-with-others (the 'we') is merely 'a certain
particular experience which is produced in special cases' and is
based on the prior experience of being objectified by others or of
objectifying them by our look. The experience of community is an
inherently unstable and derivative experience for Sartre, and it is
significant that he considers 'the best example of the "we" lto] be
furnished us by the spectator at a theatrical performance' who is
non-thetically aware of 'being a co-spectator of the spectacle'.
Sartre concludes that 'the very nature of the We-subject implies
that it is made up of only fleeting experiences without metaphy-
sical bearing'; that the experience of being with others is a
'fragmentary, strictly psychological' experience which 'reveals
nothing particular; it is a purely subjective Erlebnis' rather than
'the revelation of a dimension of real existence'. In short, accord-
ing to Sartre it is 'useless for human-reality to seek to get out of
this dilemma: one must either transcend the Other or allow
oneself to be transcended by hirn. The essence of the relations
between consciousnesses is not the Mitsein; it is conflict,.2
For Merleau-Ponty, it is on the contrary the experience of
conflict which is derivative, while that of community has ontolo-
gical priority and indeed reveals an essential dimension of our real
existence as we have seen. Merleau-Ponty points out (without
mentioning Sartre by name) that the 'inhuman gaze' by which
others objectify me, and I them, presupposes our withdrawing
from our pre-reflective inter-active presence, 'into the co re of our
thinking nature' and into an 'inactive' existence. This withdrawal
is experienced as such; thereby confirming the existence of that
which it has chosen to abandon. Thus the alienating look of the
other disturbs me, whereas the gaze of a dog or cat does not,
precisely because the former replaces potential communication
 Others and the Human World 103

with a repudiation, which itself remains 'a form of communica-

tion'. The source of this fundamental difference between the
position of Sartre and that of Merleau-Ponty, lies in the former's
faHure to provide any 'third term' between consciousness and
being (between 'le neant' or 'pour-soi', and Tetre' or 'en-soi').3
Sartre ultimately misses the phenomenon of incarnate subjectivity
- that inherence of consciousness in the body and the world which
is the central theme of Merleau-Ponty's entire Phenomenology.
In the absence of such a body-subject, Sartre cannot establish
that bodily intentionality which links my experience dialectically
with that of another body-subject so that we are able to find the
prolongation and fulfilment of our intentions in each other prior to
any reflection and thereby become mutually enriched. Merleau-
Ponty's phenomenological description of the body and of the
perceived world constitutes a refutation of the kind of view which
Sartre presents regarding my perception of the other's body and
the nature of our relationship. Sartre must therefore be considered
wrong in claiming that the primary relation is not one between my
body and that of the other; that such an inter-corporeal relation
would be 'purely external'; that the other's body is merely 'a
secondary structure' for me, an 'episode' in my project of 'making
an object of the Other'; that 'the Other's body is ... the tool
which I am not and which I utilize (or which resists me, wh ich
amounts to the same thing). It is presented to me originally with a
certain objective coefficient of utility and of adversity'.4
Merleau-Ponty's phenomenological description does not, of
course, rule out the possibility of utilizing the other's body as a
mere tool; however, that possibility is based on a prior develop-
ment of subjectivity through a sustained interaction of an entirely
different sort with other people. I am not first and foremost a
spectacle for an alien consciousness, or a spectator of others;
rather, as a body-subject I enjoy an anterior organic relationship to
the natural and the human world. My body's insertion into the
world is the condition of my interacting with other people. As we
have seen, my body is always perspectival- I never have an all-
encompassing hold on the world; there is therefore room for other
incarnate subjectivities, and their points of view complement my
own. Their body expresses their intentions and I perceive those
intentions with my own body; insofar as my body takes up the
other's intentions, there is an internal relation between our
bodies. It is thus first of all the body which opens itself to others
104 Part II: The Perceived World

and responds to them; there is a mutual presence of incarnate

subjects which precedes any alienation. The hold on the world
which others have - and which they are - enriches me by enab-
ling me to achieve a more comprehensive view of the world than is
offered by my own hold alone. Far from being mutually exclusive,
these multiple modes of being-in-the-world are internally related
and form a sodal world. Just as in the perception of objects our
perspectives 'slip into' each other and are brought together in the
thing, so my perspective and that of other people 'slip into' each
other and are brought together in a shared sodal world. Like the
natural world, the sodal world is not 'a sum of objects' but a
'permanent field' with which we are in contact by the simple fad
of existing, prior to any objectification or judgement about it.
Merleau-Ponty points out that although I can turn away from the
sodal world, I cannot 'cease to be situated relatively to it'. We
already have an internal relation to the natural world in virtue of
our possessing sensory functions and, as we have seen, it is
impossible to sever the natural and the sodal, or to declare the one
a 'lower layer'. The ambiguity which characterizes the pheno-
menal body therefore also pervades the sodal world; however,
this ambiguity is not a defect to be deplored, since it is the very
condition of our being human at all. Like the thing, the interworld
lends itself to unending exploration, unending articulations, and
ever fresh discoveries. Nonetheless, like the thing and the natural
world, others and the human world are the very stuff of that
pre-Iogical certainty which Merleau-Ponty will describe more fully
in the next chapter.

Notes
1. It should be noted that modern philosophers have approached 'the
problem of other minds' from various angles and have developed
several different arguments to refute solipsism. For a discussion of
the argument from analogy, behaviourism, the two-meanings view,
the expression theory, the criteriological view, and the identity
theory, see for example The Philosophy o{ Mind, V. C. Chappell (ed.),
(Englewood CHffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall Inc., 1962).
2. Sartre, 'Concrete Relations With Others', Being and Nothingness: a
Phenomenological Essay on Ontology, pp. 534-59.
3. Admittedly, there are passages in Being and Nothingness in which
Sartre seems to go beyond such a Cartesian dualism to a view of
incarnate consciousness more like that which Merleau-Ponty sub-
 Others and the Human World 105

sequently developed in the Phenomenology oi Pereeption. In this

connection, one might mention Sartre's own criticism of Cartesian
dualism (for example, see 'Introduction: The Pursuit of Being',
pp.3ff) as weil as parts of his discussion of 'The Body', such as:
'Being-for-itself must be wholly body and it must be wholly
consciousness; it can not be united with a body ... '(po 404); 'We
know that there is not a for-itself on the one hand and a world on
the other as two c10sed entities ... ' (p. 405); 'The point of view of
pure knowledge is contradictory; there is only the point of view of
engaged knowledge ... ' (p. 407); 'The body is nothing other than
the for-itself ... an engaged contingent being among other contin-
gent beings ... for the for-itself, to exist and to be situated are one
and the same ... ' (p. 408); , ... the very nature of the for-itself
demands that it be body ... ' (p. 409); 'My body is co-existive with
the world, spread across all things, and at the same time it is
condensed into this single point which I am without being able to
know it ... ' (p. 420); 'The body is lived and not known.' (p. 427);
, ... glasses, pince-nez, monocles, ete., which become, so to speak,
a supplementary sense organ' (p. 433); 'The body is the totality of
meaningful relations to the world' (p. 452); 'Thus my perception of
the Other's body is radically different from my perception of things'
(p. 453). 'These frowns, this redness, this stammering ... these do
not express anger; they are anger .... Thus it is not necessary to
resort to habit or reason by analogy in order to explain how we
understand expressive conduct. This conduct is originally released to
perception as understandable; its meaning is part of its being just
as the color of the paper is part of the being of the paper' (p. 455).
Yet despite these and similar passages, Sartre's position remains
fundamentally dualistic and thus lacks that 'third term' which
forms the nucleus of Merleau-Ponty's entire philosophy. It seems to
me that the latter is essentially correct in his assessment when he
declares that Sartre is 'a good Cartesian'; that 'in Sartre there is a
plurality of subjects but no intersubjectivity'; that 'the apparent
paradox of his work is that he became famous by describing a
middle ground ... between consciousness and things - the root in
Nausea, viscosity or situation in Being and Nothingness . .. - and
that nonetheless his thought is in revolt against this middle ground
and finds there only an incentive to transcend it'; that 'contrary to
appearances, being-for-itself is all Sartre has ever accepted, with its
inevitable correlate: pure being-in-itself .... there is no hinge, no
joint or mediation, between mys elf and the other'; that 'there is an
encounter rather than a common action because, for Sartre, the
social remains the relationship of "two individual consciousnesses"
which look at each other'; that 'commitment in Sartre's sense is the
negation of the link between us and the world that it seems to
assert; or rather (that] Sartre tries to make a link out of a negation';
and that if, unlike Sartre, one recognizes a genuine 'interworld',
then it is no longer a question of 'either hirn or me: or an
'alternative of solipsism, or pure abnegation', because the relation-
106 Part II: The Perceived World

ships 'in private rand] in pubIic history ... are no longer the
encounter of two For-Itselfs but are the meshing of two experiences
which, without ever coinciding, belong to a single world: Merleau-
Ponty, Adventures of the Dialeetie, Joseph Bien (trans.), (Evanston,
Ill: Northwestern University Press, 1973) pp. 147, 158-9; 205, 137,
142, 152, 193, 200.
4. Sartre, 'The Body', Being and Nothingness, pp. 445-7.
 Part 111
Being-for-Itself and
Being-in -the-World
 1
The Cogito
As we enter the final part of the Phenomenology, it is useful to recall
briefly the major points of Merleau-Ponty's phenomenological
description so far. Already in the 'Preface', we learned that
Merleau-Ponty's basic endeavour in this work is to awaken us to
an awareness of our existence as incarnate subjects inhering in the
world. Reflection on our lived experience revealed that the body
itself is not a system of externally related parts but rather, that it is
a dynamic synthesis of mutually implicatory powers. As a compre-
hensive project of such internally related powers, the body itself
already outlines the fundamental features of the world in which
these powers continually find their realization. Neither the body
nor the world towards which the former is a transcendence, can be
comprehended in isolation. The body is only a body in so far as it
is this transcendence towards a world and by the same token, the
world is only a world insofar as it is this polarization of bodily
powers. Nonetheless, neither term is reducible to the other,
because transcendence - as surpassing towards - implies objectiv-
ity, while objectivity comes into being only for a subject polarized
towards it, and that subject is most immediately the body as a
'natural self '. There is thus an internal relationship between the
body and the world; and it is within this relationship that a11
meaning emerges. Things are real when the body-subject has a
hold on them as intersensory objects; and that inevitably involves
a measure of ambiguity and incompleteness. Further, there is a
genesis not only of objectivity, but also of subjectivity; and both
poles of this body-world dialectic manifest a resistance to absorp-
tion which renders them relatively (but never absolutely) inde-
pendent.
The genesis of meaning was most directly shown to us in the
chapter 'The Body as Expression and Speech', where we saw that
the body-subject as a speaking subject finds itself already situated
in a language wh ich, as vehicle of sedimented meanings, can be
used to bring into being a new meaning. To speak of language is

109
110 Part 1II: Being-for-Itself and Being-in-the-World

of course to enter the realm of co-existence and culture. Merleau-

Ponty followed up his preIiminary discussion of this realm with a
more detailed description of the way in which not only things and
the natural world, but also others and the human world come into
being for the incarnate subject. It emerged that insofar as things
are apprehended within an already human context, the natural
and the cultural orders merge into one another and are ultimately
inseparable. It would seem then that there is no need to discuss
the cogito - since the natural and the human world has been
described, there would seem to be nothing further to say. Why
does Merleau-Ponty nevertheless find it necessary to provide a
discussion of the cogito? Is he simply so to speak 'paying his dues'
to the tradition which he has been criticizing throughout this
work? I think not; on the contrary, it seems to me that the chapter
on the cogito is absolutely crucial in estabIishing the philosophical
status of Merleau-Ponty's phenomenological description.
Up to this point, readers of the Phenomenology might weIl think
that they can accept Merleau-Ponty's description of the body as
the 'third term' lying between the extremes of mechanistic physio-
logy and intellectuaIist psychology. They might be prepared to
agree with Merleau-Ponty that there is a bodily synthesis in which
the parts of our body are given to us immediately as already
oriented towards the performance of tasks and the perception of
things in the world. Further, readers might acknowledge that there
is a bodily spatiality of the sort described by Merleau-Ponty and
that our perception of things has to do with internal and extern al
horizons which rule out absolutely exhaustive or unambiguous
perceptions. Finally, readers might be prepared to admit that our
perception of others is characterized by the same opacity and
ambiguity; that our gestures and our speech are neither cons-
tructed nor simply 'triggered off' and that our dialogue with
others is not to be understood as the translating and decoding of
ready- made thoughts. All this, then, may be conceded; however,
readers may argue that the description so far really belongs to the
domain of psychology and sociology - that it deals merely with
the manner in which we live our daily lives, our way of relating to
things, to our cultural heritage, and to others with whom we come
into contact in our daily affairs.
It may be said that of course we do not preface our actions, our
perceptions, or our conversations with reflections concerning the
position of our limbs and the Iocation of objects, or the signifi-
 The Cogito 111

cance of the words we are about to utter. It is perfectly obvious

that for the most part we carry on our lives at a pre-reflective level.
But does not an this merely underline - so it may be argued - the
radical distinction between lived experience and reflection? Does
it not emphasize the peculiar nature and task of a genuine
philosophy? Our daily life, our personal existence might weIl be
fraught with ambiguity, uncertainty and obscurity; fortunately
however, in doing philosophy we can transcend these elements
and enter the realm of pure reflection. It is precisely the task of
philosophy to clarify, to dispel uncertainty and ambiguity. AI-
though we do not in our daily exchanges with others translate
ready-made thoughts into speech, this in no way indicates - so it
may be pointed out - that we cannot take refuge in a domain of
pure thought. In fact, it is precisely our failure to do this which
renders our pre-reflective life opaque and ambiguous. However, if
we pause to engage in reflection, we enter arealm of conscious-
ness in which we can attain the kind of clarity essential to
certainty and truth; and this is surely the domain of any philos-
ophy worthy of the name. The present chapter on the cogito
addresses exactly these sorts of concerns, which readers of the
Phenomenology might weIl have at this point. The very attempt to
establish arealm of pure thought as indubitable ground of an
knowledge or truth is therefore now submitted to investigation.
The underlying question is whether there can in fact be such a
realm of pure ideas, of thoughts lacking an temporality or con-
tingency; whether there can be an absolute interiority in which
consciousness is utterly transparent to itself so that nothing eludes
its grasp.
Like Descartes, Merleau-Ponty begins the investigation with
perception and the recognition that 'our senses sometimes deceive
us'. Nonetheless, despite the fact that what I take to be an ash-try
may turn out on closer inspection to be a paperweight or even just
a shadow cast on the table by the sunlight filtering into the room,
it would seem that my act of perception itself - unlike its object-
is absolutely indubitable. Surely I cannot be mistaken in thinking
that I see an ash-tray; surely I can be in error only insofar as I
assert the actual existence of the ash-tray. Steeped as we are in the
Cartesian tradition of detaching the subject from the object, we
generally consider such a separating of perception from the
percept to pose no problem. However, at the conclusion of the
chapter 'The Body as Expression and Speech', Merleau-Ponty
112 Part II1: Being-for-Itself and Being-in-the-World

explicitly cautioned us against adopting this approach. We saw

that the body itself is not an object, nor our awareness of it an
idea; moreover, we discovered that the ambiguity inherent in the
body's mode of existence is not restricted to the body itself but
'spreads to the perceived world in its entirety'. Not only the body,
but things and other people come into being for us; and our
awareness of them is ultimately inseparable from that anonymous
dynamic interaction with the world which we find at the level of
pre-reflective life. In submitting the perceived world to a truly
radical reflection, we found that the object of perception is not a
ready-made existence but rather, one pole of apre-personal bodily
experience; and hence, that the traditional distinction between the
object's appearance and its reality is fundamentally wrong-
headed. In making explicit the theory of perception which is
already implicit in the phenomenological theory of the body
image, the previous chapters have made it clear that perception
cannot be divorced from its object, because the very structure of
the act already implies the existence of that towards which it is
polarized. The Cartesian position which dissociates the actual
existence of the thing seen from our consciousness of seeing it, is
therefore untenable. As Merleau-Ponty points out, 'if I see an
ash-tray, in the full sense of the word see, there must be an ash-tray
there'.
At this stage it might be retorted that perception does not lead
us into the realm of pure thought because perception is a peculiar
sort of activity; and that we must therefore adopt a different point
of departure for our voyage into the interior realm. Perception - so
it may be argued - inherently involves the risk of error because it
has to do with figure-background structures, with perspectives
wh ich cannot all be given simultaneously. It is after all easy
enough to see that our perception of a table, for example, always
has to do with a certain angle of the table - I see the top of it while
the bottom is hidden from me, or vice versa. Consequently, there
is a built-in uncertainty ab out perception which - so it may be
claimed - inevitably renders our thought about perception dubit-
able too. We therefore turn from perception bearing on objects in
the world, to perception having to do exdusively with our own
psychic states - we turn from 'outer' to 'inner' perception. Here,
surely, consciousness will be completely transparent to itself and
there will be no possibility of error. Our awareness of our psychic
 The Cogito 113

states will surely coincide with their actual existence; we cannot

after all be deceived regarding our own feelings - to fee I sad is to
be sad and to love is to be conscious of loving. We might thus
argue that the circuit of our own subjectivity constitutes a sphere
of absolute certainty.
As Merleau-Ponty shows, however, this is not the case; we do in
fact distinguish between 'true' and 'false' emotions. Love, for
example, can be mistaken or illusory; hence, far from being
transparent to itself, it is profoundly ambiguous. This ambiguity
is even more apparent in cases of hysteria: to maintain that the
patient is deliberately making an error with respect to his own
emotions or that he is feigning them, is to misconstrue his
experience; but on the other hand, the patient readily recognizes
the difference between the terror he feels when confronted with a
real weapon, and that which he feels in face of the insubstantial
dagger called up by his hallucinations. Though tempting, it is
useless to invoke an unconscious here, as Merleau-Ponty points
out. l Like external perception, internal perception is always in-
complete, always open-ended, because it also is a transcendence of
the human being towards the world. Gur emotions cannot be
isolated from the world; the consciousness of loving is the
consciousness which we have of situating ourselves in the world
in a particular way. Gur contact with our emotions is therefore
always 'achieved only in the sphere of ambiguity'.
If even our 'inner states' are thus open to illusions, does not
illusion itself become a meaningless term? How are we ever to
describe any of our psychic states as authentic in the absence of
any invariable criterion or measuring rod, any absolute truth
against which our 'inner' and 'outer' perceptions can be judged to
be genuine or illusory? In short, do we not condemn ourselves to
endless doubt if we accept this analysis of inner and outer
perceptions? In an effort to avoid such a situation, we may turn to
the understanding in a final attempt to achieve the absolute
self-coincidence of thought. The understanding after all deals with
the sorts of proofs and truths wh ich would seem to preclude the
opacity and ambiguity encountered so far. Merleau-Ponty there-
fore examines the kind of truths with wh ich geometry deals, and
reveals that the geometer's thought does not in fact coincide with
itself. The geometer' s thinking never manages to transcend per-
ceptual consciousness altogether, because it is ultimately based on
114 Part III: Being-for-ltself and Being-in-the-World

the geometer's experience of real triangles. The truths of geometry

are rooted in the spatiality and motility of the geometer's own
body.
The truths of geometry are therefore sustained by the original
intentionality of the body; they are in fact expressions based on
the body-subject as primordially expressive. The geometer already
operates within a universe of discourse which he takes for
gran ted. His truths are not pure self-sustaining thoughts but
rather, cultural objects wh ich are necessarily linked to concrete
acts of expression. Merleau-Ponty consequentIy turns to a re-
examination of language and of the relationship between thought
and speech. This examination reveals that there is in fact no pure
transcendent thought behind language but rather, that 'language
transcends itself in speech'. Expression is inherently temporal and
always retains 'its coefficient of facticity'. No analysis can rid
language of its fundamental obscurity; the search for arealm of
pure thought, of absolute eternal truth, has turned out to be a
doomed effort. Every thought about thought has shown itself to be
ultimately rooted in perceptual consciousness, thereby leaving us
with 'a temporal thickness', with a contingency which cannot be
conjured away. Nonetheless, what has to be realized is that this
obscurity, this ambiguity, is not the index of any defect or
deficiency but rather, that it is the very condition of our access to
knowledge, self-evidence, certainty and truth. There is, finally, no
realm of self-sustaining thought, no realm of 'pure reflection' in
the tradition al sense, to which philosophy could withdraw. And
yet, our external and internal perceptions are self-affirming; 'there
are truths, just as there are perceptions'. It is up to the philosopher
to bring to our awareness our fundamental 'being-in-truth', to
reveal the realm of discourse upon wh ich the spoken cogito draws
and to point to the uns poken - or tadt - cogito which forms its
primordial background.
Let us consider the cogito itseIf in more detail. The cogito is first
of all a thought formed at a particular time in a particular place by
a particular philosoph er - Descartes - who was himself situated
in a particular cultural order and thinking within a particular
philosophical tradition. That thought, embodied in Descartes'
writings, itself became part of the cultural-philosophical acquisi-
tion of subsequent thinkers - such as Merleau-Ponty. The cogito is
therefore 'a cultural being' which can be taken up and rethought;
and our own thought, in reaching out to it, thereby itself re-enacts
 The Cogito 115

the cogito and can subsequently submit its own act to reflection.
Descartes believed the cogito to be eternally true; in reflecting on
his cogito and our own via Merleau-Ponty's phenomenological
description we will consequently need to reconsider the nature of
truth. We have seen that the 'natural attitude to things' makes us
oblivious of the incarnate subject's contribution to the perceived
world; moreover, we have seen that realism goes on to claim that
things and ideas exist in themselves. In calling for areturn to the
subject, the Cartesian cogito thus embodies a valid insight. Our
experience of things as transcendent individual objects and our
recognition of ideas as ideas, require that we project ourselves
towards them in a certain way; their existence for us as things and
ideas respectively, depends upon our actualizing our primordial
power of knowing them as such. Their existence as transcendent
beings implies, however, that we do not know them exhaustively
and will never acquire an all-encompassing grasp of them. This
inherent measure of ignorance in our awareness of things and
ideas raises the Socratic problem of how we can simultaneously
know something sufficiently to seek it and to recognize it when
we encounter it, yet not know it, so as to prompt us to seek it. The
phenomenological response to this c1assic problem consists in
showing - as Merleau-Ponty has done in the previous chapters-
that our relationship to the world and to ourselves is not an 'all or
nothing' affair; neither do we simply invent things by endowing
them with whatever we subsequently ascribe to them, nor do we
run up against them as entities existing entirely in themselves
which we merely observe. Dur perception and reasoning are
neither blind nor transparent; instead, as we have seen, there is a
knowing which lies between the traditional extremes of realism on
the one hand and idealism on the other. Hs partial validity
notwithstanding, the Cartesian return to the self misses this third
kind of knowing and its positing of clear and distinct ideas, or
'eternal essences', existing in a translucent, timeless mind - the
thinking ego. The latter's absolute self-possession rules out recep-
tivity as weIl as any sort of inherence in the world - including
even its own personal history. Thus the Cartesian consciousness is
ultimately God; moreover, its absolute thought prec1udes the
existence of any other consciousness, thereby condemning it to a
solipsistic existence.
We saw in the last chapter why 'the constituting consciousness
is necessarily unique and universal' and why a philosophy which
116 Part III: Being-for-Itself and Being-in-the-World

affirms the existence of such a consciousness falls into irresolvable

difficulties. We must therefore resolutely abandon this absolute
cogito which ejects us from the world, blocks intersubjectivity and
destroys temporality; instead, we must pursue the phenomenolo-
gical description of our relationship with things, others, ideas and
ourselves, so as to arrive at a cogito compatible with our lived
experience. In short, we must elaborate the nature of that 'hold' on
the world and on ourselves which makes our experience possible
while preventing its ever becoming completely transparent for uso
Earlier, we saw that our perception by its very nature adheres to
the world, and that Descartes was fundamentally misguided in
attempting to sever the two terms by transforming perception into
an indubitable thought while declaring the actual existence of the
perceived world to be uncertain. 2 The previous chapters showed
us that perception is not a third person process or psychic fact
occurring in us, and that our consciousness of perception is not a
'passive noting' of a self-contained event. Nor is the awareness of
perception pure construction by an all-inclusive constituting con-
sciousness; rather, we have seen that perception is the transcend-
ing of a body-subject towards a world and that this action always
involves an ambiguous self-awareness. The certainty of seeing or
hearing is inseparable from that bodily project which is the act of
seeing or the act of hearing; hence the phenomenological cogito -
unlike its Cartesian counterpart - is the recognition of that pri-
mordial project of transcendence which is our very being.
Far from absorbing phenomena into private psychic states or
declaring them the possession of a translucent thought, the
phenomenological cogito discloses the indissolubility of the link
between our being and that of the world; it affirms our pre-
reflective 'hold' on ourselves as 'being-in-the-world'. The fact that
we are primordially situated in the world precludes our ever
enjoying the self-transparency of the Cartesian consciousness;
instead, it renders our contact with ourselves and the world
inherently ambiguous. The phrase 'being-in-the-world' expresses
an existential relationship having an existential significance,
rather than amental or mechanical relation having a purely
intellectual or mechanistic meaning. Consequently, our own emo-
tions, for example, are neither drives concealed from us in an
unconscious realm, nor objects spread out for a disinterested
mental viewing. On the contrary, our emotions are lived ambi-
guously as an inextricable part of our pre-reflective 'relationship
 The Cogito 117

with the world'; they are neither noted nor constituted, but
experienced. The phenomenological cogito thus recognizes 'a
middle course' lying between unconscious drives or representa-
tions on the one hand, and pure ideas or explicit knowledge on the
other.
The middle course which phenomenology takes describes
human existence as 'action or doing' - and hence, as perpetual
self-transcending. On the phenomenological view, we therefore
neither elude nor possess ourselves completely. In Being and
Nothingness Sartre shows that there must be a non-positional
self-consciousness anterior to the Cartesian cogito:

If we wish to avoid an infinite regress, there must be an

immediate, non-cognitive relation of the self to itself.... The
immediate consciousness which I have of perceiving .... does
not know my perception, does not posit it; all that there is of
intention in my actual consciousness is directed toward the
outside, toward the world. In turn, this spontaneous conscious-
ness of my perception is constitutive of my perceptive conscious-
ness .... Thus reflection has no kind of primacy over the con-
sciousness reflected-on. It is not reflection wh ich reveals the
consciousness reflected-on to itself. Quite the contrary, it is the
non-reflective consciousness which renders the reflection
possible; there is a pre-reflective cogito wh ich is the condition
of the Cartesian cogito. 3

Without actually referring to Being and Nothingness, Merleau-Ponty

follows the Sartrian position here in elaborating the meaning of
existence as action. Mere thoughts about thinking, doubting,
perceiving or feeling do not as such establish our certainty of
existing; rather, the certainty of our thoughts rests on that of our
actions. Our knowledge of ourselves is inherently mediated by our
relationship to the world; hence 'inner perception' is not self-
sustaining, but depends upon our actually involving ourselves in
experiences such as seeing something or doubting something or
loving someone. In the absence of such actual performance, or
'doing', our own existence would be entirely insubstantial, or
'unreal' - or rather, we would not even exist because, as Sartre
points out, 'what is truly unthinkable is passive existence,.4
In order to make ourselves the object of our thought, we must
first of all exist as being-in-the-worId; moreover, the act of
118 Part III: Being-[or-Itsel[ and Being-in-the-World

objectification itself escapes objectification - we can never, so to

speak, 'catch ourselves by the tail'. Underlying any thetic
knowledge of ourselves or the world is that pre-reflective anony-
mous existence of a body-subject polarized by a world, which
earlier chapters of the Phenomenology have described. As Merleau-
Ponty stressed in the chapter 'The Theory of the Body is Already a
Theory of Perception', 'we are our body ... by thus remaking
contact with the body and with the world, we shall also rediscover
ourself ... '. We have seen that the pre-personal subject-world
dialogue brings about the synthesis of things through the pre-
reflective synthesis of the body itself; that these syntheses are
mutually implicatory; that neither synthesis is ever exhaustive.
Primordial experience is thus inherently open-ended - but that
does not render it uncertain; like 'external perception', our 'in-
ternal perception' is simultaneously incomplete and self-
affirming.
Our perception of the world and of ourselves is fraught with
ambiguity; yet not only are we open to illusion and to truth about
the world and about ourselves, but we can and do distinguish
truth from illusion in both cases by the kind of 'hold' which we
have on the respective phenomena. It is this which the phenome-
nological cogito recognizes and affirms. Far from reducing
existence to thought about existence, this cogito reintegrates
thought into the total project wh ich is OUT existence as being-in-
the-world. As Merleau-Ponty points out at the conclusion of his
chapter 'Sensing', 'reflection does not itself grasp its fuB meaning
['sens'] unless it refers to the unreflective fund of experience
which it presupposes, upon which it draws, and which constitutes
for it a kind of original past'. The cognito recognizes that our funda-
mental inherence in the world is the source of all certainty;
interpreted in this way, the cogito is at the very co re of that truly
radical reflection which simultaneously res tores thought to the
incarnate subject and the incarnate subject to the world.
The cogito of the Cartesian philosophy is bound up with
Descartes' claims that we really perceive only with our intellect,
that 'for a perception to be a possible foundation for a certain and
indubitable judgment, it must be not only clear but also distinct',
that whatever we 'clearly and distinct1y perceive is necessarily
true' and that the entire foundation for 'the certainty and truth of
all knowledge' is our 'awareness of the true God'.5 Merleau-
Ponty's phenomenological description has called these claims into
 The Cogito 119

question; consequently, it is encumbent on Merleau-Ponty to

provide an alternative conception of truth for his cogito, and he
does so in discussing Descartes' example of a triangle. In his Fifth
Meditation Descartes argues that

when I imagine a triangle, it may be that no such figure exists

anywhere outside my consciousness (cogitationem), or never has
existed; but there certainly exists its determinate nature (its
essence, its form), wh ich is unchangeable and eternal. This is no
figment of mine, and does not depend on my mind, as is clear
from the following: various properties can be proved of this
triangle .... All these properties are true, since I perceive them
clearly ...6

We saw earlier that this attempt to sever ideas from our being-in-
the-world is fundamentally flawed; hence there cannot be a
'formal essence' or 'pure idea' of a triangle. In fact, its retrospective
nature proves that formal thought is based on intuitive thought
and it is at the level of the latter that all our certainty and truth
emerge. In the absence of any concrete experience of things and de
facta truth, we would be unable even to formulate mathematical or
scientific hypotheses and to formalize relations in definitions. The
essence of the tri angle formalizes a particular way of relating
ourselves to the world and is therefore dynamic; moreover, it is
implied in our general 'hold on the world' and presupposes that
space which is brought into being by the primordial motility of
the body-subject. The thought of the geometer is part of a cultural
world which is based on the incarnate subject's pre-personal
transcendence towards a pre-objective world. As we have seen,
this transcendence is of its very nature ongoing, open-ended,
incomplete and ambiguous because it is synonymous with our
very existence itself. The apparent clarity and completion of the
geometer's tri angle is predicated on the tacit assumption that the
physical tri angle of perceptual consciousness can be completely
synthesized; and this assumption of course involves the concomi-
tant assumption that the synthesis of the body itself can be
completed. Like any other type of thinking, mathematics is
historically and geographically situated and in nowise expresses
eternal truths. The properties which Descartes declares necessarily
true of all triangles, in fact characterize only those belonging to a
certain type of space - as the advent of non-Euclidean geometry
showed.
120 Part III: Being-for-Itself and Being-in-the-World

Our ability to modulate our hold on the world renders Euclidean

space contingent and makes other types of space possible. Within
the framework of a particular view of the world, various truths will
strike us as being self-evident; however, even these truths are
never unchallengeable - as we discover when we change our hold
on the world and thereby transform the 'ground' for our thoughts.
Because being-in-the-world means being situated - and thus be-
ing perspectival without ever being sealed into any single
perspective - certainty is inherently conditional. To protest that
such certainty is no certainty at all, is to misunderstand the nature
of certainty and to forget Merleau-Ponty's admonition that we
must revise our usual notions of contingency and necessity. It is,
moreover to neglect or dismiss the phenomenological critique of
Cartesian thinking.
As we saw above, only an absolute consciousness could have an
unchallengeable certainty; but such a non-perspectival conscious-
ness would be unsituated and thus, non-human. In fact, it would
be no consciousness at all because, lacking any transcendence, it
would collapse and cease to exist (as Sartre's detailed arguments in
the The Transcendence of the Ego and Being and Nothingness
demonstrate). There is neither a disembodied consciousness nor a
domain of absolute truth; since we inhere in the world and in
time, our truths always retain their element of facticity - they are
the truths of a perspectival, temporal being and like the latter, they
are essentially dynamic and open-ended. Contrary to our common
conception of the matter, it is therefore ultimately impossible to
distinguish between 'truths of fact' and 'truths of reason'; their
relationship is one of 'Fundierung'. In virtue of existing as a
fundamental project, we always already 'take up' truths of fact;
and in carrying them forward and making them explicit, we
transform them into truths of reason without thereby severing
them from our being-in-the-world. Truths of reason become
sedimented into the cultural tradition and thus in turn become
part of the presupposed foundation for our thoughts. In being
born into a natural and cultural world, we are consequently born
into a participation in truth; moreover, just as it is impossible to
free ourselves from any 'inherence in the world', so it is im-
possible to survey or to 'bracket' all our presuppositions so as to
attain Husserl's dream of an absolute (presuppositionless) evi-
dence. Absolute knowledge is forever precluded because our
experience of truth is inseparable from our being in a situation;
however, absolute falsity is ruled out by the same token. The
 The Cogito 121

phenomenological conception of truth goes beyond both dogmat-

ism and scepticism by showing that '"being-in-truth" is in-
distinguishable from being-in-the-world'.
To say that truth is never unconditional, is not to reduce it to
being merely the effect of our own particular psycho-physiological
makeup. Nor is it to divorce the phenomenon from being and to
declare the latter inaccessible to USo For phenomenology, the
phenomenon is not 'mere appearance', because being is 'that
wh ich appears'; moreover, the appearing of being is inseparable
from the being to wh ich it appears - that is, from incarnate
consciousness. Once again, it is a matter of recognizing the
primordial dialogue in which things, other people and the natural
and cultural world as a whole, begin to exist for us prior to any
reflection. There is no ontological- nor logical - necessity govern-
ing this pre-reflective genesis of being on which all our thoughts
(including our ideas of truth) are based. And yet, this does not
mean our thought, our self-evident truth is merely 'one fact among
others'; rather, it is 'a value-fact which envelops and conditions
every other possible one'. Necessity and possibility are them-
selves based on the primordial fact of our existing as perceiving,
thinking beings. No matter how we may doubt or err, our basic
hold on the world ensures that we remain open to certainty and
truth for the entire duration of our existence; moreover, our errors
and illusions, when recognized as such, become truths and
contribute to the never-ending process of forging ever more
complete truths. Whereas the Cartesian cogito purports to put us
into direct contact with an intelligible realm of truths in them-
selves, while neglecting even to mention that concrete world of
discourse which sustains and conditions it from start to finish, the
phenomenological reflection draws our attention not only to
Descartes' 'spoken cogito', but also to that 'silent cogito' from
which it springs. Radical reflection recognizes that its thinking is
inextricably embodied in a language and rooted in a history. It
reminds us, in reflecting on the Cartesian cogito, that explicit
subjectivity and thinking about thought presuppose an 'indeclin-
able subjectivity' wh ich is synonymous with our very being-in-
the-world. Prior to any philosophizing, there is that comprehens-
ive, pre-personal experience in which the body-subject comes into
being by simultaneously grasping the world and itself. This purely
generalized, pre-reflective cogito is the foundation of all our truths;
and a genuinely radical reflection sets itself the task of bringing it
to our awareness.
122 Part III: Being-for-Itself and Being-in-the-World

Notes
1. For a fuller discussion, see also Sartre's The Emotions: Outline of a
Theory, Bernard Frechtman (trans.), (New York: Philosophical Lib-
rary, 1948). The French original predates Merleau-Ponty's Phenome-
nology of Perception, and the latter's view of the emotions is in many
respects analogous to that presented by Sartre.
2. At the conclusion of his 'Second Meditation' Descartes states: 'I
now know that even bodies are not really perceived by the senses or
the imaginative faculty, but only by the intellect; that they are
perceived, not by being touched or seen, but by being understood;
I thus clearly recognize that nothing is more easily or manifestly
perceptible to me than my own mind.' In the 'Third Meditation'
Descartes adds: 'Now ideas considered in themselves, and not
referred to something else, cannot strictly speaking be false ....
Only judgments remain; it is here that I must take precaution
against falsehood. Now the chief and commonest error that is to be
found in this field consists in my taking ideas within myself to have
similarity or conformity to some external object .. .'. In the 'Fourth
Meditation' Descartes says: 'Now when I do not perceive clearly
and distinctly enough what the truth is, it is clear that if I abstain
from judgment I do right and am not deceived.' In the 'Fifth
Meditation' Descartes summarizes his 'criterion of truth': 'But now
I have discerned that God exists, and have understood at the same
time that everything else depends on hirn, and that he is not
deceitful; and from this I have gathered that whatever I clearly and
distinctly perceive is necessarily true.' (Philosophical Writings, An-
scombe and Geach (trans. and eds) pp. 75, 78, 98, 107.). Finally, it is
worth noting that in his Principles of Philosophy Descartes says:
'[The mind] finds within itself ideas of many things; and so long as
it merely contemplates these, and neither asserts nor denies the
existence of something like them outside itself, it cannot be in
error.' (Ibid., p. 184).
3. Sartre, Being and Nothingness: A Phenomenological Essay on Ontology,
pp. 12-13. See also Sartre's The Transcendence of the Ego: an
Existentialist Theory of Consciousness.
4. Ibid., p. 16.
5. Descartes, Philosophical Writings, pp. 75, 190, 107, 108.
6. Ibid., p. 102.
 2
Temporality
Common sense divorces the world from the subject and the latter's
thought from its body. In proceeding from the body and the
perceived world to the cogito, our investigation has overturned
this division and juxtaposition of the 'extern al' and 'internal' by
showing them to be inseparable. We have seen that subjectivity
cannot be detached from the body itself; that the latter, as a
primordial project, is inextricably tied to the perceived world; and
finaHy, that thought itself is never 'pure' but rather, presupposes
perceptual consciousness and remains inseverable from it.
Thought, subjectivity, body and world are therefore mutuaHy
implicatory; they form a single comprehensive system in which
each term can be equaHy designated as 'inside' or 'outside'-
hence Merleau-Ponty was able to declare at the conclusion of the
last chapter that 'the world is wholly inside and I am wholly
outside myself '. In reflecting on the being of each aspect of the
subject-world system, we have already encountered temporality at
various points because perception, being inherently perspectival,
is of its very nature temporal. Perception moreover requires the
synthesis of the body itself; and this synthesis involves a spatiality
and motility whose existence implies that of time. We have seen
that the perceived world comes into being for a bodily transcen-
dence; and it would be a contradiction in terms to declare
transendence non-temporal. Thus temporality has been implicit in
Merleau-Ponty's entire phenomenological description of percep-
tion; however, the being of time must now be examined explicitly
so that we may achieve a better understanding of the subjectivity
wh ich the cogito revealed. In addition, the analysis of time will
enable us to resolve the problems raised by objective thought
regarding the relation of body to soul and self to others, as weH as
the question of what the world was like prior to the emergence of
humans.
The common conception of time likens it to the flowing of a
river - a metaphor whose frequent use has led us gene rally to

123
124 Part IIl: Being-for-Itself and Being-in-the-World

accept its applicability without realizing its confusion. Flowing

implies change of place - for example, the river flows from its
source in the mountains down into the sea - but change implies a
situated observer without whom there can be no 'down' or 'from'
or 'to' and, in short, no flow. Not only is there no flowing river
existing in-itself, but its alleged temporal sequence is also pro-
foundly misleading. Whereas the metaphor assurnes that the river
flows out of the past towards the future, the tacit introduction of
the necessary ob server reverses the temporal sequence. As
Merleau-Ponty points out, the water passing the ob server sur-
reptitiously stationed on the riverbank, is not pushed towards the
future but rather, sinks into the past. Similarly, for the ob server
tacitly assumed to be swept along by the current, the landscapes
lying ahead are the future and the course of time is not the river
itself but rather, the landscape rolling by. Since it presupposes a
perspective, time is neither 'a flowing substance' nor a third
person process to be recorded; on the contrary, time comes into
being from our relationship to the world and has no existence
apart from that relation. Further, since subjectivity is the act of
transcendence towards a world which thereby comes into being as
world, we can say that we ourselves are time. Radical reflection
thus brings us to a view of time which is the opposite of that
suggested by the river metaphor; nonetheless, the analogy is
justified in so far as it precludes breaking time into a succession of
discrete moments or reducing it to a juxtaposition of objective
positions which we occupy in turn. In comparing it to a fountain
in which there is a single thrust of water instead of aseries of
separate waves, common sense recognizes the essential unity of
time. Unfortunately however, it undermines this insight by objec-
tifying time - which is not to say, of course, that the Kantian
approach is any more valid in positing time as a pure form. Once
aga in, both realism and idealism must be abandoned if we are to
understand the phenomenon - in this case, that of time.
Ironically, common sense congeals time in making it into a
being comparable to a river or fountain existing in-itself. Thus it
suggests that the water which will soon flow by is now making its
way down the mountain, for example, while that which has just
flowed past is presently further downstream. It is not a matter here
of collapsing time by arguing - as is frequently done - that
neither the past nor the future actually exists and that the present,
strictly defined, is absolutely instantaneous and hence, being
 Temporality 125

totally without extension, likewise is non-existent. On the contra-

ry, by making the future pre-exist, the present exist and the past
survive, the common sense view renders them all present in the
objective world so that, conceived as existing in-itself, the world is
completely full of 'instances of "now" '. Common sense of course
implies that the latter form a sequence; however, there can in fact
be neither a 'now' nor a sequence once the subject has been
removed. The notion of a present which is not present to anyone,
is profoundly inconsistent - as is that of a succession wh ich
occurs in the absence of any subject. Being-in-itself is utter
plenitude; and since future and past require non-being, the
objective world effectively excludes time. By divorcing it from
subjectivity, common sense loses any possibility of introducing
nothingness into the world; hence it cannot sustain temporal
dimensions and is left with the solidity of being which simply is
what it iso
In his criticism of objective thought, Merleau-Ponty here bases
hirnself on Sartre's detailed phenomenological analysis of being-
in-itself, nothingness and temporality - an analysis which, in
turn, owes much to the works of Husserl and Heidegger. 1 In Being
and Nothingness Sartre states that we cannot comprehend being-
in-the-world by breaking this synthetic relation apart or reducing it
to either of its terms. He argues that being-in-itself is solid
plenitude wh ich on principle forbids becoming and 'is not subject
to temporality'. He shows that nothingness comes into the world
through the human being and that the latter's very being must be
temporality. Sartre argues that temporality is neither a contingent
quality of consciousness nor a summation of instants; and that any
attempt to break time into static elements is doomed to fail. He
shows that the temporal dimensions are internally related; that the
for-itself temporalizes itself by existing as a project and that it
must simultaneously exist in all its dimensions. Transcendence, or
surpassing, implies that which is being surpassed and that to-
wards which the project is surpassing: the former is the past and
the latter is the future; moreover, the past and future are always
those of a certain present. Sartre goes on to argue that reducing the
past to a collection of present memories not only presupposes 'the
being of the past', but also precludes our comprehending the
'pastness' of the past - Hs 'being back there'. Similarly, divorcing
the past from the present deprives the former of its 'pastness' and,
by turning it into a thing, once again destroys time. Past, present
126 Part IIJ: Being-for-Itself and Being-in-the-World

and future can neither be reduced to, nor severed from, one
another; they are inextricably related in that single upsurge of
consciousness existing as being-in-the-world.
Tacitly taking up Sartre's argument, Merleau-Ponty elaborates
the fallaciousness of attempting to account for our consciousness
of pastness and futurity by recourse to the possession or projec-
tion of memories. It matters little whether such attempts are
couched in physiological or in psychological terms (for example,
'engrams' or 'psychic traces'); both approaches offer no more than
'a simple factual presence' while presupposing a sense of the past
and the future. In and of themselves, present data are totally
incapable of opening a past or a future for us; they cannot prompt
either recollection or anticipation in the absence of any direct
contact with the temporal dimensions. In short, memory and
projection presuppose precisely that which they are intended to
explain. The being of past, present and future is not identical;
none of the three dimensions can be 'explained' or constructed out
of the others and none can exist without the others. As long as we
insist on locating it in things themselves or in 'states of conscious-
ness', we will misunderstand the being of time. Time is neither
undergone nor constituted by us, because it is itself our living
relationship with the world. Consequently, we can no more
encompass time than we can circumscribe our own life; and by the
same token, we can never be sealed into any single temporal
dimension, but always exist as a living synthesis of all three.
How then are we to describe 'true time' - that primordial
experience of time which underlies our notions of transience,
duration and eternity? Merleau-Ponty suggests that it is in our
'field of presence' broadly speaking that we learn the interrelation
of the temporal dimensions. When we remember an incident that
happened some years ago, for example, we do not call up an idea
or image of it; rather we 'reopen time' and carry ourselves back
through the chain of intervening years to the time when it was
part of our field of presence. As such, that field had its horizons of
the future and the immediate past; but subsequently, of course,
that future became present, the incident itself became part of an
immediate past and what had been the immediate past become
more remote. Then the future which had become present became
in its turn the immediate past - and so on. In returning to the field
of presence, we therefore see that the present and future are not
pushed by the past as the river metaphor leads us to believe. On
 Temporality 127

the contrary, we see in consulting our own experience that the

future slides 'into the present and on into the past' and thus, that a
formerly future horizon becomes closed and a formerly proximate
past becomes ever more distant. None of the temporal dimensions
is posited; rather, we experience the future as being ahead of us
and the past as being behind us as we pursue our present task.
The impending future weighs on us while the immediate past
recedes from us with the arrival of each fresh present. The latter,
moreover, not only brings about a transformation in its prede-
cessor, but helps to determine the shape of its own successor.
Drawing on Husserl's Phenomenology 01 Internal Time-
Consciousness, Merleau-Ponty emphasizes that intentionalities
(Husserl's 'protentions' and 'retentions') connect us to the future
and the past, thereby anchoring us to our environment. Far from
being a line composed of discrete instants or preserved pictures of
events, time is a network of overlapping intentionalities whose
centre is none other than the body-subject itself as primordial
intentionality. There is neither a mechanistic causality nor an
intellectualist synthesis at work in the genesis of time, because
time is quite simply the project which we ourselves are - that
'ek-stase' of which Heidegger spoke in Being and Time. We tempo-
ralize ourselves by existing; hence there is no need for any explicit
unification or synthesis of dimensions. As we have seen in earlier
chapters, we have apre-personal, pre-reflective 'hold' on the
world and on ourselves; and in virtue of this primordial grip, we
have a past and future whose existence requires no more verifica-
tion than does that of the world or of ourselves. We are able to
re ach ahead to our future in anticipation or back to our past in
recollection, because our present is not closed in upon itself;
rather, it 'outruns itself' in both directions. We do not keep the
same hold on our past as it loses its immediacy and recedes below
an ever increasing temporal thickness; nonetheless, we do not
become totally severed from it either - it remains potentially
retrievable. True temporality is not something wh ich we conceive
or observe; it is the process of living our Iives and there is a sense
in which our present is not only this moment or this week, but our
entire IHe.
Primary temporality is a dynamic unity whose dimensions
overlap one another without ever coinciding: the future is an
impending present which will become past in due course; the
present is 'an impending past and arecent future'; and 'the past is
128 Part III: Being-for-Itself and Being-in-the-World

a former future and arecent present'. Time is therefore not a

sequence of 'extern al events' or 'internal states' but rather, a chain
of interlocking 'fields of presence'. If we are to avoid an infinite
regress, we must recognize that there is an immediate, non-
cognitive awareness of temporality - which should come as no
surprise, since we have already seen that there is such a non-thetic
consciousness of subjectivity and that time is the subject itself.
Once again, our pre-reflective awareness is not unambiguous; just
as the perspectivity of perceptual consciousness precludes our
ever perceiving everything simultaneously, so that of our temporal
consciousness rules out our ever having an all-encompassing
grasp of time. There is thus no defect in our temporal perspective
insofar as it gives us a present with its horizons, while preventing
our simultaneously inhabiting other fields of presence. We have a
hold on our past through a continuous chain of interlocked
retentions, but we cannot juxtapose the links of that chain so as to
grasp the whole of our past with equal clarity. Time synthesizes
itself in that ceaseless sliding of the future into the present and on
into the past, thereby giving us the illusion of eternity. Yet a
timeless time is a contradiction in terms; and the unity of time is
not something which comes ab out in spite 01 the temporal dimen-
sions. Past, present and future compose an indivisible project; and
to eliminate the distinctiveness of those dimensions would be to
destroy the project - in short, to abolish time altogether.
This phenomenological description of temporality elucidates
the nature of subjectivity, and helps us to resolve other problems
encountered in our sustained criticism of objective thought.
Merleau-Ponty's remarks regarding temporality and subjectivity
are initially puzzling; and it is tempting to conclude that he is
simply guilty of a rather glaring inconsistency in declaring both
that the subject is to be 'identified with temporality' (likewise,
that 'we must understand time as the subject and the subject as
time') and that the subject is situated in time ('time exists for me
only because I am situated in ie). Such an alleged inconsistency,
however, arises only if we insist on retaining a traditional idea of
time and of the subject - be it empirical or transcendental. Thus, if
we conceive the subject as an essentially closed entity, provided
that we do not ac cord it absolute status, we might consider it
situated in time like a straw carried along by a river. Yet on such a
view, we will find Merleau-Ponty's identification of subjectivity
with temporality quite incomprehensible. If we conceive the
 Temporality 129

subject as a constituting consciousness or transcendental ego, we

might succeed in identifying it very loosely with time considered as
a succession of states of consciousness. However, we will then
find Merleau-Ponty's insistence on situating the subject in time to
be very problematic because - as we have seen - such a Cartesian
(or Kantian) subject is necessarily absolute and hence, cannot be
situated. Merleau-Ponty's phenomenological account of the cogito
and of temporality is precisely designed to make us relinquish
these traditional conceptions.
As long as we ding to the transcendental ego, for example, we
will ren der ourselves incapable of comprehending our actual
experience. We have seen that such a thinking subject must be
absolutely transparent and hence, that it cannot inhere in the
world or have even a personal history. In an effort to account for
our experience of positing or becoming aware of ourselves in time,
we may supplement the constituting subject with an empirical
self; but the latter, being an object constituted by the former,
cannot in fact be a self. As soon as we put aside such a conception
of subjectivity on the other hand, the contradiction in self-positing
disappears. As Husserl's famous diagram shows, each fresh pres-
ent transforms the entire temporal network. This ongoing trans-
formation is not a matter of external causality, since the new
present and the whole chain of preceding fields of presence are
but a single comprehensive movement, wh ich is the project of a
life in process of unfolding. Self-positing is therefore of the
essence of primordial temporality: time as a projecting ('thrust')
affects itself as time already unfolded; and this 'dehiscence of the
present towards a future' is subjectivity. The self is both affecting
and affected - it is self-affecting, rather than unchanging self-
identity. As Sartre shows in Being and Nothingness, there is an
inherent duality at the heart of consciousness which is not to be
confused with dualism. 2 Consequently, our reflection on time is
itself situated in time; our reflection on subjectivity is itself part of
our subjectivity. We can never coincide with ourselves - and yet
we are present to ourselves precisely because we have the distance
of non-coincidence. To make the subject into an ego which
constitutes its experiences, is to eliminate that crucial distance and
hence, to destroy conciousness.
Temporality not only establishes the essential non-coincidence
of subjectivity, but by the same token, ensures its openness to
others and its participation in the common creating of meaning.
130 Part III: Being-for-Itself and Being-in-the-World

Sartre stresses the sheer spontaneity of consciousness as a conti-

nual wrenching of consciousness away from itself, and considers
this self-diremption as the source of temporality. Merleau-Ponty,
on the other hand, emphasizes that spontaneity is itself a primary
acquisition, and that temporalization is inseparably passivity and
activity. Thus subjectivity is temporality, but the subject does not
personally initiate temporalization any more than it chooses being
born. As temporality, the subject finds itself always already
situated in the world; yet the world does not come into being as a
world in the absence of a subject projected towards it. Temporality
is the basis of our spontaneity - rather than vice versa - because
we are given to ourselves as apre-personal project already in
process, that is, as a temporality already temporalizing itself. Our
existence as temporality precludes our being an absolute con-
sciousness; rather, our own temporal perspectivity opens the way
for other equally perspectival subjects and for the genesis of
meaning in our intersubjective experience. As Merleau-Ponty
notes, the common conception of time implicitly identifies mean-
ing and temporality insofar as it considers everything which is
meaningful for our present concerns to be 'part of our present'.
Once we identify subjectivity with temporality, we moreover rule
out a meaning created by an absolute reason. Thus we saw that the
common conception of time as a river slips in the assumption of a
situated perceiver without whom the stream could not even have a
direction. Temporality is therefore inseparable from being-in-the-
world; and meaning is inseparable from the primary directionality
which that primordial inherence in the world implies. The French
word 'sens' captures especially weIl this interdependence of direc-
tionality and meaning. Having identified temporality as subjectiv-
ity, we can therefore go on to identify these with meaning and
thus to declare that temporality is the meaning ('sens') of our
existence. Once again, we are brought to the realization that
subject and world are inseparably connected through the primor-
dial project and that the alternative of realism or idealism must be
rejected in favour of a phenomenological description of our
being-in-the-world.
In light of our phenomenological description of temporality as
self-affecting subjectivity which is primordially self-aware, we are
now able to recognize that subject and object are 'abstract "mo-
ments'" of a unique concrete totality wh ich is 'presence'. The
problems raised by objective thought therefore resolve themselves
 Temporality 131

definitively. For example, the structure of 'presence' replaces the

Cartesian dilemma of a mechanistic body incomprehensibly
causally connected to an immaterial soul. Once that 'the world "in
itself'" is identified with the temporal horizons, and the 'for-
itself' with 'the hollow in which time is formed', the dichotomy of
the formerly irreconcilable terms is replaced with the single
indivisible project of temporalization. And just as the future is
inherently that of a certain present, so the for-itself (or, conscious-
ness) is inherently that of a certain actually existing body. Our
actual experience of being present in the world discloses that our
phenomenal body is essentially a knowing body; thus the tradi-
tional body-soul problem vanishes. Similarly, the identification of
temporality with subjectivity undercuts the question regarding
the nature of the world prior to the evolution of human conscious-
ness. Given our earlier remarks about the interdependence of
temporality, subjectivity and meaning, it is evident that this sort
of question is, strictly speaking, meaningless. As we have seen,
the world is inseparable from a human perspective and to pretend
otherwise is invariably to reintroduce the human subject 'by the
back door', so to speak. Finally, the identification of time and the
subject opens us to other people. We saw earlier that we are linked
to others via behaviour, that is, by witnessing their 'presence in
the world'. In virtue of our fuller understanding of the meaning of
'presence' (as being simultaneously presence to ourselves and
involvement in the world), we are now in a position to appreciate
how others are present to us, and we to them. We have seen that
our own self-awareness is inevitably fraught with ambiguity, that
we are present to ourselves without ever coinciding completely
with ourselves. It consequently becomes comprehensible that
others can be present to us, that the projects which we are can
interweave in an intersubjective field of presence. The pre-
objective world in which we are always already involved is thus a
sodal world; and since we have renounced the solipsistic supre-
macy of the transcendental ego, we will need to reconsider the
actual extent of our freedom.
132 Part IlI: Being-for-Itself and Being-in-the-World

Notes
1. See Sartre, Being and Nothingness: a Phenomenological Essay on
Ontology, 'Introduction': 'The Pursuit of Being': 'Being-In-Itself,
pp. 24-30; 'Part One': 'The Problem of Nothingness': 'The Pheno-
menological Concept of Nothingness'. and 'The Origin of No-
thingness', pp. 49-85; 'Part Two': 'Being-For-Itself ': 'Temporality',
pp. 159-237.
2. Being and Nothingness: 'Introduction': 'The Pursuit of Being', pp. 3ff.
 3
Freedom
We have seen that our experience of 'presence' precludes our being
causally connected to our body, world or society; hence we have
already undercut determinism and taken our stand on the side of
freedom. But how are we to describe this freedom? At first glance
it would seem that we have unwittingly committed ourselves to
the Sartrian view of freedom articulated in Being and Nothingness.
Sartre's account rejects the transcendental ego in favour of a
non-coinciding, situated, temporalizing subjectivity wh ich has a
body and finds itself engaged with others 'in an already meaning-
ful world'. This being-in-the-world involves contingency, ambi-
guity and objective limits. 1 Nevertheless, Sartre's position is
fundamentally at odds with that of Merleau-Ponty, since the
Sartrian subject is an absolute freedom confronting others in a
situation of inevitable and inescapable alienation. 2 Not surpris-
ingly, therefore, Merleau-Ponty's chapter on freedom comprises
an extensive critique of Sartre's position.
Merleau-Ponty opens his analysis with an investigation of the
phenomenon of 'presence' which emerged as pivotal in the last
chapter and which Sartre himself considers requisite for freedom. 3
In Being and Nothingness Sartre argues that consciousness cannot
be self-identical plentitude because that would re legate it to the
order of the in-itself, or non-conscious being. If it is to exist at all,
consciousness must be self-consciousness even at the pre-
reflective level; in short, consciousness must exist 'as a presence to
itself '. Besides being-for-itself, consciousness exists as being-for-
others, as its experience of shame indicates; moreover, these two
modes of existence are equally fundamental for Sartre. In its very
upsurge as for-itself, consciousness finds itself in the presence of
others. Being-for-itself and being-for-others are incommensurable
however, and consciousness remains incapable of relating what it
is in the intimacy of its own presence to itself with what it is for
others. 4 For itself, consciousness escapes all objectification
because its being as consciousness is antithetical to the being of

133
134 Part III: Being-for-Itself and Being-in-the-World

objects. In reflection, consciousness therefore discovers a pre-

personal unqualified flux, a limitless generality, a pure spontane-
ity unfettered by any characteristics whatsoever. For itself, con-
sciousness is absolute; it is pure presence - neither a male, nor a
clerk, nor a Jew, nor French, nor crippled, nor ugly, nor sophisti-
cated. These various characteristics are conferred by other people
who - precisely because they are other - inevitably im pose an
extern al perspective, thereby reducing consciousness to the status
of an object endowed with determinate qualities. Of course, the
being-in-itself wh ich it is for others presupposes that conscious-
ness exists 'as body in the midst of the world'; moreover, Sartre
acknowledges that the for-itself can regard itself as having specific
traits by adopting the objectifying view of an other. Nevertheless,
its very awareness prevents it from ever simply being that being.
Since it finds itself in a world inhabited by other people, the
for-itself cannot get rid of its being-for-others - but it alone
chooses its attitude towards the latter. Sartre contends that the
for-itself can always destroy the other's alienating look by objecti-
fying the other with its look. It thereby gains the advantage over
the other, albeit never definitively because the other can reassert
its freedom at any time. Yet the mere fact that it apprehends the
other as threatening indicates that the for-itself freely posits the
other's freedom. Even the masochistic attempt to restrict itself to
being solely an object for the other is a choice in which the
for-itself reaffirms its own existence as freedom. 5
Sartre's account is by no means easy to refute, as Being and
Nothingness in its entirety constitutes an intricate argument for the
absolute freedom of human reality; moreover, Sartre hirnself
anticipates and counters a number of objections. To those who
would challenge the alleged absoluteness of freedom, he responds
that only things can be acted upon. Sartre argues that questioning
presupposes the questioner's absolute freedom; consequently,
critics already subvert their arguments against such a freedom in
questioning his position. Sartre's point is that 'a nihilating with-
drawal' from the given is the necessary condition for all questions
whatsoever - an utter identity of the questioner with the ques-
tioned would preclude any question ever arising. In questioning,
the questioner detaches hirnself from the being which he is
questioning and thus is not subject to its causality. The questioner
'wrenches' hirnself from the questioned 'in order to be able to
bring out of hirnself the possibility of a non-being' - for example,
 Freedom 135

the possibility that Sartre's aeeount is not eorreet. This non-being

is indeseribable because nothingness is not a thing, but it sup-
poses being because it is always the nothingness of something. As
being-in-itself is 'full positivity', it cannot be the origin of no-
thingness; instead, the latter must come to the world through a
being whieh is its own nothingness - otherwise we fall into an
infinite regress. A eonsideration of the meaning of questioning
reveals that the questioner brings nothingness to the world. Sartre
coneludes that the human being - the being wh ich questions-
must be freedom. Sartre's reasoning is that the human being must
'seerete' its own nothingness if it is to be the being through which
nothingness comes to the world. Secretion of nothingness requires
rupture with the causality of being-in-itself and this rupture is
freedom. Further, the human being cannot first exist and then
become free; on the contrary, freedom must be the very being of
human reality.6 To postulate a potential or partial freedom is to
rule it out altogether by making human reality being-in-itself - in
short, a thing rather than a being wh ich is present to itself.
At this stage the reader may be strongly tempted to dismiss
Sartre's aceount and Merleau-Ponty's subsequent critique, on the
grounds that the former has simply missed the point of the
traditional debates coneerning free will versus determinism. It is
therefore important to note that Sartre hirnself anticipates such an
objection and reverses it in response. As he sees it, the customary
discussions are tiresome and superficial beeause they stop short of
the fundamental question. By way of illustration Sartre observes
that the advoeates of free will look for decisions whieh laek a
preceding cause, or for deliberations about two antithetical but
equally possible acts whose cauSeS and motives are of exactly
equal weight. For their part, the determinists retort that all aetions
are eaused and that even the most trifling gestures refer to eauses
and motives from whieh they derive their signifieanee. In denying
this, the free will advoeates destroy the neeessary intentional
structure of the act and render action absurd. The determinists on
the other hand fail to investigate the intentionality of action - they
content themselves with designating causes and motives without
bothering to inquire how these 'can be constituted as such'?
Sartre therefore undertakes a elose phenomenological analysis
of causality and motivation. In light of the explication provided
earlier, it is elear that he rejects any notion that there are extern al
or internal factors wh ich simply impinge on human reality.
136 Part lll: Being-for-ltself and Being-in-the-World

According to Sartre, something which is not experienced as a cause

cannot be a cause. Yet although he repudiates the tradition al
conceptions of causality and motivation, Sartre retains the terms
'cause' and 'motive' and incorporates them into his position. Thus
he agrees with the determinists' contention that any act must have
a motive, but he rejects their conclusion that the latter causes the
act. Instead, Sartre argues that by its very upsurge as freedom the
for-itself organizes undifferentiated being-in-itself into a world,
and any particular act is an expression of this fundamental project.
By its choice of end, the act 'carves out' the world's particular
objective structure and effects the emergence of a cause; for the
latter is simply 'the objective apprehension' of that situation as it
is disclosed in light of the particular end as 'able to serve as the
means for attaining this end'. The cause in no way determines the
action, since it is 'only in and through the project of an action' that
it appears at all, and the same can be said for the motive. As
consciousness must be present to itself, the consciousness of a
cause must be non-thetic self-consciousness. Sartre declares that
'the motive is nothing other than the apprehension of the cause in
so far as this apprehension is self-consciousness', and he concludes
that cause, motive and end are inseverable terms of a project
which is itself a particular way of being-in-the-world - in short, a
freedom. 8
Commonly we consider causes and motives as extern al and
internal givens, respectively. Thus, for example, we speak of being
forced to do one thing and prevented from doing another, or being
inclined to take a certain decision and prompted to abandon
another. Sartre clearly rejects these reifications. Being forced or
prevented is tantamount to being acted upon, and such passive
existence of a for-itself is unthinkable. Similarly, inclinations and
promptings cannot act on us in any way, for that would convert us
into things. Action is the being of human reality; moreover, action
must be strictly autonomous if it is to be action rather than mere
movement. The for-itself is 'a nihilating spontaneity'; as such, its
determination to action must itself be action and the latter must be
a ceaseless 'surpassing of the given' toward a chosen end. Conse-
quently, motives, feelings, passions, temperament or character
cannot exist as givens in human reality. Contrary to common
conceptions, consciousness does not admit of any contents, nor
freedom of any attenuation. Since freedom is the very being of
human reality, it is as senseless to speak of degrees of freedom as it
 Freedom 137

is to predicate degrees of existence. Sartre explains that feelings

and passions are not things but ways of being-in-the-world, while
temperament or character belongs to the for-itself 's being-for-
others - wh ich in turn depends upon the for-itself 's freely chosen
mode of relating to those others. We usually regard choice as a
decision following a voluntary deliberation in which we assess the
relative weight of various motives; but Sartre argues that such a
conception is quite misleading. In fact, deliberation is itself a
chosen conduct, and the resulting reflective decision is a second-
ary choice within the fundamental choosing wh ich is our very
existence as freedom. This primordial project causes the emer-
gence of motives and determines their weight, while deliberation
merely serves to bring them to our attention. Thus the commonly
alleged weakness of our will in no way undermines our 'original,
ontological freedom' - on the contrary, the former is simply a
manifestation of the choice wh ich we make of ourselves. 9
Are there then no obstacles or limits, and are we to conclude that
freedom is pure caprice? Sartre explicitly wams against such a
misinterpretation by pointing out that freedom could not exist
without obstacles or limits, and that a capricious freedom would
be no freedom at all. As a nihilating spontaneity, the for-itself
clearly requires that there be something to be nihilated; or to put it
somewhat differently, a perpetual surpassing of the given sup-
poses that there be a given to be surpassed. By its very structure as
project, choice precludes instantaneity and rules out the possibil-
ity of our existing without a past. Sartre readily concurs with
common sense in maintaining that our past commitments weigh
on us - even to the point of 'devouring' us - and that a prisoner is
evidently not always free to leave the prison, nor a paraplegie to
get up and walk. In Sartre's estimation however, common sense
errs when it goes on to equate freedom with the ability to obtain
one's chosen ends. Physical, social, political and religious free-
doms are in fact supported by ontological freedom, and Sartre's
analysis concems itself exclusively with the latter.
Ontological freedom, that is, 'autonomy of choice', is in-
distinguishably choosing and acting; but Sartre insists that choos-
ing does not mean wishing or obtaining. In failing to uphold the
difference, the common sense conception of freedom inadver-
tently collapses the distinction between our waking life and the
nocturnal world of our dreams. Instantaneous transformations of
ourselves and the world typically occur in our dreams, giving
138 Part III: Being-{or-Itsel{ and Being-in-the-World

them their air of unreality - thus our merest wish suffices to

produce the desired object or to annihilate any apparent obstacle.
On waking however, we find ourselves on ce more in the real
world with a11 its substantial restrictions. Sartre contends that
these restrictions are essential, because an unrestricted choice
would be no choice at a11; moreover, it would be absurd to
maintain that freedom simply creates its own obstacles. Our
freedom is in fact paradoxical: 'there is freedom only in a situation,
and there is a situation only through freedom'. Everywhere we
encounter resistances and obstacles wh ich we have not created,
but it is we ourselves who confer meaning on them by our very
existence as freedom. Sartre's famous example of the crag illus-
trates the point: the rock face reveals itself as unclimbable only
within a project of climbing. For the injured or would-be mount-
ai neer it presents an obstacle; for the seasoned climber it provides
an opportunity to set a new record, while for the airborne tourist it
offers the chance to take a striking photograph. Of course, not
every crag williend itself to being climbed - that depends on 'the
brute being' of the crag - but it can disclose its resistance only
within the context of a human project. Thus 'there is no obstacle in
an absolute sense'; nor can we ever separate out what comes from
'the brute given' and what from freedom in any particular case.
Without the brute 'quid " freedom could not exist; but by its very
upsurge, freedom endows the brute being with meaning and
value according to the choice wh ich it makes of itself. Any limits
which freedom encounters with reference to its past, its body, its
pi ace, its environment and other people, are therefore ultimately
self-imposed. Although it is not free to not be free, 'freedom is
total and infinite.'lO
As Merleau-Ponty sees it, such a conception utterly destroys
freedom. If freedom is our very being, so that it is the same no
matter what we do or how we feel, then it becomes impossible to
discern its appearance anywhere. A freedom which is infinite and
omnipresent lacks any background of non-freedom from which to
stand out; hence it cannot be anywhere. If a11 acts are free, then
effectively none is free and the very idea of choice and action
disappears. There is nothing to acquire if freedom is primordial
and every instant finds us equally free; consequently, there is
nothing to choose and nothing for us to do. Freedom cannot come
into play anywhere or find expression in anything. If freedom is
action as Sartre claims, then it is necessary that our decisions
 Freedom 139

accomplish something and set a direction for the future, rather

than leaving us 'just as indeterminate' the next instant. This does
not mean of course that we renounce our power to interrupt and
set a new direction - but that power implies our power to com-
mence. Sartre himself rejects the notion that consciousness is
reducible to aseries of instants; moreover, he stresses that there
must be a past, resistances and 'a commencement of realization in
order that the choice may be distinguished from the dream and
the wish',u Yet are these stipulations not ultimately incompatible
with the notion of a primordial, total and infinite freedom? How
can such a freedom have an abode and a field in which to realize its
objectives? In short, how can we ever experience freedom?
While agreeing with Sartre's criticism of the classical conception
of free will, Merleau-Ponty detects an unresolved difficulty in the
Sartrian notion of a global choice of ourselves and our whole way
of being-in-the-world. If, as Sartre insists, that choice is synony-
mous with our very upsurge in the world, then it is unclear how it
can be considered to be our choice at all. The very idea of such an
initiatory choice is contradictory, inasmuch as choice implies an
antecedent commitment. If, on the other hand, the Sartrian global
choice is genuinely a choice of ourselves, then it must be a total
modification of our existence which, once again, presupposes a
prior acquisition to be converted by that choice. Sartre's definition
of freedom as perpetual rupture or secreting of nothingness is
therefore merely the negative feature of our global commitment to,
and involvement in, a world. Sartre contends that freedom cannot
be 'a simple undetermined power' but rather, that it must deter-
mine 'itself by its very upsurge as a "doing" '.12 Nevertheless,
Merleau-Ponty concludes that this 'ready-made freedom' reduces
itself 'to apower of initiative' which must take up one of the
world's propositions in order to become a doing. Merleau-Ponty
maintains that 'concrete and actual freedom' lies in this transfor-
matory exchange.
The very notion of an exchange precludes Sartre's conception of
an entirely centrifugal signification. Sartre declares that human
reality confers meaning on the brute given, and that 'nothing
comes to it either from the outside or from within which it can
receive or accept'. Further, he asserts that 'since freedom is a
being-without-support and without-a-springboard, the project in
order to be must be constantly renewed. I choose myself per-
petually ... '.13 Charging that Sartre's position is ultimately in-
140 Part III: Being-for-Itself and Being-in-the-World

distinguishable from classical idealism, Merleau-Ponty rejects the

notions of exclusively centrifugal signification and perpetual
choice. Since Sartre's own distinction between dreaming and
waking life attests to the fact that freedom requires a field,
signification must be both centripetal and centrifugal. Merleau-
Ponty therefore reconsiders Sartre's example of the crag to show
how this can be so. He acknowledges that only the presence of a
human being and a project of scaling can confer attributes such as
'unclimbable' on the rock. However, Sartre hirnself admits that
given a project of scaling, some rocks will prove more favourable
than others. Consequently, it is in virtue of my freedom that there
are obstacles and me ans in general, but my freedom does not
determine the world's particular contours. Merleau-Ponty draws
attention to the fact that irrespective of any specific intention to
scale them, these crags will strike me as being high simply
'because they exceed my body's power to take them in its
stride'. Although I may imagine myseIf a giant, the 'natural seIf'
prevents my actually making the mountains minute for me.
Besides, even 'my express intentions' are evidently modelIed on
the pre-reflective experience of those 'general intentions' wh ich
my natural self sustains around me and which affect my environ-
ment independently of any decision on my part. These bodily
intentions are general in that they hold for all similarly organized
'psycho-physical subjects' and 'constitute a system' which simul-
taneously includes 'all possible objects' - for example, if the crag
looks high and straight, the pine looks small and bent. Thus
Gestalt psychology has been able to demonstrate that there are
particular shapes wh ich other people and I especially favour. In
addition, there are various ambiguous shapes suggesting per-
petually shifting significances, which elicit our 'spontaneous
evaluations'. A pure consciousness or an absolute freedom could
not sustain such ambiguity, but would immediately coincide with
the objects of its intentions without ever experiencing their
distance in a shared world. Obstacles come to be such not by any
acosmic conferring of meaning, but by a pre-reflective exchange
between 'our incarnate existence' and the world.
This exchange, which constitutes the basis for all deliberate acts
of signification, is not restricted to 'external perception' but
informs any evaluation whatsoever. Sartre is therefore correct in
arguing that far from acting on my freedom as causes, suffering
and fatigue have a meaning and express my manner of being-in-
 Freedom 141

the-world. Moreover, if that original choice involves a refusal to

tolerate suffering and fatigue, then adecision to continue hiking
despite my pain and weariness will exact a considerable price - for
it will require a different way of existing my body and thus, 'a
radical conversion of my being-in-the-world'. Nonetheless, Sar-
tre's repeated insistence on the importance of the past does not
suffice to show how a frequently confirmed attitude comes to
acquire ' a favoured status', so that the adoption of an opposite
attitude becomes increasingly improbable. 14 Since the Sartrian
freedom is absolute, any habitual modes of being-in-the-world
must be equally fragile at every moment. Consequently, habits
cannot become sedimented in our life and any complexes which
we have developed over time can always be readily dispelled in an
instant by our freedom. Probability therefore becomes meaning-
less - at best, it is reduced to a matter of statistics. However, this
betrays our actual experience of having committed ourselves to
something which subsequently weighs on us and lends a certain
atmosphere to our present. Besides, we have already encountered
probability and generality as phenomena of the perceived world
which emerge through an interaction of the natural self and the
world. In that exchange, a human level and a field of possible
actions come into being. We must therefore reject Sartre's claim
'that two solutions and only two are possible: either man is wholly
determined ... or else man is wholly free'. We must reEuse the
Sartrian alternative oE'a nihilating spontaneity' on the one hand,
and 'mechanical processes' on the other, 'each one in its incommu-
nicable solitude,.15 Instead, we must describe how our freedom
gears itself to our situation and how that open situation summons,
but does not dictate, especially favoured forms of response.
A consideration of how we relate to his tory will disclose the
same need to go beyond the Sartrian alternative of absolute
freedom or mechanistic causality to a third type of existence,
which is that of an incarnate subjectivity. In his effort to refute
determinism, Sartre argues that refIection reveals that in my pure
presence to myself, I am an impersonal, 'pre-human fIux' without
any qualities whatsoever. Although I can subsequently consider
myself a worker, for example, I can never fully be a worker. My
awareness of being a worker remains second order; for mys elf, as
opposed to my being-for-others, I am a pure consciousness freely
evaluating itself as proletarian. A study oE history shows that my
objective place in production never suffices to kindie class-
142 Part III: Being-for-Itself and Being-in-the-World

consciousness and that revolt is therefore not the result of object-

ive conditions. On the contrary, the worker evaluates the present
through his 'free project for the future', and becomes a proletarian
by deciding 'to will revolution'. His decision requires 'a pure
wrenching away from hirnself and the world', wh ich enables hirn
to 'posit his suffering as unbearable suffering and consequently
[to] make of it the motive for his revolutionary action'. The worker
'wrenches' hirnself away from his past in order to evaluate it in the
light of the future and 'confer on it the meaning which it has in
terms of the project of a meaning which it does not have'.16
However, Sartre's position seems to deprive history itself of any
meaning save that which our will confers. Thus his criticism of
objective thought takes the form of an idealist reflection which
likewise overlooks the phenomena. Whereas objective thought
makes dass-consciousness the product of objective conditions,
Sartre's analytic reflection makes the objective conditions depen-
dent on a constituting consciousness, so that 'being a workman'
becomes reduced to the awareness of being one. 80th objective
thought and idealist reflection deal with abstractions which miss
our actual existence; consequently, Merleau-Ponty invites us to
embark on a truly existential approach to the phenomenon of
dass-consciousness.
At the outset, Merleau-Ponty cautions us not to seek either the
causes of dass-consciousness or the conditions which make it
possible. As Sartre emphasizes, no external cause can act on a
consciousness; furthermore - as Sartre unfortunately fails to see-
it is a matter of discerning the conditions wh ich actually elicit
dass-conciousness, rather than those of its mere possibility. Using
'a genuinely existential method', we discover that my awareness
of being a worker or a bourgeois is not simply a function of the fact
that I market my labour or that I have avested interest in
capitalism. Nor do I become proletarian or middle dass the day I
decide to regard history from the perspective of the dass struggle.
Instead, it is first of all a matter of existing as proletarian or middle
dass; and this way of interacting with society and the world
motivates my revolutionary or counter-revolutionary projects, as
weH as my express judgement that I am a proletarian or a
bourgeois. Motivation does not mean causation however; there-
fore, it is impossible to deduce my projects and judgements from
my life-style or vice versa. Neither impersonal forces nor an
unmotivated intellectual exercise renders me a worker or a bour-
 Freedom 143

geois. What makes me the one or the other is my manner

of being-in-the-world within a socio-economic order which I
experience and live.
Merleau-Ponty provides a detailed example of the genesis of
class-consciousness by considering the lives of a factory worker, a
tenant farmer and a day-Iabourer. Without any choice or explicit
evaluation, those doing the same sort of job under comparable
conditions 'co-exist in the same situation' and feel a certain
kinship. This can simply continue without developing into class-
consciousness and revolutionary activity or alternatively, various
events can help to bring about such a transformation. The news of
a factory workers' strike elsewhere and the resulting wage hike
here, may sharpen the factory worker's perception of the estab-
lished order. Seeing prices rise and feeling his own livelihood thus
become precarious, the day-Iabourer may blame the town
workers, so that class-consciousness fails to emerge. If such
consciousness arises, it is not because the day-Iabourer decides to
turn into a revolutionary and thereby bestows 'a value upon his
actual condition', but because he has perceived concretely that his
own life ge ars into that of the town workers and that they all
participate in a common condition. For his part, the tenant farmer
may begin to identify with the factory workers on learning that the
owner of his farm sits on the board of various industrial en-
terprises. In these ways, a sphere of the expioited begins to emerge
in the social space and a regrouping beyond ideological and
occupational identities becomes increasingly evident. This, then,
is the coming-into-being of class-consciousness, and when the
different segments of the proletariat experience their objective
connection as a common impediment to each one's existence, a
revolutionary situation obtains.
Merleau-Ponty, implicitly taking Sartre to task, insists that at no
point is there a need for 'a representation of revolution', for each
proletarian to think of himself expressly as such, for any deliberate
evaluation or any 'explicit positing of an end'. It suffices that there
be a feeling of solidarity among the various peasants and workers,
and a sense of being involved in trying to change things. Both the
established order and its destruction 'are lived through in ambi-
guity' - which is not to say that the proletarians and peasants
unconsciously produce revolution, or that the latter is the result of
'blind, "elementary forces" , manipulated by a handful of sIy
agitators. In reality, the alleged rabble-rousers' slogans are eagerly
144 Part 1II: Being-jor-Itselj and Being-in-the-World

taken up in a revolutionary situation 'because they crystallize

what is latent' in the workers' lives at large. In many respects, the
making of a revolution is akin to the creating of an artistic work:
both are neither blind nor transparent activities but rather, ambi-
guous undertakings whose meaning develops as the activity
unfolds and whose outcome is neither foreseeable nor ever expli-
citly posited in advance. Both the artistic work and the revolution-
ary movement are intentions whieh create their own instruments
and modes of expression. The revolutionary project matures at the
pre-reflective level of my interactions with other people and my
relations to my job, long before it becomes articulated and linked
to objective goals. Thus when I take a stand vis-a-vis a possible
revolution, thereby recognizing myself as a proletarian or a
bourgeois, the adopting of that position is neither an automatie
effect of my dass status nor an instantaneous evaluation ex nihilo.
In Merleau-Ponty's judgement, Sartre's error lies in his exclu-
sive focus on intellectual projects to the neglect of the existential
project. As a consequence, Sartre's analysis overlooks a11 the rich
ambiguity in the emergence of dass-consciousness from the enig-
matieally lived-through experience of its prospective members.
The unrepresented, ambiguously apprehended objective towards
whieh their lives are polarized, stands in stark contrast to the
thought object of the Sartrian constituting consciousness. In
making dass-consciousness the product of adecision and choiee,
Sartre disregards genuine intentionality and effectively dedares
that problems are instantly resolved. As Merleau-Ponty notes
however, the intellectual project is itself the outcome of an
existential project and expresses a particular manner of being-in-
the-world. Like the proletarian or the peasant, the intellectual is in
fact firmly rooted in co-existence, and the meaning, direction and
future wh ich he gives to his life spring from the way in which he
lives that co-existence. Any conceptualization on his part comes
from the same source; hence a11 attempts to derive actual existence
from acts of consciousness are profoundly misguided. Being a
bourgeois or a proletarian is not merely being aware of being the
former or the latter. It means identifying oneself as the one or the
other through a tacit or existential project whieh blends with one's
manner of structuring the worId and co-existing with others.
Sartre would of course counter this critique of his position by
pointing out that while my being-for-others includes attributes
such as proletarian or bourgeois, I am simply a pure consciousness
 Freedom 145

for myself and can regard myself as proletarian or bourgeois only

by adopting an outsider's perspective. Furthermore, it is im-
possible to deduce the other's presence from the ontological
structure of being-for-myself (the for-itself), for that would destroy
the other's othemess as a subjectivity irreducible to mine. The
other's presence is therefore an original fact, and my experience of
being in sympathy or community with others (the Mitsein) pre-
supposes my experience of being in confrontation with them. In
short, being-with-others is based on being-for-others, and 'con-
flict is the original meaning of being-for-others'. The experience of
'we' is 'extremely unstable', continually giving way again to the
alienating experience of being-for-others. Fundamentally, my
relation with others is one in which I attempt to 'enslave' them
while they simultaneously seek to 'enslave' me. 17 Merleau-Ponty
anticipates such a rejoinder and endeavours to forestall it. He
argues that Sartre's radical dichotomy between being-for-myself
and being-for-others precludes my ever experiencing the other. I
can never recognize another subjectivity unless my being-for-
myself already incorporates the structures of my being-for-others.
In any case, the Sartrian being-for-others cannot account for all the
features of my actual experience which an existentialist analysis
brings to light. Other people are neither necessarily, nor ever
entirely, objects for me; moreover, absolute subjectivity is purely
an abstraction, and 'the-other-as-object' is an inauthentic charac-
terization of others. A genuinely radical reflection shows that from
the start, I must be aware of being somehow centred 'outside
myself " of having an aura of generality about 'my absolute
individuality'. Without there being such a primordial 'atmosphere
of "sociality" , around my presence to myself, attributes such as
male or bourgeois could have no meaning for me. Unless there
were a primordiaI background of being-for-others, being-for-
myself could not emerge as such and hence, I could not be. There
must be a meaning beyond that which I constitute; there must be
an intersubjectivity; and I must be anonymous in the double sense
of being wholly individual and completely general.
If we adopt Sartre's account as opposed to Merleau-Ponty's, we
effectively rule out any meaning, direction or truth of his tory - we
rule out situations altogether. If becoming a worker or a bourgeois
were a matter of pure initiative, history would lack any shape or
structure, revolutionary situations or times of retrenchment would
not exist, uprisings could reasonably be expected at any moment
146 Part III: Being-for-Itself and Being-in-the-World

and statesmen would be indistinguishable from adventurers. In

his eagerness to disprove the mechanistic view of history, Sartre
overlooks the fact that history must have a meaning which is not
simply conferred on it by human Hat - that it must be 'lived
through'. The meaning of events is neither amental construct nor
the inadvertent consequence of their simultaneity; rather, it is the
actual intersubjective 'project of a future' which is prepared
within anonymous co-existence prior to any personal dedsion.
Signification is thus at once centrifugal and centripetal: we bestow
history's meaning, but it itself puts that meaning forward. The
individual is not the director of history; yet at a certain moment of
its genesis, an individual can take up and carry forward the
meaning which has been maturing in sodal co-existence. Since
history offers a meaning to be taken up, we can discern historical
truth and distinguish between the adventurer and the statesman.
The individual is born into a world in which significances
already fashioned qualify hirn as male and bourgeois, for example,
even in his presence to hirns elf. Moreover, wh at has traditionally
been considered a strictly individual experience - for instance, the
seeing of a colour or the thinking of an idea - is only apparently
unique; in actual fact, it draws on the sodal world. My concrete
interactions with others familiarize me with 'a world of colours',
so that a certain one stands out from a background for me.
Consequently, even in colour perception I do not apprehend
mys elf as apre-human flux. My allegedly private thought similarly
feeds on intersubjective life in that it supposes a particular cultural
world. I am therefore not an inaccessible subjectivity but rather, 'a
Held of presence' - to myself, other people and the world. Sartre's
notion of freedom as the secreting of nothingness is ultimately
hypocritical, for such aglobai refusal depends continuously on an
acceptance: it is itself a certain way of being-in-the-world which is
Hrmly rooted in a particular cultural tradition and partidpates in
sodal co-existence. Sartre's claim about the origin of nothingness
can thus be supplemented: 'it is through the world that nothing-
ness comes into being'. Far from being perpetually without
support, my freedom is always buttressed by others; and my
global commitment in co-existence sustains my power to effect a
perpetual rupture. Nor is that power tantamount to perpetual
choice - for such choice would preclude the ambiguity and gener-
ality which an existentialist approach discloses.
 Freedom 147

Sartre's fundamental error consists in opposing the for-itself to

the in-itself, with no mediator between them. He thus disregards
our primordial bond with the world - our being not only in the
world but also o[ it. It is not a matter of having to choose between
determinism on the one hand and absolute freedom on the other,
because we are neither things nor pure consciousnesses but
instead, incarnate subjectivities inhering in a situation wh ich we
assume and modify. By way of a further example, Merleau-Ponty
counters Sartre's discussion of the torturer and his victim. Sartre
emphasizes that the tortured man's response 'is a spontaneous
production'; that, utterly alone before his tormentor, the victim is
absolutely free to choose the moment when he will 'beg for
mercy'.18 Merleau-Ponty, by contrast, stresses that the victim's
refusal to submit to the torturer's demands is buttressed by his
continuing experience of being-with-others and of being involved
in a joint struggle. It is not a case of a pure consciousness coming
to a solitary decision, but rather, a matter of a prisoner with his
loves, memories and feit commitments, living-through a situation.
In conclusion, Merleau-Ponty notes that freedom requires some
power, that that power is sustained by our commitments, and that
no commitment can originate or issue in absolute freedom. We are
thus always committed, but never absolutely so; and we live our
commitments ambiguously before we ever thematize them. Our
existential analysis of the phenomenon of presence has revealed,
moreover, that we are in fact the very synthesis which Sartre
ruled out as an impossibility - namely, that of being-in-and-for-
ourselves. Along with our existence, we all receive a particular
style which figures in everything we think and do. Our past, our
temperament and our environment are aspects of the total
psychological-historical structure which we are, and it is thanks to
this structure that we can be free at all. As an 'intersubjective field'
we are, as Saint-Exupery noted, 'but a network of relationships';
and it is by assuming those relationships and carrying them
forward, that we realize our freedom.
148 Part III: Being-for-Itself and Being-in-the-World

Notes
1. Sartre, Being and Nothingness: a Phenomenological Essay on Ontology,
pp. 121, 598ff., 616ff., 641ff., 655, 678, 705.
2. Ibid., pp. 473, 474, 671ff., 700.
3. Ibid., pp. 124-7, 241ff., 250, 568.
4. Ibid., pp. 120-6, 298, 301-3, 474.
5. Ibid., pp. 471ff.
6. Ibid., pp. 33-6,56-61,70,71,84,116,120-6,615-16. Note that Sartre
uses the following terms more or less interchangeably here
(although he does specify that consciousness is 'the instantaneous
nucleus' of the human being): consciousness, being-for-itself, the
for-itself, the human being, human reality, man.
7. Ibid., pp. 559, 563-4.
8. Ibid., pp. 564ff., 575ff.
9. Ibid., pp. 16, 567ff., 581ff., 594ff., 612ff., 620ff., 705ff.
10. Ibid., pp. 619ff., 625ff., 635ff., 645ff., 675ff.
11. Ibid., pp. 599ff., 618ff., 622, 637ff.
12. Ibid., pp. 567ff., 616, 624. It is interesting to note that Sartre says
(p. 568): 'Human-reality is free because ... it is perpetually
wrenched away from itself and because it has been separated by a
nothingness from what it is and from what it will be.'
13. Ibid., pp. 568-9, 617, 652.
14. Ibid., pp. 584ff., 597-8, 637-47.
15. Ibid., pp. 570-l.
16. Ibid., pp. 561ff., 640ff., 654ff., 666ff.
17. Ibid., pp. 301ff., 340ff., 471ff., 534ff., 654ff. (See particularly
pp. 472-5, 536-7, 553, 656.)
18. Ibid., pp. 523ff.
 Conclusion: A
Critical Assessment
of Merleau-Ponty's
Phenomenology of
Perception
Merleau-Ponty's central concern in the Phenomenology of Percep-
tion is to prompt us to recognize that objective thought funda-
mentally distorts the phenomena of our lived experience, thereby
estranging us from our own selves, the world in which we live and
other people with whom we interact. Such thinking is not con-
fined to a single discipline or to a particular philosophical tradi-
tion. On the contrary, not bnly is it common to the sciences, social
sciences and humanities, but it underlies both realism and ideal-
ism and feeds on common sense itself. In exposing the bias of
objective thought, Merleau-Ponty seeks to re-establish our roots in
corporeality and the perceptual world, while awakening us to an
appreciation of the inherent ambiguity of our lived experience.
The body is commonly deemed to be the locus of experience;
hence Merleau-Ponty investigates tradition al conceptions of the
body, draws our attention to their inadequacies and urges us to
abandon these classical objectifications. In place of the traditional
approaches, he proposes that we regard the body as a dynamic
synthesis of intentionalities which, by responding to the world's
solicitations, brings perceptual structures into being in a ceaseless
dialectic whereby both body and objects are constituted as such.
Since this ongoing dialectical movement effects the emergence of
cultural as weIl as natural objects, Merleau-Ponty proceeds to
consider our experience of other people. The latter, he contends,
are not inaccessible minds incomprehensibly inhabiting impe-
netrable mechanisms whose functioning induces us to infer the
existence of other subjectivities confronting our own. To this
traditional philosophy, Merleau-Ponty opposes a phenomenolo-
gical description of the direct, pre-reflective communication of
body-subjects sharing a perceptual field. Concluding that private

149
150 Conclusion

subjectivity is itself rooted in this primordial dialogue of incamate

intentionalities, Merleau-Ponty enjoins us to reject the entrenched
notion of an original, self-enclosed, self-sustaining subjectivity.
He further submits the traditional absolute cogito to a radical
reflection, thereby revealing an underlying tacit cogito and re-
integrating thinking into an existential project. According to
Merleau-Ponty, the temporalization implied in such a project
transcends the traditional passivity-activity dichotomy and again
discloses the body-subject as a third kind of being. Consequently,
the freedom of that incamate subjectivity is neither non-existent
nor absolute, but features the same dialectical structure that
already emerged in the phenomenological analysis of our most
rudimentary perception.
Merleau-Ponty radicalizes phenomenology and offers a pro-
foundly positive phenomenological-existential philosophy in
tracing intentionality back to its source in corporeal subjectivity
and showing the latter to be part of a continuous dialectical
exchange with the world and other incamate subjectivities. By
acknowledging a spontaneous accord between sensing and und er-
standing, and a non-conceptual harmony among subjects in
aesthetic experience, Kant's Critique of ]udgement already pointed
the way beyond the Cartesian bifurcation of human reality with
its consequent restriction of intentionality. As Merleau-Ponty
notes in his 'Preface', Husserl's subsequent distinction between
'operative intentionality' and 'intentionality of act' developed
Kant's insight and, in broadening the notion of intentionality,
enabled phenomenology to 'become a phenomenology of origins,.1
Nevertheless, Husserl stopped short of establishing the origin of
intentionality in the situated body-subject, with the result that his
own philosophy remained insufficiently radical.
Other philosophers in the phenomenological or existentialist
tradition similarly failed to undertake a truly radical reflection-
that is, their thought did not reach the actual roots of experience
and thus involved unacknowledged assumptions. Heget, for
example, declared in his Phenomenology of Mind that 'sense-
certainy is unaware that its essence is the empty abstraction of
pure being'; that 'for us (tracing the process) or in itself, the
universal qua principle, is the essence of perception; and as
against this abstraction, both the moments distinguished - that
which perceives and that which is perceived - are what is non-
 Conclusion 151

essential'; that spirit is the content of experience and that the goal
of its process of embodiment 'is Absolute Knowledge or Spirit
knowing itself as Spirit'.2 Heidegger's philosophy likewise failed
to put the primacy on human reality, as is evident from his
assertion that 'the essence of man is essential for the truth of
Being, and apart from this truth of Being man himself does not
matter'.3 Thus Heidegger stressed that 'the essence of man rests in
Being-in-the-World'; but by 'World' he meant 'the clearing of
Being, wherein man stands out from his thrown essence'.4 For
their part, Kierkegaard, Jaspers and Marcel sternly criticized
traditional philosophy as remote from concrete human life and
emphasized, by contrast, the need to focus on actual experience
and to recognize the philosopher's participation in a situation.
Their attempts to articulate a genuinely concrete philosophy fell
far short of this goal, however, because all three called for a leap of
faith to an absolute designated, respectively, as 'God', 'the Encom-
passing', and 'transcendence itseH' or the 'presence' which makes
itself feIt in 'mystery' and whose recognition is 'only possible
through a sort of radiation which proceeds from revelation it-
seH ,.5 While firmly rejecting any leap of faith and achieving
concreteness, the philosophies of Nietzsche and Camus, in turn,
lacked comprehensiveness; and though attaining the latter as well,
that of Sartre was flawed by dualism. In avoiding all these pitfalls,
Merleau-Ponty's Phenomenology of Perception stands as a remark-
able achievement.
By drawing attention to the serious shortcomings of objective
thought and discussing these in detail, Merleau-Ponty encourages
us to abandon the traditional approaches and return to the
phenomena of our concrete experience. The Phenomenoloy not
only provides a method whereby such areturn can be accompl-
ished, but also undertakes that return itself in its phenomenolo-
gical-existential analyses of the body, objectivity, subjectivity,
thought, time, intersubjectivity, freedom and history. Merleau-
Ponty's treatment of these perennial issues suggests that we are
primordially o{ the natural world and therefore fundamentally at
horne in it; that we similarly enjoy a pre-reflective bond with others
and the human world; that by our daily lives we participate in
shaping our world and determining the course of our joint history;
that our commitments are never completely unsupported since
our freedom is always interwoven with that of other people; and
152 Conclusion

that the carnality and fundamental ambiguity of our being-in-

the-world are by no means impediments to reflection or to
communication with others.
To appreciate the full import of the Phenomenology's orientation,
it is instructive to recall Sartre's thesis in Being and Nothingness by
way of comparison. Sartre contends that the phenomenon of
presence is a fall, adegeneration of the in-itself; that any synthesis
of a 'nihilating sponteneity' and 'mechanical processes' is im-
possible; that the for-itself is thrown into exile in an utterly
indifferent in-itself; that 'adversity and utilizable instrumentality'
is the primary meaning of things; that the for-itself 's situation is
one of inevitable separation from things and abandonment in a
world which it seeks to appropriate by various techniques in a vain
attempt to give itself a foundation; that the inherent contradiction
in its fundamental project of appropriation renders the for-itself
an utterly 'useless passion' and dooms all its activities to equiva-
lence, so that solitary drinking and leading a country amount 'to
the same thing'; that the basic project of appropriation likewise
characterizes the for-itself 's relations with others and inevitably
imprisons it a circle of seeking to enslave and to escape such
enslavement itself; that the for-itself 's selfness requires negating
the other; that unity with others is theoretically and practically
unrealizable; that the very essence of relations with others is
insecurity, danger, confrontation and conflict; that others inevitably
impose an alien meaning and limit the for-itself 's freedom; that the
mere existence of others lends an indefeasible 'dimension of
alienation' to the for-itself 's situation; that an inescapable aliena-
tion thus characterizes all situations; that 'the very meaning' of
freedom is to surge up in the world as 'confronting others' and to
cause the emergence of a situation whose 'essential character-
istic ... is to be alienated'; that, finally, the for-itself 's alienated
being (its being-for-others) is its link with others. 6
Sartre's notion of ontological freedom forms the core of his
position; consequently, by uncovering the inherent contradiction
in this pivotal concept, Merleau-Ponty effectively demolishes the
very foundation of Sartre's philosophy. Although Merleau-Ponty
devotes the final chapter of his Phenomenology to an analysis of
freedom, his critique of Sartrian freedom actually constitutes a
recurrent theme through the entire work. Of course, he frequently
does not use the term 'freedom', but we have seen that at each
stage of the inquiry Merleau-Ponty draws attention to the inso-
 Conclusion 153

luble dilemmas incurred by reducing reality to a product of pure

construction or mechanistic causality. In focusing on the underly-
ing prejudice common to both approaches and on the need to
recognize a third kind of existence which both reject, Merleau-
Ponty systematically undermines Sartre's idea of a for-itself whose
very being is freedom. He thereby simultaneously institutes a new
way of thinking which, being more radical, discerns the derivative
nature of the Sartrian notion of alienation and goes beyond it to
disclose our primordial bond with the natural and human world.
We have seen in the previous chapters that the dichotomy of
in-itself and for-itself is fatally flawed and that the Sartrian
nihilation is itself rooted in a more basic tacit affirmation. Far from
being cut off and paralyzed by an indifferent being-in-itself, we
are primordially related to, and animated by, a pre-objective world
which solicits our sensibilities and enables us to actualize and
develop them. Being-in-the-world is therefore not an exile; and
although we can indeed regard things as discreet, adverse entities
to be seized through the application of techniques, such an
attitude toward our environment depends on the anonymous
dialectical movement in which the body-subject is intervolved
with pre-objective being anterior to any separation. As it is not
primordially apart from the world but rather of it and in fecund
interaction with it, incarnate subjectivity is not inherently
doomed to seek the appropriation of a foundation - nor are its
activities condemned to equivalence. Moreover, its incarnate
intentionality already opens the body-subject to other incarnate
subjectivities and inaugurates apre-personal dialogue which is
mutually enriching. A fundamental mutual comprehension thus
subtends any subsequent misunderstandings, so that our basic
relations with others are not ones of confrontation but of co-
operation. Prior to any refusal of others, our bodily being
establishes apre-personal unity with them; and it is in virtue of
such unity that selfhood can develop at all. While it is true that
others can impose alien meanings on us, their ability to do so and
ours to apprehend them as alien, suppose a positive, pre-reflective
reciprocity which rules out the alleged inevitability of alienation.
The importance of this radical reversal of the Sartrian position
cannot be over-estimated. Far from being part of the human
condition, alienation, confrontation, misunderstandings, conflicts,
terror and a Hobbesian state of war thereby become contingent
transformations of a basic harmony which impugns any cavalier
154 Conclusion

dismissal of calls for global co-operation as mere pipe-dreams. The

pervasive sense of alienation in the western world today becomes,
by implication, a phenomenon calling for critique and rectification
based on a re-awakened appreciation of primary perceptual recip-
rocity. The Phenomenology provides just the sort of comprehensive
grounding which such a critique requires if it is to be philoso-
phically compelling. Merleau-Ponty's step-by-step disclosure of
our primordial inherence in the world also lays the foundation for
an explicitly ecological approach to our environment and an
accompanying development of an appropriate technology. Our
fundamental belonging to, and dialectical interaction with, the
natural world means that our neglect or destruction of the latter
carries that of ourselves in its wake. Merleau-Ponty's critique of
rationalism calls into question 'the placing of spirit in an axiolo-
gical dimension having no common measure with nature' and
prompts hirn 'to prepare the substructure of living experience
without which reason and liberty are emptied of their content and
wither away'.7
By restoring our rootedness in the perceived world and in
pre-personal co-existence with others, the Phenomenology paves
the way for a concrete morality which is adequate to the demands
of our age. Any allegation that such a claim involves the natural-
istic fallacy, falls prey itself to Merleau-Ponty's critique of the
traditional fact-value distinction. The perceiver is neither an
isolated, passive recipient of an in-itself datum nor a solitary,
absolute artificer of a perceptual structure but instead, an incar-
nate subjectivity relating simultaneously centrifugally and centri-
petally to an intersubjective, emergent world. The ceaseless,
dialectical co-structuring of a dynamic, perceptual field is already
pre-reflectively value-Iaden and its phenomenological description
brings to light value-facts which defy the cIassical dichotomy.8
The recognition of this inextricable intertwining of facts and
values in lived experience precludes our taking refuge in any
abstract morality. As Merleau-Ponty indicates in his 1946 address
defending the Phenomenology before the Societe franr;ais de philoso-
phie, his text effectively puts us en route to creating an ethics of
genuine regard for others in the concreteness of our specific
situation:

If we admit that our life is inherent to the perceived world and

the human world, even while it re-creates it and contributes to
 Conclusion 155

its making, then morality cannot consist in the private adhe-

rence to a system of values .... Thus we cannot remain indiffe-
rent to the aspect in which our acts appear to others .... It is the
very demand of rationality which imposes on us the need to act
in such a way that our action cannot be considered by others as
an act of aggression but, on the contrary, as generously meeting
the other in the very particularity of a given situation .... Just
as the perception of a thing opens me up to being ... the
perception of the other founds morality ... 9

The social-political implications of that remark are only too

evident; and whilst the very structure of perception predudes
guarantees, Merleau-Ponty's description of perceptual experience
does indicate that successful co-existence is genuinely possible. In
overturning the Sartrian conception of freedom, the Phenomeno-
logy implicitly appeals to us to realize our responsibility in
actively seeking harmony with others in all aspects of our
existence.
In radicalizing the phenomenological reduction and implement-
ing it in a comprehensive investigation of perception, Merleau-
Ponty succeeds in uncovering the tacit assumptions in traditional
modes of thinking. In addition, he offers us a new way of
philosophizing whose implications are dearly very far-reaching.
The Phenomenology o[ Perception therefore constitutes an invalu-
able contribution not only to the philosophical discourse but also
to that of related disciplines. Despite its signal achievements
however, Merleau-Ponty's extraordinary text poses a number of
problems. Before proceeding to consider them, it is essential to
forestall potential misconceptions concerning the nature of such
an examination. There is a way of reading the Phenomenology from
the outside, so to speak, wh ich merely serves to confirm us in our
prejudices. Such an approach typically deplores the general ambi-
guity of the work as weH as its lack of precise definitions, succinct
explanations, telling refutations, straightforward arguments, con-
vincing proofs or unequivocal demonstrations. At its extreme,
such an 'external' reading dismisses the entire text as unintelli-
gible - an extended exercise in 'muddled thinking'. In its more
moderate form, this mode of critique attempts to sift out and
translate 'the interesting bits' into unambiguous philosophical
terminology before submitting them to doser scrutiny. In either
case, the critic operates with a whole host of preconceptions ab out
156 Conclusion

the meaning of 'good' philosophy and the eriteria for its evalua-
tion. The moderate eritic furthermore takes for granted that in
philosophy, as opposed to poetry, content can be separated
from form - Nietzsche notwithstanding. Such a modus operandi is
profoundly uncritical, and it misses the very essen ce of the
Phenomenology altogether.
Merleau-Ponty's Phenomenology of Perception calls into question
our traditional conception of philosophy, our habitual eategories
and criteria, even our established conceptual framework itself. In
the process of doing so, moreover, the Phenomenology is develop-
ing a fresh discourse, an innovative phiIosophy; eonsequently, we
must firmly resist the temptation to tailor it to the old eonstructs if
we are to appreciate what it is saying. In order to understand and
assess it, we must leave our various assumptions behind and open
ourselves to the text itself. We will also do weH to keep in mind
Merleau-Ponty's own eautionary remarks about the status of the
work in his 'Introduetion' to the Phenomenology. Throughout the
book, he implicitly stresses the inseparability of form and eontent
by continually drawing our attention to the weaknesses of both
the intellectualist and the empiricist reduetions, and the eonse-
quent need for a third kind of being. In the ehapter 'The Spatiality
of the Body Itself and Motility' Merleau-Ponty says explicitly that
matter and form stand in a relationship of 'Fundierung', that 'form
integrates within itself the content until the latter finally appears
as a mere mode of form itself ' and that existenee is a ~dialectic of
form and content'.lO It is aeeordingly misguided, to say the least, to
assurne that Merleau-Ponty's own philosophy can be detached
from its form; furthermore, we saw in the chapter 'The Body as
Expression and Speech' why the traditional theories of language
are ultimately untenable. Our predilection for divorcing the body
from the mind and the object from the subject, prompts us to
regard language as detachable from thought and meaning as
exeIusively on the side of the latter. Merleau-Ponty's phenomeno-
logical analysis of language aims to awaken us to the phenomenon
of incarnate signification which rules out any such division and
imbues words with significance.
As in the case of the innovative speaker, the philosoph er who
breaks new ground brings a novel meaning into being in the very
act of articulating it, and its expression - whether verbal or
written - is as inseparable from that meaning as are the works of
poets, musicians or painters from theirs. Through the style of
 Conclusion 157

writing and choice of words, the creative philosopher gives birth

to an existential significance which inhabits the words themselves
instead of lying somewhere behind them. The words themselves,
in short, are essential - they cannot simply be stripped away and
others substituted to expose the philosopher's 'real' meaning. If
that is the case, then our reading of the Phenomenology must not be
a matter of unwrapping or decoding Merleau-Ponty's thought but
rather, of rendering ourselves genuinely present to its presence in
the text itself. As Merleau-Ponty notes, we 'begin to understand a
philosophy by feeling [our] way into its existential manner, by
.u
reproducing the tone and accent of the philosopher' Even the
summarizing of an authentie, or originating, philosophy is there-
fore fraught with difficulty and any assessment of that philosophy
must be made strictly on its own terms.
An excellent starting point for evaluating the shortcomings of
the Phenomenology lies in Merleau-Ponty's own estimation of the
work shortly before his death. In one of his 'Working Notes' dated
July, 1959 we find the following startling judgement: 'The pro-
blems posed in Ph.P. are insoluble because I start there from the
"consciousness"-"object" distinction - -'.12 By way of elabora-
tion, Merleau-Ponty says (in the same note) that the entailment of
aglobai disturbance by a certain physiologieal injury (as in the
case of Schneider) remains incomprehensible given the afore-
mentioned distinction, and that the purported 'objective condi-
tion ... is a way of expressing and noting an event of the order of
brute or wild being whieh, ontologically, is primary. This event is
that a given visible properly disposed (a body) hollows itself out an
invisible sense ['sens'] __ '.13 What are we to make of this cryptic
note? Has not Merleau-Ponty at every step of his analysis in the
Phenomenology endeavoured precisely to overturn the traditional
distinction between 'consciousness' and 'object' by disclosing
incarnate subjectivity as a third kind 01 being whieh is irreducible to
either consciousness or objective body? Has he not reiterated that
this third term is primordially 01 the world? Has he not taken
pains to show - in his analysis of habitual behaviour, for example
- that the body-subject incorporates the world's structures into its
own space? Has he not insisted that the world is not to be
regarded as a totality of objects, nor the subject as a spectator
consciousness surveying the lot? Has he not emphasized repeatedly
in the Phenomenology that there is a genesis of subject and object in
pre-reflective perceptual experience? Has he not throughout his
158 Conclusion

study of perception drawn attention to the distortions stemming

from our adherence to the classical distinctions? Has he not
consistently attempted to illuminate the primordial experience
which antedates any such distinctions? As the ans wer to a11 these
questions cannot but be affirmative, it would seem that Merleau-
Ponty's own assessment of the Phenomenology must be dis-
counted. Upon further reflection however, we shall see that this
conclusion is too hasty - for the issue itself is far more complex
than the foregoing would suggest.
In the Phenomenology of Perception Merleau-Ponty is concerned
to show that perception is not imposition - whether of an objective
datum on a passive subject or a subjective structure on an external
object - but rather, pre-reflective communication ('dialogue') be-
tween the perceived world and the perceiving body-subject.
Merleau-Ponty's choice of title is significant in this regard, for his
study encompasses perceiving and the percept - as the double
meaning of 'perception' indicates; moreover, his phenomenology
reveals that these two terms are inextricably and dynamically
interrelated in perceptual experience. We have seen, further, that
Merleau-Ponty's phenomenological description of perception
stresses the phenomenal body's primordial anchorage in and bond
with, the pre-objective world. This means that the perceiver is
simultaneously part of the perceived world and sufficiently apart
from it for dialogue between them to arise. The perceiver is
concurrently perceived and perceiving - but not in the sense of
the Sartrian 'look', as is evident from the preceding chapters. This
would suggest that in belonging to the perceived world, the
perceiver shares its fundamental texture while retaining the dis-
tinction of existing as a perceiving being - and a human one at
that. Further, Merleau-Ponty's tracing of meaning to a pre-
reflective exchange between incarnate subjectivity and pre-
objective being suggests that the emergence of meaning has to do
with this paradoxical difference-in-sameness, this transcendence
in immanence, wh ich is the very essence of perception as
perceived-perceiving. Yet a11 this is - for the most part -latent in
the Phenomenology, as Merleau-Ponty concentrates on awakening
us to an awareness that a11 our so-ca11ed 'external' and 'internal'
perceptions - even our 'innermost' feelings and seemingly self-
subsistent thoughts - are the product of a ceaseless dialectical
interaction between the phenomenal body and the pre-objective
world. The focus here is on the existence of that fundamental
 Conclusion 159

dialogue and on the way in which it structures the lived expe-

rience wh ich subtends reflection itself. The aforesaid paradox
which enables the dialogue to emerge at all and the actual birth of
meaning thus remain largely unexplored.
In a very real sense, then, Merleau-Ponty's phenomenological
description of perception starts from the everyday world of
already acquired meanings and from the consciousness of an
established, meaningful world. In its 'natural attitude' to the world
- as we have seen - consciousness regards things as simply ex-
ternal entities, that is, as objects. Beginning with this everyday
distinction of 'consciousness' and 'object', Merleau-Ponty seeks to
alert consciousness to its primordial inherence in a body and
strives to disclose the pre-reflective exchange whereby objects are
constituted as such. Since this incarnate consciousness is an
already perceiving, speaking, thinking subject situated and
engaged in an already meaningful world, the origin of meaning
remains perplexing - as does the exact nature of consciousness's
inherence in body and world, given the dichotomous starting
point wh ich Merleau-Ponty hirnself acknowledges in the note
cited earlier. As he admits there, the profound transformation
which a given brain injury introduces into one's being-in-the-
world accordingly remains puzzling in the Phenomenology.
Nonetheless, at various points in the work, Merleau-Ponty does
begin to probe the birth of meaning and the paradoxical character
of our being-in-the-world. In his study of the body's sexual being,
for instance, he explores the coming into existence of sexual
significance and the consequent need to reject the classical dicho-
tomy of passivity and activity in describing the phenomenal body.
Similarly, Merleau-Ponty's phenomenological investigation of
expression and speech draws our attention to the difference
between originating expression and everyday speech, and to the
amorphous primordial silence from which a radically new mean-
ing is born. The inception of a novel linguistic significance
indicates the inadequacy of the traditional necessity-contingency
and immanence-transcendence distinctions for understanding
our actual manner of being-in-the-world. In the same chapter,
Merleau-Ponty notes that there is an 'ever-recreated opening in
the plenitude of being' which conditions all authentic expression;
further, he likens this 'function which we intuit through language'
to 'a wave', describes it as being 'its own foundation' and
characterizes originating expression as a 'miracle',t4 Elsewhere he
160 Conclusion

describes how the phenomenal body adjusts to lighting in order to

see, and how it transplants itself into things which it uses
habitually (such as musical instruments, orthopaedic devices,
items of clothing or transport vehicles) or how, by the same token,
it incorporates the latter into its own bulk. These descriptions
constitute implicit explorations of our paradoxical bond with the
primitive, or universal, Being mentioned above.
The opening and closing seetions of the Phenomenology are also
significant in this respect, as they foreshadow the motifs of
Merleau-Ponty's last writings. In his 'Preface' to the book, we
learn that the phenomenologist strives to recapture the 'primitive
contact with the world' so as to give it a philosophical standing;
that phenomenological reflection discloses the world 'as paradoxi-
cal'; that 'the phenomenological world' is the meaning which
shows through at the interseetion of experience; that expression
and language originate in 'the silence of primary consciousness';
that philosophy and art both endeavour to grasp the coming into
being of meaning; that both are acts creating truth; that the world
is 'the only pre-existent Logos' and that we ourselves are a
'network of relationships'.15 The concluding 'Freedom' chapter
reiterates that we are but such a network, and stresses that our
primordial bond and exchange with the world reveal the need to
discard the traditional passive-active dichotomy so that we may
comprehend our being-in-the-world.
If we are to determine whether Merleau-Ponty's failure to
develop these themes more fully significantly weakens his pheno-
menological description of perception, we must consider the
nature of his final writings. At the time of his death, Merleau-
Ponty was in the midst of working on a book wh ich was intended
to be an ontology of 'wild' or 'brute' Being and Logos. Among his
'Working Notes' of January 1959 there is one in wh ich he makes it
clear that he meant to reconsider, deepen and rectify the Phenome-
nology in this ontological investigation. 16 As it is, the project was
brutally interrupted, leaving us only the following fragments: a
half-finished manuscript predating 1952, whose third chapter
appeared in modified form as the essay 'Le langage indirect et les
voix du silence' ('Indirect Language and the Voices of Silence'),
while the manuscript itself was published posthumously under
the title La prose du monde (The Prose o[ the World);17 the 1960 essay
'L'CEil et I'Esprit' ('Eye and Mind') which, according to M. Claude
Lefort, provides 'a preliminary statement' of ideas to be developed
 Conclusion 161

in the prospective ontology;18 a manuscript comprising the intro-

ductory first part of Merleau-Ponty's projected book; and some
working notes. The latter manuscript and a selection of the notes
were published posthumously as Le visible et l'invisible: suivi de
notes de travail (The Visible and the Invisible: Followed By Working
Notes). Merleau-Ponty's 1960 'Pnfface' ('Introduction') to Signes
(Signs) also contains many of the themes which he planned to
elaborate in his ontology. Although it is of course impossible to
ascertain how the latter would actually have unfolded, we can
detect the general direction of Merleau-Ponty's later thought in
these pieces.
Earlier, I suggested that in the Phenomenology Merleau-Ponty
endeavours to draw our attention to the existence of a pre-
objective world underlying our scientific and common sense
views, a body-subject subtending our traditional conceptions of
the self, and a primary interaction persisting between this pre-
reflective self and pre-objective world. Accordingly, Merleau-
Ponty traces the traditional cogito to a bodily, tacit cogito operative
at the pre-reflective level of perceptual experience. In his later
work, he deliberately abandons this tacit cogito 19 and tries to reach
the level of silence below the distinction of 'consciousness' from
'intentional objecr wh ich even a tacit cogito implies. His aim is to
disclose the very emergence of meaning from 'brute' Being
through the wave-like 'coiling over' which makes our own flesh
'self-sensing'. Merleau-Ponty points out that this will require 'an
elucidation of philosophical expression itself ... as the expres-
sion of what is before expression and sustains it tram behind'. As
sensible we belong primordially to 'the flesh of the world', whilst
as sentient we hollow out a meaning without tearing any hole in
the tissue of brute Being; and 'all this is finally possible and means
something only because there is Being'. The latter, however, is not
in-itself but rather, comprises the whole perceptual world includ-
ing ourselves. That world encompasses not only the visible, but
also its invisible substrueture of brute Being - that dimension of
silence on which we draw in any aet of authentie expression. 20
Meaning is itself invisible; yet 'it appears only within' the
visible and is its 'secret counterpart'. In order to understand it, we
must eomprehend the relation of silenee to Logos, or originating
expression, in whieh truth 'speaks itself ,.21 To illuminate that
relation to Being which '[forms] itself within Being', Merleau-Ponty
returns again and again to the study of language and of art. He
162 Conclusion

attempts to show that far from being congealed inside or on top of

the words, meaning inhabits them in such a way that the unity of
spoken language is a unity of differences, a coherent system of
'determinate gaps' which is continually being reshaped by the
network of speaking subjects. The latter bring new meanings into
being from within the linguistic field by a movement of transcen-
dence which modi fies that field without ever leaving it behind. 22
Similarly, painters transform the visible from within it through a
seeing wh ich is at the chiasma of eye and mind. The painting of a
seH-portrait is an example par excellence of the 'coiling over' of
vision which enables a new meaning to emerge from vertical
Being. Simultaneously seer and seen, the painter belongs to the
fabric of the visible and folds that fabric over so that a fresh
meaning is hollowed out. The painter's vision is a seeing from
within the visible itseH - as such seH-portrayal most readily
shows. It thus becomes understandable that our own vision
likewise 'in stalls' itself in things and that its power to do so points
to a fundamental unity in the very tissue of Being. Merleau-Ponty
puts it as follows in a note of September, 1959 in which he
considers how best to describe pre-reflective Being.

Take up again the analysis of the cube ... to say that 1 have a
view of it is to say that, in perceiving it ... 1 go out of myseH
into it. I, my view, are caught up in the same carnal world with
it; i.e.: my view and my body themselves emerge from the same
being which is, among other things, a cube ... It is hence finally
the massive unity of Being as the encompassing of myself and of
the cube, it is the wild, non-refined, 'vertical' Being that makes
there be a cube. With this example grasp the upsurge of pure
'signification' __23

The above passage shows just how far Merleau-Ponty has gone
beyond his phenomenological description in the Phenomenology 01
Perception. What, if any, are the implications of this advance for an
assessment of the Phenomenology? The answer hinges on what we
take the task of phenomenology to be and that, in turn, depends to
a considerable degree on whether - and how - we distinguish
phenomenology from ontology, metaphysics and 'concrete' or
existential philosophy as a whole. Unfortunately, Merleau-Ponty's
own writings are rather unclear on these crucial points. Although
 Conclusion 163

a detailed discussion of the matter lies beyond the scope of this

chapter, our evaluation of the Phenomenology's shortcomings sup-
poses an appreciation of the problem at issue. Briefly, the less
definite the aforementioned distinctions are, the more significant
is Merleau-Ponty's sub se quent philosophizing in showing up
inadequacies in his phenomenological description of perception.
The 'Preface' to the Phenomenology in fact opens with the
question, 'What is phenomenology?' and the ensuing acknow-
ledgement that an ans wer is in order. The entire 'Preface' consti-
tutes Merleau-Ponty's reply. Thus we leam that phenomenology is
indeed 'the study of essences' - such as 'the essence of perception'
- but that it begins with our 'facticity' and reintegrates essences
into existence. As a transcendental philosophy it brackets the
claims springing from 'the natural attitude' to the world; yet it
recognizes the pre-reflective presence of the world and devotes its
whole efforts to re-establishing a 'primitive contact' with it and
directly describing our ac tu al experience. Merleau-Ponty admits
that phenomology appears to say everything and to be incapable
of defining its purview, but notes that it 'can be practised and
identified as a manner or style of thinking' which is attainable solely
via 'a phenomenological method'. The latter, as we have seen,
eschews scientific explanation and analytical reflection in favour
of a description designed to re-awaken the primordial experience
underlying all our reconstructions of the world. Sy putting in
abeyance our common sense certainties and natural attitude,
rhenomenological reflection enables us to become aware of our
presuppositions and restores a sense of 'wonder' vis-a-vis the
world. 24
The phenomenological reduction reveals 'the unmotivated up-
surge of the world', its 'lived' unity and the impossibility of a
thought which would encompass everything including itself.
Since it discloses the irreducible facticity of both the world and
our own reflection, 'the phenomenological reduction is that of an
existential philosophy' and - as we saw earlier - phenomenology
becomes 'a phenomenology of origins' which seeks to describe
'the core of existential [significanceJ', the unique style of existence
expressed in the objects of its radical reflection. 25 Merleau-Ponty
summarizes the nature of phenomenology and again explicitly
equates it with existential philosophy in a 1947 essay on film and
psychology:
164 Conclusion

Phenomenological or existential philosophy is largely an expres-

sion of surprise at this inherence of the self in the world and in
others, adescription of this paradox and permeation, and an
attempt to make us see the bond between subject and world,
between subject and others, rather than to explain it as the
classical philosophies did by resorting to absolute spirit. 26

Such a philosophy is synonymous with 'concrete thinking' and

with a metaphysics which 'is the opposite of system'. Thus
understood, metaphysics becomes the lucid awareness and
description of our paradoxical being-in-the-world. Instead of
constructing concepts to conceal the paradoxes of lived experience,
metaphysics as Merleau-Ponty defines it rediscovers the 'funda-
mental strangeness' of the objects of our experience 'and the
miracle of their appearing'.27 As he points out in the 'Introduction'
to Signs, this type of philosophy is the very antithesis of a
'God-like survey' and even of an allegedly 'higher point of view'.
Instead of soaring over a world spread out beneath its gaze, 'it
plunges into the perceptible', 'seeks contact with brute being'
and - 'in regaining the "vertical" world' - discloses the 'chiasma
of the visible'.28
Is not that, however, the task of his projected ontology as
Merleau-Ponty outlines it in what has become The Visible and the
Invisible: Followed By Working Notes? It is true that he insists on the
impossibility of defining this ontology prior to the actual carrying
out of his project and that he staunchly refuses to specify in
advance either the nature of the inquiry or even its methodology -
except to say what his interrogation 'must not be' and to caution
that it 'requires a complete reconstruction of philosophy'. The
notion of 'flesh', which 'has no name in any philosophy', is to be
central in this reconstruction. Despite a note suggesting that his
prospective definition of ontology would restrict the latter to an
elaboration of key notions while that of philosophy would include
the consideration of philosophy's own procedure, the bulk of
Merleau-Ponty's unfinished manuscript and notes dealing with
his intended ontology makes no such distinction between it and
philosophy.29 Notwithstanding his resolve to avoid any predeter-
mi nation of its contours, moreover, those writings do in fact
indicate that the intent of Merleau-Ponty's mature ontology-
philosophy is of a piece with that of his earlier Phenomenology.
 Conclusion 165

In light of the manifest impossibility of compartmentalizing

Merleau-Ponty's philosophy into segments labelIed, respectively,
'phenomenology', 'metaphysics' and 'ontology', we are unable to
discount his final fragmentary 'ontology' as irrelevant for an
assessment of his 'phenomenology' of perception, or to dismiss as
inaccurate Merleau-Ponty's own assertion - made in one of his
'Working Notes' - that the Phenomenology 'is in fact ontology'.3o
No matter how tempting it might be to do so, it thus becomes
impossible to argue, for example, that Merleau-Ponty's conception
of phenomenology's proper task confines phenomenology to a
description of the perceptual world, whilst metaphysics or onto-
logy rightly probes the Being which is its source. The various
passages which have been cited show, on the contrary, that we are
dealing with an integral, existential philosophy. When judged on its
own terms, this philosophy consequently proves to be insufficiently
radical in the Phenomenology of Perception. The very notion of
perception already suggests distinctions beyond 'our brute or wild
experience' - such as that between seeing and thinking. If it is to
be truly radical, the description of our lived, or 'primitive',
experience must go back to what is given to us originally 'in an
experience-source,.31
But how are we to accomplish such areturn to genuinely 'brute'
experience? Are we not perforce condemned to draw those
minimal distinctions which philosophical inquiry itself implies?
As Merleau-Ponty acknowledges, not even the most radical reflec-
tion can recapture immediate experience as such - for that would
require a coincidence, a fusion, wh ich reflection itself precludes.
The experience to which reflection returns is inevitably an expe-
rience mediated by that very reflection. Radical, or 'concrete',
philosophy is thus a profoundly paradoxical undertaking. 32 This
does not mean, however, that it is of its very nature doomed to
failure or that it constitutes a futile endeavour. Indeed - ironically
enough - it is its own paradoxicalness which provides reflection
with the requisite key to penetrate the sedimentation of acquired
significances so as to elucidate the very genesis of meaning in the
paradoxical nature of our lived inherence in Being. To appreciate
that the Phenomenology's failure to trace meaning to its origin in
our self-sensing hold on brute Being is indeed a shortcoming, it is
important to indicate how such a radicalized inquiry might
proceed.
166 Conclusion

A rectification of the Phenomenology's descriptive analysis could

weil take the latter's conclusion as its own point of departure. We
have seen that Merleau-Ponty's phenomenological description of
temporality as primordially self-aware, self-affecting subjectivity,
reveals the structure of presence; and that his subsequent investi-
ga ti on of freedom involves an extensive critique of the Sartrian
opposition between being and nothingness. That critique leads
Merleau-Ponty to conclude that we must from the start be aware of
being somehow centred outside ourselves, that we are not
inaccessible subjectivities but rather, an intersubjective 'field of
presence' and that our freedom does not consist in a secreting of
nothingness, but in a transformatory exchange with what iso H,
like Sartre, we then examine our philosophieal interrogation itself,
we will find that questioning does indeed define our very being;
nonetheless, we will go beyond Sartre's account by exposing - as
in the Phenomenology - the tacit presupposition in his contention
that the fundamental relation whieh reveals itself in any question
is one of rupture and opposition. Instead, we will see that the
'encounter between "us" and " w hat is" - these words being taken
as simple indexes of a meaning to be specified' - is one of
presence in whieh our very openness upon what is, testifies to our
primordial bond with it and brings to light a common 'flesh'.
Reflection on our philosophieal inquiry will disclose that primary
coiling or folding over, whieh installs us beyond ourselves in what
is, and allows a novel significance to emerge in the hollow which
that reflecting creates. 33
Dur reflection necessarily rests on language; yet it thrusts us out
of the already established significances so that - in authentie
philosophizing - we experience the coming to articulation of
mute Being within our own philosophieal discourse, in our very
attempt to regain contact with immediate experience. In endea-
vouring to disclose and describe the miraculous birth of meaning
in pre-reflective experience, reflection so to speak bends back over
that experience and, in failing to fuse with it, creates the opening
wh ich enables the same miracle to occur in philosophical expres-
sion itself. This paradox at the core of philosophy's creativity
mirrors that of our overall being-in-the-world; hence our reflec-
tion on the former can re-awaken us to an appreciation of the
nature of our primordial presence to brute Being. Authentie
philosophieal expression emerges in the flesh of language from the
'pregnant silence' which is its invisible infrastructure and, in
 Conclusion 167

crystallizing into speech, takes its place in the world of already

acquired significances. The transformatory exchange between the
latter and the as-yet mute intention, restructures the linguistic
field so that it becomes the springboard for further acts of
expression. Thus philosophical inquiry interrogates Being from
within and, in doing so, continually establishes new relationships
wHh H. In general, then, the 'self-sensing' character of our own
flesh opens us to what is and links us with it, while enabling us to
thrust up new significances which reshape the primary given and,
in turn, draw us on to ever fresh efforts of expression.
In failing to focus on this chiasma of the visible and the
invisible, this intersecting of our flesh and that of brute Being, the
Phenomenology ultimately misses the dimension of nascent mean-
ing and thus falls short of Merleau-Ponty's express intention to
offer a truly radical description. Nevertheless, Hs failure to un-
cover the very roots of our lived experience does not annul the
work's worth or ren der it incapable of providing the sort of
foundation suggested in our consideration of its contemporary
relevance. It does, however, mean that philosophical reflection
must coil back over the 'phenomenological' description of percep-
tion so as to push itself beyond the latter's results to a genuinely
radical articulation of our paradoxical presence to what iso
The foregoing has suggested that although the Phenomenology of
Perception constitutes a very significant advance in phenomenolo-
gical-existential philosophy, it does not go far enough in describ-
ing the primordial experience which antedates all our traditional
distinctions and theories. This insufficient radicalization is the
Phenomenology's central weakness; nonetheless, the work's addi-
tional, far less serious, shortccmings must now also be considered.
The first is not actually adefeet in so far as it has to do wHh the
very nature of 'concrete' philosophy - namely, its deseriptive
eharacter. As we saw earlier, Merleau-Ponty hirnself alerts his
readers to this matter and points out that those who are firmly
committed to the dassical approaehes will find his aceount con-
fused, unconvincing and philosophically insignificant. Their own
theoretical constructs will strike such critics as infinitely more real
than the phenomena of experience described in the Phenomeno-
logy. The latter's fluid concepts will deern incomprehensible to
them and, despite Merleau-Ponty's denial, they will deern simply
a product of idiosyncratic introspeetion the ambiguous domain
which he protrays. These readers will dismiss his conditional
168 Conc1usion

certainty, perspectival truth and pre-reflective bodily knowledge

as not being any certainty, truth or knowledge at all.
Merleau-Ponty cannot counter such allegations by bringing
forward some definitive experiment, unchallengeable fact, telling
argument or clever proof. From the perspective of 'concrete'
philosophy, these conventional rejoinders are predicated on an
acceptance of the scientific preconception of the uni verse and the
concomitant ideal of knowledge. The rebuttals are therefore them-
selves thoroughly uncritical. Concrete philosophy criticizes this
presupposed adherence to an objective, unambiguous, precisely
knowable world; consequently, it must forego the philosophical
tactics which are based on what it considers to be a prejudice.
Having rejected on principle the possibility of philosophical
refutation, Merleau-Ponty's only recourse - as he readily
acknowledges - is to endeavour to re-awaken his critics to their
own experience and induce them to abandon their assumptions
by disclosing the plethora of previously incomprehensible pheno-
mena made accessible through his approach.
This sole resort is unfortunately even more problematic than
Merleau-Ponty decIares it to be. After all, the dogmatic readers will
doubtless regard the Phenomeno[ogy's description of those pheno-
mena as more - not less - unintelligible than the traditional
accounts, notwithstanding the latters' lacunae. Buttressed by both
common sense and science in their belief in the objective world,
such critics can hardly be expected to render themselves suffi-
ciently present to the text so as to enable them to find Merleau-
Ponty's position genuinely convincing. Given their protracted
adhesion to 'the natural attitude to things' and the requisite
habitual tailoring of their own experience accordingly, how are
those readers to distinguish their 'actual' experience from its
customary distortion? Furthermore, in light of the enormous
prestige of science and the consequent pressures to discredit any
experience that fails to fit the tacitly prescribed framework, what is
to prompt them to suspend that 'natural attitude' which conforms
with the basic assumptions of science? Why should they question
the validity of long established criteria for judging reality? Why
should they renounce the usual recourse to auxiliary hypothesis to
rectify any alleged inadequacies in the traditional theories? Why
should they consider the Phenomeno[ogy's account of experience to
be more incIusive than the renditions offered by the classical
approaches - why not simply bring forward phenomena and
 Conclusion 169

experiments which the Phenomenology does not discuss? What is to

prevent readers from reversing Merleau-Ponty's charge that they
are the victims of 'a kind of mental blindness' ,34 by retorting that
on the contrary, his stubborn rejection of distinctions supported
not only by common sense but also by science, evidently sterns
from a peculiar mental blind spot? Why not add - for good mea-
sure - that despite his insistence on the contingency of reflection,
Merleau-Ponty's failure to examine the concrete origin of his own
thought unfortunately keeps hirn from discovering his glaring
intellectual block?!
Merleau-Ponty calls the traditional modes of philosophizing
into question; hence, he lacks any recognized recourse against the
criticisms of those who refuse to dispense with the established
ways of doing and assessing philosophy. It is of little avail to
declare experience the final judge and to inventory phenomena
wh ich pass the test of experience, if detractors persist in disputing
the nature of that experience or challenging the credentials of this
'judge'. In the absence of a11 the classic philosophical comebacks to
the various objections, Merleau-Ponty must supply more than the
few scattered comments which he proffers regarding the character
of his approach. If those who are not already committed to such a
mode of philosophizing are to be induced to suspend their
preconceptions sufficiently so as to heed their own underlying
experience - as Merleau-Ponty evidently hopes - then the inhe-
rent difficulty in what has come to be known as 'shifting para-
digms' must be addressed directly and treated in considerably
greater detail than it has been in the Phenomenology. In addition,
the readers must be alerted to their own role in accomplishing
such a shift of their entire philosophical framework.
If he is to succeed in re-awakening his readers from their
'dogmatic slumber' - to use Kant's famous phrase - Merleau-
Ponty must preface his 'phenomenological' description of percep-
tion with a discussion of the relationship between the reader and
the text. This would induce the readers of the Phenomenology to
reflect at the outset on their own function in disclosing the
phenomena which the text describes. Having been duly sensitized
to various ways of approaching a philosophical work, they would
be more apt to recognize and to bracket their assumptions instead
of automatica11y discrediting whatever resists the usual categori-
zations. As it is, Merleau-Ponty's brief remarks about taking up
and rethinking Descartes' thought as embodied in the latter's
170 Conclusion

writings, implicitly point in the direction of a fuller discussion of

reading - but Merleau-Ponty fails to provide it. 35 Nor does it
suffice to discuss the nature of bodily expression and comprehen-
sion, as he presents it in the Phenomenology, without focusing
specifically on the question of how to read the text. In the absence
of such an examination, Merleau-Ponty's sparse comments about
the impossibility of producing proofs to support his description
are likely to have very little impact on his readers. To make matters
worse, Merleau-Ponty wams his readers that there can be no
conclusive experiment because all experiments involve interpreta-
tions which already colour their conclusions; yet he hirnself
occasionally makes use of experimental findings - such as those of
Nagel, Stratton and Wertheimer - in a way that would suggest
precisely the opposite, by speaking as if the results definitively
authorize his own conclusions. Whilst there can be no question of
dispelling the problems attending any philosophy which criticizes
the established modes of thinking instead of philosophizing from
within the traditional framework, a thorough exposition of those
problems and a concomitant consideration of the readers' task,
would go a long way in encouraging those who are wedded to the
classical approach es to relinquish their tenacious hold - at least
enough to appreciate the import of Merleau-Ponty's description of
perception. Regrettably, the Phenomenology fails to offer such
crucial assistance.
The requisite discussion of the relationship of the reader to the
text could consist of a development of some key points of Sartre's
study of literature. For example, Sartre contends in What is
Literature? that reading is neither a mechanical registering nor an
impartial contemplation of marks printed on paper. Thus if one
were to read each word of a text separately, its meaning would fai!
to emerge because the latter is not the sum of words but rather, the
organic whole. Writing and reading are dialectically correlated and
constitute the two moments of what is effectively a joint venture.
In seeking to disclose some truth, the prose-writer embarks on a
project of communication which requires the reader's participa-
ti on for its realization. Only writing and reading together can bring
it about that something is revealed, as a revelation is only such tor
someone. Consequently, the writer implicitly appeals for the
reader's collaboration. In order to comply, the reader must go
beyond a merely 'abstract consciousness' of what the writer is
saying. Reading is therefore 'directed creation'; but the reader is
 Conclusion 171

free to reject the writer's appeal by refusing to take part. Such a

refusal prevents the text from actually becoming a disclosure - at
least as far as that reader is concerned. As Sartre puts it, 'to write is
thus both to disclose the world and to offer it as a task to the
generosity of the reader,.36 Undoubtedly, Merleau-Ponty's deve-
lopment of these themes would have differed significantly from
their presentation in What is Literature?; in themselves, however,
they are in keeping with the description of perception in the Pheno-
menology. If the latter is to achieve its stated objective of re-
awakening the reader to an appreciation of the lived experience
subtending both the 'natural attitude' and all the theoretical
reconstructions of the world, then - despite Merleau-Ponty's evi-
dent presumption to the contrary - that study cannot in fact
dispense with an explicit examination of the sort of themes
outlined here.
Merleau-Ponty's recurrent heavy reliance on the results of
studies dealing with pathological behaviour - particularly those
of Goldstein and Gelb pertaining to Schneider - also considerably
weakens his description of perception. In the absence of any
adequate discussion of the difficulties inherent in the very nature
of his philosophy and the kind of approach which its comprehen-
sion requires on the part of the reader, it is especially tempting for
the latter to dismiss the Phenomenology. The grounds for such
dismissal might weIl be that Schneider's experience proves no-
thing because it is too individual and in any case, too different to
throw any possible light on normal experience. Further, the reader
might challenge the conclusions stemming from Merleau-Ponty's
assessment of Schneider's reported behaviour, by arguing that
they are mere theoretical constructions of alleged experience and
that Merleau-Ponty is hirns elf guilty of tailoring observations to
fit his own preconceptions concerning the nature of our normal
experience. The reader can thus simply level at Merleau-Ponty
the latter's own charge against the classical theorists - that they
are fundamentally uncritical in their interpretation of human
experience.
To forestall such objections, Merleau-Ponty would need to
discuss in much greater detail the meaning of 'facts', 'data' and
observations; the philosophical status of experiments; the issue of
interpretation and his own use of experimental findings. For hirn,
of course, it is not a matter of proving anything but rather, of
describing the phenomena as he sees them upon putting his
172 Conclusion

'natural attitude' in abeyance. Ultimately, his readers must judge

for themselves whether that description adequately captures the
lived structures of their own pre-reflective experience. In order to
be in a position to make that judgement, however, they must first
re-awaken to an awareness of their actual experience. Given the
difficulty of achieving such awareness, Merleau-Ponty quite
rightly examines behavioural breakdowns to draw attention to
their normal counterpart. After all, the recognition of iIlness
already implies a conception of heaIth; hence, a elose considera-
tion of the former can indeed bring to light the unacknowledged
preconceptions in the latter, thereby enabling us to put those aside
and see our experience as it really iso It is unfortunate, therefore,
that Merleau-Ponty has not supplied the necessary methodological
discussion for this approach.
Merleau-Ponty's method in the Phenomenology elearly also in-
volves a continual juxtaposition of the 'empiricist' and 'inteIIec-
tualist' approaches; consequently, it is essential to consider
whether that perpetual juxtaposition in any way weakens the
Phenomenology. On first consideration, it may seem that Merleau-
Ponty has erected straw pins whose toppling requires little effort,
for neither position is consistently identifiable with the works of
any single philosopher or psychologist. This does not mean,
however, that either of these positions is an artificially created
stance. Merleau-Ponty's own references to various writings,
supplemented by the sources cited and discussed in this exegesis,
indicate that the positions are by no means artificial - although
they are extreme. Nonetheless, it might still be argued that few of
today's philosophers adopt such positions, most preferring to take
a less extreme, more flexible stand. That may indeed be the case;
yet it does not follow that Merleau-Ponty's critique of 'empiricism'
and 'intellectualism' thereby loses its force and becomes merely of
historical interest. We must remember that Merleau-Ponty also
discusses hybrids of the two positions and shows that they share
the same basic assumptions; moreover, in the Phenomenology we
have seen the same fundamental prejudice underlying both ex-
tremes. Despite their apparent difference, the majority of existing
approach es continue to rest on that bias.
There is nevertheless a sense in which Merleau-Ponty's persi-
stent focus on 'empiricism' and 'intellectualism' does indeed
weaken his description of perception. His manner of presenting
and criticizing the extremes frequently makes it exceedingly
 Conclusion 173

difficult to discern Merleau-Ponty's own position on the particular

issue under consideration. More importantly, his preoccupation
with 'empiricism' and 'intellectualism' is no doubt at least par-
tially responsible for the relative lack in development of his own
position. The bulk of his efforts is devoted to exposing the
inadequacies of the tradition al approaches, thereby frequently
leaving his response beyond their critique largely a matter of
implication. As a result, Merleau-Ponty's own key concepts re-
ceive far too little elaboration and the issues which he addresses
remain very undeveloped. There is all too little discussion, for
example, of the meaning of notions such as field, horizon, ambi-
guity, certainty, truth, rationality, comprehension, knowledge,
fact, 'value-fact', motivation, sedimentation, necessity, contingen-
cy, intentionality, power, nature, culture, 'interworld', signifi-
cance and 'meaning' itself. This is most unfortunate, as Merleau-
Ponty indicates that we are not simply to assign their usual
meanings to these pivotal terms. Nor is his own use of them
always entirely consistent - especially in the case of 'meaning',
'significance', 'nature' and 'culture'. A number of crucial questions
regarding the meanings, import and interrelations of the various
notions thus remain unanswered in the text. For example,
Merleau-Ponty's own use of the terms 'nature' and 'culture' is
sometimes very narrow - yet occasionally quite broad. His re-
marks about the primacy of perception, as weil as the approach
wh ich he actually employs in describing it in the Phenomenology,
would suggest that there is a level of 'culture' above the level of
perception and that the fundamental structures of the laUer can be
elucidated whilst bracketing any consideration of the former. Yet
as Merleau-Ponty hirnself acknowledges at various points, it is
ultimately impossible to maintain a distinction between 'nature'
and 'culture' and to consider them as 'lower' or 'higher' layers,
respecti vely.
It would see m that our perception is always already imbued
with 'cultural' meanings and values, so that it is in fact misleading
to imply that we can examine perception without at the same time
investigating questions of 'rationality' and 'values'. As Merleau-
Ponty's own discussion of expression and speech indicates, our
perception is inherently laden with 'cultural' influences. Just as
the question of what the world was like before the appearance of
humans, is meaningless and a world without a human perspective
inconceivable, the question of the being of bodily experience
174 Conclusion

anterior to any cultural influence is also meaningless, and the

absence of the latter inconceivable. This would suggest that bodily
experience cannot be adequately studied in abstraction from the
belonging of the body-subject to a particular culture; hence, the
description of perception might weIl need to be much more
culturally specific than Merleau-Ponty's description in fact iso
There can be no question of resolving this extremely complex
issue here; nevertheless, it must at least be noted that even the
notion of 'perception' is not adequately considered in the Pheno-
menology. Then too, there are broader questions wh ich remain
substantially unresolved in the text - such as the meaning and
implications of an absolute within the relativity of our experience,
or the parameters of this sort of philosophy and the need for a
much more radical departure from the traditional philosophical
terminology in order to articulate the novelty of approach. On the
other hand, it is important to keep in mind that Merleau-Ponty at
no time considered his Phenomenology to constitute a definitive
statement; on the contrary, he explicitly asserted his intention to
undertake subsequently the necessary studies of 'culture', langu-
age, intersubjectivity, philosophy, truth and the like. 37 In his own
eyes, therefore, the Phenomenology was a preliminary investiga-
tion whose various themes were to be pursued in more depth
upon its completion. As we have seen, those subsequent studies
were never finished. Consequently, the many questions wh ich the
Phenomenology implicitly raises but leaves unanswered, call all the
more urgently on the readers' own resources to take up and carry
forward Merleau-Ponty's uncompleted inquiry. In its sustained
attempt to re-awaken its readers to the enigmatic richness of their
own lived experience, the description of perception provides the
requisite tools for embarking on such an endeavour. Despite its
preliminary nature, its lacunae and insufficient radicality,
Merleau-Ponty's Phenomenology 01 Perception thus makes a very
substantial contribution to the philosophical discourse of our
time.
 Conclusion 175

Notes
1. Phenomenology oi Perception, xvii-xviii.
2. G. W. F. Hege!, The Phenomenology oi Mind (trans. J. B. Baillie),
(New York: Harper & Row, 1967), pp. 162-3, 177, 800ft
3. Heidegger, 'Letter on Humanism', The Existentialist Tradition:
Se/ected Writings, p. 229.
4. Ibid., p. 233.
5. See, for example, Kierkegaard, The Present Age (trans. Alexander
Dru), (New York: Harper & Row, 1962) pp. 56ff., 62; Kierkegaard,
Fear and Trembling and The Sickness Unto Death (trans. Walter
Lowrie), (New York: Doubleday & Co., 1954) pp. 30ft, 208ff.;
Jaspers, Reason and Existenz (trans. William Earle), (New York:
Noonday Press, 1955) pp. 51-77, 137ff.; Marcei, The Philosophy oi
Existentialism (trans. Manya Harari), (New York: Citadel Press, 1966)
pp 15ft, 46, 94ft
6. Being and Nothingness: a Phenomenological Essay on Ontology,
pp. 126, 377, 472-7, 555, 568-70, 617, 647, 651-7, 671-4, 784, 797.
7. 'The Phenomenal Field', Phenomenology oi Perception, pp. 56-7.
8. Merleau-Ponty's notion of 'value-fact' is a modality of that mediat-
ing 'third term' which is lacking, for example, in Sartre's analysis of
our being-in-the-world. It challenges - so it seems to me - Sartre's
strict demarcation between ontology and ethics. (See, for example,
Being and Nothingness: a Phenomenological Essay on Ontology, p. 795.)
9. 'The Primacy of Perception and Its Philosophical Consequences',
The Primacy oi Perception and Other Essays, pp. 25-6. See also p. 39
regarding Merleau-Ponty's refusal to separate his phenomenolo-
gical description from his concIusions pertaining to the practical
realm.
10. Phenomenology of Perception, p. 127.
11. Ibid., p. 179.
12. MerIeau-Ponty, The Visible and the Invisible: Followed by Working
Notes (ed. Claude Lefort and trans. Alphonso Lingis), Evanston:
Northwestern University Press, 1968) p. 200.
13. Ibid., p. 200. (Note that MerIeau-Ponty is not consistent in capitaliz-
ing 'Being' and 'Logos'. Occasionally, as in this case, he fails to do
so.)
14. Phenomenology oi Perception, p. 197.
15. Ibid., vii, xiv, xv, xx, xxi.
16. The Visible and the Invisible: Followed by Working Notes, p. 168.
17. La prose du monde (ed. Claude Lefort), (Paris: Gallimard, 1969);
English translation by John O'Neill, The Prose oi the World
(Evanston, II1.: Northwestern University Press, 1973). For a discus-
sion of the relationship between this work and Merleau-Ponty's The
Visible and the Invisible, see Claude Lefort's 'Avertissement' /
'Introduction' to the former. His 'Foreward' to The Visible and the
Invisible is also very helpfu!, as is the 'Translator's Preface'.
18. 'Eye and Mind', The Primacy oi Perception and Other Essays, p. 159.
As the translator notes, this essay was the final work published in
Merleau-Ponty's own lifetime. It first appeared in Jan. 1961.
176 Conclusion

19. 'Working Notes', The Visible and the Invisible: Followed by Working
Notes, pp. 170-1, 175-6, 178-9.
20. The Visible and the Invisible: Followed by Working Notes, pp. 138-40,
146, 167, 170,202-3,224,250-1.
21. Ibid., pp. 185, 215-6.
22. For a very useful 'sketch' of MerIeau-Ponty's philosophy of langu-
age, see James M. Edie's 'Forward' to Consciousness and the Acquisi-
tion oi Language by MerIeau-Ponty, translated by Hugh Silverman
(Evanston, III.: Northwestern University Press, 1973) pp. xi-xxxii.
Once again, the 'Translator's Preface' is also helpful.
23. 'Working Notes', The Visible and the Invisible: Followed by Working
Notes, 202-3.
24. 'Preface', Phenomenology oi Perception, pp. vii-ix, xiii-xv.
25. Ibid., xiv, xvii-xix.
26. 'The Film and the New Psychology', Sense and Non-Sense (trans.
Hubert L. Dreyfus and Patricia A. Dreyfus), (Evanston, III.: North-
western University Press, 1964), p. 58.
27. 'Marxism and Philosophy', Sense and Non-Sense, pp. 133-4; 'The
Metaphysical in Man', Sense and Non-Sense, pp. 92-8. Merleau-
Ponty's 1961 lecture notes on 'philosophy and non-philosophy'
testify to his unflagging concern that philosophy be 'concrete'. See,
for example, 'Merleau-Ponty: Philosophie et non-philosophie de-
puis Hegel - Notes de cours (11)', Textures, 10-11, 1975, pp. 163--4.
28. Merleau-Ponty, 'Introduction', Signs (trans. Richard C. McClearly),
(Evanston, III.: Northwestern University Press, 1964) pp. 20-2, 157-8.
29. The Visible and the Invisible: Followed by Working Notes, pp. 139,147,
158-9, 167, 179, 193, 259.
30. Ibid., p. 176.
31. Ibid., pp. 158-62.
32. Ibid., pp. 35ff., 44-6, 102, 122-9, 158-62, 174, 197.
33. A dose reading of The Visible and the Invisible: Followed by Working
Notes suggests that MerIeau-Ponty intended to take the sort of
approach which I have outlined to radicalize his earlier description
of perception. See, for example, pp. 31ff., 50-95, 99-104, 119-29,
156-62, 197. See also the 'Introduction', Signs, pp. 14-22.
34. Phenomenology oi Perception, p. 25.
35. The following cursory remarks which Merleau-Ponty makes in his
chapter on 'The Cogito' are especially interesting for a discussion of
the relationship between the text and its reader: 'This book, once
begun, is not a certain set of ideas; it constitutes for me an open
situation, for which I could not possibly provide any complex
formula, and in which I struggle blindlyon until, miraculously,
thoughts and words become organized by themselves.' (Phenomeno-
logy oi Perception, p. 369) and: 'It is I who reconstitute the historical
cogito, I who read Descartes' text, I who recognize in it an undying
truth, so that finally the Cartesian cogito acquires its [meaning] only
through my own cogito ... ' (lbid., p. 371).
36. Sartre, What is Literature? (trans. Bernard Frechtman), (London:
Methuen, 1950) pp. 10-13, 29-32, 39-44, 51. Note that a crucial
 Conclusion 177

phrase is missing on p. 30 of this translation. The French original

reads: 'Aussi les cent mille mots alignes dans un livre peuvent etre
lus un a un sans que les sens de l'reuvre en jaillisse; le sens n'est pas
la somme des mots, il en est la totalite organique: (Sartre, Qu'est-ce
que la litterature? (Paris: Gallimard, 1948) p.56.) As we might expect,
there are a number of fundamental points in Sartre's What is
Literature? which are at odds with Merleau-Ponty's position. In fact,
Sartre refers to the Phenomenology in his opening pages and
explicitly rejects the notion that there is any parallelism between
literature on the one hand, and the art of the painter, sculptor or
musician on the other. Merleau-Ponty, for his part, evinced
substantial disagreement with Sartre's book and intended to under-
take a detaiIed study of literature in reply. Unfortunately, that
project did not materialize beyond his unfinished manuscript The
Prose of the World and the essays on language. In any case, such a
detailed treatment would - obviously - have been too late and too
long for incorporation into the Phenomenology. What the latter
sorely lacks, however, is at least some explicit consideration of its
readers' relationship to the text - somewhat along the lines I have
indicated. (Those points do harmonize with the Phenomenology.)
For further consideration, see the first two pages of Sartre's What is
Literature?, as weIl as Claude Lefort's 'Avertissement' to La prose du
monde (vii-viii) and Bernard Pingaud's article 'Merleau-Ponty,
Sartre et la littl~rature', L'ARC, no. 46 (1971) pp. 80-8.
37. 'An Unpublished Text by Maurice Merleau-Ponty: a Prospectus of
His Work', The Primacy of Perception, pp. 3-11.
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178
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 INDEX
ambiguity, 4-5, 16, 31, 45, 54-5, analysis, 29-31, 34, 66
62, 65-6, 104, 109-11, 173 cogito, 114-18, 121, 176
amnesia, 57, 63 concept and tradition, 65
anchorage, primordial, 87 concept of body and soul, 29,
anosognosia, 28, 31-2 65
aphasia, 57-8 criticism of, xii-xvi
existential theory of, 58, 63-4 method, Cartesian, xii
modern theory of, 63-64 distance, 85-91
Aristotle, viii dreams, 87, 137
association, 6-9
attention, 10-14 Edie, James M., xix, 176
ego
Berman, Morris, xi, xviii psychicaJ, xi ii
body, 21-66, 149 solipsistic supremacy of, 131,
as expressive space, 47 133
as expression and speech, transcendental, xiii-xiv, 19,
56-66 72, 78, 80, 88, 129
general synthesis of, 50 Einstein, Albert, relativity
habitual, 32-3, 84 theory, 17
image - philosophical Elizabeth, Princess, 29-30
implications of, 39-42, 44, emotions, 9, 16,28,60, 113,
101 116
objedified, 27-35 memory and, 28, 33
and sexuality, 48-55 thought and, 62
empiricism, 5-6, 8-15, 28, 45, 58,
Camus, Albert, xviii, 151 72, 75, 172-3
Chappell, V. c., 104 aphasia and, 58
dass conciousness, 141-4 attention and, 10-13
cogito, 109-22, 150, 161 morbid motiJity and, 44-5
Descartes, xii, 114-18, 121, 176 perception and, 72
colours, 3-5, 12, 57-8, 64, 73, 78, rejection of, 47
89, 92-5, 97-8, 146 sensation and, 7, 8, 75
alterations in, 73 spatial position, 81
as real, 92-3 epoche, xiii
consciousness, xii, xiii, xiv, xv, essence, xiii, 151, 163
9, 11, 13, 16, 18-20, 75, 98, abstract, 14
111-13, 120, 129, 133-4, 157, of consciousness, xv
159, 161 Husserl and, xiii-xiv
intentionality of, xiv eternity, 126, 128
constancy, 89-90, 92-3, 95, 97 experience, xv, xvi, 4-5, 7-8,
abandonment of, 13 14-15, 18-19, 33, 36-8, 39, 71,
hypothesis, 10, 13, 18, 77 99, 149, 154-5, 157-9, 164,
culture, 173-4 167-9, 171-4
cybernetics, xi closed and open, 65
phenomena of, 8, 167, 171
depth,84
Descartes, Rene, vii, xii-xiii, 3, fjeld, xiv, 5, 8, 24, 167, 173
29-30,34-5, 37, 66, 111, 122, of perception, 36, 71, 79
169 phenomenal, 15-20

181
182 Index

field cont'd perception of emotion and,

'of presence', 126, 128-9, 146, 113
166 truth and, 118, 121
sensory, 27 intellectualism,10-14, 28, 45-6,
transcendental, 19 63,72,75,90-1, 172-3
visua\, 25, 73 attention and, 10-13
freedom, 36, 133--48, 152, 166 Descartes, 29
dependence and, 34, 36 language, theories of, 58-63
existentialism and, ix morbid motility and, 45-6
Gelb, Schneider case study, objeetivity, 90-1
41-2, 171 pereeption and, 72, 74--5
Gestalt, 19, 45, 140 in psychology, 28, 34
gestures, 60-2 sexuality and, 51-2
communication and spatial position, 81
comprehension oE, 61-2 intentional are, 46
'phonetic', 64 intentionality, 40, 127, 149-50,
speech and, 65 173
Goldstein, Schneider case study, bodily, xiv, 31, 40, 42, 64,150
41-2, 171 body image and, 40, 42
aphasia,63 of eonseiousness, xiv
Grünbaum, modern theory of Husser\, xiv, 127, 150
aphasia,63 introspeetion, in psyehology,
Guerriere, Danie\, vii, xviii, 72 18-19
intuitionism, 18
habits, existential analysis oE,
47-8
laspers, Karl, ix-x, xviii, 151,
hallucination, 13, 113
175
Hegel, Georg Wilhelm
judgment, 10-14
Friedrich, ix, xvi, 54, 150,
175
Kant, Immanue\, vii, xiii, 11, 14,
Hegelian Reason, 19
75-6, 78, 79, 124, 129, 150,
Heidegger, Martin, vii-viii, x,
169
xviii, 125, 127, 151, 175
Kierkegaard, Soran, ix, xviii,
Heisenberg, Wem er,
151, 175
uncertainty principle of, 17
knowledge, xii, xv, 7, 15, 20, 40,
Heraclitus, viii
168, 173
history, ix-x, 17, 51, 121, 141-2,
absolute, ix, 120, 151
145,146
Koeklemans, Joseph J., xix
existentialism and, ix
horizon, xv, 24, 173
double, of extern al and bodily language, ix, 3, 57-9, 61, 101,
space,41 156, 162, 166-7, 174, 177;
indeterminate, 46 (see also speech)
particular, 24 existential signifieance oE,
of the past, 8 59-60
of possi bi li ties, 44 existentialism and, ix
Husserl, Edmund, vii, xii-xix, study oE, 161
14, 125, 127, 129, 150 language, though and, 59-61,
absolute evidence, 120 64, 114
phenomenology, xiv, 19 Lefort, M. Claude, xix, 160, 175,
177
idealism, 19, 23-4, 149 lighting, 93-5
ideas, xv-xvi, 115, 121 modulation oE, 95
illusion Locke, lohn, 3
 Index 183

Marcel, Gabriel, xviii, 151, 175 radical, xv, xvii, 14, 19, 20,
memory, 6-7, 33-4 75-6, 121, 124, 150, 163,
emotion and, 33 165
projection of, 6-9, 126 repression, organic
metaphysics, 162, 164--5 Ryle, Gilbert, 18, 20
motility, morbid, 41, 43-4
movement, 42, 44--86 Sartre, Jean-Paul, vii-viii, x, xiv,
xviii-xix, 84, 90, 96, 102-6,
Nagel, 82, 170 122, 126, 130, 151, 166,
nature, 154, 173 170---1, 175-7
Nietzsche, Friedrich Wilhelm, Being and Nothingness, 54, 105,
xviii, 151, 156 117, 120, 125, 129, 132,
134, 148, 152-3
objectivity, ix, 12 cogito,117
ontology, 160, 162, 164--5 freedom, position of, 133-47,
152-3
perception, 12-13, 15, 17, 70-2 relations with othes, 102-3,
89-90, 98, 155, 157-9, 163, 152
165,173-4 schizophrenia, 84
Husserl, 14 Schneider, 42-6, 51-2, 65
structure of, 11-12, 154 motility, impaired, 42-5
phenomenology, xv, xvii-xviii, sexuality, inhibited, 46, 51-2,
19, 165 64--5
Cartesian Way, xiii, xv sensation, 3-6
meaning of, xvii, 162-3 kinaesthetic, 37-8
task of, Merleau-Ponty, xv, unification of senses, 77-8
162,163 sexuality, 53
philosophy, existentialist, body and, 48-55
viii-ix, xi, xvii, 162-3, 165 intellectualism approach to,
physiology, 5, 27, 34 51-2
mechanistic, 25, 27-35, 39, 46 physiological, 51
modern, 27 Schneider, 46, 51-2, 64--5
sexuality, approach to, 51 signification, 139-40, 146, 156
Pingaud, Bernard, 177 primary process of, 50
Plato, ix Smith, Colin, xviii, 39, 47
'presence', 9, 39, 130---1, 133 Socrates, 20, 115
psychology, 34, 39, 46, 89-90 solipsism, 16, 98-9, 101-2,
classical, and the body, 36-8, 104--5, 115, 131, 133
39 speech, 56-61 (see also language)
Gestalt, 19, 45, 140 authentie, 59, 159, 161, 166,
introspective, 18-19 167
first and second order oE,
quality, 3-5, 76 59-60,159
'gestural significance', 65
rationalism, xi, 17 Stratton, 81, 170
realism, 13, 23-4, 115, 149 subjectivity, 12, 16,38,98, 150,
reduction, phenomenological, 166
viii, xii-xiv, xvi, 155, 163 incarnate, xv, 15, 53, 84, 147,
Husserl and Merleau-Ponty, 150, 154, 157-8
xii-xvi transcendental, xiii
Sartre, xiv
reflection, xiv-xv, 8-9, 14, 19-20, technology, x, xi, 154
32, 76, 78, 160, 165-6, 169 mili tary, x, xi
hyper-, xv modern, ix-x
184 Index

technology cont'd eternaL ix, xii

nuclear, x-xi of fact and reason, 120
thought, xv and illusion, 118
aware of itself, 9
calculative, x Weber, Max, ix
emotion and, 62 Wertheimer, 82, 170
pure (silence), 60 words, and meanings, 58, 156-7,
speech and, 59, 64, 114 162
truth, ix, xii, xvii, 17, 122, 151,
160, 168, 173--4
absolute, 14 Zeno, 86