Phenomenological Approaches to Intersubjectivity and Values [1 ed.] 1527534820, 9781527534827

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Phenomenological Approaches to Intersubjectivity and Values

Phenomenological Approaches to Intersubjectivity and Values Edited by

Luis Aguiar de Sousa and Ana Falcato

Cambridge Scholars Publishing

Phenomenological Approaches to Intersubjectivity and Values Edited by Luis Aguiar de Sousa and AnaFalcato This book first published 2019 Cambridge Scholars Publishing Lady Stephenson Library, Newcastle upon Tyne, NE6 2PA, UK British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Copyright © 2019 by Luis Aguiar de Sousa, AnaFalcato and contributors All rights for this book reserved. No part ofthis book may be reproduced,

stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any fonn or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior pennission ofthe copyright owner. ISBN (10): 1-5275-3482-0 ISBN (13): 978-1-5275-3482-7

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Introduction ................................................................................................ 1 Luis Aguiar De Sousa and Ana Fa1cato Part I. The Cognitive and Epistemological Dimension of the Problem of the Other

Chapter 1 The Inaccessibility of the Other Ego in Husserl's Phenomenology Paul F. Zipfel

..................................................................................................

12

Chapter 2 39 The Other Holding on to Things: M. Merleau-Ponty's Phenomenological Approach to the Problem of Intersubjectivity Luis Ant6ino Umbelino ..................................................................................................

Chapter 3 .................................................................................................. 49 The "Inner Weakness"-Merleau-Ponty on Intersubjectivity, Subjectivity and Husserlian Phenomenology Luis Aguiar De Sousa Chapter 4 .................................................................................................. 83 On the Ecological Self: Possibilities and Failures of Self-Knowledge and Knowledge of Others Roberta Guccinelli Chapter 5 Intersubjectivity in Psychiatry Jorge Gonyalves

..................................................................................................

99

Part II. The Ethical and Existential Approach to the Problem of the Other

Chapter 6 The Primacy of the Whole in Scheler's Phenomenology of Othemess Helder Telo

................................................................................................

112

vi

Table of Contents

Chapter 7 Being-With and Being-Alone in the Young Heidegger Paulo Alexandre Lima

................................................................................................

138

Chapter 8 ................................................................................................ 164 Sartre andlntersubjectivity Andre Barata Chapter 9 ................................................................................................ 1 8 1 Gabriel Marcel: lntersubjectivity as Reciprocal Availability Elodie Malbois Chapter 10 .............................................................................................. 209 What Sense Does Solicitude Make? Rethinking with Levinas the Social Import of Fundamental Philosophicallnquiry Vlad Niculescu Part III. The Other beyond the Phenomenology of Intersubjectivity

Chapter 1 1 .............................................................................................. 240 From Merleau-Ponty to Foucault (and Beyond): Towards a Contemporary Ontology of lnnnanence Gianfranco Ferraro Chapter 12 .............................................................................................. 259 Shame and Ideas of the Self: Bernard Williams, Kant, and I.M. Coetzee Ana Fa1cato Chapter 13 .............................................................................................. 290 Intersubjectivity and Style inL 'etranger Grace Whistler Chapter 14 .............................................................................................. 307 The Poetry in the Pity Nicolas De Warren Contributors ............................................................................................ 321

INTRODUCTION LUIS AGUIAR DE SOUSA AND ANA FALCATO

As witnessed by the number of recent publications on the topic, there has been a renewed interest in phenomenology in recent Anglo-American philosophy. This interest, however, has been almost exclusively directed at phenomenology's possible contributions to issues pertaining to the cognitive sciences and philosophy of mind in general. Phenomenology's remarkable insights are still largely overlooked when it comes to contemporary debate, not only, say, in ethics and aesthetics, but concerning values in general. The present volume is meant to address this gap. For all intents and purposes, this volume can be taken as a collection of papers on the phenomenology of intersubjectivity. However, it is not meant to be just another companion to the topic of intersubjectivity or another collection of assorted essays on phenomenological issues. The idea behind it is that intersubjectivity is the key to what phenomenology has to say about values. It also provides an opportunity to introduce the work of continental scholars whose contributions will, for the most part, be new to English­ speaking academics. The authors of the chapters in this volume are specialists in the fields of phenomenology, post-structuralism, continental social philosophy, philosophy of mind and philosophy of literature. The papers collected here reflect original research on almost all the great phenomenologists' views on intersubjectivity. Accordingly, the book gathers essays on the work of Edmund Husserl, Martin Heidegger, Jean­ Paul Sartre, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, and Emmanuel Levinas. Beyond these, there are also other papers that focus on phenomenologists who are less well known or studied in the Anglo-American world, but whose reflections on intersubjectivity and its relation to ethics are especially relevant, such as Max Scheler and Gabriel Marcel. As a matter of principle, we have chosen to provide as comprehensive an account of phenomenology as possible rather than focusing strictly, say, on Husserlian phenomenology. The downside of this is that the book does not feature papers on certain highly relevant phenomenologists of intersubjectivity and the social world, such as Edith Stein, Alfred Schutz, and those from the so-called Munich school, such as AdolfReinach. On the

2

Introduction

other hand, one ofthe distinguishing features ofthis volume when compared to similar efforts is that it takes seriously what Merleau-Ponty so poignantly wrote about the nature and practice of phenomenology: the responsible philosopher will say that "phenomenology allows itself to be practiced and recognized as a marmer or as a style, or that it exists as a movement, prior to having reached full philosophical consciousness. It has been en route for a long time, and its disciples fmd it everywhere, in Hegel and in Kierkegaard of course, but also in Marx, Nietzsche, and Freud" (Merleau-Ponty 2012, lxxi). In keeping with Merleau-Ponty's idea of phenomenology as a style of philosophizing rather than belonging to a specific school or the endorsement of a fixed set of doctrines, this volume includes studies on authors who are not usually associated with the phenomenological tradition but whose "style of thought" can be said to be, at least in some respects, phenomenological. Accordingly, the reader will find papers dealing with authors or certain strands of thought that normally fall outside the scope of volumes on the phenomenology of intersubjectivity, such as the relation of Foucault's and Deleuze's thought to their phenomenological forebears, the relevance of the phenomenology of intersubjectivity to psychiatry, the problem of intersubjective communication of ethical standpoints through literature, the ethical status of shame and, [mally, the nature of war and its remembrance. As stated above, what makes this volume special and distinct from other collective works on the phenomenology ofintersubjectivity is its insistence on the axiological-that is, the ethical and existential-dimension of phenomenology's account of intersubjectivity. In other words, most of the papers do not focus exclusively (and some not at all) on the cognitive dimension of the problem of intersubjectivity. Furthennore, intersubjectivity is perhaps the topic in which issues concerning the theory of knowledge and cognition, which fonned the core ofHusserl's concerns at the beginning of the phenomenological movement, start to take on an axiological and ethical dimension. It is not by chance that in Levinas, for instance, phenomenological reflection culminates in an ethics based on the encounter with the "face of the other". One can see that this axiological tum in phenomenology was in some sense already unavoidable from the moment Husserl discovered the original character of the presentation of the "other" as an integral part of the phenomenal world. The topic of intersubjectivity is further distinguished by the fact that there seems to be not only much common ground but also a shared approach to the problem of the other, despite the many differences between the various phenomenologists' stances. In fact, one of the most striking conclusions one reaches when reading through some of the papers contained in this volume is that all phenomenologists discussed in this collection share the idea of the "original" character of the presentation of

Phenomenological Approaches to Intersubjectivity and Values

3

the other-that is, the idea that the other is not artificially reached by way of explicit or implicit reasoning. The phenomenological subject is at its innermost core a social subject, for the other is not like any other object I constitute. The "other" is a condition of the possibility not only of objectivity in general, but of cultural objects and values. From this common basis, there is admittedly much division among phenomenologists. To begin with, while Husserl (and in a way, even Merleau-Ponty) still seems to espouse the idea that our access to the other is primarily cognitive, subsequent phenomenologists, especially Scheler, Heidegger and Sartre (not to speak of Marcel or Levinas), are explicitly opposed to the idea that our access could be primarily cognitive in nature, although each of them expresses his 0\Vll position in different ways, using different vocabulary. Heidegger and Sartre say that our relation to the other is one of being, not knowing; Scheler says that we access the other through what he calls "love"; Marcel speaks in tenns of "availability" or "unavailability" to the other; Levinas speaks of an original ethical encounter with the face ofthe other. Another issue that is particularly connected to the nature of our openness to the other and that recurs in many of the phenomenologists discussed in this volume is that of a priori and global or holistic access to the other. Albeit in different forms, it is possible to find this idea in Scheler, Heidegger, Merleau-Ponty and Sartre. Connected to it is also the notion, especially present in the work of Scheler and Merleau­ Ponty, that our own subjectivity, far from being insulated from the world and others, is dependent for its constitution on the relation with the other. I myself, as a subject, am only co-constituted along with the other subject. According to this view, the difference between me and the other, as subjects, derives from a primordial intersubjective, or intercorporeal, relation, if not a straightforward identity with the other. Thus, to return to a previous point, the introduction of the topic of the other confers on phenomenology an undeniable, if sometimes only implicit, ethical dimension. In fact, from a phenomenological point of view, the hope of finding a foundation for ethics or morality must lie in the correct phenomenological analyses of the way in which the other is given to me. Furthennore, to the extent that values are linked to our social existence and have an essentially social dimension, the phenomenology of value must be connected to the phenomenology of intersubjectivity. As for the structure of the present volume, it consists of three parts. The first part contains papers dealing with the more epistemological or cognitive dimension of the problem of intersubjectivity. It opens with Paul Zipfel's paper on the accessibility of the other in Husserl. \¥hat is the meaning of Husserl's talk of inaccessibility when it comes to the experience of the

4

Introduction

other? Zipfel tries to elucidate this question by means of a discussion of the meaning of "direct" and "originary" in Husserl. According to Zipfel, "directness" refers to the self-givenness of an object, while "originality" refers to the belonging of an object to a unified stream of consciousness. Husserl's talk of the other ego's being accessible only in its inaccessibility comes dO\vn to the fact that the other ego is given directly to me, but in an unoriginal marmer-that is, as another stream of consciousness that is unable to be temporally unified with mine. What is originally given to me is only the other's body, not his ego with its stream of consciousness. In the following chapters of the first part, both Luis Umbelino and Luis Aguiar de Sousa focus on Merleau-Ponty's phenomenological approach to intersubjectivity, especially in his magnum opus, the Phenomenology of Perception. Luis Umbelino stresses the fact that our lived experience is always already an intersubjective experience. If this weren't the case, we would never come up with the idea of otherness based on our 0\Vll private expenence. After showing how Merleau-Ponty's conception of intersubjectivity is related to Husserl's, Umbelino points to the body, not only as lived but also as pre-personal, anonymous and habitual, as forming the primordial layer of our experience of the world and others. He also emphasizes the role that Merleau-Ponty's conception of habit plays in tlie constitution of intersubjectivity to the extent that it short-circuits the subjective-objective divide. Luis Aguiar de Sousa focuses on the relation between Merleau-Ponty's accounts of intersubjectivity and subjectivity and their relation to Merleau­ Ponty's reading of Husserl. De Sousa claims that Merleau-Ponty's philosophical project revolves around the introduction of a phenomenological conception of subjectivity tliat differs from both rationalist/idealist and empiricist/realist/materialist conceptions. FurthemlOre, the author shows that, according to Merleau-Ponty, our social nature prevents us from having the status of a transcendental subject and that this is at tlie center of Merleau­ Ponty's reading of Husser1. The intersubjective relation occurs only on the basis of an anonymous intercorporeal relation. Solipsism contains a kernel of truth tliat it does not understand. It is true that I can never live tlie point of view of the other as mine, but the very distinction between "me" and "other" is dra\Vll against the background of lived intercorporeal relations. De Sousa also contends that the nature of intercorporeal relations should not be conflated with a state of utter indistinction and identity between bodies. In the next chapter, Roberta Guccinelli explores the notion of the "ecological self' in Max Scheler. She raises the question of the existence of a pre-cognitive vital layer which humans share not only with each other but with all living beings. She emphasizes in particular the importance and

Phenomenological Approaches to Intersubjectivity and Values

5

function of the lived organism, as the locus of our "ecological identity", in shaping our most basic values and how we, as members of a species, encounter our environments. Guccinelli then goes on to consider the consequences of Scheler's conception of ecological identity for knowledge of self and others. Knowledge of the self is subsidiary to the most basic sense of self we have through our embodiment. The latter is also what primarily opens us to others before any fOlTIl of reasoning and knowledge concerning others is in place. To conclude the fIrst part, Jorge Gonyalves broaches the phenomenology of intersubjectivity from the point of view of psychiatry. Gonyalves focuses on the intersubjective relation between doctor and patient. His guiding question is how to understand the minds of patients. Gonyalves emphasizes the advantages ofthe phenomenological approach to the other over theories that start out from me as an individual and that postulate the need to infer the mind of the other. However, as the author also shows, not everything that concerns the other is directly sho\Vll via our immediate access to his or her body's expressive nature. The other remains elusive. For that reason, Gonyalves views narratives as a way of understanding the other. In the end, Gonyalves leans towards a hybrid solution to explaining my access to the other. He argues in favor of a phenomenological approach coupled with the understanding of the other's narrative when it comes to psychiatric patients. As an example, he presents the theories and results of Louis Sass, who has proposed an understanding of schizophrenia that relies on an understanding of patients' narratives. Whereas the first part of the present volume comprises papers that deal primarily with phenomenological approaches to the epistemological problem of how we "know" or "access" others, which lead the authors not only to the phenomenology of cognition but also to the phenomenological description of the pre-cognitive layer of our access to the other, the second part deals more with the existential and ethical dimension of our access or openness to the other. In its opening chapter, Helder Telo's paper focuses on Scheler's account of our relation to the other considered as a whole and in its ethical dimension. Telo shows that, for Scheler, the notion of the other has an a priori character, and he sums up Scheler's critique of popular theories of his time, such as the theory of analogical reasoning and of empathy (Einfuhlung). Telo brings to the fore Scheler's idea that the other as a whole, not just a particular other, fOlTIls the background that renders possible the experience both of myself and of any individual other. FurthelTIlore, it is this experience of the other as a whole that is also at stake in the experience of particular communities. Telo also highlights and analyses personal love as that in which genuine access to the other consists

6

Introduction

for Scheler. It is through "love", in Scheler's technical sense, that we are opened not only to particular others but, a fortiori, to the "other as a whole". Finally, Telo brings out the phenomenological foundations of notions such as "social group" and "community", showing how they are part of an encompassing total community, according to Scheler, and how the highest ethical value consists in loving the total community of others, which entails loving every single other. The next chapter, written by Paulo Lima, deals witb tbe problem of access to the other in Heidegger's Being and Time, with a view to determining what Heidegger understood by loneliness or being-alone (Alleinsein). Lima shows how Heidegger's "existential" approach to the problem of the other proceeds from a critique of the so-called "cognitive" approach. According to Lima, the "cognitive approach" was represented by the theories of "empathy" (Einfuhlung), especially tbat developed by Husser!, to which Heidegger opposes his category of being-witb (Mitsein). In this way, Lima's paper also represents a very important scholarly contribution to clarifying one aspect of Heidegger's (mostly silent) relation to Husserl's phenomenology. Lima shows that, according to Heidegger, every instance of Einfuhlung already presupposes tbe more primordial, existential, contact with the other. Very much like in the preceding chapter by Helder Telo, Paulo Lima also explores the idea that our primary contact with the "other" as such fOlTIlS the background of our encounters not only with particular otbers but with the self as well. Being-with has an a priori character that precedes every factical encounter with particular others. Loneliness is only possible as a modification of being-with and presupposes the latter. Lima describes two fOlTIlS of loneliness that can be found in the early Heidegger. The first concerns the factical absence of another being like myself. The second concerns the possibility of my feeling lonely regardless of the factical presence of others. As a result of the analysis of these fOlTIlS of loneliness, Paulo Lima concludes not only that being-with, the a priori community of myself and the other, has an existential structure, but also that loneliness ensues from a breakdO\vn or disturbance of that existential community. In tbe third chapter of Part Two, Andre Barata looks at Sartre's phenomenology of intersubjectivity against tbe background of what he considers the failure of Husserl's effort to solve tbe problem of tbe other. Barata shows that Sartre's approach represents a "relational", "ontological" and "practical" tum in dealing with the problem of intersubjectivity, in contrast to Husserl's purely epistemic, cognitive approach. Using Saramago's novel Blindness as an example, Barata also provides a more positive assessment of the experience of shame than Sartre does. 'While

Phenomenological Approaches to Intersubjectivity and Values

7

shame may be the source of our existential hell, it also holds us in check from a moral point of view. In this paper, Andre Barata also examines Sartre's analysis of concrete intersubjective relations such as love, language and masochism. According to Barata, parallel to Husserl's epistemic failure in assuring us of the other, there is in Sartre a practical failure in the recognition of the other. Nonetheless, although we are far from being condenmed to be with each other in the way Sartre describes, Barata concludes that Sartre's theory of intersubjective relations may constitute an accurate diagnostic of human relations in the modem age. Next, Blodie Malbois's paper consists in a reconstruction of Gabriel Marcel's position on intersubjectivity. Malbois starts out by characterizing the concepts of "availability" and "unavailability" based on the variety of pronouncements Marcel makes about them throughout his oeuvre. After detelTIlining what "available" means, she proceeds to an analysis of the meaning of Marcel's claim that to be available is to see the other as a subject. From here she passes to a consideration of what it means for the other to be available to me and what reciprocal availability, which for Marcel is true intersubjectivity, represents. Malbois also points out that Marcel does not tackle the problem of other minds, for according to him the Cartesian way of raising the problem of the other is merely abstract. According to Malbois, Marcel is instead concerned with the various ways of being with others, in particular by means of the conceptual pair "availability"!"unavailability", with which Marcel distinguishes authentic from inauthentic types of relation with others. As Malbois shows, "availability" and "unavailability" may provide a phenomenological foundation for an ethical theory and for authenticity-that is, true selfhood-in the sense that we can only genuinely be ourselves by being with others. FurthelTIlore, as Malbois shows, for Marcel I carmot even know or think of myself independently of others. At the end of her essay, Malbois also addresses Levinas's critique of traditional accounts of intersubjectivity as a reduction of the other to the same. Levinas is also the main concern of the final chapter of the second part, written by Vlad Niculescu. The author lays out a Levinasian critique of Heidegger's existential understanding of sociality and the philosophical question concerning it. According to Nicuslescu, the Heideggerian way of asking about the other is always reduced to a mode of self-care. Inquiry into the meaning of tbe Being of any entity is subordinated to inquiry into tbe meaning of the entity which I myself am, Dasein. Niculescu reinterprets Heidegger's threefold division of tbe formal structure of every question: the distinction between that in regard to which something is questioned (das Ge/ragte), the entity that is questioned (das Be/ragte) and what is sought out

8

Introduction

by the questioning (das

Erfragte).

Inspired by Levinas, the author claims

that this distinction implicitly involves reference to the other, as she to whom the question ofthe meaning of Being is addressed. Understood in this way, the meaning that

I solicit from my interlocutor wholly transcends my

pre-conceptual understanding of it. The other is available to be questioned by virtue of her face expression. The other elects me as inquirer. The other 's face summons me to attendance;

I

not only solicit the other in my

questioning, but the other herself appears as a summons to solicitation. Social transcendence is not linguistic, but purely addressative or phatic. World-concern and self-concern have been subordinated to solicitude

(Fursorge). According to the Levinasian view, as articulated by Niculescu, reflection on the other is endowed with an ethical status inasmuch as it stands before his or her judgement. The third and final part of the book is dedicated to connections between the phenomenology of intersubj ectivity and values and other authors and topics tbat fall outside tbe scope of what is usually held to be the domain of phenomenology. In its first chapter, Gianfranco Ferraro focuses on Michel Foucault's tacit relation to Merleau-Ponty on the one hand and to Gilles Deleuze on the other. Ferraro traces the late Foucault's ontology of immanence to his phenomenological forebears, especially Merleau-Ponty­ a topic of great interest to many but one that has hitherto not received the attention it deserves. According to Ferraro, there is no essential contradiction between Foucault's early archaeological perspective and his late, more ontological perspective. He also focuses on the relation between Foucault's conception of immanence and Deleuze's parallel notions of "Life" and "Transcendental

Immanence",

claiming

that

these

are

pivotal

to

understanding Foucault's "technologies of the self'. Finally, Ferraro shows how Deleuze's ontology of immanence can be assimilated to Foucault's idea of an ontology of actuality or modernity. Although it does not deal directly with a phenomenological philosopher, Ana Fa1cato 's paper is an original exploration of a topic that will be of great interest to anyone studying the phenomenology of intersubj ectivity: tbe experience of shame, and in particular the moral dimension ofthis emotion, as analyzed in tbe works of Bemard Williams, Kant and the novelist Coetzee.

J.

M.

The paper begins with a brief characterization of Bernard

Williams's genealogy of shame, after which Fa1cato tums to tbe role of shame in Kant's moral philosophy, showing that, contrary to what is usually held, Kant ascribes moral value to shame. She also shows that Kant's moral interpretation of shameful experiences is opposed to the way in which shame is portrayed in

J.

M.

Coetzee's fictional work. While Kant

emphasizes the role of shame in exposing our animal, sensible self and

Phenomenological Approaches to Intersubjectivity and Values

9

inciting us to lead a moral life, for Coetzee shame constitutes an assault on our intellectual self-conceit that leads to a renewed appreciation of our animal, biological nature. Following Fa1cato 's foray into I. M. Coetzee's fictional work, the next paper, by Grace 'Whistler, also

deals with the literary treatment of

philosophical issues and perspectives. 'Whistler raises the question of the use of literary devices to communicate ethical perspectives through the example of Camus's

L 'Etranger.

Here the intersubj ective connection

concerns the relation between the author, or, in this case, the main character and narrator, Mersault, and the reader. Grace Whistler explores issues related to the narrative style employed by CamuslMersault, showing how it is used to introduce the reader to Mersault' s world, conveying the latter 's ethical worldview. At first, what Camus's style of narration conveys is Mersault' s

indifferent

outlook on life,

the

stance

of the

"absurd".

Nonetheless, Grace 'Whistler shows that this is not the definitive "moral of the story" of Camus's novel. Through a change ofliterary style, Camus tries to convey Mersault' s moral development to the reader; the style, and as a result Mersault's character, shifts radically from the beginning to the end of the novel. Finally, Nicolas de Warren's paper, which might surprise readers due to its non-conventional, non-academic style, functions as an epilogue of sorts to this collection of essays. De Warren's text is a remembrance of, and a meditation on, the moral catastrophe of the First World War. De Warren's paper reflects on the disastrous consequences oftechnological development at the time of the First World War in terms of its sheer capacity for destruction, of both human and non-human lives, and its impact on transfOlming the relation between humans and their environment. The evolving nature of war was manifested, in tum, in war trauma such as "shell shock", which is now knO\vn as post-traumatic stress disorder, and its expression in modernist art and poetry. The text ends with a more general reflection on war remembrance, the pity it arouses, and the potentially redeeming nature of poetry in connection with Homer's Iliad.

Reference Merleau-Ponty, Maurice. 2012.

Phenomenology of Perception.

Translated

by Donald A. Landes. Abingdon, UK: Routledge. Originally published as Phenomenologie de

la perception. Paris:

Gallimard, 1945.

PART I. THE COGNITIVE AND EPISTEMOLOGICAL DIMENSION OF THE PROBLEM OF THE OTHER

CHAPTER 1 THE INACCESSIBILITY OF THE OTHER EGO IN HUSSERL'S PHENOMENOLOGY PAUL F . ZIPFEL

In' the work of Edmund Husserl, the appearance of the other ego

as

an

appresented co-constituting that accompanies the innnediate presentation of the other's lived body is distinguished from my own constituting by its inaccessibility. How this sense of inaccessibility is to be characterized will be the focus of the present study. Phenomenologically, it is impossible to say that I do not encounter other egos,

as my world is filled with them. It is

possible to doubt the veracity of these appearances, but to do so is already to rush past the phenomenological evidence needed to investigate the appearance of the other ego. Thus, there is something given, and while it is inaccessible, this inaccessibility is to be understood in a pregnant sense. The other egos appear as inaccessible because, as Husserl notes:

neither the other I herself, nor her lived experiences [Erlebnisse], her appearances themselves, or anything else belonging to her own essence becomes given in my experience originally. If it were, ifwhat belongs to the other's mvn essence were directly accessible, it would be merely a moment of my own essence, and ultimately she herself and I myself would be the same. (Husserl 1999, 1091139; translation altered) 2

1 I would like to thank the Fulbright Scholar Program for fimding my time at the Husserl-Archiv in Cologne, where the majority of this research was done. Thank you to Prof. Dieter Lohrnar and the rest of the staff and students at the Husserl­ Archiv for allowing me to spend a very productive year with them and for listening to a preliminary presentation of this paper. Thank you to Dr. Lanei Rodemeyer, Alessio Rotundo, Mike Kramer, and Julie Zipfel for comments on previous drafts of this paper. 2 For all Husserl citations, the English pagination comes first, where available, followed by the German pagination.

The Inaccessibility of the Other Ego in Husserl's Phenomenology

13

Here, and in other passages,3 the accessibility of the other ego is different than the way in which inanimate objects are given, in that it is a constituting that is not originally mine and what belongs to it is not directly accessible. Thus, it is my contention that accessibility, phenomenologically considered, is a function of the originality of the conscious act and the directness of its contents 4 This terminology must be clarified in order elucidate tbe full sense of accessibility. After exploring Husserl's usage of these telTIls, I will employ this telTIlinology in describing three modes of consciousness: recollection, the primal impression of immediate experience, and expectation. I tben discuss originality and directness in

Fremdeifahnmg5

to show tbe

way in which the experience of the other ego is different than the above three acts of consciousness, which allows for a clear elucidation of what Husser! means by accessibility. Through a careful explanation of tbese modes of experience, I argue that Husserl uses "accessibility" to denote a special type of originality tbat separates the givenness of tbe other ego's conscious life from my 0'Wll. I then show how the other ego is accessible to me as an other ego through the inaccessibility of her conscious life, which is given to me directly

as

an object and indirectly

as

an enacting of her

conscious acts.

3 See Ideas I, wherein Husserl speaks ofthe experience of the other ego in reference to its originality (Husserl 1983, 6/8); in Basic Problems, Husserl notes that the other ego has a stream of consciousness similar to my directly given stream (Husserl 2006, 1 02/87), and later in the same text, Husserl uses "direcf' and "original" to distinguish my stream of consciousness from that of the other ego's (Husserl 2006, 142146/220-224). 4 Accessibility for Husserl does not concern mediation, at least not in the way that the contemporary literature discusses it. As Cairns notes, mediation can be used to denote any occurrence of a medimn, even a spatial distance or lived body, but phenomenologically my embodied experience of a spatial object is immediate (2006, 6). This broad sense of mediation is also used against the phenomenological approach in the debate on social cognition (Zahavi 201 1 , 547-549). That mediation can be taken in various ways according to various thinkers or disciplines places a greater importance on clarifying what Husserl means regarding the accessibility of the other ego. 5 I refrain from using empathy here, as Husser1 himself was unhappy with the term (Husserl 2006, 164/234). Empathy is an act of a higher order that is not always at play in the experience of the other ego. That is, the associative act ofP aanmg is an experience of our conscious act directed toward the other ego, but it is not empathy proper.

14

Chapter 1

Direct and Indirect Experience Husserl's use of the telTIl "direct" is at times non-technical and applied to experience in various marmers according to its obj ect. Such ambiguity is mirrored in the contemporary scholarship. On one hand, direct perception is used in analytic philosophy of perception to describe the direct grasping of the object itself as opposed to representations

or

appearances of the

thing.6 Further, direct is used in work on social cognition to denote theories that argue that other minds are observable.7 In general, there is little agreement on what is exactly meant by saying an experience

or

perception

is direct.8 For instance, how is the perceptual directness of spatial objects related to the perceptual directness of other minds: assuming I have direct perception of the cup in front of me, do I have the same direct perception of the consciousness of the server who handed me the cup? Such differences in contemporary scholarship are infOlmative for reading Russerl 's work, as he uses "direct" to characterize the presentation of other egos and spatial obj ects, but he also notes that the intuition of other egos is fulfilled in different ways than spatial objects. Husser! would likely argue that I cannot directly perceive the other ego, at least not in the technical sense of perception, but this does not mean that there is no direct experience of the other ego.9

6 This is both in reference to analytic readings ofHusserl and other philosophers in the tradition who hold that we perceive objects immediately (Tostenson 2010). 7 As opposed to so called Theory-theory or Simulation-theory supporters whose arguments assume a basic mlObservability of other minds. For overviews of these two positions, see Ratcliff (2012, 474-475), Williams (2017a, 194-195), Zahavi (2014, 139-141). 8 Williams describes a direct experience as being "more immediate, experiential, and intuitive" (2017b, 158). In attempting to distinguish direct perception from simulation, Gallagher refers to direct perception as "nothing more than perception itself' (2008, 537). In analytic philosophy of perception, direct perception is used more for a name to describe perceptual theories that grasp objects without representation and are characterized by the transparency of perception, i.e. they do not assert the existence or influence of constitutive data (such as sensations of bits of color) that make up the perception of an object, rather the components of the object perception are the components of the object itself (when looking at how one perceives a table, one finds components pertaining to the table and not sensorial data) (Tostenson 2010). My personal favorite is Zahavi, who admits that "one should acknowledge that there simply isn't any established view on what 'direct' means" (20 1 1 , 548). 9 There is an ambiguity in the usage ofperception, and part ofthat ambiguity will be explored in this present work. I perceive the other ego in so far as I am aware of them, interact with them, etc. However, I cannot grasp them as I can a physical

The Inaccessibility of the Other Ego in Husserl's Phenomenology

15

The task of this section, then, is to uncover a functional pattern to Husserl's use of direct, but I do not pretend that

an

exhaustive study of his

usage of the term is likely to find a unifonn meaning.10 I begin with some considerations from the secondary literature, derived mostly from the work on social cognition. I use the framework given in these arguments to assess passages from Husserl that offer a picture of his usage of direct, one which influences the contemporary usage. 'When possible, I attempt to find citations in which he contrasts the direct and the indirect. In doing so, I hope to clarify the way in which certain things are given directly to consciousness and how other things are given indirectly. In his attempt to clarify the phenomenological position in the debate over social cognition, Dan Zahavi offers a descriptive account of what is meant by direct. In response to other theorists who argue that the perception

object. Even the apperceived other sides of a physical object can become grasped in a perception, which is impossible for the apperceived other ego. Husserl often states that one does not perceive the other ego, or that she is not given directly in perception, but this does not mean that I do not experience other egos in my everyday life. Other egos are there, just as tables and chairs are there, in my experiential world. Thus, the following discussion will focus more on the experience or the consciousness of the other ego as opposed to the strict perception of her in order to avoid this terminological pitfall. 1 0 That Husserl uses terms loosely while having an lUlderlying functional distinction can also be fOlUld in Steinbock's analysis of Husserl's use of fremd and andere (Steinbock 1995, 57-60). Steinbock notices a pattern in the use of these terms that, while not lUliform, allows for a conceptual distinction Husserl himself did not notice or with which he was unconcerned. He argues thatfremd, as alien or foreign, is an axiological concept, while andere is a logical one. Andere indicates the other as in the second thing under investigation, not the primary, while fremd connotes an irreducible and irreplaceable thing separate from the originally investigated thing. His example of a foreign language not being equivalent to a second language best exemplifies this distinction. In the case of direkt and indirekt I have recourse to Husserliana XXIII, particularly §2 of the first Beilage, wherein Husserl lays out a flUlctional demarcation largely in line with the following discussion. I still hold that this usage is not entirely consistent for a few reasons: (1) this distinction is also described as genuine and non-genuine in the same Beilage, showing that a terminological distinction does not seem to be on Husserl's mind; (2) the terms are sparsely used in the discussions of phantasy and image consciousness even when it seems that he is discussing this distinction; and (3) the same conceptual distinction in other texts is made between the direkt and the mittelbar. Again, this is not to say that Husserl was lUlaware of this concept, or that this concept cannot be dra\Vll out of his work. Rather, I am drawing out Husserl's present but little clarified distinction between direct and indirect perception, which furthers the ClllTent project of clarifying the accessibility of the other ego in its inaccessibility and offers a possible foundation for the usage of direct in the contemporary debates on social cognition.

16

Chapter 1

of the other ego carmot be direct if it is given contextually,ll Zahavi argues that the proper dichotomy should be between direct and indirect or mediated. What is directly perceived is said to be: my primary intentional object. There is, so to speak, nothing that gets in the way, and it is not as if I am first directed at an intermediary, something different from the other's psychological state, and then only in a secondary step target it. Moreover, and importantly, the state is experienced as actually present to me, thereby making the experience in question very different from, say, reasoning that the other is upset, because the letter she received has been tom up, or inferring thatthe other is dnmk because he is smfOlUlded by a dozen empty beer bottles, or concluding that the other must be furious because I would be [mious if I had been subjected to the same treatment as he has. (Zahavi 201 1 , 548)

have included the final three examples because they situate nicely the atmosphere in which Zahavi is defining "directness". The first two examples would be standard fare for Theory-theorists who argue that our perception of the other mind is one of theoretical positing based on contextual and cultural knowledge. The third example brings to mind Simulation-theory, which argues that we posit the other mind's psychological state based upon how we would respond in a similar set of circumstances. In relation to both of these theories, Zahavi defines direct as bypassing the need for such (usually) high-level intermediary cognitive processes in favor of an unmediated grasping of what is right there in front of me: the other ego. This other ego, or the psychological state of the other ego, is my primary intentional object, and thus given directly to me phenomenologically. While this descriptive account of what is meant by "direct" is helpful in distinguishing the phenomenological account of social cognition from its challengers, it does not offer a technical or rigorous starting point because it is unclear as to what exactly qualifies as my primary intentional object.12 Zahavi describes my primary object as "experienced as actually present to me", which Husser! often calls Leibhaftigkeit, the being there in person. However, there are many objects that are given to me in person, as actually present before me, that are nevertheless not my primary intentional object. For instance, the desk at which I sit writing this is not the primary object of I

1 1 Zahavi is specifically referring to Jacob (20 1 1 , 528). 1 2 While this is a critique of the definition offered by Zahavi, it is clear that such a rigorous defmition was not his goal in this text. His description of "direct" is helpful in distinguishing the phenomenological position regarding social cognition from its challengers.

The Inaccessibility of the Other Ego in Husserl's Phenomenology

17

my intention, nor is the laptop my desk supports. Rather, my primary intentional object is the paper itself as I compose it; yet, the desk and the laptop are directly given to me, even in the background. I also have memories which are directly given, and the temporal surroundings of those memories are directly given, although they can be understood as secondarily intended. Zahavi also calls an experience direct when there is "nothing that gets in the way" of my experience of the object. In a direct experience, there is nothing other than the object (no intermediary) that facilitates my experience of the object. Husserl offers a similar description in Husserliana XXIII when he describes tbe manner in which phantasy presentation is indirect: In perceptual presentation we have one apprehended object, and this is also the object meant. In phantasy presentation we have two apprehended objects; namely, the phantasy image and the image subject presented to it: only the latter, however, is meant, presented in the proper sense. Perceptual presentation presents its object directly, phantasy presentation indirectly: phantasy presentation presents its object in such a way that it first brings to appearance another object resembling the object, by means of which it apprehends and means the object in image. (Husserl 2005, 1221112)

From this it is quite easy to see that directness is a function of the givenness of the object; as Dorion Cairns describes it, in a direct consciousness the object appears itself without some intermediary, while an indirect consciousness is of something "indicated, or represented, or signified, by something else" (Cairns 2006, 3). The easiest example of tbis, and one often used by Husserl, is an experience of a painting. 'When I view a painting, say of my cat, there is a double intending: I have an intention of the image of the object and of the object itself (Husserl 2005, 1 2 1 - 1 2211 12). In one sense, I view the painting and tbink of my cat, tbat is to say my actual cat and not this painted image before me. In this intention, the painted image acts as an indication, a pointing towards an object that is re-presenting what is meant. 13 In a second intention, I can view the painting as an object itself, as when I focus on its brush strokes or its color. In this second intention, the image of the cat is itself directly given; it is the intended of my intending. However, the object of the first intention, my cat itself, is indirectly given, because it 1 3 "For the image here [in image presentations] is the 'objectification' of sense contents, and yet this objectification is not a perceptual presentation. It is not the re­ presenting [reprdsenfirende] object, the 'mental' image that is meant, but the depicted object, the image subject; not this tiny little figme appearing in the colors of tbe photograph, but tbe 'real' child" (Husserl 2005, 121-1221112).

18

Chapter 1

is only indicated. I do not have a consciousness of the current state of affairs concerning my cat; rather, I have only an image of my cat, which is not the intended of the intention (Husserl 2005, 126/1 16, 150/136). This is not to say that a direct consciousness demands that its object be given as simultaneous with its act. For instance, the remembering of my cat, a present act with a past object, is a direct consciousness.14 Cairns emphasizes that this makes the remembering different from a picturing, for the object of my recollection is itself given as my object, it is merely given as something just-haying-been. Cairns also notes that the same can be said for dreaming and anticipation, in that their objects are the dreamt and the anticipated.15 The directness of consciousness, then, is not dependent upon the current existence16 of its object. Rather, the directness of a conscious act still comes down to the way in which an object is given: a direct consciousness is one in which the object itself is given as opposed to indicated or in some other way presented through something else, which is apprehended but not meant.17 Cairns offers an interesting example of physical perception to illustrate the difference between direct and indirect givenness, specifically the way in which I can have a simultaneously direct and indirect consciousness of the same object: Looking into a mirror, I mean the seen images as depicting contemporary physical events, which may well be, at the same time, objects of a direct perceiving consciousness: I see what I take to be a mirror-image of my hand and, at the same time, I see what I take to be my hand itself. Thus I have a direct consciousness of something as "an image" and, simultaneously, both

1 4 Husserl also says: "Remembering . . . now brings the past directly to intuition as [the past] itself, [namely,] a past that was intended in empty memory" (Husserl 200 1, 1 24/81); "Memory is direct presentation of what is past, just as perception is direct presentation of what is present" (Husserl 200S, 287123S); See also Cairns 2006, S. 1 5 Husserl also describes recollection and anticipation as intuitive consciousnesses whose content stands before us itself (200S, 602/S01). 16 "The flUlClamental error in [the beliefthat the object of a direct consciousness must be simultaneous with that consciousness] is the belief that the consciousness of something involves the existence, in some manner or other, of something that is the object of the consciousness ifnot its existence in reality then at least its existence as somehow in the mind ofthe person who is conscious of something" (Cairns 2006, S). 1 7 It should be noted that for Cairns this givenness need not be intuitive: "In sensuously perceiving something, I am directly conscious of it in its entirety; but I am conscious of only some parts and qualities of it as given. . I am directly conscious of the perceived thing as having more to it than it presents; and I am conscious of this more directly, though not intuitively" (2006, 7).

The Inaccessibility of the Other Ego in Husserl's Phenomenology

19

an indirect and a direct consciousness of something else as "my hand". (Cairns 2006, 4) In viewing my hand in the mirror, I obviously have a direct consciousness of the image of my

0\Vll

hand. Further, I have an indirect

consciousness of my hand itself as the intended object indicated by tbe mirror image of my hand. This also occurs when I look in a mirror to see if I have toothpaste in my beard. In such an experience, I see both my face and the mirror-image of my face, but my intention is obviously directed toward my face itself - which is indirectly given through tbe mirror image. When I reach up to wipe the toothpaste from my beard, I have verification of tbe current state of affairs through multiple sensual fields of experience. I feel the kinesthetic motion of my head leaning into the mirror to get a better angle of the offending bit of tootbpaste. I feel my hand touching my face as it wipes it away. Thus, I have other consciousnesses of my body while it is indirectly given to me in the mirror image. My face, indirectly given through the mirror image, is presented as it currently is, verifiable through my kinesthesis and sense of touCh.18 In this way, I have an object simultaneously given indirectly and directly. Such a double givenness is obviously not possible in the case of the painting of my cat, for even if I am looking at the painting while petting my cat, the painting does not offer a re-presentation of the current state of affairs with regard to my cat. I can see her directly in front of me, or indirectly as the indicated painted cat. Thus, the directness of consciousness

is

not

dependent

upon

the

simultaneity

of the

consciousness and its object or the existence of the obj ect. It is based purely on the givenness of the obj ect to consciousness. Husserl discusses the directness and indirectness of consciousness in a similar manner in an appendix to

Basic Problems in Phenomenology 2006, 141- 147) 19 Here he lists both memory (later changed to Vergegenwartigung) and expectation as direct modes of consciousness.

(Husser!

When I remember an object (an event, a person, or anything else previously experienced), it is directly given as an itself" that has been, a thing of tbe past. Husserl offers an example of recalling a restaurant to illustrate the

18 Husserl also notes this intertwining: "I see how my hand moves, and without it touching anything while moving, I sense kinetic sensations, though as one with sensations of tension and sensations of touch, and I localize them in the moving hand" (1989, 1581151). 1 9 In this appendix, Husserl also uses O"Wlllless and authenticity to describe acts of consciousness, but I will maintain the thematic focus of the cmrent section and limit my discussions to directness. 20 Husserl notes that this "itself' is given as belonging to "my" consciousness, which is important for the discussions of originality in the following section.

20

Chapter 1

difference between these direct modes of consciousness and an indirect one. When I remember a restaurant that I have visited, it is a mode of direct consciousness in that the obj ect is given as the remembered restaurant itself. However, if I were to "posit it as present, as existing now, then the Now and that which is objective in the Now are in no way self-given.

The Roon:r 1

given to me as something remembered and something past . .

is

its still­

existing-now and its being-simultaneous-with the Now of perception - all that is not directly given" (Husser!

2006, 1461223).

Positing it as still­

existing now is not quite a picture consciousness, according to Husserl, and thus slightly different than the above discussion, but in both cases the obj ect is not given itself; it is only indicated. In Husserl's example, the indication comes from my past experiences as opposed to an image proper, but the obj ects indicated are of indirect consciousnesses nonetheless. We can now say that the directness of a conscious act is based solely on the givenness of the obj ect of that consciousness, now clarified as self­ givenness: that which is given as itself is given in a direct mode of consciousness, while that which is given through something else is given in an indirect mode of consciousness. This clarification will help to delineate the accessibility of phenomena, but it is not enough for what Husserl has in mind phenomenologically when he discusses accessibility. I have a direct perception of the other ego, as Zabavi and ShaUll Gallagher have shown, but the other ego is still accessible only in its inaccessibility. To fully flesh this out, we must consider originality.

The originality of experience In the

Cartesian Meditations, the accessibility of the other ego

is often

discussed in relation to originality: that which is particular to the other ego's 0\Vll

essence is not given to me originally. In contrast, Husserl notes that,

"[i]n [transcendental self-experience] the ego is accessible to herself originally" (Husser!

1999, 22/62; translation altered) . Husser! explores this Basic Problems

distinction with more depth in the same appendix to

mentioned above, in which he investigates the way in which streams of consciousness are given as individuated, specifically my stream as separate from the stream of other egos.22 In my phenomenologically reduced stream

21 The specific restamant in Husserl's example. 22 This argmnent is reconstructed from Appendix 7 of Basic Problems and the fifth meditation in Cartesian Meditations, but the entirety of these texts help formulate the problem of originality and the other consciousness. In fact, in certain places within the lectures from Basic Problems, later amendments made by Husserl insert terminology relating to originality (mostly origindr) to clarify the original meaning.

The Inaccessibility of the Other Ego in Husserl's Phenomenology

21

of experience, I have consciousnesses of objects that are not always given as my

consciousnesses, properly speaking.

For anyone who has felt shame

or embarrassment, as described by Sartre in exploring the look, this is a readily available experience. When I fall off of the weight bench at the gym and I notice all of the much more capable and healthier people looking at me, I am conscious of every single pair of eyes. This means that I have an awareness of not only specific objects in my world, but also of some of those objects having an awareness of me. I see them seeing me; I have a

consciousness of a conscious act that is not my 0\Vll. How do I separate my

0\Vll

conscious acts from all of these other acts, my looking from theirs?

Phenomenologically, all ofthese are given as differing from my own in that my various consciousnesses are marked with originality and the acts of the other egos are not, but how are we to understand this originality? In an appendix from

Husserliana XIII

concerned with the differences

between psychological and phenomenological origins, Husserl attempts to clarify what is meant phenomenologically when one asks about the origin of a consciousness. These analyses consider the originality of the perceived obj ect and the way in which fundamental consciousnesses can be called original, and Husserl ends with an in-depth consideration of the way in which the question of originality demands a genetic methodology. In the beginning of the text, Husserl treats originality as a concept admitting of degrees. An object that is perceived is originally present, while what is not perceived is unoriginal.23 Even when originally present, an obj ect can be perceived imperfectly, such that there are other parts or sides that are intuitable but not originally perceived. Husser! calls this an original perception in a relative way, because it points to a possible givenness that is more originary in that it gives more ofthe obj ect. Thus, Husserl notes that "the process of perception is more original than the individual perception" (Husser! 1973a, 347; my translation).

It is this sense

of originality24 that is

important for the present task, as "the object is all the more originally given, more encompassing, in more sides and parts, the more it comes to actual perception within the process of perception. And the perception of the object

23 "Die Ursprfulglichkeit kann be sagen, dass der Gegenstand wahrgenornrnen ist, im Gegensatz die Nicht-Ursprtinglicbkeit, dass er nicht wahrgenornrnen, nicht originar prasent ist (originar 'da')" (Husserl 1973a, 347). 24 The second sense of originality as fmmdational is one that Husserl seems to waiver on within the text, even crossing out a paragraph dealing with the topic. The third sense, originality in terms of genetic constitution has more to do with constitution in general than the constitution of the other ego, although it should be noted that the question of the originality of my 0\Vll experience as opposed to my experience of other ego's (and their experiencing) is on his mind in discussing all three senses of originality.

22

Chapter 1

is all the more originally given, all the more richly given in original fullness, if it brings more of the obj ect to more original givel1lless" (Husserl 1973a, 347; my translation) .25 From this, we can see a possible link between the directness of a consciousness and its originality, in that what is given more fully and richly, i.e. given as itself as opposed to indicated, is given more originally.26 My

O\Vll

conscious acts, then, are more original than the

conscious acts of the other ego, because they are directly experienced by me. My acts include my psychic perception - the acting through of my acts. The acts of the other ego are given to me directly as the content of my

O\Vll

acts, but not as an acting, not as the living of the other ego. Her psychic contents are merely indicated, and thus not given to me in actual perception. As Husserl notes: "The more properly my own

[eigentliche1

perception

(primordial presence of the obj ect), all the greater originality" (Husserl 1973a, 347; my translation). According to this differentiation, the given consciousnesses (both my

O\Vll

and those that are foreign) separate

themselves out according to the "fullness of their originality" (Husserl 1973a, 348; my translation). My own experiences bring more to original fullness than my experience of the other ego's experiencing. We also see this type or originality at play in

Cartesian Meditations.

Here, the originality of a consciousness depends upon the givenness of its fulfillment.

"Whatever can become presented, and evidently verified, originally is something I am, or else it belongs to me as peculiarly my own. Whatever, by virtue thereof, is experienced in that founded manner which characterizes a primordially unfulfillable experience an experience that does not give something itself originally but that consistently verifies something indicated is "other." (HusserI 1999, 1 14 1 151144) Husserl contrasts two types of experience here: the first is an experience of something that can be reduced to my own experiencing, my ownness; the second is an experience of something that always points beyond it to something indicated. When I fall off of the weight bench, I have a consciousness of other conscious acts with my action as their object, and these consciousnesses are not originally mine. My sensation of pain and regret are my O\vn; they are presented to me without moderation. The seeing me fall, however, is not. I see the other egos

see

me fall, as acts

accomplished or undertaken, but the acting of them is only indicated. The living activity of the other ego is an unoriginal consciousness, one that I do

25 Thank you to Marco Cavallaro for his help with this translation. 26 In this appendix, Husserl treats originality as a concept admitting of degrees.

The Inaccessibility of the Other Ego in Husserl's Phenomenology

23

not possess. These unoriginal experiences are unfulfillable primordially, in that their objects cannot be brought to direct givenness; the object of the other consciousness cannot be mine: I cannot see me as the others do. Yet, these unoriginal experiences are directly given, in that they are there in person without an intermediary, as Zahavi described. I see all of the looks, and even the people not looking because they may feel it is poor gym etiquette or because they were too absorbed in their

0\Vll

workout. Thus, I

have experiences (the other egos seeing me) directly given to me with their indirectly given objects (me as seen) that are not originally my experiences, and the experience of this unoriginal experiencing (me seeing the other ego see me) is itself my original experience. From this we can see that the directness of a consciousness will be helpful in detennining the originality of an experience, but it is not sufficient for the determination of originality, which demands more qualification than the clarification ofthe givenness of its obj ect. Husserl offers a better clarification of the appearance of originality in §37 of Basic

Problems.

In my everyday life, I have a single, unified flow of

consciousness that I can scroll through as needed in order to construct a sequence of events. I know that before I made breakfast this morning, I woke up, fed the cats, got dressed, brushed my teeth, etc. I can go back further to falling asleep, preparing for bed, spending Sunday with my wife at the market, etc. 'What is more, I can often construct whole parts of my life in this way, such as that time I met Deron Williams27 in the airport or when a security camera at work caught me falling over for no reason. Phenomenologically, every consciousness has its "temporal halo" or surroundings that are given with it - each now has its retentive past and protentive future, but also each remembered now has the same (Husserl 2005, 80).28 However, this halo is not always clearly given for various reasons. I do not remember the events that occurred between my falling over at work and meeting Mr. Williams, and I cannot quite order them properly in my memory: Did I meet Mr. Williams after the fall and possibly told him the story? Had the humorous anecdote not yet occurred? Husserl states the problem

phenomenologically:

"must

[two

remembered

streams

of

consciousness] fit into the unity of a stream of consciousness which, however, is not [in advance]29 given at all?" (Husserl 2006, 81). The answer

27 Deron Williams was a professional basketball player who played collegiate basketball at the University of Illinois. 28 For the constitution of this halo, or temporal context, through retention, see Roderneyer (2010, 232-233). 29 Husserl added this to the text sometime after 1 924.

24

Chapter 1

reveals a special law of consciousness, and it lies in the present positing of the two memories: Two memories each, which belong to the lUlity of a present moment of consciousness that joins them together, combine to fonn a unity of memory, i.e., a unity oftirne-consciousness, albeit one that is not intuitively filled, in which the remembered of the one memory and the remembered of the other memory lUlite in the one remembered, in one time, and thus in accordance with this lUlitary consciousness, they are necessarily intuitable, being either simultaneous or in succession. It may be the case that the temporal order is indistinctly apprehended . . . But then it is an indeterminateness that harbors within itself determinability . . . Consequently, it must be "possible" to clearly and completely awaken a memory-series and to run through it such that it connects the one memory to the other in such a way that it really brings about the continuous temporal connection in the stream of consciousness. Of course, that is a motivated possibility. But this is not to say that we actually have this memory series at om disposal. (Husserl 2006, 81)

This long quote offers the law of consciousness by which a stream of consciousness is given as unified, and thus, as original to me as the I of this unified stream. The remembering of the !\vo memories in a present consciousness - "an encompassing, synthetic consciousness" - fOlTIls a unity of experience within the present flow of consciousness, a halTIlonious temporal context. This unity need not be totally clear, brought to intuition such that I can trace the steps from one memory to the other. It does not even need to be clarified to the point that I can say which one came first or that they did not simultaneously happen.30 Rather, the unity is one of motivated possibility: the unity is given as intuitable, fillable, determinable.31 It is motivated by the harmonious temporal context of my 0\Vll experiencingY If I recall my encounter with Mr. Williams, it is connected 30 I can recall that I hung out with my friend on Friday and that I have seen Star Wars: The Last Jedi, but I can be unclear as to whether I saw that movie with my friend last Friday. 31 Husserl also says, "Here we have a judgment motivated by another judgment, but prior to the judgment the temporal forms themselves motivate each other. In this sense we can say that even the pervasive unity of the stream of consciousness is a unity of motivation. In the personal attitude this means that every act of the Ego is subject to the constant apprehension characterizing it as an act 'of' the Ego, as 'my' lived experience" (1989, 239/228). 32 Rodemeyer shows how this is both a context of content as well as structure. The structure of retention modifies retentions "in such a way that the temporal connection from one event to the next can be ascertained in reflection" (2010, 233). The "passively present content maintained by my retaining and recollecting

The Inaccessibility of the Other Ego in Husserl's Phenomenology

25

with a consciousness of being with a specific girlfriend in a specific airport. When I remember falling over, I have a consciousness of being in a specific geographic location andwith specific friends. I can order these consciousnesses within my unified stream because I dated that girlfriend after I worked at the place with those friends. Thus, I can fill in the temporal relation between the events, even if I cannot completely fill the path from falling over to meeting the hero of Illinois's 2004 NCAA Tournament Final Four fUll. That they are remembered in a synthetic consciousness with an intuitable temporal ordering within the same stream of consciousness makes them original. It cannot be the case that such a unity is possible between the other ego's consciousness and my 0\Vll simply because the positing of the other ego's conscious act and my 0\Vll is done in a unified present. In other words, it is not the synthetic consciousness that gives two conscious acts an intuitable temporal order. If this were the case, such a unity would not serve to distinguish between my 0\Vll stream of consciousness and the other ego's, and thus it would not serve to characterize the originality of my experience. To clarify this, I will utilize an example from Natalie Depraz's work on joint attention, wherein she and her daughter watch an acrobatic perfOlmance together.33 'While both are attentive to the perfOlmance, they are also both attentive to the sharing of the experience. As Depraz writes, "we will expressly show or hide our fear or our enthusiasm (by a word, by a pressing of the hand), at the sight ofthe act" (2010,1 1 3 ; my translation). In watching the acrobatic act with her daughter, there is an enrichment of the experience when Depraz shares her enthusiasm with her daughter and also when Depraz shares in her daughter's "living the spectacle, expressing her anxiety at her sight of the show or in laughing with her" (Depraz 2010, 1 14; my translation). In Depraz's example, then, we have a co-consciousness of a

consciousness" allow for different types of contexts in my lived experience (Rodemeyer 2010, 248). In the passage from Basic Problems, Husserl seems to be more focused on the structural context, in that I can order my experiences in a memory-series. However, this also requires a context of content, in that I can place certain memories together based on what is remembered. 33 I admit that the point ofDepraz's article is to integrate the work on joint-attention in philosophy of mind into the phenomenological work on intersubjectivity, and thereby supplement the empathetic phenomenological account of intersubjectivity, which she describes as largely cognitive. Still, Depraz's example touches on the separation maintained in a shared experience that Husserl has in mind when speaking of originality. In fact, she brings up this point as something that Husserlian phenomenology cannot clarify. As the following analysis will show, I think Husserl's work on the originality of consciousness allows for this clarification.

26

Chapter 1

shared event.34 Depraz has an original consciousness ofjointly attending to the acrobatic act with her daughter. This means that she has her original experience of the acrobatic act and an original experience of her daughter's experiencing the act in various ways.35 In experiencing her daughter's excitement while watching the show, and that her daughter is excited or worried about a specific occurrence within the perfOlmance, she has an original experience of an unoriginal experiencing. There is a living it together, such that she is aware of her daughter's emotion and her daughter is aware of sharing it with her mother, but there is no living through the other ego's consciousness. Her daughter's experiences are not given in a unified stream of consciousness with her O'Wll . Depraz's experiences of the viewing acrobatic act and sharing it with her daughter, analytically divided while experientially concurrent, are given in a synthetic unity within a unified stream of consciousness: they belong originally to Depraz. 'While the focus of Depraz's analysis is on the role of the shared object in facilitating the shared lived experience, she notes that there is an asymmetry of experience here, which Husserl would say comes dO\vn to the original character of the consciousness involved.36 This example of a living together also allows for a clarification of the relationship between the directness and originality of consciousness. One can have a direct experience of something unoriginal, as when Depraz has a direct experience of her daughter's anxiety or when I see others looking at me. Such experiences are directly given, yet they carmot be united in the experiencing ego's living stream of consciousness. I can also have an indirect experience of that which is original to me, such as when I experience a painting of a figure. I have no direct experience of the painted object, yetthe experience of it that I have is original to me. Phenomenologically, it is important to remember that the directness of an experience depends upon the givel1lless of its object, such that ifthe object gives itself, it is given directly. The originality of a consciousness is found in its ability to be given in a unified stream of consciousness with my current now; of course, it must 34 "Le fa�onnement du lien entre nous, entre deux sujets repose bien sm l'experience d'un seul et meme objet; il y a bien 'mutual awareness', conscience mutuelle de partager un objet, de Ie vivre ensemble, que cette cooperation soit rationnelle ou ernotionnelle" (Depraz 2010, 114). 35 Thanks to Caroline Pluchon for her help in translating this text. 3 6 Depraz argues that the concept of inter-attention need not result in an asymmetry, although there is still "non-homogony, [an] irreducible difference of attentional movements towards the other" (Depraz 2010, 117; my translation). I argue that this difference, whether asymmetrical or not, is on account of the originality of my consciousness and the mlOriginality of the consciousness of the other ego.

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be remembered that this unity is a motivated possibly, and thus intuitable, if not actually intuitively given.

The originality and directness of recollection, the living present, and expectation After exploring what Husser! means when speaking of originality and directness, I now look at how he employs these telTIlS in his analyses. To do this, I will work through two modes of consciousness that Husserl uses as comparisons for empathy,37 recollection and expectation. I will also investigate the accessibility of the living present, which Tanja Staehler argues is phenomenologically inaccessible (at least at its core). Both recollection and expectation are Vergegenwdrligungen, just like Fremderfahnrng, so that there is an obvious structural similarity among the three. Vergegenwartigungen, or re-presentations,38 are acts of consciousness that bring other acts of consciousness, including their objects, to presence.39 In this way, recollection brings past consciousnesses and their recollected objects into my view in the same way that expectation aims at future ones and their expected objects, albeit as merely possible and still empty. Empathy falls under this category, as its object is the conscious act of an other ego. Expectation and recollection often function as examples for Husserl in his attempts to clarify the way in which the other is constituted, although he readily states that they both are imperfect in illustrating empathy. One important difference is that recollection and expectation belong to my temporal context, while empathy

37 I will be using empathy because it is the Fremderfahnmg most often discussed in Husserl. I proceed lUlder the assumption that the directness and originality at play in empathy will transfer to FremderfahrlUlg as a whole. 38 The translation of vergegenwiirtigen and its cognates is problematic for the English speaker, because the most obvious word for it is representation. However, representation is associated with a long history of metaphysical meaning that is contrary to what Husserl has in mind here. Re-presenting is the best translation, in my opinion, because the "re" indicates an activity done on top of the original presenting, which is the exact activity the ego is undertaking in the vergegenwiirtigen it brings it to presence before itself again in some manner. 39 This definition is a literal translation of the German word, which adds the prefix ver-, meaning in this case to enact, to the nolUl Gegenwiirtigung, which is the act of making something present. A good friend and colleague of mine, Marco Cavallaro, once defmed Vergegenwiirtigungen as a conscious act with another conscious act as its object. My above formulation owes much to Marco's laconic yet insightful description.

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fe-presents an act belonging to an other temporal context.40 In investigating the ways in which originality and directness are used in describing these acts, I hope to show the way he uses these telTIlS to demarcate what is accessible and what is inaccessible. As discussed above, recollection is an original consciousness with a content that is directly given. However, Husserl offers recollection as an illustrative example of the way in which the other ego is verified as inaccessible.41 In Husserl's example, when I remember something, I bring it to the present as a modification of my immediate present (Husser! 1999, 1 1 5/145). My remembered experience is not given as present again; rather, it is given as an experience already experienced. In Fremdeifahrnng, the other ego is also given as an intentional modification of my living present, specifically as a living present that I cannot inhabit. Both the verification of this past and the verification of the other ego progress through hatmonious syntheses, albeit of different sorts: the other ego remains as such so long as it gives itself as an other stream of consciousness separate from mine, and the past remains the past as long as it retains the intentional modification of having-previously-been. This is an admittedly odd formulation of recollection, but I think that Husserl is attempting to show the structure of verification at play in these two types of Vergegenwartigung. There is a verification not only of the content but of the givenness of that content. Were the other ego to suddenly just be another version of me or were I to suddenly find myself living last week's events, there would be a need to reevaluate my constitution of each stream of consciousness as a particular type of modification of my living present. Thus, we can see that there is a similar verification ofthe other ego as there is with my past, as both streams of consciousness are given as modifications, or one may say, variations, of my now. Is this a verification of what is inaccessible in both? Husserl himself notes that empathy carmot be a remembering, so inaccessibility may be a 40 Phantasy, another type of Vergegenwiirtigung, is interesting in that it belongs to no temporal context, or at least to a temporal context other than mine or any other ego's. As Rodemeyer puts it: "Phantasies may have their time, in other words, but they do not fit into time, i.e., they are not part of the time of perceptual experiences" (2010, 244). 41 This example occms in §52 of Cartesian Meditations in the paragraph immediately following Husserl's discussion of the other ego as accessible through inaccessibility. You can find a similar connection between Fremderfahrung and recollection later in Cartesian Meditations (Husserl 1999, §55) and in "The Origin of Geometry" (Husserl 1970, 359-360/370-37 1 ) . Levinas makes a similar comparison between the alterity of the other ego and temporal alterity in Time and

the Other.

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key difference (Husserl 2006, 83).42 [fthe past were inaccessible, then this inaccessibility would be understood in relation to a "now" that is given as accessible: the past would be inaccessible because it is simply not present. Were this the case, accessibility would merely denote the present; an experience would become inaccessible through the modification of a present experience. I argue, however, that this is not how Husserl views accessibility, nor is it a phenomenologically sound explanation of it. My past experience was nevertheless an original experience able to be placed within my temporal context, and as sho\Vll above by both Husserl and Cairns, it is directly given in recollection. It is phenomenologically available to me in this way, and thus it seems accessible to me. Staehler argues that the comparison between remembering and Fremderfahrung can illustrate the way in which the transcendental ego is inaccessible to me.43 She notes that the "inaccessibility of the other ego might reveal something about the sense in which even my 0\Vll past ego is alien to me" (Staehler 2008, 1 15). Staehler quotes a manuscript io which Husserl compares the way in which I am in a community with other egos to the way in which I connect with my past ego in remembering, which again establishes the relation between the way in which [ contact others and the way in which I contact memories, or past egos.44 Taking this relation as evidence of my 0\Vll past being in some way foreign to me carmot mean that it is inaccessible. The foreignness of my past seems much different here than the inaccessibility of the other ego, in that the past experience is original to me, while the experiences of the other egos in my connnunity can never be said to be original. Staehler then argues that the inaccessibility of the other ego is similar to the inaccessibility at the heart of the liviog present. The core of the living present, the "pure there" bracketed off from protention and retention, is an enduring yet ever withdrawing flow of experience. IfI reflect upon the "pure there", which she equates with the functioning ego, I can only ever access 42 How could it? If it were, then I would have knowledge of all other egos in the same way that I have knowledge of my mvn past.

43 It should be noted that Staehler's goal in this text is not to take a deep look at inaccessibility. Rather, she is investigating the question Husserl is asking the fifth meditation, and she does a wonderful job exploring the various issues at play in a difficult text. Her work in this article is invaluable to anyone studying Husserl's work on intersubjectivity. 44 "In empathy (Einfiihlung), in originally understanding them and having them as persons in co-presence, I am in contact (in Fuhlung) as I with the Thou, with the other ego, similarly to the way in which I am in contact with myself in the difference of remembering, in a comrlllmity" (Ms. E III 9, S. 84 (1931), quoted from Staehler

2008, 115).

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it after the functioning is complete; my reflection is always too late. In this way, the ego can be said to be accessible to itself in inaccessibility, albeit one that is only accessible because of this inaccessibility: I can never access my transcendental ego as it is fimctioning, and at the same time, if there -..vas no flow but static unity at the core of the ego, the ego would be not accessible at all, i.e., not even accessible as inaccessible. Since the ego as it is functioning cannot be made an object of reflection, it is characterized by a peculiar anonymity. Similarly, the other ego is only accessible to me as flUlClamentally different from myself and ultimately inaccessible. (Staehler 2 00 8, 1 1 5)

According to Staehler, the anonymity of my own present leaves only the access of inaccessibility, and the lived experiences of the other ego, though not quite anonymous, are inaccessible to me in a similar way. Staehler seems to argue that my own ego is only accessible to me in recollection as an intentional modification of the ego of the living present; in this way it is accessible (as recollected) in its inaccessibility (as the ego of the living present). Any intentional modification of this inaccessible ego would also only grant an accessibility of the inaccessible. Even the other moments of the living present, the retentional and protentional, would not afford access to the ego. If this holds, there is no manner in which my 0\Vll ego is ever accessible to me as accessible. However, as quoted above, Husserl says that the ego is accessible to itself originally in transcendental self-experience, and he describes the ego's living present as the core that is accessible. There are indeed indetelTIlinate horizons that are not given in this living present but rather surround it,45 but the accessibility of this living present is never called into question. That which is indetelTIlinate is not necessarily inaccessible, as access seems tied more to determinability than detelTIlination proper. As Husserl says: though I am continually given to myself originally and can explicate progressively what is included in my mvn essence, this explication is carried out largely in acts of consciousness that are not perceptions of the 0\Vll­ essential moments it discovers. Thus alone can my stream of subjective processes, the stream in which I live as the identical Ego, become accessible to me: first of all, in respect of its actualities, and then in respect of the

45 The givenness of the living present is said to be only adequate in §9 of Cartesian Meditations, which could problematize transcendental subjectivity as apodictic evidence. Carr offers a more in-depth treatment ofthe apodicticity oftranscendental subjectivity in Cartesian Mediations (1987, 45-69).

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potentialities that manifestly are likewise moments of my mvn essence. (HusserI 1999, 1021133)

The givenness of my 0\Vll experience, transcendental or otherwise, in the immediateness of my 0\Vll experiencing is precisely the hallmark for accessibility, and we can see that it is based in the possible or actual experience being originally mine. It is worth questioning whether or not we can think of the living present as being somehow inaccessible according to the directness of its content, but this reframes the question. The living present, as an accessible experiencing, is not subject to directness or indirectness. The object of the living present, be it an image-consciousness or a remembering of some object and then positing it as existing now, can be directly or indirectly given, according to that consciousness itself. If, however, I were to take for my object the actual living through oftbis living present - for instance, focusing on my thinking of how to solve this problem - then, the object of that conscious act, as the living itself, is given in the conscious act and not referred to by something else.46 It is the living flow of my actual lived experience rushing ever forward into my various potentialities. Whichever experiences come to pass, they are given to me and accessible to me, even in acts that are not perceptual. There are two further issues here that make Staehler's interpretation problematic. First, the experience of the other ego does not entail the delay of reflection. Second, the anonymity of my living present is not paralleled in the experience of the other ego. The lived experience that is given to me as inaccessible is not the lived experience of no one but of that one, that other ego. The inaccessible lived experience of the other ego is verified in the same way as recollections, through harmonious syntheses. However, the recollected is given directly in an original consciousness, even if it is given as having-been. Thus, what is recollected is accessible in itself and not through inaccessibility. The originality and directness of expectation are more similar to recollection than empathy, but in Basic Problems Husserl notes that expectation is a much better, although still deficient, analog for empathy.47 Cairns argues that the object of an expectation is directly given, in so far as 46 This seeming problem reminds one of Sartre's critique of Husserl's phenomenology in Transcendence of the Ego, which never seemed to be much of a problem for Husserl. The living present is not missing or lUlthinkable because it is only available in reflection. Rather, the living present is very much there, alive for one to engage with spontaneously. Recollection is not the only access one has to experience; rather, it is merely a way to engage with that past living present again as modified. 47 He also notes the link between expectation (or anticipation) and empathy in that empathy is enveloped with systems of expectations (Husserl 2006, 160-162).

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that object is the expected, which mirrors the direct givel1lless of the recollected to recollection. Further, the originality of the expected is not in question, as the stream of consciousness in which this or that possibility will occur naturally shares a temporal context with my living present. If I think of multiple possible actions, all of them are original possibilities to me in that I can undertake them. As I decide upon the preferred course of action and complete it, all of the previously possible actions are still originally my possibilities, although I did not take them up. They are given as that which I could have done, and in this way are given as original. To illustrate, when I know that it is trash night, I plan to ready the trash and take it out to the curb. However, when I get home, I am hungry and thus make myself dinner first. I still expect to take out the trash, but the fulfillment ofthe expectation is now deferred. If my wife gets home and takes the trash out while I am eating, the expectation of taking the trash out does not become unoriginal simply because someone else undertook the activity. Rather, it becomes an activity I could have done, and as such is original to me. My wife's experience of taking out the trash, including her exasperation with my aversion to dealing with the garbage on an empty stomach, is not given to me originally; they are not able to be given in a temporal unity with my stream of consciousness. That I could have done it is within my temporal context, that is certain, but it is now an activity that I can no longer enact. Thus, it is easy to see that expectation is also an original consciousness with a directly given object.

The accessibility of Fremtkrfahrung I will now explore the way in which Fremderfahrung can be characterized as original and direct so as to explicate fully the way in which the other ego is given as accessible in its inaccessibility. First, experience the other ego in an originally given experience of an unoriginal experiencing. This tricky fonnulation, admittedly borrowed from Husserl's use of the accessibility of the inaccessible, merely means that there is an experiencing of the other experiencing, the other ego's engagement in the world, with the latter being resistant to a synthesis into the temporal stream of the fonner. There are two streams of originality at play, then, in every experience of the other ego. On the one hand, I have my original stream of conscious, and in that stream is an experience of an other ego. This experience is obviously original to me, capable of being situated within my 0\Vll temporal context. It is an experience of the other ego's body as sharing the world with me, experiencing it with me. The experiencing of her body - her grabbing things or moving things out of the way, her living

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engagement with the world - is unoriginal to me, yet given all the same. Husserl explains in this way: what is grasped with actual originariness in this seeing [of someone else]­ namely that corporeality over there, or rather only one aspect ofits surface­ is the other's body [Ko1per] itself, but seen from my position and from this side . ... [W]hat is grasped originally is the body of a psyche essentially inaccessible to me originally, and the two are comprised in the unity of one psychophysical reality. (Husserl 1999, 1 24/152; translation altered)

Thus, the other ego's psyche, the unoriginal experiencing that is inaccessible to me, is given to me as tied up with my original experience of the other ego's body. I do not see various bodies and then posit egos among them; rather, I see lived bodies all around me, surrounded by inanimate ones. My experience of the other ego originally includes, as experienced by me, the unoriginal experiencing of those inanimate objects by the other ego, complete with temporal halos that lack a motivated possibility to be synthesized with my living present.48 The temporal horizon that marks originality is a unity of my stream of consciousness as containing the experiences that can be synthesized within it. The other ego's experiences have no such motivated possibility, and in fact come with their 0\Vll internal motivations, as inner horizons, that cause me to constitute their temporal halos as separate from mine. The temporal context of the other ego is one that is separate from my 0\Vll: her conscious acts are of an other stream of consciousness, and thus not given to me originally.49 I must next consider the directness at play in my experience ofthe other ego, as the other ego is in one way directly there for me, and yet in another 48 This does not mean, of course, that there is no temporal relation between the two, or that they somehow exist in separate temporalities. There is the constitution of a shared time and objective time, but this is an entirely separate matter. 49 Husserl offers a wonderful example of this in his discussion of the constitution of the world and my body within it (2006, 6). My body acts as the middle point for the world, the zero-point of orientation around which all other points are constituted. Included in these smrounding points are other egos as surrOlUlding points. However, these other egos are also given as middle points themselves. In fact, Husserl later edited this passage to note that these other egos, as middle points, are originarily (origindr) given to me as surrounding points. The original experience of an individual I as the middle point is original only to itself, and the experience of that original experiencing by a different I is the original experience of someone else's originality. Husserl discusses this idea with more depth when he speaks of the relation between my "here" and the other's "there" (Husserl 1999, §54; Husserl 1989 § 1 8f, 41, 50-52).

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is not. As noted above, the body of the other ego is given to me directly; it is there in front of me, self-given, not indicated or pictured by anything else. Phenomenologically, the other ego is also there for me, and thus given directly to me. To say that the psyche of the other ego is only indicated is to fall into the same issues criticized by the phenomenologists engaged in the debate on social cognition. The other ego is appresented, but this is not an indication or a picturing. Rather, her body "appresents the other ego, by virtue of the pairing association with my physical lived body [korperlichen Leib], and with my governing I, within my primordially constituted nature" (Husserl 1999, 123/1 S 1 ; translation altered). In this pairing, her body appresents the "other ego's goverinng this body... [and] mediately the governing in the nature that appears to her perception" (Husserl 1999, 12311 S 1 ; translation altered). Thus, when I see the body of the other ego, I see it as a Leib, as a psychophysical unity, as ensouled, governing her O\Vll body and engaging with the world, a world which we share as common (Husserl 1999, 123/1S2). However, Husserl also states: "through 'empathy' I become co-conscious of the alien psychic life, an alien psychic life that is inaccessible to direct perception as such" (Husserl 2001, 3731240). The inaccessibility of the other ego seems to imply that such a psychic life is merely indicated. Husserl even uses "indicate" (indizieren) to describe the way in which the Leib ofthe other ego gives me the other ego properly on multiple occasions. However, his use of this telTIl describes the relation between the lived body of the other ego as perceived within my primordial sphere and the living of the other ego. He even notes that this relation is between the presented body and the appresented other ego. Such a relationship is not an indication in the sense of indirectly given as described above: the givenness of a thing referred to by another object. To the contrary, he states that the other ego is not perceived as somehow signaled or represented by its lived body: "it is not as though the body over there, in my primordial sphere, remained separate from the animate bodily organism of the other ego, as if that body were something like a signal for its analogue" (Husserl 1999, 122I1S1). Rather, "the sensuously seen body is experienced forthwith as the body of someone else and not as merely an indication [Anzeige] of someone else" (Husserl 1999, 122/1S0). Here, then, we see the difficulty of clarifying phenomenologically the experience of the other ego in telTIlS of direct or indirect givenness, which is the same difficulty encountered by Zahavi, Gallagher, and others supporting the phenomenological position in the debate over social cognition: the psychic life ofthe other ego, its enacting ofits conscious acts, is given to me only as indicated; however, the indicating is done by the

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conscious acts as enacted, the living of the other ego itself1 As Husserl notes: "[Empathy1 is an empty making co-present, a re-presentation [ Vergegenwarligung] of a consciousness that is made co-present and that belongs to the lived-body, a consciousness, however, whose process of bringing to intuition certainly has to embark upon quite different patbs tban those peculiar to the non-visible aspects of the thing-like body" (Husserl 2001, 374/240; translation altered). We have seen tbat tbe objects of VergegenwartiglUlgen are capable of being directly given, as with recollection and expectation, and that further the directness of a consciousness is not dependent upon the intuition of its object, however different it may be from normal fulfillment. The only criteria for directness is self-givenness, and the other ego gives itself, not as the enacting of this or that consciousness, but as being alive - as engaging in tbe world through a lived body. 50 Thus, in my experience of the other ego as an embodied consciousness, directly given to me originally, I have an experience of the living it does as an embodied consciousness constituting the world with me: In the appresented other ego the synthetic systems are the same, with all their modes of appearance, accordingly -with all the possible perceptions and the noematic contents of these: except that the actual perceptions and the modes of givenness enacted therein, and also in part the objects actually perceived, are not the same; rather the objects perceived are precisely those perceivable from there, and as they are perceivable from there. (Husserl

1999, 1231152) As an other living, lUloriginal stream of consciousness, the other ego is experienced as experiencing the world with me from her 0\Vll temporal stream. Her stream of consciousness is given to me in that that it is directly perceived in my original stream of consciousness. I experience the other ego experience the world with me, but I do not directly experience the content of her conscious life. An interesting example of this comes from my fear of heights. If I see a tree growing precariously out of a cliff or a boulder perched near the edge, I have no special experience of the object. However, 5 0 Husserl also talks of what is directly given as being prominent for itself: " . . . we can only set om eyes on something, grasp something directly where we have something prominent for itself' (2001, 1751129). The prominence of the other ego is evident in the mere question of its accessibility. This is not a question of ghosts or goblins, whom we can ask after without knowing their existence, for the existence of the other ego is not in question here. Ghosts are questioned in terms of their accessibility because it is unknm.vn if they exist to be accessed; other egos are questioned in terms of their accessibility because we are lUlsme of how we access what is obviously, prominently there in front of us.

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if I see another person near the edge, I feel the anxiety of being near the height, even if she does not. However, while I may worry about someone falling over the edge, I cannot feel the wind on her face or the thrill of hanging over the precipice. The enaction and actuality (Verwirklichkeit and Wirklichkeit) of these acts are beyond my reach. Even the objects directly given to me in my O\Vll consciousness are also indirectly given as perceived by herY In a wonderful passage from Husserliana XV, Husserl describes this relation as an intentional penetration: The "concrete" I (the monad constituted through prirnordiality) and the concrete (in the second sense) intersubjectivity as "combined" manifold of the concrete I, combine as a result of other 1's being given in consciousness with their life, in my I-consciousness, in my intellectual life, and are given to consciousness in co-acceptance and verified as belonging to me and my life in their conscious-life, and thus are on their side "combined" with me. In this intentional penetration the contents of the other's consciousness become accessible for me; my consciousness is related intentionally to the foreign and by this through and through to that of which the foreign is conscious, and conversely, by this inversion, this having consciousness of the other that is related back to me and what I am conscious of [itself] becomes conscious to me, so that my consciousness circling though this returns to itself including the foreign. (Husserl 1973b, 76 77; my translation)

With the above understanding of direct and originality as it pertains to Fremderfahrung, I can end with a clarification ofthe way in which the other ego is accessible in its inaccessibility. As an experiencing of the world that is not original for me, the other ego is nevertheless experienced by me in an original consciousness. What is directly given to me in the original experience of the other ego is the other ego itself as acting in this world. What is indicated by this other acting in the world is the enacting of the other ego's conscious act. Thus, in my experience of the other ego, what is accessible is my original consciousness of their acting in the world. 'What is inaccessible is the enacting of unoriginal conscious acts and the objects of those acts in so far as they are directly given to an unoriginal consciousness. That the other ego is accessible for me in her acting in the world, which as

5 1 Husserl also says: "Each person has, from the same place in space and with the same lighting, the same view of, for example, a landscape. But never can the other, at exactly the same time as me (in the originary content of lived experience attributed to him) have the exact same appearance as I have" (1989, 177/169; my emphasis).

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an enacting of an unoriginal consciousness is entirely inaccessible to me, makes the other ego accessible to me only in her inaccessibility. As a special type of originality used by Husser! to separate olber streams of consciousness from my O\vn, it seems that accessibility is properly only used to describe the givenness of conscious acts, such that one could not say this or that physical thing is accessible to me. 'What are accessible to me are original experiences, those that are able to be given in a unified stream of consciousness with my current now. The other ego is given to me directly in an original experience as an experiencing that is not original, one that I carmot enact. Her enacting of her stream of experience, as well as her objects as experienced by her, are indicated in the givenness of her ego, but these can never become originally experienced by me. Thus, the other ego is given as accessible to me in her inaccessibility, and this is the only way in which the other ego is accessible to me at all. 52

References Cairns, Dorion. 2006. "Direct and Indirect Consciousness." Journal of Phenomenological Psychology 37 (1): 1-8. Carr, David. 1987. Interpreting HusserL Critical and Comparative Studies. Dordrecht: Martinus Nijhoff Publishers. Depraz, Natalie. 2010. "De l'''inter-attention'' a l'attention inter­ relationnelle. Le croisement de l'attention et de l'intersubjectivire a la lumiere de l'attention conjointe." Symposium 14: 104-118. Gallagher, Shaun. 2008. "Direct Perception in lbe Intersubjective Context." Consciousness and Cognition 17: 535-543. Husser!, Edmund. 1970. "The Origin of Geometry." In The Crisis of European Sciences and Transcendental Phenomenology, translated by David Carr, 353-378. Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press. -. 1973a. Husserliana XIII: Zur Phiinomenologie der Intersubjektivitiit. Texte aus dem Nachlass. Erster TeiL 1905-20. Edited by Iso Kern. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff. -. 1973b. Husserliana XV: Zur Phanomenologie der Intersubjektivitiit Texte aus dem Nachlass. Dritter Teil. 1929-35. Edited by Iso Kern. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff.

52 Without this inaccessibility, the other ego would not appear at all. If one were to take the experiences of the other ego as original, all would be one world soul experiencing everything. A deficient pan-psyche arbitrarily divided into multiples, there would in reality only be a mono-psyche experiencing itself. Possibly this is the One of Plotinus, but there seems to be little joy in its self-experience so considered.

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1983. Ideas Pertaining to a Pure Phenomenology and to a Phenomenological Philosophy, First Book. Translated by F. Kersten. Dordrecht: Martinus Nijhoff. -. 1989. Ideas Pertaining to a Pure Phenomenology and to a Phenomenological Philosophy, Second Book. Translated by Richard Rojcewicz and Andre Schuwer. Dordrecht: K1uwer Academic Publishers. -. 1999. Cartesian Meditations. Translated by Dorian Cairns. Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers. -. 2001. Analyses Concerning Passive and Active Synthesis. Lectures on Transcendental Logic. Translated by Antbony J. Steinbock. Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers. -. 2005. Phantasy, Image Consciousness, and Memory (1898-1925). Translated by John B Brough. Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers. -. 2006. The Basic Problems ofPhenomenology. From the lectures, winter semester, 1910-191 1 . Translated by Ingo Farin and James G. Hart. Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers. Jacob, Pierre. 201 1 . "The Direct-Perception Model of Empathy: A Critique." Review ofPhilosophy and Psychology 2 (3): 519-540. Ratcliffe, Matthew. 2012. "Phenomenology as a Form of Empathy." Inquiry 55 (5): 473-495. Rodemeyer, Lanei. 2010. "A Return to Retention and Recollection: An analysis of the possible mutual influence of consciousness and its content." In On Time - New Contributions to the Husserlian Phenomenology of Time, edited by Dieter Lohmar and [chiro Yamaguchi, 231-249. Dordrecht: Springer. Staehler, Tanja. 2008. "What is the Question to Which Husserl's Fiftb Cartesian Meditation is tbe Answer?" Husserl Studies 24 (2): 99-117. Steinbock, Antbony J. 1995. Home and Beyond Generative Phenomenology after Husserl. Evanston, Illinois: Northwestern University Press. Tostenson, David. 2010. "Husserl's Direct Perception." Journal of the British Societyfor Phenomenology 41, no. 1 (January): 94-109. Williams, Heath. 2017a. "The Directness of Empathy." Phenomenological Studies 1 : 193-216. -. 2017b. "Explicating the Key Notions of Copresence and Verification in Relation to Husserl's Use of tbe Term Direct to Describe Empathy." Human Studies 40: 157-174. Zahavi, Dan. 201 1 . "Empathy and Direct Social Perception: A Phenomenological Proposal." Review ofPhilosophy and Psychology 2 (3): 541-558. -. 2014. "Empathy and Other-Directed Intentionality." Topoi 33: 129-142.

CHAPTER 2 THE OTHER HOLDING ON TO THINGS: M. MERLEAU-PONTY'S PHENOMENOLOGICAL ApPROACH TO THE PROBLEM OF INTERSUBJECTNITY LUIS ANTONIO UMBELINO

1.

The hidden powers of the body

One of the main strengths of Merleau-Ponty's phenomenological account of intersubjective relations is that it avoids arguing for the existence of the other in terms of knowing how to surpass the gap between the "I", barricaded in itself, and the "other", always inaccessible in its O\Vll private inner barricade. Traditional approaches that argue for the existence of others by analogy and that tend to take the personal self as a point of departure miss the point: the other is always reduced to a face-to-face encounter between a "thinking" being, transparently certain only of itself, and a foreign "other" (also transparent to itself) that is only conceivable by "me" via an exterior, analogical, causal approach. According to Merleau-Ponty, in these circumstances the other is never knO\vn as such. The difficulties raised by this hypothesis are, in fact, evident. To begin with, it could be argued that a self-assured "I" is most likely to employ the "other" as a means of reinforcing a more or less egocentric or neurotic certainty of itself-that is to say, as an occasion to reinforce the certainty of the self by projecting and "finding" in the "other" a set of self-assuring similarities. In other words, if we begin with a closed, thinking "I" and suppose that the "I" is the only "thing" known from the start, the other will never truly be found or knO\vn as such; the other will justly represent the paradox and the scandal of a "consciousness seen from the outside, of a thought that has its abode in the external world" (Merleau-Ponty 1945, 401; 2002b, 402). For Merleau-Ponty, the conclusion to be drawn here is clear:

Chapter 2

40

if we consider the problem of intersubjective relations in these telTIls, the problem of the existence of other minds doesn't have a solution. And yet we carmot deny that, at some level oflived experience, there are moments when we don't doubt the presence of the other: Reflection must in some way present the unreflected, otherwise we should have nothing to set over against it, and it would not become a problem for us. Similarly, my experience must in some way present me with other people, since otherwise I should have no occasion to speak of solitude, and could not begin to pronounce other people inaccessible. (Merleau-Ponty 1945, 412-13; 2002b, 419).

There must be another way to approach the problem of intersubjectivity because, at the level of our concrete being in the world, the other is something of a lived certainty. The solipsistic difficulty must be addressed in another way. It can be argued that to know the other as such we first need to know ourselves as such; however, as Merleau-Ponty points out, it would be impossible to account for the existence of others (the simple idea of otherness could not even be conceived) if, prior to any distinctions and at the concrete and original level, our lived experience were not always already an intersubjective experience-an experience that, because it is defined as an embodied presence in the world, is one that "recognises" the presence of others all around and across "me". This is a central claim: in order to account for the possibility of knowing the other as such, we must turn to that embodied way of being in the world for which the other is constantly present. In other words, the key to solving the problem at hand can only be found in "our" own body's hidden powers of belonging to, intermingling with, expanding into, committing to, and incorporating or inhabiting a humanized, perceived world. 2.

The problem with the sphere of ownness

The terms in which Merleau-Ponty addresses the problem of intersubjective relations are established in a critical dialogue with the "shadow" of Husserl's famous Fifth Cartesian Meditation. Although Merleau-Ponty shares common philosophical ground with Husserl, it is his critical appropriation of Husserl's work1 that remains central to fully grasping his original standpoint on the problem of intersubjectivity.

1 For a brief overview ofhow Merleau-Ponty appropriates Husserlian phenomenological premises, see Merleau-Ponty 1 945, I-XVI; 2002, VII-XXIV.

The Other Holding on to Things

41

To illustrate this claim, we could say, for example, that Merleau-Ponty acknowledges that the phenomenological reduction offers the possibility of suspending the blunders of objective thought and of surpassing the naIve belief that conscience is "something" located in the mind, in the brain, contained within a physical body; yet we must add that, according to Merleau-Ponty, "the most important lesson which the reduction teaches us is the impossibility of a complete reduction" (Merleau-Ponty 1945, VIII; 2002b, XV)-a lesson that leads us to conclude that the problem of intersubjective relations carmot be solved by returning to an idealistic sphere of ownness (of a transcendental ego) (Husserl 1966, 77) and, on the contrary, points to a concrete and original mode of bodily belonging to (or of being in) the word. Here, it would also be relevant to say that Merleau­ Ponty partakes in Husserl's effort to find a solution to the problem of intersubjectivity without "projection or introjection" (Merleau-Ponty 1960, 274; 1964, 168), but we must also emphasize that Merleau-Ponty keeps his distance regarding the limits and difficulties of Husserl's theory of pairing (Paarung) (Husserl 1966, 94ff.; see Garcia 2015, 14): Husserl is right to transport the problem of other minds to the arena of a bodily encounter archaically forged along a kind of mutual reverberating empathy (Einfuhlung) (see Marc Richir 2015, 100ff.), a kind of mutual affective resonance that situates the problem of intersubjectivity at a pre-intentional level, but "resemblance" or "analogy", according to Merleau-Ponty, are of no real use here. It is true that only at such an archaeological level is a solution to the problem of inter-objectivity to be found; in order to do so, however, a more radical analysis of the body must be put in place because what the body shows is that to be a body in the world and to know others are-at a pre-intentional level-one and the same. Once again, this is a crucial claim: the body sketches a way of being that eludes the Cartesian ontological dichotomy between immanence and transcendence, and this is why, at an archaeological level of lived experience, I versus other is not a real distinction. Merleau-Ponty's argumentative twist is subtle but decisive. We can characterise it in the following tenns: assuming that "if the other is to exist for me, he must do so to begin with in an order beneath the order ofthought" (Merleau-Ponty 1960, 277; 1964, 170), as Husserl points out, and if, beneath the order of thought, what is at work is the anonymous way of being in the world of the body, then the key to the problem of intersubjectivity is to be found on the side of the body's perceptive way of belonging to the world: a way of belonging that is one of dispossession rather than possession, of involvement and participation rather than separation, of familiarity rather than rupture.

42

Chapter 2

Although the problem of intersubjective relations cannot be solved at the level of an interior "I", it can be solved on the anonymous side of the body: Between my consciousness and my body as I experience it, between this phenomenal body of mine and that of another as I see it from the outside, there exists an internal relation which causes the other to appear as the completion of the system. The other can be evident to me because I am not transparent for myself, and because my subjectivity draws its body in its wake. (Merleau-Ponty 1 945, 405; 2002b, 410)

3.

The eerie presence of others everywhere

The body Merleau-Ponty is talking about is, needless to say, the lived body and not just the objective body, "that conjunction of processes analysed in physiological logical treatises" (Merleau-Ponty 1945, 401; 2002b, 407) . As is well known, Merleau-Ponty's original contribution regarding the body is his claim that "our" own bodies, the bodies we live as Leibk6rper, are not merely subjective spaces of corporeal sensation, nor merely personal, but also constitute a pre-reflexive, habitual, silent and general experience of being in the world (and having a world). My personal existence is the resumption of such a pre-personal perceptive body, which can be said to be another subject beneath me, for whom a world exists before I am here, and who marks out my place in it. This captive or natural spirit is my body, not that momentary body which is the instnunent of my personal choices and which fastens upon this or that world, but the system of anonymous "functions" which draw every particular focus into a general project. (Merleau-Ponty 1945, 294 ; 2002b, 296)

This means that human subjectivity is embodied, and that to be is to be placed in a world that evades complete interiority. This world "is not an object such that I have in my possession the law of its making"; rather, it is "the natural setting of, and field for, all my thoughts and all my explicit perceptions" (Merleau-Ponty 1945, IX; 2002b, XI-XII). In this sense, truth does not "inhabit" only "the inner man" Of, more accurately, "there is no inner man" (Merleau-Ponty 1945, IX; 2002b, XII), no pure "for itself': we are of the world by means of the motility (or motor skills) of the habitual pre-personal body, and it is because of the enigmatic possibilities of the body's practical involvement that "we" begin to make praktognosic (Merleau-Ponty 1945, 164; 2002b, 162) sense of a demanding world-a -

The Other Holding on to Things

43

world that appears to the body as the promise of accomplishment of an original motor intentionality. Correspondingly, my body must be apprehended not only in an experience which is instantaneous, peculiar to itself and complete in itself, but also in some general aspect and in the light of an impersonal being. (Merleau-Ponty 1945, 98; 2002b, 95)

If this is true, then we must conclude that the "self' is never transparent or fully coincidental witli itself. In fact, what the anonymous and pre­ personal layer of bodily experience shows is that we can't be at one with ourselves because there will always be a difference between what "I" expressly "understand" of the world and what, beneath our personal experience, the anonymous and habitual side of the body "knows" of the world by means of practical and anonymous belonging. This is a crucial claim regarding the problem of intersubjectivity: as a general aspect and an impersonal being, the body unveils, by its own way of being in the world (tliat is, a mode of perceptive belonging that subverts the traditional distinctions between immanence and transcendence, interior and exterior), a layering of "my" pre-personal experience that is simultaneously not simply my own (Trigg 2013, 420; see also Trigg 2012, 13ff.) Merleau-Ponty demonstrates this in an elegant and somewhat surprising way in the celebrated Chapter N of Phenomenologie de la perception: Not only have I a physical world, not only do I live in the midst of earth, air and water, I have around me roads, plantations, villages, streets, chmches, implements, a bell, a spoon, a pipe. Each of these objects is moulded to the human action which it serves. Each one spreads rOlmd it an atmosphere of humanity which may be determinate in a low degree, in the case of a few footmarks in the sand, or on the other hand highly determinate, if I go into every room from top to bottom of a house recently evacuated. (Merleau­ Ponty 1945, 399-400; 2002b, 405)

Beneatli a veil of anonymity, as if hanging on to cultural objects, the close (ghostly) presence of tlie other is unequivocallyfelt, as if preserved by an Objective Spirit furtively operating in the ruins. Otherness is thus always real, always present in the perceived world. But how? To fully understand Merleau-Ponty's analysis at this point, we must understand his original analysis of tlie key concept of habit. Here, the originality of Merleau-Ponty's approach consists in the fact that he views habit as entailing not only a "subjective side", made of bodily schemes and syntheses (already studied in detail by Husserl under the concept of habitus), but also an "objective side", which corresponds to how the body

44

Chapter 2

incorporates and redoubles a set of "habitual facts that go from obj ects to institutions and behaviours" (Begout Merleau-Ponty, an intersection of

2005, 383). Habit is, according to corporeal scheme with the body's

dynamic capability-made up of expansion, dynamic enlargement or incorporation of obj ects, places, gestures, and behaviours ("offered to" a certain organization of the world already partially organised by the body itself)-to makefamiliar an intersubjective space. Therefore, habit is not just the corporal schematization produced in the "secret laboratory of passive synthesis" (Begout

2005, 384). Rather, it is a 2012, 69-82) that the ancient correspondences and dis-positions

kind of practical and motor "implicit memory" (Fuchs body remembers as it fe-enacts

learned by an ancient and anonymous calling for mundane incorporation. To "acquire the habit" of doing something is in some sense to have things

in-habit the body by embodied annexation. This is why certain habits belong to certain places, objects or intersubjective circumstances. But what is truly decisive is that this way of inhabiting in fact comes in two modes, which correspond to a kind of mutual haunting (Merleau-Ponty

159):

1945, 161; 2002b,

the body "haunts" obj ects and places since it is always expanding in

their direction "by anticipation" (Merleau-Ponty

1945, 161; 2002b, 159),

and obj ects and places haunt the habitual body as a constant demand for practical correspondences. And when that practical hawser is given by the body, it becomes clear that habit is not just the expression of an inner schematization but also the expression, in the world, ofthe exteriorization­ by incorporation and annexation-of the habitus. In this sense, no "object" or place in the world is simply an object: all

objects retain and protect traces of the human gesture of motor and behavioural incorporations. This is why we can literally say, with Merleau­ Ponty, that "in the cultural obj ect I feel the close presence of others beneath a veil of anonymity" (Merleau-Ponty

1945, 400 ; 2002b, 405); if in a "house

recently evacuated" we encounter objects that exhale an atmosphere of humanity is because, so to speak, the objective side of the habitus remains "coagulated in the things" (Begout

2005, 390) 2

Something of the body's

anonymity is therefore preserved in objects and proj ected in shared behaviour, easily

recognisable

(sometimes against the most basic convictions of the

2 We must conceive here a new idea of the object: its materiality is always imbedded with spirit; that is to say, each object of the hlUllan world is a condensation of uses and corporal gestures, a projection of habitus that dwarfs the functionality of each object and distils in them as a fundamental part of the objects' operatory schematizations the presence in absence of a relatively anonymous humanized existence. Such apresence is vibrant for the lived body, even ifnot for our reflective conscience, which in the present faces merely abandoned objects.

The Other Holding on to Things

45

reflexive conscience) by the general and impersonal being of the body as not merely "my" 0\Vll. 4.

Inter-corporeality

The presence, in the present of the object, of past incorporations, behaviours and dynamic correspondences of the other's anonymous, general and pre-personal habitual incorporations is "knO\Vll" in "my" pre­ personal body as an atmosphere of otherness that is always already familiar to the eerie dynamic re-enactments, intermixtures and embodied dynamic exchanges of the anonymous body. And is this not analogously true in the case of the perception of the body of the other? Merleau-Ponty seems to point us in that direction when he states the following in Causeries: I cannot detach someone from their silhouette, the tone of their voice and its accent. If I see them for even a moment, I can reconnect with them instantaneously and far more thoroughly than if I were to go through a list of everything I know about them from experience or hearsay. Another person, for us, is a spirit which haunts a body and we seem to see a whole host of possibilities contained within this body when it appears before us; the body is the very presence of these possibilities. (Merleau-Ponty 2002a, 46; 2004, 82-83)

Perhaps this is the only way to solve the problem of knowing how a particular cultural object in the world-the body-can point out to "our" perceptive powers (something ofwhich it alone seems capable) the presence of another "I" as such, in this way giving sense to a true "we" (Merleau­ Ponty 1945, 400; 2002b, 405). From the point of view of a phenomenology of perception, this is a very specific and enigmatic occasion, as it forces us to conceive that a determined body in the world-the body of the other-is not perceived in the same way other bodies are: it is perceived by an enigmatic, anonymous and lived sharing of a mutual general and impersonal way of being. This is a strong and decisive claim: the anonymous existence of the body opens up the possibility of experiencing an alterity that is more real, more profound, and more primitive than that which is possible at a self­ conscious level. According to Merleau-Ponty, this claim seems to be validated-taking the path of genetic phenomenology-by the interesting behaviour of children of about six months of age (Merleau-Ponty 1945, 404; 2002, 410; see also Merleau-Ponty 2001; 2007, 143-84). Merleau-Ponty is particularly interested in cases where babies mimetically open their mouths when their caretakers simulate biting one of their little fingers. The toddler knows

46

Chapter 2

nothing about himself, does not recognise himself in the mirror, and knows nothing of his O\Vll teeth and mouth. In such a situation, we carmot say that two conscious individuals are meeting face to face. And yet biting, as it is syncretically re-enacted by the baby, as it is mimetically and affectively shared by means ofpre-communication (M. Scheler) or postural impregnation (H. Wallon), has "immediately ( . ) an iotersubjective significance" (Merleau-Ponty 1945, 404-405; 2002b, 410): . .

The fact is that its mvn mouth and teeth, as it feels them from the inside, are immediately, for it, an apparatus to bite with, and my jaw, as the baby sees it from the outside, is immediately, for it, capable of the same intentions. It perceives its intentions in its body, and my body with its O\Vll, and thereby my intentions in its own body. (Merleau-Ponty 1 945, 405; 2002b, 410).

All of this depends on the fact that the baby "perceives its intentions in its body, and my body with its own, and thereby my intentions in its own body" (Merleau-Ponty 1945, 405; 2002b, 410). In this sense, from a genetic point of view, intersubjectivity is first of all anchored in the anonymity of the pre-personal lived body as it puts in place, via its motor dynamism, an original intentionality and an archaic tacit exchange of corporeal schemes (see Dillon 1988, 114-21) (an exchange that is the double-sidedness of a siogle phenomenon) (Merleau-Ponty 1945, 405; 2002b, 412). Intersubjectivity is originally inter-corporeality: in reality, it must be the case that the child's outlook is in some way vindicated against the adult's and against Piaget, and that the lUlsophisticated thinking of our earliest years remains as an indispensable acquisition lUlderlying that of maturity, if there is to be for the adult one single intersubjective world. (Merleau-Ponty 1 945, 408; 2002b, 414)

In such a realm of "phenomenic iodifferentiation" (Krueger 2013, 5 14), the problem of intersubjective relations with others is no longer one of knowing how to surpass the gap between "me" and "him" but one of understanding how we became different from the other even though we originated in a shared atmosphere, where this difference did not exist. The toddler's lived body is the motor yearning for an intersubjective world. The baby is linked bodily to the behaviour of another; it is intermingled with the range of gestures inscribed on the body of the caregiver, and suddenly, such gestures are met with cOJTesponding behaviour, an embodied cOJTespondence, as ifthe other were originally always known as a demand ofthe lived body's kinesthetic possibilities, a much-needed completion of its system. The traditional theses established by analogy are definitively short­ circuited: not only do they seem too demanding to be executed by an infant

The Other Holding on to Things

47

of a few months of age, but (Krueger 2013, 5 1 2), most of all, they seem to be too superficial as they ignore the archaic practical and motor level ofpre­ communication, where the incarnated conscience of the other truly "begins". The body re-enacts the alien existence in a sort of "reflection" that takes place beyond the realm of personal existence and must be distinguished from intellectual reflection. In other words, my recognition of the other as another is not a decision taken at a self-conscious level but rather precedes that level since it depends on a shared pre-personal and anonymous realm of mutual belonging-a realm where "my" body is also the experience of alien bodies. The other is originally real to "me" as such beyond any personal face-to-face encounter, as such an encounter depends on the fundamental inter-corporeal fabric of intersubjectivity. Because we have a corporal scheme and a perceptive field, we are always in anonymous contact with other corporeal schemes that have become-in a common perceptive field-the variable range of our gestures and motor intentionality. 5,

Inconclusive conclusions

If we wanted to use Merleau-Ponty's later concepts, we could say that, via our anonymous bodies, "me" and "other" are always the two sides of the flesh of the world. This reference to Merleau-Ponty's onto-phenomenological project is not naIve. In these reflections, we have considered the phenomenological range of Merleau-Ponty's phenomenological analysis of the problem of intersubjectivity; there is also a "shadow", however, that accompanies such an approach. This is most easily articulated in the fOlTIl of a question: at the pre-personal level of inter-corporeal relations, what guarantee do we have that what is there is the experience of the body of the "other" and not just the lived experience of "my" lived body? The answer to this question will hinge on the key ontological concept of the chiasm. The full explanation of this, however, will require another paper altogether.

References Begout, Bruce. 2005. La decouverte du quotidien. Paris: Allia. Dillon, M. C. 1988.Merleau-Ponty 's Ontology. Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press. Fuchs, Thomas. 2012. "Body memory and the Unconscious." Founding Psychoanalysis Phenomenologically, edited by D. Lohmar and J. Brudziiiska, 69-82. Dordrecht: Springer.

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Garcia, Esteban. 2015. "Anonimato, conflicto y reconocimiento como figuras de la alteridade en la filosofia de M. Merleau-Ponty." T6picos. Revista de Filosofia, 29. http://www.scielo.arg.ar/scielo.php?script�sci arttext&pid�S 1666485X20l5000l0000! . Husserl, Edmund. 1966. Meditations cartesiennes. Introduction a la phenomenologie. Translated by Emmanuel Peiffer and Emanuel Levinas. Paris: VIin. Krueger, Joel. 2013. "Merleau-Ponty on Shared Emotions and the Joint Ownership Thesis." Continental Philosophical Review 46. Merleau-Ponty, Maurice. 1945. Phenomenologie de la perception. Paris: Gallimard. -. 1960. "Le philosophe et son ombre." In Signes. Paris: Gallimard. -. 1964. "The Philosopher and his Shadow." In Signs, translated by Richard McCleary. Evanston, 11.: Northwestern University Press. -. 200 ! . Psychologie et pedagogie de l 'enfant. Cours de Sorbonne 19491952 Paris: Verdier. -. 2002a. Causeries. Paris: Seuil, 2002. -. 2002b. Phenomenology ofPerception. Translated by C. Smith. London & New Yark: Routledge. -. 2004. The World of Perception. Translated by Oliver Davis. London: Routledge. -. 2007. "The Child's Relations wilb Olbers". In The Merleau-Ponty Reader. Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press. Richir, Marc. 2015. L 'ecart et Ie rien. Conversations avec Sacha Carlson. Grenoble: Million. _

CHAPTER 3 THE "INNER WEAKNESS"­ MERLEAU-PONTY ON INTERSUBJECTIVITY, SUBJECTIVITY AND HUSSERLIAN PHENOMENOLOGY LUIS AGUIAR DE SOUSA

I Intersubjectivity (or intercorporeality) is one of the most studied and positively assessed contributions of Merleau-Ponty's thought. What is usually emphasized is how Merleau-Ponty (not unlike the later Wittgenstein) helped us to free ourselves from the "other minds" problem ! by showing that it relies on false philosophical presuppositions. Although interpretations tend to reflect how pivotal Merleau-Ponty's notion of embodied subjectivity is to his account of intersubjectivity, much less emphasized is the fact that this conception of subjectivity ensues from Merleau-Ponty's views on the specific nature of phenomenological thought, and especially from his interpretation of the inner, but hidden, tendencies of Husserlian phenomenology. Accordingly, in this paper, my focus will be on the relation of Merleau-Ponty's views on intersubjectivity to his views on subjectivity. I will show that his views on intersubjectivity are intrinsically dependent on his views on subjectivity and that a proper understanding of the latter, in tum, depends on a correct understanding of his conception of phenomenology and his reading of Husser1. For Merleau-Ponty, a true account of intersubjectivity involves a radical transfonnation ofthe notion of subjectivity inherited from the intellectualist, idealist and transcendental tradition, which he often associates with Kant's Critique a/Pure Reason, or at least with some interpretations of it. For the 1 See, for example, Cannan (2008, 148-162), Rornedlm-Rornluc (20 1 1 , 141-154), Hass (2008, 100-123), Priest (1998, 179-1 95), Matthews (2002, 89-109 and 2006, 1 14-134) and Langer (1989, 97-106).

50

Chapter 3

French phenomenologist, the very fact that something like the other can mean something to us, the fact that we are in principle opened to the other, entails that the subject of experience must be conceived not only as radically finite but also as emerging from the depths of an embodied, pre-reflective, even anonymous awareness. It is only insofar as we find ourselves as bodies engaged in worldly behaviors, with the capacity not only to manifest but also to create meaning out of ourselves, that we are in a position to recognize the behavior of others' bodies as being similarly meaningful. The fact that the problem of the other, of intersubjectivity, entails my embodied existence is at the crux of Merleau-Ponty's reading of Husserl and his ambiguous relation to Husserlian phenomenology. On the one hand, Husserl appears as the perfect embodiment of the excesses of the "transcendental tradition" (a term I borrow from Carr 1999). For Merleau­ Ponty, the transcendental conception of subjectivity is overly intellectualist, preventing the other from becoming a genuine problem. On the other hand, Merleau-Ponty wants to show that the very fact that the other was a problem for Husserl entails that the latter's conception of subjectivity is radically different from the transcendental idealist one, which he identifies with Kant and the Kantian tradition. The problem of the other in Husserl attests to the fact that the latter's concept of subjectivity must be seen as different from the transcendental one. In other words, the problem of intersubjectivity points to a specifically phenomenological concept of subjectivity, distinct from the transcendental one. It is of course debatable whether Husserl ever fully realized the implications of his account of intersubjectivity for his notion of transcendental subjectivity. Because interpretations tendentially focus, as indicated, on Merleau­ Ponty's overcoming of the problem of other minds as ordinarily understood, that is, under the presupposition of a false dichotomy between body and soul, they tend to overlook the extent to which intersubjectiviy was, in fact, a problem for Merleau-Ponty, and an insoluble one at that. Thus I conclude by showing that, according to Merleau-Ponty, the relation with the other that obtains insofar as we are embodied beings still falls short of being a genuine intersubjective relation. The latter indicates a relation between different egos, whereas the fOlmer takes place at a pre-personal level, deserving to be called intercorporeal rather than intersubjective. As was already the case with Husserl and Sartre, the other subject appears in my perceptual field as an absence, this being the source of all the problems that come up in our concrete relations with others. To the extent that we are the subjects of our experience and do not coincide with other subjects, Merleau­ Ponty claims that there is a "lived solipsism."

The "hiller Weakness"

51

One word more regarding the scope and method of the present paper: my guiding thread throughout will be the chapter on intersubjectivity from the Phenomenology ofPerception. This decision is bolstered by my belief that it is in this chapter that Merleau-Ponty lays out his position on the topic with a higher degree of explicitness and clarity. However, I am well aware that there are some differences and nuances in the way Merleau-Ponty communicates his position. For that reason, I will also take into account other texts by Merleau-Ponty whenever doing so is justified. This means that I will not presuppose tliat tliere is a deep gulf dividing tlie early Merleau-Ponty (of the Phenomenology of Perception) from tlie late Merleau-Ponty (usually represented by The Visible and the Invisible and his last working notes). That tliere is a deep continuity regarding the topic of intersubjectivity (pace Barbaras 1991) can be appreciated if one compares his position in tlie Phenomenology of Perception witli one of his last writings, the essay "The Philosopher and his Shadow," from Signs (Merleau-Ponty 1964).

II As already briefly indicated, my main aim in this article is to show that Merleau-Ponty's views on intersubjectivity are closely linked to his views on subjectivity, and these, in tum, to his views on the nature of phenomenology and his reading of Husserl. In fact, it is my belief that since its inception, right tlirough to its very end, Merleau-Ponty's philosophy can be read as a reflection on the nature of human subjectivity. Merleau-Ponty tliinks that the philosophical tradition, at least since Descartes, has been afflicted by false oppositions and dichotomies, having their origin in the way we tend to be led astray by certain abstract conceptions. These include the idea of the human body, which culminates in the Cartesian conception of the human body as a mere mechanism. This Cartesian conception is shared by empiricist and purportedly "scientific" attempts to reduce human consciousness and subjectivity to physiological, biological, chemical, or even purely physical mechanical phenomena. The other main abstraction is, of course, the seemingly opposite idea, also harking back to Descartes: the idea of tlie soul as a res cogitans, that is, as a thinking substance and thus as completely different from tlie body. In Merleau-Ponty's view, tlie latter abstraction helped to pave the way for intellectualist, transcendentalist, and idealist philosophies. We can only understand the inner thrust of Merleau-Ponty' s lifelong intellectual project if we see it as an attempt to overcome these oppositions, in particular tliat between body and soul. This does not mean that both

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conceptions should be outright rejected on account of their purported falsehood. Rather, it implies that we should see them for what they really are-abstractions from a phenomenon that is more primordial than each of them. In this regard, Merleau-Ponty's philosophy can be viewed as similar to the Hegelian approach in that it consists in an internal critique of other positions, one that includes but also simultaneously overcomes them. Of course, the more original phenomenon in which Merleau-Ponty wishes to root the Cartesian ideas ofbody and soul is what he, in Husserl's wake, calls the lived body (Leib), or what he later in his last, unfinished work The Visible and the Invisible refers to as theflesh. This is the idea ofthe body as a subject, or at least a proto-subject-that is, as self-aware, as not only exhibiting and producing intentionality and meaning in the technical, phenomenological sense, but also as its ultimate source and root. Nonetheless, Merleau-Ponty does not claim to have created the idea of embodied subjectivity. According to him, this idea is already at play in Russerl's phenomenology. In fact, this idea plays a central role not only in those volumes-some of which must have remained unknO\vn to Merleau­ Ponty-in which Husserl is explicitly concerned with the body (for example Ideas II [Husserl 1989] and lecture courses like Thing and Space [Husserl 1997] and Phenomenological Psychology [Husserl 1977]), but also in Husserl's analyses ofthe pre-predicative sphere, the domain ofthe so-called passive syntheses (for example, Analyses Concerning Passive and Active Syntheses [Husserl 2001] and Experience andJudgement [Husserl I973]) 2 Besides this, Merleau-Ponty thinks that Husserl created a new, specifically phenomenological concept of subjectivity, which contrasts with the one inherited from the idealist and transcendental tradition. The latter are also referred to by Merleau-Ponty under the labels of "intellectualism" and "reflective analysis." One can assume that under these labels the French phenomenologist has in mind Kantian and neo-Kantian philosophy 3 However, we should not be misled into thinking that Merleau-Ponty wholly 2 For general accounts of Husserl's phenomenology of the body and embodied subjectivity, see, for example, Behnke, n.d. and Zahavi 1994. 3 Merleau-Ponty's view of Kant as a thoroughgoing idealist may have been influenced by his reading of Lachieze-Rey's interpretation, as witnessed by Merleau-Ponty's references to it, in particular at the beginning of the chapter on the cagila (Merleau-Ponty 2012, 388-94 [428-34], 554-5n2-18). He may have taken the idea that Kant's transcendental project is completely different from Husserl's from Eugen Fink's article "Die phanomenologische Philosophie Edmund Husserls in der gegenwartigen Kritik" (Fink 1933), in which Fink, with Husserl's acquiescence, tries to draw a strict bmmdary between Husserl's transcendental phenomenology and Kant's transcendental philosophy (see Merleau-Ponty 2012, lxxvii [14], 494n30 [14n1], S04n20 [SSn4], where Merleau-Ponty explicitly refers to Fink's article).

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rejected Kantian philosophy. Not only did he think that Kant's transcendentalism and "reflective analysis" were a necessary step in the progression that starts with the natural attitude and that culminates in the phenomenological point of view, but he was also somewhat ambiguous regarding the significance of Kantian philosophy: he held the Critique of Judgment in high esteem precisely for having anticipated much of what he himself would end up defending (for proof of this, see, for example, Merleau-Ponty 2012, lxxxi [1 8]). It is not only with regards to Kant that Merleau-Ponty maintains an ambiguous stance. Although he sees Husserl as the forerunner ofthe idea of embodied, existential and finite subjectivity, he still situates him, in particular the phase of Ideas I, in the intellectualist, transcendentalist, idealist tradition. Despite this, he thinks that the inner thrust of Husserl's thought and its actual development in later years already exhibits traces that 4 point to an overcoming of his early position. As a result, Merleau-Ponty views his 0\Vll phenomenology as the self-realization of the inner tendency of the Husserlian one. For that reason, Merleau-Ponty's reading of Husserl makes the latter seem much closer to subsequent phenomenologists than is usually acknowledged, in particular those usually associated with the so­ called "existentialist" tradition, such as Heidegger, Sartre, and Merleau­ Ponty himself. Leaving aside the question of the extent to which Merleau-Ponty's Husserl can actually be found in the real Husserl, in the latter's vast and numerous published and unpublished writings, Merleau-Ponty's Husserl is, of course, Merleau-Ponty himself-or a reflection of how the latter sees Husserl's phenomenology as developing towards, and turning into, his 0\Vll. It is not my intent here to go into all the aspects of Merleau-Ponty's very deep and important relation to Husserl 's phenomenology. I broach this topic because, as mentioned above, my claim is that an understanding of Merleau­ Ponty's views on subjectivity and its relation to Husserlian phenomenology 5 is central to grasping his views on intersubjectivity. As I briefly pointed out in the introductory section, according to Merleau-Ponty one of phenomenology's most distinctive features in relation 4 It is also in the context of a footnote referring to Lachieze-Rey's interpretation of Kant that Merleau-Ponty (2012, 539n2 [290n1]) explicitly associates Kant's transcendental idealism with what he calls Husserl's "second period," that is, the period of Ideas 1. On Merleau-Ponty's conception of Husserl's philosophical development in three distinct periods, see Seebohm (2002, 56-7). 5 For proof of this, see, for example, Merleau-Ponty's later essay "The Philosopher and His Shadow" (1964, 159-181), where Merleau-Ponty returns to the topic of Husserlian phenomenology, once again making intersubjectivity a central issue.

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to the transcendental tradition is the fact that for the latter there is in principle no problem of the "other," whereas phenomenology views itself as being faced with that problem: "for Husserl, however, we know that there is indeed a problem of others, and the alter ego is a paradox" (Merleau­ Panty 2012, 1xxvi [ 1 2]) 6 Thus, according to Merleau-Ponty's view, intersubjectivity cannot be taken as a specific area of research in phenomenology alongside others. Rather, it concerns the very kernel of the phenomenological project. Historical proof of this, in Merleau-Ponty's view, is provided by the fact that the problem of the other makes its first explicit appearance in Husserl's published works in Formal and Transcendental Logic (Husserl 1969) and in his more famous treatment of it in the last ofthe five Cartesian Meditations, where Husserl seems to want to distance himself from the shadow of solipsism. 7 Merleau-Ponty believes that, if Husserl were in fact a thoroughgoing transcendental idealist, the other could never have become a problem for him. The fact that it did means that Husserl somehow recognized that human subjectivity must have an external side, must be embodied, must have a place in nature, history and culture (although it remains controversial whether Husserl himself ever drew these consequences with regard to his conception of transcendental subjectivity)8: If another person is truly for-himself, beyond his being for-me, and ifwe are for-each-other and not separately for-God, then we must appear to each other, we both must have an exterior, and there must be, besides the perspective of the For-Oneself (my view upon myself and the other's view upon himself), also a perspective of the For-Others (my view upon others and the view of others upon me). Of course, these two perspectives cannot be in each of us merely juxtaposed, for then others would not see me and I would not see others. I must be my exterior, and the other's body must be the other person himself (Merleau-Ponty 2012, lxxvi [12]). 6 On the fact that the other was not a problem for Kant, see also Merleau-Ponty 2010, 435. 7 In his unpublished writings, Husserl introduced the topic of intersubjectivity in his lectures as early as 1 9 1 0. See his lecture course translated as Basic Problems of Phenomenology (Husserl 2006). See also the other, early texts on intersubjectivity in Husserliana XIII (HusserI 1973). 8 As a parenthetical remark, letme mention that, besides Husserl, Sartre (1 966, 270) likewise claims that intersubjectivity entails my embodiment, although in Sartre's view this is tantamount to my being turned into an object for the other. Although Merleau-Ponty argues for the correlation between the "other" and embodiment, we will see that this does not mean that I should be taken solely as an object. For Merleau-Ponty, Sartre's exclusive alternative between either taking myself as "for­ itself' or as "in-itself' does not hold, as I hope will become clear in what follows.

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At the same time, the fact that the other is truly a problem for phenomenology, in a way that it is not for Kantian transcendental idealism, is intrinsically linked to the former's view of subjectivity. Below I will have the opportunity to develop in more detail Merleau-Ponty's argument in this regard. Suffice to say that, according to Merleau-Ponty, phenomenology discovers a sphere of consciousness prior to reflection, to the "I think," to the cogito. Not only does this pre-reflective sphere precede and make reflection possible, but it is in this sphere, before any other, that it is possible to find not only my original relation to the world but also my relation or openness towards others. "Pre-reflective" or "phenomenological" subjectivity is not absolute. It encompasses the world as much as the world encompasses it; it is a bodily perspective on a world in which it at the same time inheres or is rooted. It is the finitude of phenomenological subjectivity, this "inner weakness," in opposition to the putative absolute character of transcendental subjectivity "that prevents me from being absolutely individual and that exposes me to the gazes of others as one man among men or, at the very least, as one consciousness among consciousnesses" (Merleau-Ponty 2012, lxxvi [123]).

III Before we consider Merleau-Ponty's views on intersubjectivity more closely, it is necessary to discuss the exact context and sense in which the question ofthe "other" is raised by Merleau-Ponty. In Husserl, for example, at least in the Carlesian Meditations, the problem of the other comes up in the context and development of the so-called phenomenological reduction. It could be said, in a very brief and superficial marmer, that the latter consists in suspending our constant and tacit belief in the existence ofthe world; that is, it entails perfOlming the phenomenological epoche. This means that, according to Husserl, when doing philosophy qua phenomenology, we should abstain from making use of the thesis of the natural (and scientific) standpoint that the world exists. Thus, the problem of the other is so important for Husserl in part because it threatens the whole phenomenological project with the ghost of solipsism-that is, the threat that the phenomenological ego may be the one and only existing ego. 9 This notwithstanding, the way

9 On this interpretation of the meaning ofHusserl's endeavor in the fifth Meditation, see Smith 2003, 248-9. Smith claims that what distinguishes Husserl's approach to the problem of the other in the fifth Meditation from other approaches in his manuscripts is that his concern in the former is to describe the appearance of the

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Husserl introduces the problem of the other, at least in the Cartesian Meditations, seems designed to baffle readers. After having introduced the phenomenological reduction in the first two Cartesian meditations, Husserl introduces a further reduction in the fifth and last meditation. The latter meditation is the one that is explicitly concerned with the problem of the other. 'What may come as a surprise is that this further reduction, which Husserl calls a reduction to the sphere of ownness (Eigenheit), seems to be superfluous, for after having perfOlmed the phenomenological reduction, the phenomenologist has allegedly already abstained from giving assent to belief in the existence ofthe world, which seems to include the existence of other egos besides my O\Vll. Here is not the place to enter into much detail on the intricacies of Husserlian scholarship. Suffice to say that I read the "new" reduction that is at stake in the fifth Meditation as drawing a distinction that is internal to the world as phenomenon, the "reduced" world. In other words, the new reduction presupposes that the previous one is still in place. The reduction to the sphere of ownness "puts out of play" not only the phenomenon of others as such, but also everything that is somehow connected with or made possible through them. For example, the appearance of cultural things to the extent that they are made by or for others is therefore "reduced," put out of play. The same happens with animated bodies other than my own. When I say that they are "put out of play," here, I mean that I cease to view a shoe, for instance, as something that was made by others and for others. I proceed to view shoes, artefacts in general, and animated bodies in general, only as pure material things. Of course, someone could object, I do not cease to view shoes as shoes or other organisms as organisms, but much like physical science, I do not take heed of those aspects with which reality appears to me when I am engaging in the reduction to the sphere of ownness. According to Husserl, one of the most important aspects of reality that falls prey to reduction to the sphere of ownness is the very notion of objectivity. Insofar as the latter means something that is valid for everyone, it presupposes the notion of the other as well. This is an idea that runs throughout the fifth Meditation: the other ego is the first non-ego (Husser! 1960, 137) in that it is the other ego that makes possible the appearance of something alien to me (Fremdes), that is, something that goes beyond my 0\Vll stream of consciousness: "Accordingly the intrinsically first other (the first 'non-Ego') is the other Ego. And the other Ego makes constitutionally possible a new infinite domain of what is 'other': an Objective Nature and other to "the transcendentally meditating philosopher" who is engaging in the

epoche.

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a whole Objective world, to which all other Egos and I myself belong" (Husserl 1960, 137). 10 Husserl's reflection on the other is thus far from being a "topic" among others in the framework of transcendental phenomenology. It lies at the center of the phenomenological endeavor insofar as the latter concerns the very possibility ofthere being objects for us, the transcendence of the subject towards an object-in sum, intentionality. Whereas for Husserl the problem of the other is very closely linked to the perfOlmance of the phenomenological reduction, in Merleau-Ponty things are different. This is not to say that Merleau-Ponty does not perform his 0\Vll sort of "reduction." At least in the Phenomenology ofPerception, Merleau-Ponty does present his 0\Vll version of the "reduction"-one which, unlike the Husserlian version, does not entail bracketing our belief in the existence of the world, setting us up in our "transcendental consciousness" and seeing the world exclusively as a phenomenon for the fomler. In Merleau-Ponty's version, the "reduction" consists, rather, in putting aside our theoretical beliefs concerning the world in order to highlight how the world appears from the "natural standpoint." According to Merleau-Ponty, the reduction does not consist in a departure from the "natural standpoint." Rather, the latter is the very theme of phenomenology. The difference may seem subtle, but it is crucial. Merleau-Ponty's "reduction" consists in returning to what he calls the "phenomenal field" (Merleau-Ponty 2012, 53ff. [77ff.]), or to the "lived world" (ibidem, 57 [83]). The "lived world" (monde vecu) is in fact Merleau-Ponty's translation of Husserl's notion of Lebenswelt, a term which is often also translated as "life-world." Merleau-Ponty's reduction to the "lived world" is not an injunction to philosophize in a naIve way. Rather, as indicated, the task of phenomenology is, for Merleau-Ponty, to focus on and bring to light what makes up our most primitive relation to the world, our "being in the world": Because we are through and through related to the world, the only way for us to catch sight of ourselves is by suspending this movement, by refusing to be complicit with it (or as Husserl often says, to see it ohne mitzumachen), or again, to put it out of play. This is not because we renounce the certainties of common sense and of the natural attitude on the contrary, these are the constant theme of philosophy but rather because, precisely as the presuppositions of every thought, they are "taken for granted" and they pass 1 0 See Smith's (2003, 214) very fortunate choice ofwords in making this same point: "the ultimate concern of this final meditation is with objectivity, or the sense of something anything existing in a way that does not reduce to facts concerning my consciousness." On the close link between intersubjectivity and objectivity, see also Husserl 1 960, 123, 123-4, 126, 137. Cf. also Merleau-Ponty 1964, 168 and Zahavi 2003, 1 10, 1 1 5, 1 1 9.

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Chapter 3 by unnoticed, and because we must abstain from them for a moment in order to awaken them and to make them appear. (Merleau-Ponty 2012, lxxvii [ 1 3 4] )

Phenomenology is needed because what is most immediate and unquestioned from the point of view of our natural immersion in the world, of our Lebenswelt, is far from being a matter of course. In fact, to gain access to and uncover our "being in the world," we need to engage in a special kind of reflection, which in the Phenomenology of Perception Merleau-Ponty calls "radical reflection" (Merleau-Ponty 2012, lxviii [14], 227 [264], 250 [288]), and which he later, in the Visible and Invisible, calls "hyper­ reflection" (Merleau-Ponty 1968, 38, 46). The latter does not simply mean putting ourselves in the position of mere onlookers of our O\Vll conscious life. Rather, radical reflection makes us aware of reflection's O\Vll restrictions and distortions and of its origin and inherence in, and dependence on, a pre­ reflective life. If we attend to how we most innnediately find ourselves in the life­ world, we find that we are always already surrounded by others and by cultural- and value-objects that implicitly refer to them. In fact, as we saw, for Husserl, the very notion of "objectivity," of something other than me, something alien, is intrinsically related to the fact of there being other ll sUbjects. Let me add that, besides Husserl, and before Merleau-Ponty, Heidegger also stressed that: 1) each of us (or as he puts it, our respective Dasein) does not exist in isolation from others, and thus that our Dasein 12 should be conceived as Mitdasein, as a "Being there with others,,; 2) our notion of the other is not tied to actually existent others, and our actual encounter with them depends on our being previously opened to a horizon 13 of "otherness"; and 3) ordinary things already make implicit reference to 1 1 On the fact that the world is a public world and that the other is a condition of objectivity, see also Barbaras 199 1 , 4 1 . 12 On the original character ofthe other (their being there with me in the same world), see Heidegger 1 962, 1 1 8: "By reason of this with-like [mithaften] Being-in-the­ world, the world is always the one that I share with Others. The world ofDasein is a with-world [Mitwelt]." See also Heidegger 1 962, 123 and Sartre 1966, 280. 1 3 "The phenomenological assertion that 'Dasein is essentially Being-with' has an existential-ontological meaning. It does not seek to establish ontically that factically I am not present-at-hand alone, and that Others of my kind occur. If this were what is meant by the proposition that Dasein's Being-in-the-world is essentially constituted by Being-with, then Being-with would not be an existential attribute which Dasein, of its own accord, has corning to it from its own kind of Being. It would rather be something which turns up in every case by reason of the occmrence of Others. Being-with is an existential characteristic ofDasein even when factically

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possible others: for example, the bicycle is seen by us as something of use that refers to certain possible projects of human beings with a certain physical configuration, etc. 14 In a certain sense, this can be seen as an answer to the question of the other in the epistemological sense of "how can I know about the existence of other egos or minds beside my O\vn?" Insofar as I make the Lebenswelt the source and touchstone of all philosophical problems, the so-called problem of "other minds," as it is usually understood, shows itself to be nonsensical. Others are always already there with me, such that even to fOlTImlate a question about their possible existence or non-existence presupposes if not their actual then at least their possible givenness. The question regarding the existence of others presupposes the very notion that it attempts to put into question. If I were not already opened to the notion ofthe "other" as such, it would never cross my mind to ask about his or her existence. no Other is present-at-hand or perceived. Even Dasein's Being-alone is Being-with in the world. The Other can be missing only in and for a Being-with. Being-alone is a deficient mode of Being-with; its very possibility is the proof of this. On the other hand, factical Being-alone is not obviated by the occmrence of a second example of a human being 'beside' me, or by ten such examples. Even if these and more are present-at-hand, Dasein can still be alone. So Being-with and the facticity of Being with one another are not based on the occurrence together of several 'subjects'. Yet Being-alone 'among' many does not mean that with regard to their Being they are merely present-at-hand there alongside us. Even in our Being 'among them' they are there with us; their Dasein-with is encOlUltered in a mode in which they are indifferent and alien. Being missing and 'Being away' [Das Fehlen und 'Fortsein'] are modes ofDasein-with, and are possible only because Dasein as Being-with lets the Dasein of Others be encOlUltered in its world. Being-with is in every case a characteristic of one's 0\Vll Dasein; Dasein-with characterizes the Dasein of Others to the extent that it is freed by its world for a Being-with. Only so far as one's 0\Vll Dasein has the essential structure of Being-with, is it Dasein-with as encOlUlterable for Others" (Heidegger 1962, 120). 1 4 On this see Heidegger 1 962, 1 17: "In our 'description' of that environment which is closest to us the work-world of the craftsman, for example, the outcome was that along with the equipment to be fOlUld when one is at work [in Arbeit]' those Others for whom the 'work' ['Werk'] is destined are 'encountered too'. If this is ready-to-hand, then there lies in the kind of Being which belongs to it (that is, in its involvement) an essential assignment or reference to possible wearers, for instance, for whom it should be 'cutto the figme'. Similarly, when material is put to use, we encOlUlter its producer or 'supplier' as one who 'serves' well or badly." On the fact that cultural objects already presuppose the constitution of others see also Husserl 1 960, 124, 127. On the reference of the thing of use to others see also Sartre 1 966, 233-4. For Heidegger's account of sociality in Being and Time, see Heidegger 1 962, §§25-27.

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The sequence ofMerleau-Ponty's presentation in the Phenomenology of Perception, in which he considers the "natural thing" before the other, may speak against the idea that the world, my world, is always at the same time a world for others, a shared world As a result, it is an open question how much Merleau-Ponty presupposes the givenness of pure nature to the exclusion of others as a primordial layer of meaning upon which the meaning of others, that is, the "intersubjective world," is built. Since Merleau-Ponty discusses our openness to the physical world before introducing the "other" and the "cultural world," it may seem that the fOlmer has a more primordial character: "And in some respect, each object will at first be a natural object; if it is to be able to enter into my life, it must be made of colors and of tactile and sonorous qualities" (Merleau-Ponty 201 2, 363 [404]). Passages such as these suggest that Merleau-Ponty seems to think of the cultural world as a layer of meaning superadded onto a purely natural one. The division between the purely "physical world" and the "cultural," "intersubjective" world was surely inspired by Merleau-Ponty's reading of 15 Husserl. It is no surprise that Husserl calls the fOlmer the "solipsistic world" (Husserl 1989, 79). This notwithstanding, as commentators like Barbaras (1991, 37-8) and Langer (1989, 97ff.) have already noted, the "other" keeps creeping into the discussion of the "natural thing," such that we may doubt whether the introduction of the natural world before the cultural world in the Phenomenology ofP erception was not perhaps merely done for the sake of presentation. In fact, Merleau-Ponty is quick to point out that, in addition to natural things, we find ourselves surrounded by cultural objects: "Not only do I have a physical world and live surrounded by soil, air, and water, I have around me roads, plantations, villages, streets, churches, a bell, utensils, a spoon, a pipe. Each of these objects bears as an imprint the mark of the human action it serves" (Merleau-Ponty 201 2, 363 [404-5]). Here is not the place to go into much detail on this topic, but let it be said that the relation between the cultural thing and the natural thing is probably understood by Merleau-Ponty as what he calls, in Husserl's wake, a relation offounding (Fundierung)-although what is founded (the cultural thing) presupposes and in a sense comes after the founding element (the natural thing), the latter is incorporated and transfOlmed by the former so 16 that the pure natural thing is in a sense an abstraction. Although from a 1 5 On the pre-objective and pre-social phenomenon of nature, "mere nature" (blasse

Natur), see Husser1 1960, 1 26-7, 128.

16 See Merleau-Ponty's observations to this effect on Husserl's notion ofFundienmg (2012, 128 [159]; 414 [454]). See also Dillon's (1988, 52-3, 137, 172 and passim) very instructive discussion of it.

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genetic point of view I have to presuppose that I am only able to constitute the meaning of others after I have constituted the meaning of the "material thing," I fmd myself already surrounded by natural things in the framework of a social world. When we enter into Merleau-Ponty's more substantive claims about how our relation with others is constituted, we will have further opportunity to see how, at its roots, the world appears inextricably as a social world, not just a natural one. Despite holding that the other is already there with me in my Lebenswelt, Merleau-Ponty maintains that it is also phenomenology's task to locate the origin of this evidence. As we have just seen, this does not consist in proving the existence of the other via arguments. We already saw that those kinds of proofs always end up presupposing what they are trying to accomplish. It consists, instead, in looking for the experiential, phenomenological root 17 of that belief. Merleau-Ponty thinks that our encounter with the other through objects of use, tools and in the cultural world takes place "in the mode of the one (on)" (Merleau-Ponty 2012, 363 [405]), that is, through a 18 "veil of anonymity" (Merleau-Ponty 2012, 363 [405]) Cultural objects are traces of human behaviors and endeavors. Our access to the other via cultural objects prompts the question of how it is possible for the human being to manifest him- or herself in external, material things in the first place. For Merleau-Ponty, our acquaintance with cultural objects is to be traced back to our acquaintance with the human body and its behavior. For him, just as for Husserl, the experience of cultural objects points to, and presupposes, the perception of the other's lived body (Leib): "the very first cultural object, and the one by which they all exist, is the other's body as the bearer of a behavior" (Merleau-Ponty 2012, 364 [406]). It is only in the light of this "original encounter" that cultural objects make sense for me. Translated in Husserl's parlance, this means that in the order of constitution, before I am able to intend a cultural, historical world and its objects, I must previously experience the other's body as what bestows sense to the former

1 7 Just as for Sartre, for example, om knowledge of a concrete other presupposes an original acquaintance with him or her through the experience of what Sartre calls the "look" (Ie regard). My acquaintance with the other as object, which for Sartre has only a probable character, presupposes the experience of the "other" as an original presence (see Sartre 1966, 253ff.) The latter amOlUlts, in Sartre's view, to the experience of being seen by the other: '''Being-seen-by-the-other' is the truth of 'seeing-the-other'" (Sartre 1 966, 257). 18 Echoes ofHeidegger's notion of the "They" (das Man) can certainly be heard in Merleau-Ponty's idea of the anonymous other. On the idea of das Man, see Heidegger 1996, 1 26[f.

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experience. 19 Although in this regard Merleau-Ponty was certainly inspired by Husserl, he also deviates from him in certain respects (as we will see). First, however, we must consider more closely what this experience of the other's body consists in.

IV Hitherto, it may seem that Merleau-Ponty does not add much in the way of novelty beyond what can already be found in Heidegger's, Sartre's and, on some readings, even Husserl's analyses of intersubjectivity. To start appreciating what is new in Merleau-Ponty in relation to his predecessors, we must first consider what he says regarding the subject or the ego in connection with the problem of intersubjectivity. As we have already indicated, Merleau-Ponty is particularly opposed to the idea that we can broach the problem of intersubjectivity by starting with the notion of a transcendental ego. In Merleau-Ponty's view, this idea does not belong exclusively to Kant and Husserl. Different versions of the idea of the "transcendental ego," whether they bear this name or not, can be found in philosophers as diverse as Descartes and Sartre. The notion of the ego that Merleau-Ponty attacks consists in the idea that the ego, by its nature, can only be a subject; that is, it can only be apprehended from a first-person perspective, never from a third-person, objective perspective. It is not the case that this notion is false (we still have to detennine the extent to which Merleau-Ponty himself endorses it); rather, by starting with this idea of the ego, it becomes impossible, according to Merleau-Ponty, to in any way apprehend or relate myself to an ego other than my own. The latter case would entail that I must literally become the other in order to experience that other as a subject, which of course would dissolve the very notion of "otherness," hence the idea that the alter ego is a "paradox" (Merleau-Ponty 2012, lxxvi [12], 365 [407], 383 [424]) 20 Merleau-Ponty draws the ultimate consequences regarding the "transcendental" approach to the problem of the other. According to Merleau1 9 On the other's body as the first "object," see Husserl 1 960, 153. 20 An almost identical view can be fmmd in Sartre 1966, 234. Sartre's views on the intrinsically troubled nature of intersubjective relations reflect precisely the nature of this problem: insofar as I am a subject, I must, of necessity, view the other as an object. Of course, according to Sartre it is also possible to have an immediate experience ofthe other as a subject, but this entails experiencing myself as an object: "However that other consciousness and that other freedom are never given to me; for if they were, they would be knO\vn and would therefore be an object, which would cause me to cease being an object" (Sartre 1 966, 271).

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Ponty, if we add to the notion of the ego as something that is genuinely only given from the first-person point of view the idealist viewpoint according to which the world and its entities (or at least their meaning) are somehow "constituted" is in some way dependent on my ego, it is impossible for there to be two or more transcendental egos: If the subject's only experience is the one I obtain by coinciding with it, if the mind, by definition, eludes the "outside spectator" and can only be recognized inwardly, then my Cogito is, in principle, unique no one else could "participate" in it. (Merleau-Ponty 2012, 391 [43 1 ] ; on this topic see also Merleau-Ponty 2012, Ixxv [12], 365 [407])

According to Merleau-Ponty, ultimately, something like the transcendental ego should be seen as absolute, as one with God itself, for it does not logically allow for the existence of another one alongside it: The Cogito ultimately leads me to coincide with God. If the intelligible and recognizable structure of my experience, when I recognize it in the Cogito, draws me out of the event and places me within eternity, then it simultaneously frees me from all limitations and from this fundamental event that is my private existence, and the same reasons that oblige us to pass from the event to the act, from thoughts to the I, also oblige us to pass from the multiplicity of I's to one solitary constituting consciousness and prevent me in an attempt to save in extremis the finitude of the subject from defining it as a "monad". The constituting consciousness is, in principle, singular and universaL (Merleau-Ponty 2012, 392 [432])

Of course, since Merleau-Ponty challenges the notion of transcendental ego in all its manifold versions, this does not entail for him that intersubjectivity is nonsensical or impossible, but only that we should forsake taking the transcendental subject as our starting-point when it comes to the problem of the other, replacing it with another, more suitable one. In fact, as I have already pointed out, he seems to suggest that one of the reasons we should not hold Husserl too strictly to the notion of the transcendental ego is that, in fact, intersubjectivity became a real problem for Husserl. Seemingly implied in Merleau-Ponty's view is the idea that, had Husserl been truly coherent with the notion of transcendental ego, he would have found no place for another ego. Correlated with the idealist version of the "transcendental ego" we have just introduced is the idea that my 0\Vll body is just one more object among others, that there is nothing distinctive about it. This same view of the body is shared by empiricism, in particular by the view that the body is a mere

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mechanism.21 The idea that the body could be taken as a mere object is, in fact, uncovered by Merleau-Ponty as a fundamental assumption common to both intellectualism and empiricism. Of course, one of the main traits of Merleau-Ponty's philosophy is to put into question this assumption by way of challenging the idea that my body could ever be taken exclusively as an object (in fact, my body, the body that I live as my own, is never fully constituted as an object for Merleau-Ponty). The overthrowing of this assumption has a tremendous impact on the way we should regard the problem of intersubjectivity: If I do not learn within rnyselfto recognize the junction of the for-itself and the in-itself, then none of these mechanisms that we call "other bodies" will ever corne to life; ifI have no outside, then others have no inside. (Merleau­ Ponty 2012, 391 [43 1])

If it were a constituting consciousness, in relation to whom only the world has meaning, my body would be nothing but an object among objects. In this case, as we saw, the "other" becomes unintelligible, for his existence would imply that I must "constitute" him or her, and that he or she must in tum "constitute" me. There is no room, then, for others and for a phrrality of consciousnesses within objective thought. IfI constitute the world, then I cannot conceive of another consciousness, for it too would have to have constituted the world and so, at least with regard to this other view upon the world, I would not be constituting. Even if I succeeded in conceiving of this other consciousness as constituting the world, it is again I who would constitute it as such, and once again I would be the only constituting consciousness. (Merleau-Ponty 2012, 365 [407])

If my body is not reduced for me to the condition of being an object among objects, if I am my body, if the latter is endowed with powers traditionally ascribed to subjectivity and mind, then the problem ofthe other is deeply transformed. For when I encounter the other, it is no more a matter of asking how I know that his or her body is the manifestation of an invisible and intangible mind. I immediately take the other's body as I take mine: as a conscious, meaningful, expressive body: "If my consciousness has a body, why would other bodies not 'have' consciousnesses? This is obviously to assume that the notion of the body and the notion of consciousness have been deeply transformed" (Merleau-Ponty 2012, 367 [408]). 21 On the fact that realism is lUlable to accolUlt for the existence of the other and views his or her body as any other material object, see Sartre 1 966, 224ff.

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As Merleau-Ponty suggests, the idea that I can only intend the other if! myself am embodied is already implied in Husserl 22 In his analysis in the fifth Cartesian Meditation, Husserl thinks that the fact that we are not merely the transcendental ego and that the latter appears embodied in nature is key to addressing the problem of the other. It is only insofar as my body is not a mere object for me-in other words, insofar as I live my body from the first-person point of view-that is it possible for me to gain access to the other, for the latter is, at first, only accessible to me via his or her body. The question for Husserl is how I come to view the other's body as the outward manifestation of subjectivity and not merely as a material thing. According to the account he gives in the Cartesicm Meditations (Husserl 1960, 1 2 l ff.), I come to view the body of the other as other by viewing it as analogous to mine in that it appears to me not only as a material thing among others (a mere Karper) but also as an animated, lived body (Leib). In other words, I see the other's lived body as the out\vard manifestation of his or her conscious subjectivity-this, however, without any explicit or implicit reasoning, in the most instantaneous and immediate of marmers. Similar to how material, inanimate things present only one of their profiles (Abschattungen) to me (even though I always intend the thing as a whole, not justthe momentarily presented sides), when the body (Leib) ofthe other is present to me, his or her conscious subjectivity is, as Husserl says, indirectly presented to me (or as he also puts it, "appresented" to me) in much the same sense that the thing as a whole, with all its sides, is always co-presented to me together with the presentation of one of them.23 Of course, although I can never grasp a material thing as a whole, with its inner and outer horizons completely laid out before me (which would require a God's-eye perspective, if such a perspective were possible), I can always in principle uncover the material thing's hidden sides, whereas the other as such can in principle never really be given to me, always armouncing itself through its absence.24 According to Husserl, the phenomenon we have here 22 Although it falls outside the scope of this article, I cannot fail to mention here that the correlation between my embodiment, my "facticity," the fact that I have a "nature," and the Other is one of the mainstays of Sartre's Being and Nothingness: "if there is an Other, whatever or whoever he may be; whatever may be his relations with me, and without his acting upon me in any way except by the pure upsmge of his being-then I have an outside, I have a nature. My original fall is the existence of the Other" (Sartre 1 966, 263). See also Sartre 1966, 270, where Sartre claims that the other is a condition of my being an object. For Sartre, the "other" is indubitable to the same extent that my being an object is (Sartre 1 966, 271). 23 On "appresentation," see Husserl 1960, 139. 24 On the other as absence, see Husserl 1 960, 139, 142 and Sartre 1966, 223, 228.

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is one of association through passive synthesis. 'When I see the other's body, I immediately "pair it" associatively with mine and take it, just like mine, as an animated body. What breathes life into my "analogizing apprehension" ofthe other ego is the phenomenon of my O\Vll conscious subjectivity, which is constantly, even if only tacitly, given to me.25 Husserl's influence notwithstanding, Merleau-Ponty introduces ideas that go far beyond Husserl's thought horizon. Whereas for Husserl I am fundamentally the transcendental ego, which, as embodied, is the result of a mundanizing self-apperception (verweltlichende SeTbstapperzeption, cf. Husserl 1960, 130) on the part ofthe transcendental ego, Merleau-Ponty for his part thinks that I am ultimately the lived body. There is no finther dimension behind the lived body to which I can trace myself. The ego, which is reached via reflection, through explicitly turning attention towards myself, already presupposes my bodily engagement with the world. As already indicated, Merleau-Ponty's theory of subjectivity is central to an understanding of his account of intersubjectivity. For him, insofar as we take ourselves as transcendental egos, the relation among transcendental egos, that is, intersubjectivity, is unintelligible. Merleau-Ponty thinks that the transcendental ego is what results from our reflection on ourselves and from taking ourselves to be the source of all synthetic and constituting activity. As such, its objective correlate would have to be the world viewed in full transparency as the result of the constituting activity of the transcendental ego. Merleau-Ponty thinks that it is only insofar as I am a finite-that is, a bodily-perspective on the world that other perspectives or points of view besides my 0\Vll are even thinkable. Another way to put this is to say that it is only insofar as I am not wholly transparent to myself that there are aspects of my being that the cogito carmot fully grasp, that others are conceivable: "others can be evident because I am not transparent for myself, and because my subjectivity draws its body along behind itself' (Merleau-Ponty 2012, 368 [410]). Merleau-Ponty thinks that the fact that I am a perceiving body-that is, a perspective or a point of view on the world, as he also puts it-already pre-figures if not the actuality, then at least the possibility, the horizon, of otherness. The existence of others is a matter of course for me because I am, at my very core, a point of view on the world, a finite being. This is not only because things appear to me in certain adumbrations and orientations in correlation with the position of my sense organs, but also because I am a temporal being; my different perspectives of things succeed and pass into each other. When I reflect on my previous perspectives on a certain thing, I become, in a certain sense, another to myself. Previous perspectives are, even if only to a minimal extent, already 25 On analogy, see Husserl 1960, 140-41 . On pairing, see Husserl 1960, 141-2.

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alien to me. The very fact that there is always more of the world to see, that everything can be seen from different perspectives, already armounces the possibility of tbe other. Merleau-Ponty's overcoming of both empiricist and intellectualist (idealist and rationalist) approaches to the notion of the body allows him to put into question the traditional problematic ofthe other, which relies on the Cartesian idea that I only have access to the other's body, understood as a piece of extended matter, but that his or her mind constantly eludes me, and thus that the otber remains forever problematic. If my starting point is tbe body as it naturally presents itself to me, as a body able to express intention and meaning and to externalize them through its behavior, then the problem of the other that is generated by a strict distinction between body and mind appears to be completely mistaken. In fact, to see how we are able to perceive others, it is enough to attend to the way we naturally encounter them. To our pre-reflective being in the world, the other presents him- or herself quite immediately to me through tbe way his or her body behaves. This behavior is immediately meaningful to me since I myself am a body that behaves in ways similar to those that can be observed in the other. This does not mean, of course, that there is some kind of argument by analogy at play here (Merleau-Ponty 2012, 367-8 [409]). As in Husserl, tbe fact that the lived body is paired with tbat ofthe otber does not ensue from an explicit inference or reasoning; thus, for Merleau-Ponty, the way my body is opened or related to that of the other is not mediated through any sort of reflection. Knowing tbe other is problematic only for accounts that start witb a subject that has to come out of his or her 0\Vll private conscious realm in order to reach out into the other's private conscious realm. At the level of my intercorporeal relation with the other, I access him or her in an immediate marmer. In fact, this is how children and babies interact, both among themselves and with adults, a fact tbat Merleau-Ponty points out (2012, 371 [412]) and tbat was later independently exp lained by neuroscience through 26 the discovery of mirror neurons. The phenomenon of imitation in babies is very significant for a Merleau-Pontyan approach to intersubjectivity, for it shows that the identity between inner and outer does not ensue from our learning to compare, say, the external perception of the other's mouth with the internal feeling of opening my 0\Vll mouth. Rather, babies seem equipped with the ability to "translate" the adult's exterior behavior into their 0\Vll "internal" behavior. In fact, when describing the intercorporeal basis of intersubjective relations, Merleau-Ponty often relies on empirical 26 On the relation between the discovery of mirror neurons and Merleau-Ponty's insights into the nature of intersubjectivity, see Carman 2008, 1 3 8 and Romdehn­ Rorn1uc 201 1 , 141-2.

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examples having to do with the way babies and children relate with others. It is no surprise that one of his most cited texts on intersubjectivity has as its theme child psychology (see the essay "The Child's Relation with Others" [Merleau-Ponty 2010, 434ff.]). There is something in Merleau-Ponty that, however much he wishes to bring his position close to Husserl, deviates from the Husserlian account. As we saw, although the fact that I and the other are embodied consciousnesses is absolutely crucial for getting Husserl's argument off the ground, the experience I have of my body is still granted primacy in the face of the experience of the other's body. We can say that there is still a trace of reasoning by analogy, although implicit rather than explicit, in Husserl's account of the perception of the other. In Merleau-Ponty's case, this scheme of things is blurred inasmuch as the experience I have of myself-and this entails, before anything else, the experience I have of my body-already 27 prefigures the experience of the other. Merleau-Ponty relies on the notion of "body schema" to characterize in a new way the experience or awareness I have of my body. The notion of body schema is as crucial as it is difficult, and for that reason I cannot trace its details in the present context. I will limit myself to pointing to certain features that are relevant to an understanding of the view that the experience of my body entails experience of the other. The notion of body schema was taken by Merleau-Ponty from the debates of his time. 28 However, he does not limit himself to making use of an already-established notion; he transforms and makes it his own. What Merleau-Ponty means when he refers to the body schema is, firstly, that the experience of my body is not that of a heap of sensations, but that of a unitary whole that precedes its parts, of a Gestalt (2012, 100-2 [127-9]). As Merleau-Ponty himself admits, however, this is still insufficient to characterize the body schema (2012, 102 [ 1 29]). The latter is the experience of my body in the world29 as involved in certain tasks and projects (and not only in a certain spatial situation in relation to the rest of the world). One of the aspects of the body schema that Merleau-Ponty emphasizes throughout the Phenomenology of Perception, in particular in its first part, which is dedicated to the body, is the fact that the corporeal schema is a "system of 27 Of course, there are Husserlians who say that in Husserl, too, the other is already inscribed in my self-experience. See Zahavi 2003, 1 13 . However, in my view, this is not the accOlmt that can be fmmd in Cartesian Meditations. 28 Here I will not discuss the difference between the notion of body image [image du corps] and body schema [schema corporel]. On this distinction see, for example, Gallagher 1995, 225[f. and Cannan 2008, 102- 1 1 1, esp. 105. 29 "This is to say that the body schema is not merely an experience of my body, but rather an experience of my body in the world ( )" (Merleau-Ponty 201 2 176 [142]). . . .

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equivalences" (2012, 141 [175]; see also 2012, 243-4 [281] and 2010, 247). This means that, for example, a certain task, say, striking a football, immediately translates into certain postures, movements and perfOlmances on the part of my body. This aspect of the "body schema" is also related to the body's expressive nature and to the fact that the body not only translates infOlmation from one sense to the other, for example the visual correspondent of a certain tactual sensations (in Merleau-Ponty's parlance, it "translates" sensorial data across the senses (2012, 243-4 [281])), but also translates bodily and worldly relations into each other. The body schema assures the equivalence between my "internal" feeling of moving my hand (what Husserl called cenesthesia) and the visual image of my moving hand. The body schema is thus the ultimate foundation of the relation between inner and outer. In order for this relation to obtain, it is not enough to have a subjective experience of my body; the latter must be the experience of my body as both subjective, lived, and as objective, in the world (a point that is very well emphasized by Dillon 1988, 122-3). It is the body schema as this "system of equivalences" or of "translation" that allows each of us to grasp the significance of the other's gesture, to apprehend "the correspondence between what he sees done and what he does" (Merleau-Ponty 2012, 370 [411-2]). Since the world of perception is the world that is "familiar" to the body, and since one of Merleau-Ponty's main tenets is that everything that is (which also means everything that exists and is meaningful to me) must be so on the basis of that primordial relation of my body with the world of perception (linguistic and intellectual relations are conceived of as the outcomes of expressive operations that are perfOlmed on the basis of perceptual relations, which of course does not mean that they should be seen as reducible to them), the body schema is "the common texture of all objects" (Merleau-Ponty 2012, 244 [282]). In a sense, it encompasses the whole world in that all things acquire meaning only in relation to it. On these grounds, Merleau-Ponty sometimes suggests that our relation with others must be understood in the same sense as the relation between our sense organs among themselves-to the extent that these require a unity that precedes them, such that I and the other are in a sense part of an encompassing unity that precedes our differentiation. As an example, take the following passage: "henceforth, just as the parts of my body together fOlTIl a system, the other's body and my 0\Vll are a single whole, two sides of a single phenomenon, and the anonymous existence, of which my body is continuously the trace, henceforth inhabits these two bodies simultaneously" (Merleau-Ponty 2012, 370 [411]). 30 This of course generates certain issues 3 0 That Merleau-Ponty thought of the other in terms of an "extension" of my body schema and of both of us as members of a single system is also quite explicit in this

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and possible conflicts with other parts of his theory of intersubjectivity. I will return to this issue in the next section, where I will examine the extent to which it is possible to hannonize the idea of the primordial indistinguishableness of me and the other with other aspects of Merleau­ Ponty's views on intersubjectivity. v

What I have presented is still far from providing the whole picture of Merleau-Ponty's account of intersubjectivity. First of all, the experience of the other's body as I have hitherto described still falls short of being a genuine intersubjective relation: "this only establishes another living being, and not yet another man" (Merleau-Ponty 2012, 370 [411]; on this see also Dillon 1988, 122). Although in a way I am my body in the sense that the latter is the locus of my personal existence, for Merleau-Ponty the body is first and foremost a pre-personal and even anonymous entity: "if I wanted to express perceptual experience with precision, I would have to say that one perceives in me, and not that I perceive" (Merleau-Ponty 2012, 223 [260]; on the body's anonymous nature see also 2012, 86 [1 13], 362 [404] and passim). I have argued elsewhere (Sousa 2018) that, on this point, Merleau-Ponty has been influenced by Sartre's idea, to be found in the essay The Transcendence of the Ego (Sartre 2004), concerning consciousness's anonymous and pre-personal character. Briefly, in that essay, Sartre claims that instead of being personal, endowed with an ego, consciousness is impersonal. According to Sartre, there is no need for an ego to unify or make consciousness individual. (It should be held in view that in Being and Nothingness this idea gave way to the influential notion of "pre-reflective consciousness.") In the Phenomenology of Perception, Merleau-Ponty passage from "The Philosopher and its Shadow": "my right hand was present at the advent of my left hand's active sense of touch. It is in no different fashion that the other's body becomes animate before me when I shake another man's hand or just look at him. In learning that my body is a 'perceiving thing,' that it is able to be stimulated (reizhar) it, and not just my 'consciousness' I prepared myself for understanding that there are other animalia and possibly other men. It is imperative to recognize that we have here neither comparison nor analogy, nor projection or 'introjection.' The reason why I have evidence of the other man's being-there when I shake his hand is that his hand is substituted for my left hand, and my body annexes the body of another person in that 'sort of reflection' it is paradoxically the seat of. My two hands 'coexist' or are 'compresent' because they are one single body's hands. The other person appears through an extension of that compresence; he and I are like organs of one single intercorporeality" (Merleau-Ponty 1 964, 168; see also 2010, 247).

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viewed this idea of consciousness as anonymous and located it in the body (as can be witnessed by his similar idea of the tacit cogitO) 31 According to this view, it is only against the backdrop of its impersonal, anonymous basis that the body acquires a personal dimension. However, if this is so, if my relation with the other consists in a relation between our respective lived bodies, this entails that the relation between me and the other that I just characterized is not a genuine relation among two subjects: "if the perceiving subject is anonymous, then the other self that he perceives is anonymous as well" (Merleau-Ponty 2012, 372 [413]). According to some interpretations (Zahavi 2014, 78ff., 85ff., 203ff. and Dillon 1988, 1 19ff.), Merleau-Ponty (in particular in the lecture course "The Child's Relation with Others" [Merleau-Ponty 2010, 241-315], but also in later writings like "The Philosopher and his Shadow") defends the position that an intersubjective relation can only come about on the basis of a previous identification of myself with the other (or at least their indistinction). According to Barbaras (1991, 48), Merleau-Ponty's starting point is Husserl's arrival point, that is, the phenomenon of "coupling" (ibidem). Merleau-Ponty does not try to reconstruct the other starting from a private sphere of ownness (ibidem, 48-9). We already saw, in the previous section, that Merleau-Ponty's notion of the "body schema" seems to include the idea of a systematic unity between me and the other. In that lecture course, Merleau-Ponty even traces a psychogenetic account of the progressive development of the consciousness of self, starting from a state of indistinction: We cannot perceive the other if we make a distinction between ego and other. On the contrary, this becomes possible if the psychogenesis begins in a state where the infant ignores differences. I am little by little conscious that my body is closed armmd me. Correlatively, this produces a modification of the other's image that appears in its insularity. The first stage is the existence of a kind of precomrnunication, an anonymous collectivity with differentiation, a kind of group existence. The second stage is the objectification of one's body, segregation, distinction 3 1 In this regard, see Merleau-Ponty's working note from January 1959: "The Cogito of Descartes (reflection) is an operation on significations, a statement of relations between them (and the significations themselves sedimented in acts of expression). It therefore presupposes a prereflective contact of self with self (the non-thetic consciousness [of] self Sartre) or a tacit cogito (being close by oneself) this is how I reasoned in Ph. P" (Merleau-Ponty 1968, 170-1) . The fact that Sartre's pre­ reflective cogito shaped Merleau-Ponty's notion of the tacit cogito was also noted by Dillon (1998: 1 04-5): "Sartre's influence is manifest here. Merleau-Ponty's tacit cogito is modelled upon Sartre's pre-reflective cogito [ ]." . . .

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Chapter 3 between individuals. C . . . ) Individual consciousness only appears later, along with the objectification of one's O"Wll body, establishing a dividing wall between the other and me and the constitution of the other and of me as "hmnan beings" in a reciprocal relationship. (Merleau-Ponty 2010, 247?2

However, the idea of a primal indistinction or even identity between me and other is problematic and in need of reconciliation with other things Merleau-Ponty also says when it comes to describing the genesis of intercorporeality and intersubjectivity. In the first place, the idea of a primal state of identity between me and the other precludes there being a relation that could merit being called intercorporeal. Dillon (1988, 120-1) speaks of the prior indistinction and even identity that is at the basis of intersubjective relations but at the same time uses the idea of a "transfer of body schema" in his account of Merleau-Ponty. Surely if there is indistinction there would be no need to transfer my body schema. It only makes sense to speak of intercorporeality when the child reaches the stage where there is a distinction, however minimal, between her body and the others' body. Instead of "transfer of body schema," I prefer to think in terms of an extension or even incorporation of the other's body. Just as, to use Merleau­ Ponty's analysis of habit (Merleau-Ponty 2012, 144-7 [178-81]), the cane or the piano can be appropriated in such a way that they become one of its organs, the body of the other is to be seen as an extension of mine. Hass (2008, 1 1 1), for example, emphasizes that while rejecting a strict dualism between self and other, Merleau-Ponty also rejects all monist positions. Barbaras (1991, 55-6) likewise criticizes the idea of a primal indistinction between me and the other on the grounds of its insufficiency in accounting for the experience of the other. Just as I am never identical v.rith myself, I am not identical with the other. There is always some divergence (ecart) between me and the other. This may be why, in his lectures on child psychology, Merleau-Ponty characterizes the fIrst stage ofthe baby's social development as "a kind of precommunication, an anonymous collectivity with differentiation, a kind of group existence" (Merleau-Ponty 2010, 247; my italics). The second stage of development is characterized, according to Merleau-Ponty, by "the objectification of one's body, segregation, distinction between individuals" (Merleau-Ponty 2010, 247). Merleau­ Ponty also identifIes this phase with the ability on the part of the infant to 32 In the context of a discussion of Guillamne, Merleau-Ponty quite clearly lays out that "the child begins with a total identification with the other. How, out of this primitive identification with others, is the child able to realize himself and his aptitude for reproducing behavior? How can we explain the appearance of imitative consciousness? And, in general, how do we explain the passage from identification to the distinction between me and others?" (2010, 24) .

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identify his or her image in the mirror (Merleau-Ponty 2010, 250ff.; Dillon 1988, 123-5). This is also purportedly the beginning ofthe formation of my idea of myself (which in order to be fully accomplished has to reach yet another stage). The child does not possess any idea of him- or herself to begin with: "the child lives in a world that he believes is immediately accessible to everyone around him. He is unaware of himself and, for that matter, of others as private subjectivities. He does not suspect that all of us, including himself, are limited to a certain point of view upon the world" (Merleau-Ponty 2012, 371 [412]). This is problematic, however, for before the child is able to objectivate herself she must at some point already acquire her 0\Vll body schema and thereby a pre-reflective awareness of her 0\Vll body. This is a point that Dillon (1988, 123) grasps very clearly: "the body image is at once an extemalization and an objectification of the corporeal schema. In order for the infant to see himself as a separate being, he must leam to see himself 'from the outside' as a body like the other bodies he sees but different from them insofar as it is his 0\Vll. [ . . . ] In order for me to develop a thematic body image, however, the tacit identification must become explicit: I must thematize my body-as-object as the body-subject I am. The body image is thus the thematization of the corporeal reflexivity underlying the corporeal schema" (1988, 123-4). Thus, I take Merleau­ Ponty's passages above to mean that the child has no explicit awareness of being a point of view. Yet surely when Merleau-Ponty describes the way in which children are related to others, this presupposes that children are pre­ reflectively conscious of themselves as being bodily individuals that are distinct from the other bodily individuals with whom they relate. My previous point regarding the fact that Merleau-Ponty takes up Sartre's notion of anonymous and impersonal consciousness and identifies it with the body aimed precisely to show that, on Sartre's model of pre-reflective consciousness, which I believe greatly influenced Merleau-Ponty, there is no need for an ego to make one consciousness different from other consciousnesses (however problematic this may be from a philosophical . pomt 0f VieW ' ) . 33 Beyond the two stages of development already sketched, Merleau-Ponty allows for yet another, which corresponds to the formation of the explicit representation of myself, of the ego, that is, to perfOlming the Cartesian cogito. I become capable of thematizing my 0\Vll point of view as my 0\Vll 33 It was at least problematic for Sartre, who felt the need to revise the idea for his magnmn opus Being and Nothingness, turning pre-reflective consciousness into personal consciousness. On the difference between The Transcendence of the Ego and Being and Nothingness with regards to the personal or impersonal character of consciousness, see Gardner 2009, 90ff.

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and (eventually) of ceasing to identify myself with my body. My idea of myself becomes more abstract and completely detached from my bodily and other facti cal circumstances. 34 As I said at the beginning ofthis section, intercOlporeality does not tell the whole story of Merleau-Ponty's account of social relations. Intersubjectivity remains a problem. Husserl's and Sartre's efforts to account for our relation to other subjects were not misguided. They were rooted in a deep and genuine philosophical comprehension ofthe problems underlying sociality. The fact that I only relate to the other insofar as both of us are bodies has the consequence that intercorporeality is then a relation between two anonymous entities and not a proper intersubjective relation, that is, a relation between two egos: "ifthe perceiving subject is anonymous, then the other self that he perceives is anonymous as well" (Merleau-Ponty 2012, 372 [413]). Through his behavior, I can never attain the other's ego as such, his ownmost subjectivity. On this point, Merleau-Ponty refers explicitly to Husserl's idea that the other ego is merely appresented through his lived body (Leib), that is, co-intended in each of his body's presentations-in much the sarne way that the spatial object as a whole is always presupposed and co-intended in the perception of one of its sides-but never really properly given to me in the way my 0\Vll ego is: But ultimately, the other's behavior and even the other's words are not the other himself. The other's grief or anger never has precisely the same sense for him and for me. For him, these are lived situations; for me, they are appresented. (Merleau-Ponty 2012, 372 [414])

As I wrote above, for the other ego to be given to me adequately, I would have to be him, and thus the otherness of the other would disappear. 35 It is for this reason that, for Merleau-Ponty, intersubjectivity presents us with an unavoidable "paradox." Since for Merleau-Ponty the cogito, reflection, is a cognitive "act" founded on our primary thrownness into the world via the body, it is no 34 Again, the idea of there being three different stages in the formation of the ego is very well put by Dillon (1988, 124): "The tacit cogito is prethematic corporeal reflexivity; the body image involves thematic corporeal reflexivity; and the Cartesian cogito is thematic reflexivity that short-circuits and ignores its corporeality, mistakenly conceiving itself as pure interiority." 35 See Merleau-Ponty 1964, 171: "The other person's life itself is not given to me with his behavior. In order to have access to it, I would have to be the other person himself." This idea is recmrent not only in Merleau-Ponty and Husserl but also in Sartre. See, for example, Sartre 1966, 234.

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surprise that the problem of intersubjectivity in the proper Husserlian and Sartrian sense only comes to pass when we are able to reflect on ourselves as subjects of experience: "the perception of others and the intersubjective world are only problematic for adults" (Merleau-Ponty 2012, 371 [412]). Following Piaget, Merleau-Ponty locates the beginnings of this experience in adolescence. In other words, the problem of intersubjectivity, and in particular the problem of solipsism, only comes about when we reach a stage of mental development in which we are able to perfOlTIl the cogito, to expressly think of ourselves as an ego. In this regard, however, two things should be borne in mind. First, adults, just like children, spend much oftheir time immersed in the world, so that only rarely, and often only when engaging in philosophical reflection, do we have tbe opportuinty to think of ourselves in the manner of the cogito. In a way, we remain "children" in the relevant sense, that is, philosophically naIve, for much of our adult years. This is why tbe experiences of children should not be seen as totally removed from our O\vn: But in fact, children must in some sense be correct against adults or against Piaget and, ifthere is to be a unique and intersubjective world for the adult, then the barbarous thoughts of the initial stage must remain like an indispensable acquisition beneath the thoughts of the adult stage. (Merleau­ Ponty 2012, 371 [413])

Even though tbe analysis of children can be paradigmatic and illuminating when it comes to difficult philosophical issues, their experience, for the most part, is on a continuum with ours. Curiously enough, it is this child-like naivety that prevents our full retreat into our inner world, our fall into complete madness. Merleau-Ponty tbinks that there is a kernel of truth in solipsism, which it misapprehends and misstates (Merleau-Ponty 2012, 373 [414]). However, solipsism misunderstands its 0\Vll position in that it views the statement of the irredeemable loneliness of the subject as referring to myself as the subject of my thoughts, as the Cartesian cogito, or as what Merleau-Ponty also calls tbe spoken cogito (Merleau-Ponty 2012, 423-6 [463-5]). What solipsism wants to say is instead that only I can live my 0\Vll point of view, or alternatively, that I cannot live the point of view of anotber. Along tbe lines of Husserl and Sartre, Merleau-Ponty does not provide any ultimate solution to this problem. It is an ultimate fact concerning what it is for each of us to be conscious and self-aware selves: "here we see a lived solipsism that cannot be transcended" (Merleau-Ponty 2012, 374 [415]). This latter passage may puzzle readers who mistake the problem of "other minds" for the phenomenological problem ofthe otber and who, as a result, by the point

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he asserts this in the Phenomenology of Perception, think that Merleau­ Ponty has already gotten rid of the problem of the other, thereby failing to see that the problem of the other, phenomenologically understood, does not admit of such a resolution (and it is for that reason that the other is a living paradox): "Consciousnesses present the absurdity of a solipsism-shared-by­ many, and such is the situation that must be understood" (Merleau-Ponty 2012, 376 [412]). The problem of the other is not even a purely epistemological problem in that it lies at the root of all the problems we experience in our concrete life when dealing with others: not only cultural and social conflicts, but also conflicts and differences among individuals, be they friends, family or lovers. The closest Merleau-Ponty gets to attempting a proof ofthe existence of others is via the analogy between my experience of the other and the pre­ reflective experience of myself in the world. For Merleau-Ponty, the pre­ reflective sphere is primordial in that it includes my original relation and openness to the world. Via reflection, I can manage some distance from this experience, putting it into question, although only abstractly, as we will see, just as Descartes did via the evil genius hypothesis, but this reflection still feeds off that pre-reflective experience. To doubt something only makes sense on the grounds of a primordial belief or faith in the world, and this, according to Merleau-Ponty, is that of my pre-reflective existence (see Merleau-Ponty 2012, 393-6 [433-6]). For the French phenomenologist, I simply couldn't have made up the latter pre-reflective experience of my existence in the world with others. There is in fact an analogy between the "certainty" I have of my pre-reflective life and the "certainty" I have of the existence of others. Just as my mistaking myself for my body and for my pre-reflective existing self would be inexplicable if I were the ultimate subject of thought (the transcendental subject, the subject of reflection) (Merleau-Ponty 2012, 215-6 [252-3]), so I would not have the faintest notion of the other if the latter were not somehow already armounced to me in a pre-reflective marmer: we must say about the experience of others what we have elsewhere said about reflection: that its object cannot absolutely escape it, since we only have a notion ofthe object through that experience. Reflection must, in some way, present the lUueflected, for otherwise we would have nothing to set against it, and it would not become a problem for us. Similarly, my experience must present others to me in some way, since if it did not do so I would not even speak of solitude, and I would not even declare others to be inaccessible. (Merleau-Ponty 2012, 376 [417]; translation modified)36 36 The original French text reads: "II faut dire de la experience d' autrui ce que nos avons dit aillems de la reflexion: que son objet ne peut pas lui echapper absohunent,

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It must be said tbat what Merleau-Ponty accomplishes with this "argument" is not much different from what Sartre does in Being and Nothingness when he introduces tbe category of "being-far-otbers." Just as Sartre's argument does not ensure the existence of any concrete other (I could always be mistaken tbat tbe look [Ie regard] oftbe otber is in fact of the other and not just, say, that of a wax figure),37 so Merleau-Ponty's argument guarantees only that there is an irredeemable horizon of otherness, that we are at root opened to the other, but not that I cannot be mistaken that a concrete other exists. But ultimately, according to Merleau-Ponty, although we certainly exist in the world, there is no guarantee that nothing in particular exists, for perception is forever revisable. In general, Merleau-Ponty views sociality as very closely tied to how we are immersed in the world in a pre-reflective manner. This is why I believe that, as indicated above, it would be misleading to separate the natural world from the social world. The world of perception, the lived world, is at once a natural and a cultural world. Thus, what Merleau-Ponty says about our most primitive and fundamental relation to the world can also be said about our immersion in the social world-it is an ultimate fact that we cannot account for, since it is the very condition of the possibility of our 0\Vll questioning of it. Sociality is thus a dimension of our individual existence: even our attempts to theoretically deny it or to practically live in isolation presuppose that we always already find ourselves situated in it: "Thus, we must rediscover the social world, after the natural world, not as an object or a sum of objects, but as the permanent field or dimension of existence: I can certainly tum away from the social world, but I cannot cease to be situated in relation to it" (Merleau-Ponty 2012, 379 [420]). Merleau-Ponty distinguishes between the social as a dimension (or as he also says, as a milieu of our existence) and sociality as an explicit object of knowledge. According to him, the fonner is primordial and enables the latter. Our attempts to know society, for example, to determine the traits of a certain culture in a certain historical time, presuppose our previous puisque n'en avons notion que par elle." Landes takes elle to refer to rejlexion and translates the text as "we only have a notion of the object through reflection." However, I think that that construal of the sentence conveys the exact opposite of Merleau-Ponty's meaning. I take elle to refer to experience, and I hope that my interpretation of the sentence will be justified by my interpretation in what follows. 37 The concrete other has a merely probable character: "In a word what is certain is that I am looked-at: what is only probable is that the look is bmmd to this or that intra-mundane presence. Moreover there is nothing here to smprise us since as we have seen, it is never eyes which look at us; it is the Other-as-subject" (Sartre 1 966, 277).

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openness to our pre-thematic social horizon. Accordingly, it could be objected that tbis only begs the question, that his "descriptions" only lead us to an ultimate fact and leave us without any explanation of precisely this fact. This is, in fact, a problem that can be raised against the foundations of Merleau-Ponty's enterprise in the Phenomenology a/Perception as a whole, and he himself recognizes this (witness his admission of this at the end of the chapter on intersubjectivity, Merleau-Ponty 2012, 423-4 [382-3]). [ believe that Merleau-Ponty's answer to this problem would be that perception ultimately opens us to a world shared by others, and it is this evidence that should fOlTIl our starting-point when it comes to the problems ofothers, intersubjectivity and sociality. This is because, firstly, we can only question this evidence because we already find ourselves in possession of the distinction between trutb and illusion. Secondly, trying to get behind tbis first evidence is tantamount to asking what makes the world possible (Merleau-Ponty 2012, lxxx-Ixxxi [17]), and even ifit were possible to give an answer to this question, it would fall outside the scope of phenomenological investigation.

VI In conclusion, Merleau-Ponty thinks tbat tbe problem of intersubjectivity is inextricably linked to how we conceive of subjectivity. [fwe hold the right, phenomenological conception of subjectivity (in his view), we will be led to a certain correlated view of intersubjective relations. On the contrary, if we hold onto a purely transcendental view of the ego, it is not possible to account for intersubjectivity and sociality. By its nature, the transcendental ego does not allow for another ego to stand beside it. This means that in order for there to be other egos, I must be a certain finite perspective on the world, and must thus be an embodied subject. In other words, Merleau­ Ponty shows tbat we can only intelligibly introduce tbe problem of tbe other in the context of phenomenology if our starting point is not the transcendental ego and, vice-versa, that it is only because we are an embodied, finite, subject in the world that the very idea of another perspective, co-existing with ours, is possible. Thus, like other phenomenologists before him, Merleau-Ponty holds that, from a phenomenological point of view, there is no problem of "other minds" as ordinarily understood. In the realm of the Lebenswelt, I find myself, as a lived body, in meaningful relations with other lived bodies. The body of the other presents itself to me as behaving in meaningful ways without its ever becoming the object of an express comparison or analogy with mine.

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The fact that intersubjectivity was a problem for Husserl, one with which he was confronted again and again, entails, according to Merleau-Ponty's reading, that Husserl should have revised his notion of the transcendental ego. We saw that it is doubtful, to say the least, whether the real Husserl ever forsook the primacy of the pure, transcendental ego in favor of embodied subjectivity. However that may be, Merleau-Ponty was firmly convinced that this was at least an unexpressed tendency of Husserl's thought. As the latter puts it in one of his later writings, "The Philosopher and its Shadow," "Husserl wanted to say [ . . . ] that there is no constituting of a mind for a mind, but of a man for a man" (Merleau-Ponty 1964, 169). As we saw, Merleau-Ponty's view of subjectivity as embodied does not amount to erasing the problem of intersubjectivity and the threat of solipsism, but rather makes us aware of their respective, genuine, meaning for the first time. The original or primal experience of the other should properly be described as intercorporeal rather than intersubjective, for there is no genuine access to the other's subjectivity as such. The latter forever eludes our grasp. In this, for Merleau-Ponty, lies what may be viewed as the truth in solipsism. This "truth" is partial, however, not only because I am confronted, as a matter of fact, with many subjects with whom I co-exist in the world, but also because I can only think of myself as a subject against the background of my primordial "thrownness" into the world; in other words, by reflecting on myself as someone who acts, perceives and interacts with others in the world. Merleau-Ponty's view has the great merit of making a very strong connection between subjectivity and intersubjectivity-ofshowing, in other words, that it is only possible for us to fOlTIl the idea of other subjects because our self is radically different from the Cartesian self, and vice-versa. As a result, Merleau-Ponty manages to tum Husserl's account of intersubjectivity on its head, undermining the foundations of Husserlian phenomenology (even if this remains polemical from a Husserlian point of view).

References Barbaras, Renaud. 1991. L 'litre du phenomene. Grenoble: Editions Jerome Millon. Behnke, Elizabeth A. n.d. "Edmund Husserl: Phenomenology of Embodiment." Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Accessed December, 5, 2018. https:llwww.iep.utm.edulhusspemb/ Carman, Taylor. 2008. Merleau-Ponty. Abingdon, UK: Routledge.

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Carr, David. 1999. The Paradox of Subjectivity. The Self in the Transcendental Tradition. New York: Oxford University Press. Dillon, M.C. 1988. Merleau-Ponty 's Ontology. Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press. Fink, Eugen. 1933. "Die phanomenologische Philosophie Edmund Husserls in der gegenwmigen Kritik." Kantstudien 38: 319-83. Gallagher, Sean. 1995. "Body Schema and Intentionality." In The Body and the Self, edited by Jose Luis Bermudez, Anthony Marcel and Naomi Eilan, 225-244. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press. Gardner, Sebastian. 2009. Sartre 's Being and Nothingness. A Reader's Guide. London: Continuum. Hass, Lawrence. 2008. Merleau-Ponty's Philosophy. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press. Heidegger, Martin. 1962. Being and Time. Translated by John Macquarrie & Edward Robinson. Oxford, UK: Blackwell. Originally published as Sein und Zeit. Tiibingen: Max Niemeyer Verlag, 1927. Page numbers refer to the GelTIlan edition and are also reproduced at the margins of the English translation. Husserl, Edmund. 1960. Cartesian Meditations. An Introduction to Phenomenology. Translated by Dorion Cairns. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff Publishers. Originally published as Cartesianische Meditationen und Pariser Vortrage. Vol. I of Husserliana. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1950. Page numbers refer to the German edition, which are also reproduced at the margins of the English translation. -. 1969. Formal and Transcendental Logic. Translated by Dorion Cairns. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoof. -. 1973. Zur Phanomenologie der Intersubjektivitat. Erster Teil: 19051920. Edited by Iso Kern. Vol. XIII ofHusserliana. Den Haag: Martinus Nijhoff. -. 1973. Experience and Judgement Investigations in a Genealogy of Logic. Revised and edited by Ludwig Landgrebe. Translated by James S. Churchill and Karl Ameriks. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul. -. 1977. Phenomenological Psychology. Lectures, Summer Semester, 1925. Translated by John Scanlon. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff. -. 1989. Ideas Pertaining to a Pure Phenomenology and to a Phenomenological Philosophy. Second Book. Studies in the Phenomenology of Constitution. Translated by Richard Rojcewicz and Andre Schuwer. Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers. Originally published as Ideen zur einer reinen Phanomenologie und zu einer phanomenologischen Philosophie. Zweites Buch. Edited by Marly Biemel. Vol. N of Husserliana. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1952.

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Page numbers refer to the GelTIlan edition and are also reproduced at the margins of the English translation. -. 1997. Thing and Space. Lectures of 1907. Translated by Richard Rojcewicz. Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers. -. 2001. Analyses Concerning Passive and Active Synthesis. Lectures on Transcendental Logic. Translated by Anthony J. Steinbock. Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers. -. 2006. Basic Problems ofPhenomenology. Translated by Ingo Farin and James G. Hart. Dordrecht: Springer. Langer, Monika. 1989. Merleau-Ponty 's Phenomenology ofPerception. A Guide and Commentary. Hampshire: Macmillan Press. Marratto, Scott. 2012. Intercorporeal Self. Merleau-Ponty on Intersubjectivity. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press. Matthews, Eric. 2002. The Philosophy of Merleau-Ponty. Chesham: Acumen. -. 2006. Merleau-Ponty: A Guide for the Perplexed. London: Continuum. Merleau-Ponty, Maurice. 1964. Signs. Translated with an Introduction by Richard C. McCleary. Evanston, Illinois: Northwestern Uinversity Press. -. 1968. The Visible and the Invisible Followed by Working Notes. Edited by Claude Lefort. Translated by Alphonso Lingis. Evanston, Illinois: Northwestern University Press. -. 2010. Child Psychology and Pedagogy. The Sorbonne Lectures 19491952. Translated by T. Welsh. Evanston, Illinois: Northwestern University Press. -. 2012. Phenomenology ofPerception. Translated by Donald A. Landes. Abingdon, UK: Routledge. Originally published as Phenomenologie de la perception. Paris: Gallimard, 1945. Page numbers refer to the English edition followed by references to the French edition in square brackets. The latter are also reproduced at the margins of the English translation. Priest, Stephen. 1998. Merleau-Ponty. London: Routledge. Romdenh-Romluc, Komarine. 201 1 . Routledge Philosophy Guidebook to Merleau-Ponty and Phenomenology of Perception. Abingdon, UK: Routledge. Sartre, Jean-Paul. 1966. Being and Nothingness: A Phenomenological Essay on Ontology. Translated by H. Barnes. New York: Washington Square Press. Originally published as L 'litre et Ie neant. Paris: Gallimard, 1943. -. 2004. Transcendence of the Ego. A Sketch for a Phenomenological Description. Abingdon, Oxfordshire: Routledge.

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Seebohm, Thomas. 2002. In Merleau-Ponty 'sReading ofHusserI, edited by Ted Toadvine and Lester Embree, 51-68. Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers. Smith, A.D. 2003. Routledge Philosophy Guidebook to Husserl and the Cartesian Meditations. London: Routledge. De Sousa, Luis Aguiar. 2018. "The Lived Body as Pre-reflective consciousness: Merleau-Ponty on the Cogito", Studia UBB. Philosophia, 63 (1): 7-20. Zahavi, Dan. 1994. "Husserl's Phenomenology of the Body". Etudes phenomenologiques, 29, 63-84. -. 2003. Husserl 's Phenomenology. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. -. 2014. Self & Other. Exploring Subjectivity, Empathy, and Shame. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

CHAPTER 4 ON THE ECOLOGICAL SELF: POSSIBILITIES AND FAILURES OF SELF­ KNOWLEDGE AND KNOWLEDGE OF OTHERS ROBERTA GUCCINELLI

Wills! du dich seIber erkennen, so sieh, wie die andern es treiben, Wills! du dich die andern verstehen, hlick in dein eigenes Herz. (F. Schiller, Der Schliissel)

Which Self? Which Others? Does an "ecological self' really exist? If sO', what are its main features? Does the bearer of such a self have a specific individualizing fOlTIl-a fOlTIl, that is, that a possible ecological identity must presuppose? Is there a being, in other words, that manifests ecological subjectivity, that is to say, that has a material bodily awareness of this subjectivity and of the correlate (the environment or world) of its own peculiar organism? According to its Greek origin (oikas), "ecology" means "house". In a more general sense, in addition to a more local notion of "house" (niche) and its "proper administration"-the house of the single species or of each living organism-it is connected to a broader notion of "house": that of global nature, in all its layers and regions, and of its proper administration. Nature in this sense can be more or less pleasant; human and non-human animals can live in conflict or in peace and cooperation, and this to varying degrees. Since animals (in this case, human animals) share a layer of nature at least with the species to which they belong, their possible "ecological" selves, which are suited to this shared region, are not at base solipsistic. In the animal's daily perceptual and operative activities, each region is opportunely mentally constructed and characterized by relevant biological

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signals, or rather by translations into danger or benefit signals as a result of environmental stimuli (see Guccinelli 2015; Guccinelli 2016, 67-153 for more on these points with regard to Scheler's relationship with the biological sciences of his time more precisely). Environmental meanings of this kind promote the animal's survival.

M. Chagall, I and the

Village (1911)

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85

In order to partly transcend the barriers that seem to isolate each species within its own habitat, so to speak, it is nevertheless crucial to ask ourselves whether, beyond this "construction" of reality in one's one's

0\Vll

0\Vll

"mind" or in

physical "body", different species and individual animals can

meet each other concretely and feel, in their own peculiarity and not only in telTIlS of those aspects that are inherent to their respective species, the lives of others-even their enemies. Can we speak, in other words, of an ecological

community,

of a genuine

vital sphere

in which it is possible for

us animals, apart from fOlTIling and developing ourselves, to interact at the preconceptual level and really live, not in an idealistic or constructivist way, together with other species (non-human animals and vegetables)? Are human beings able, for example, to fellow-feel the mortal terror or the tiredness of a bird? Can a sinister landscape or a gloomy valley emotionally infect its inhabitants or easily impressionable visitors? At least to the latter question, we would intuitively reply in the positive. The great "Mitteleuropean" literature, from Kafka to Bernhard, has revealed to us the ghastly effects that domestic and social milieus-or something like a deep mountain gorge, itself characterised by mortal, dull pain and a frightful atmosphere-can have on the bodies and minds of their inhabitants. Certain "environments" can negatively affect their inhabitants to such a degree that they go mad: to such a degree that monster birds, who likewise experience their mephitic, noxious atmosphere, emit piercing cries and fall heavily to the ground. We can also imagine, without doubting its plausibility, a contrary case. A man of ressentiment, as it were, can embitter and poison his environment. He can evenfalsify the image of his milieu or of other people and in a certain sense "lie". We must shed light on similar cases, which seem to have some truth in themselves, within their

0\Vll

source and processional dynamics. In

particular, I will argue that intersubjectivity consists primarily in a special form of (subjective)

interlivingbodyness and living

bodily

attunement that

nevertheless does not circumscribe a neutral place (one free of values) in which anonymous, mere

thing-like bodies (Korper)

encounter each other.

"Thing bodies" belong, as such, to the sphere of the inorganic and are susceptible to being confused with each other, for they do not have a marked individuality, or they have an "individuality", so to speak, that is redeemable or reanimated only at the psychic level. They make real

encounters and attunement impossible. Ifwhat I have termed the "ecological self' confilTIls,

in its bearer, its relational nature, that is to say, its being spontaneously

attuned (or not attuned) to its milieu and to other animals (human and non­ human), it will constitute the prerequisite for a unified theory of self­ knowledge/knowledge of others.

Such knowledge, then, will consist

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precisely in a first-order living bodily self-sense/sense of others (the basic knowledge of our bodies, our bodily selves, and of other bodily selves) and in a second-order self-knowledge/knowledge of others (social and personal knowledge). This theory leaves room for material failures of self knowledgeiknowledge of others and considers possible affective disorders or pathologies ofintersubjectivity. From this point of view, social cognition is founded on ecological cognition (on these points, in particular on embodied social ontology, see Waldenfels 2015). If this a priori order of foundation is correct, it will provide an account of the modality in which certain types of primarily experienced contents, namely those of living bodily consciousness, define the sphere of possible types of social and personal contents more precisely. To what extent, then, can an ecological self-sense affect or integrate self­ knowledge and knowledge of others? In negative cases, to what extent can failures of self-sense affect self-knowledge and knowledge of others? I am referring, in this latter question, to the phenomena, widely investigated by Max Scheler, of value-(perceptual)illusions (Werttauschungen; Illusionen) and, in more serious cases, of genuine axiological blindness (see, e.g., Scheler 2005; 2007, 33-147, 213-292; see Guccinelli 2016 on illusions in a Schelerian sense). This latter type of manifestation, which is examined and described at least in the first instance from a phenomenological approach, on the perceptual level, at the same time constitutes specific topics that are at the core ofthe contemporary (Philosophical, psychological, psychiatric and neuroscientific) debate, which is rather lively in the Anglophone academic context: the topic of self-deception/deception of others on the one hand (see, e.g., Fingarette 1969; Davidson 1982; Davidson 1985; McLaughlin and Oksenberg Rorty 1988; Dupuy 1998; Martin 2009; Pedrini 2013) and that of delusion on the other. As far as self­ deceptionideception of others is concerned, the propositional model prevails in this area of research: deception is conceived as the possession of linguistic and thought content, such as a (false) belief, or, from the deceiver's vie\vpoint, as a mere lie. Self-deception is also conceived rather exclusively in tenns of belief, more precisely contradictory beliefs (in intentionalist theories). Thus self-deception involves a person's having a belief that something is true and simultaneously having a belief that what he or she believes is false. Self-deception also remains tied to beliefs when self-deceivers have "motivationally biased beliefs" (Mele 2009, 261) that exclude, as such, the doxastic conflict between the beliefs at stake, as in the opposite model of self-deception, that IS, motivationalist (anti­ intentionalist) theories. The "incriminated" motivational state is in fact often an unconscious desire. As far as delusion is concerned, the emergent

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doxastic conception of the latter (Bortolotti 2010) is nevertheless very interesting and has important therapeutic implications (in tenns of cognitive behavioural therapy). Even if we limit ourselves to ascertaining, on the basis of this simple outline of the ongoing debate, the ethical (in addition to the psychological and sociological) relevance of such directions of empirical and theoretical research-for example, the problem of finding a justification for the ascription of responsibility in these cases, in which the intention of the subject in question is disputable-it will be clear to anyone with knowledge of Scheler's central writings on ethics that he was both a true pioneer with regard to illusions and interdisciplinary research and offered conceptual instruments within this framework that remain valid and important today. I intend to highlight certain concrete virtues of Schelerian phenomenology in the field of value-illusions, moving from the perceptual (rather than propositional) level of illusions to the always puzzling problem of self­ knowledge and knowledge of others-primarily to the problem of ecological identity and the awareness that human and non-human animals can have of it. In a global consideration of the individual, reference to moral (or at least axiological) identity is inevitable in this context, where identity in general (ecological, axiological, social, personal) can be described in many ways-as something that is plural, so to speak, while maintaining, via the order ofpreferences and love that structures it, its unity and originality.

The Self that I Am, the Self that You Are Scheler's definition of the living being immediately rescues it from a standard image that fixes the being in a state ofpassivity, facing an indistinct environment that is only capable of having a causal effect on it. The organism, in fact, does not present a mere physico-chemical constitution from a phenomenological view, and it is not endowed in generic tenns with life. On the contrary, "every living being is an ordered structure oflevels of pulsions [Trieben] complying with non-formal value-attitudes, and this independently of the effects of milieu-objects-indeed it is the living being's structure that is determining for them" (Scheler 1973, 158) 1 In this non-nominalist definition, some of Scheler's important achievements in the physiological realm come into view:

1 I have slightly modified the English translation; "drives" has been changed to "pulsions", for example, for the latter connotes the rhythm of life and avoids confusion with the idea of a drive in a lUlivocal sense or with the idea of an instinct.

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Chapter 4 The idea, first, that the pulsions and vital functions of living organisms, and their corresponding perceptual modality (value perception), are not a chaos of blind "senses" and unreasonable pulse­ movements-just as sensory functions and their corresponding perceptual modality (sensory perception) are not a mere sum of discrete stimuli-but are somehow ordered and able to see, constituting even the living being' s articulated structure and, more precisely, making it a

constrnction,

as if they took care of its

"architectonical" dimension. The idea that this ordered construction of pulsions is not at all formal because it reflects the axiological orientations of the pulsions and their already-genuine

attitudes toward the environment.

being (the bearer of pulsional perceptions and movements, its

attitudes)

O\Vll

The living

determines,

in its

milieu. It is therefore a given

that it is the vital rhythm (basic tendencies of movement), consisting in pulsion and movement, that allows for the primary individualizing form ofthe living being (the bearer of an ecological self)-where the human being, meant globally, is supposed to have a living bodily-psycho-physical identity. Because it is primarily an organism (pulsions endowed with intentionality directed toward values), the individual has a living bodily awareness and a fonn of

unity that enable us to differentiate it from abiotic entities. Points (i) and (ii) exclude the view that the environment, through its

objects (according to Scheler, "value-unities" or "goods"), causally

determines the living being. This runs contrary to Kant, who accepts the idea of causal detennination of this sort. This idea wrongly led Kant to consider mere consequences of this cause, not only simple and fragmentary pulse-movements, but also pulse­ attitudes (see Scheler,

2009, 171),

whose fundamental unity and

intentionality Scheler grasps. Scheler begins from the qualitative experience that, because we are animals, we have and continue to have of ourselves as living beings and of our

0\Vll

environment. We experience the reciprocal living being-organism

connection thanks to the movements and explorations that we accomplish every day in our expressive or dynamico-vital, value-laden environment­ an environment that appears, precisely because of its clear expressiveness, to be more familiar, but not always more innocuous, than that geographic

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and abstract knowledge that, in Merleau-Ponty' s language, we might have of it. In this kind of "landscape" or milieu (natural or psychological) we directly feel, for example, in the curl of a smile or in a glance from the comer of the eye (scheel blicken), the suffocated desire for revenge held by those consumed by envy or ressentiment and "the strong", unsatisfied "tension between tendency (Streb en)", or desire, "and not-being-able (Nichtkonnen)" (Scheler 2007, 63) to accomplish it. As far as human beings consumed by ressentiment are concerned, they have only an obscure awareness of their 0\Vll impotence, of the vital decline that they express in spite of themselves, while they spit out the "poison" that spreads through their bodies and minds, inducing them to deceive themselves before others, the environment and the world. It is extremely significant that Scheler recognizes in this self­ poisoning, which arises in the unsolved conflict pointed out above and which is principally played out on the terrain of bodyness, the cause of "certain pennanent dispositions (dauemde Einstellungen) to certain types of value-deceptions (Werturttauschungen) and corresponding value­ judgements (Werturteilen)" (Scheler 2007, 38). Those who are consumed by ressentiment lack the natural and implicit form of living bodily consciousness that each of us, in more or less nonnal conditions, enjoys. Under more or less nonnal conditions in an expressive landscape, for instance, we can directly feel the sadness of a weeping willow simply by observing its long leaves, deprived of vigour, and the thin, flexible branches that bend as if they were hanging their heads. We can directly feel the freshness of a green meadow, stretching out our hands to pluck from a tree a round red apple, which "declares" its maturity. This movement is accomplished because certain qualities ofthe apple are in line with certain vital requirements, such as hunger or the sudden need to lighten a wave of anger that had stiffened our hand into a fist just moments before. Perhaps it is only the colour of the apple, announcing to us that it is mature and sweet and thus ready to satisfy our hunger, that invites us to seize it. If it were green, instead armouncing that it was sour and bitter, it would not invite us to seize it. Some may of course "prefer" green apples (to echo Scheler), and this would not necessarily be a mere subjective, arbitrary "preference".

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On the one hand

(a parte objectz), consequently, there are certain value

quaJities that, from Scheler's viewpoint, are real (neither constructed nor fictitious and different both from mental events and physical events), although special,jacts. They are facts in the same way that fruits, pieces of granite, and lead sheets are facts (see Guccinelli 2014 for an elucidation of the concept and quality of "value") . On the other hand (a parte

subjeell),

there are certain pulse-attitudes or first-order "preferences" that primarily individualize the being in question. On the Kantian model of the living being-in Scheler's opinion-there are instead bodily requirements and instincts of the species that do not seem to distinguish us from other members of our species: A Living being already provides a "pLan" for fXJssible goods through his or her own type ofpulse-attitudes, a plan that does not rely primarily on a living being's empirical experiences in

a

milieu

[Mllieuerfdhrungen],

but that

corresponds to his or her physical-living bodily organization. Such attitudes, no matter how they

are

to be explained, cannot be reduced to any 1lllifOml

drive like that of "self-preservation". (Scheler Kant failed to see

basic

2 I han

a

1973, 158:Y

fact that is absolutely primary in ethics, namely, that a

value-difference among hmnans is determined by which

slightly modified the Englim tr:lll.slatioo..

objecta in

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general some objecta and not others can have an effect on their possible comportment and, hence, can give rise to sensory states; and he failed to see that there are differences among those things from which different men can derive certain "pleasmes" in general, from these and not from other pleasures. (Scheler 1973, 159),

Regarding the qualitative and material Schelerian approach to living beings' experiences and the Schelerian dissatisfaction with Kantian formalism, we can better understand the deeper reason for Scheler's critique of Kant's universalism with regard to instinct, apart from understanding the reason for his critique of Kant's universalism with regard to the moral law. Scheler does not accept this universalism, or rather he does not accept its more or less "guilty ignorance" in reference to personal (material) identity. Moreover, Scheler does not accept this universalism or its more or less "guilty ignorance" in reference to what I have telTIled "ecological" identity, or rather in reference to the structuring (pre)"preferential" attitudes of living beings presupposed by this identity. These "preferential" attitudes determine the possible types of pleasure (and displeasure) experienced by these beings, for example, or the types of encounters they can have. Scheler acknowledges the crucial importance, in other words, of the living-bodily tendencies ofthese beings. It is precisely the structure ofthese tendencies­ "their identical unitary structure (einheitliche identische Struktur der Leibtendenzen)"-that is the foundation of both "the motor-functional structure ofthe physical body as animated body (Leibkorper) and the pulse­ structure of the living body's psyche (Leibseele)" (Scheler [ 1927] 2009, 414). Scheler therefore reveals to us the nucleus of the value consistency of a developing individual's identity, which further reveals that even ecological identity has a peculiar axiological structure that is fOlTIled in the essentially living bodily tensions or repulsions of the bearer, lived at the sensory­ (vitalistic)-motor level, towards/against certain vital value or disvalue contents of the environment (e.g., the refreshing, the satisfying, the painful, the wild, the lustful) and in the correlate contents of (biological) sensations, unitarily grasped, which detelTIline certain variations of the unitary living body's experience (we uncover how this specific individual is feeling). This value consistency, which can later render to others a (more or less true, more or less accessible) image of the subjectivity of the individual involved, announces now, in the eyes of other individuals, the first-order (value) "existence" of this specific individual.

3 I have slightly modified the English translation.

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The idea of the axiological and, in a primitive sense of the telTIl, "preferential" (not a mere connection to the species' instincts) structure of this primary, developing identity is a fundamental point that, as such, we must underscore. It allows us, in fact, to distinguish a Schelerian-based phenomenological approach to the living being (on these points, in a Schelerian sense, see Guccinelli 2013; 2016, 67-153) from other philosophical or psychological approaches that are closer to a phenomenological style and that, although focused on the embodied dimension of the mind, still neglect the level and the individualizing form ofthe living being. I am thinking, for example, of the ecological approach to perception (Gibson 1986), or in its more recent version, enactivism (see, e.g., Dell' Alma 2006; Noe 2004; O'Reagan and Noe 2001), which emphasizes the sensory-motor character ofthe perception and perfOlmative sense of our experience, which each time is precisely acted (enactivated), as well as the new cognitive sciences, for example Gallagher's (2013) interdisciplinary proposal in the direction of an embodied cognition. From my perspective, identity (and its bearer) is not a monolithic block but a dialogic, becoming and stratified reality: a reality that is more or less open or closed to the (vital) environment of the individual who experiences this identity, to the world of this individual and its respective inhabitants. I am increasingly convinced of the necessity of dialogue between different philosophical traditions and between theoretical and empirical research. At the same time, however, I continue to think that phenomenological enquiry, more attentive to the experiential traits of our lives, is indispensable to those who at least try to approach that "self', that "identity" or becoming "ego", the bearer of which will answer "I" to the question that may one day be asked of it, namely "who are you?". In order to answer "I", in a material and not merely formal way, the individuals involved must embody this self precisely in its possible variations, even if they need not, of course, have an explicit sense of this embodiment in every moment of their existence, in which case they would betray a strange, if not pathological, form of behaviour. Without claiming to have exhausted this subject, however, namely the bigger and more general question of the different modalities in which we can experience our subjectivity, above all in intersubjective experiences, I wish briefly to highlight certain aspects of the living bodily dimension of subjectivity, which, in my opinion, are crucial to a better understanding and redefinition of both our self-sense/sense of others and self­ knowledge/knowledge of others. Showing and justifying the notion and existence of an ecological self means recognizing in the body, in the primary way that a subject has access

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to his or her environment, a living body (Leib) with a specific onto­ axiological and epistemological status that makes it an original (given to consciousness in the original, not by means of concepts and representations) and, in a certain sense, autonomous phenomenon compared to the phenomenon of the ego, the person and, above all, the thing body (Karper). As far as the environment is concerned, it needs to be remembered that there is a close connection between the milieu and the living body, or rather they constitute a vital exchange system in which they mutually interact and develop. Living beings fOlTIl their 0\Vll environments, or rather they anticipate them in their selective perceptual activity (the relevance of experiential content from the vital point of view) and make them habitable as if they were their 0\Vll houses (Gehause), at the same time fOlTIling their own structure or organization, both physical and bio-physiological, through which they precisely embody those houses-as a snail embodies its house (Schneckenhaus). In tum, the environment is not a mere mental event of correlate organisms and does not have a merely causal impact on them; rather, it determines in them, through biological stimuli (objects of "vital" experience that differ from mere discrete stimuli), various types of reactions or "varied reactions" (variierte Reaktionen) (Scheler [1927] 2009, 167), and thus not a univocal reaction, as if it were writing their score, their living bodily "biography". Both environmental ethicists and everyday experience teach us that it is increasingly important to consider the consequences of human animals' actions, not only on their 0\Vll environment but also on the specific environment of non-human animals. If we learn how to know and respect our 0\Vll environment, we will learn to know at least some of our 0\Vll axiological layers. Similarly, if we learn to know and respect the environment inhabited by non-human animals, then we will learn to know at least some of the axiological layers of non-human animals. As living beings, we carry with us, in our movements in the environment, the life of our specific "body house environment"-just like a snail. There are no magic keys for obtaining perfect and definitive self­ knowledge, but we have something better: a natural key in our living body that, in normal conditions, allows us to feel ourselves, to have a sense of self, and to be attuned (in positive cases) to our environment and to other individuals, even if, like infants, we have not yet achieved social or personal knowledge in the proper sense, with which the sense of self later co-operates and which in some way (indirectly) it continues to affect. This natural key reminds us that we are structurally open to others. It is our/arm of life itself, a biological a priori, namely our living body, that reminds us of this primary fact: "formally", after all, we are never completely alone in the world. Self-

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knowledge is not possible without the aspiration or the tendency to know other individuals, to open our eyes to the world, near and far. This is why, in The Nature of Sympathy, Scheler quotes the famous couplet by Schiller, the title of which is in fact The Key: If you would know YOillself, take heed of the practice of others: If you would understand others, look to yom O\VIl heart within you. (Quoted in Scheler [ 1 923] 2009, 250)

One of the aims of this paper is to put these words to radical use, that is, to assume these ideas when referring to each living being, including human and non-human animals.

I-Others-Environments Indeed, it sometimes happens that we feel near to ourselves and satisfied even in the deeper layers of our existence. Living beings (human and non­ human) and nature, in the global sense of the telTIl, can contribute to our serenity, or at least to our sense of psychophysical well-being. In its most expressive "perfOlmances" and manifestations of biodiversity, where it succeeds in avoiding degrading treatment and in preserving a kind of autonomy and integrity, grasped as a biotic community endowed with dynamic and vital qualities (wild or not-so-wild, vigorous, fresh, sad as a weeping willow, etc.), nature can certainly have a positive influence on our moods and lives and can even move us. The deep breath of the ocean and cold lashes of wind can suddenly seem to purify us. It is perhaps the rare "happy" moments or periods of our often-rushed lives, and not necessarily the extraordinary cases of mystic contemplation or, in a more prosaic and solipsistic sense, of mere introspection, that isolate us from other people and from practical reality. In fact, when they do not rise explicitly to consciousness as the central theme of our axiological-affective and/or cognitive fullness, others always remain in the background in this Schelerian-based eco-phenomenological account of the self and others and of the possible relationships between the self and others (or of the breaking off of these relationships), just like the practical context, with its value­ things, in which people are embedded. The passionate reading, for example, of a genuine literary masterpiece that envelops us in a cloud of silence and concentration, presupposes a world of characters, however fictional, whose experiences (along with their qualities) we visualize through vicarious feelings (nacherleben) or through a "cognitive" activity that offers them to us as it would offer, for example, "a landscape which we 'see' subjectively in memory" (Scheler [1923] 2009, 9). In addition, however, it presupposes

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a real author who opens our eyes to this world. In this moment of quiet, we are tacitly conscious not only, for example, of the cat coiled up on the mellow-coloured carpet of the room but also of the presence of people walking up and down the street, the deafening traffic, the quality of the air, which we would explicitly experience if we were to open the window. In a vital sense, in which "we feel our life itself, its 'growth', its 'decline', its 'illness', its 'health'" (Scheler 1973, 340), and in the normal activation of this sense, we can become truly attunedto our milieu: Whereas sensory affections never in any sense lose their plUlctuality, in a vital sense we are given the peculiar value-content of our environment, for example, the freshness of a forest, the living power of growing trees. Of special importance, however, is the fact that vital senses, and not feelings of personality, first participate in the fimctions of post-feeling and fellow feeling. Thus vital senses can contribute to the fOlUldation of a consciousness of community [ . . . ] . (Scbeler 1973, 340)4

[ . . . ] so far as the various modes of vital-feeling are concerned, lUlderstanding and fellow-feeling are able to range throughout the entire animate universe [ . . . ] The mortal terror of a bird, its sprightly or dispirited moods, are intelligible to us and awaken Oill fellow feeling, despite our total inability to penetrate those of its sensory feeling which depend on its particular sensory organization. (Scheler [1 923] 2009, 48). In the non-activation of the vital sense, in its possible dysfunctions, in the impossibility of refining it, this affective tie can break, or rather it can manifest itself in the negative, in a sort of "affective dystonia", in the inability to "resonate", to be spontaneously attuned to our milieu and other individuals. The practical background and the presence of others, in fact, often also seems to remain in these cases, such as in cases of ressentiment or genuine axiological blindness. Yet the others and the environment manifest themselves, although in a sort of "devitalized presence". This is the case, for example, for the mother who "looks at the face of a yelling child as a merely physical object" (Scheler [1923] 2009, 8) just because she is no longer able to grasp the child's living body; that is to say, she is not able to grasp the foundational relationships that every living body establishes, at the same time constituting their background, between experience and expression. This is the case, for other reasons, for those who suffer "intrusive presences", such as those due, for example, to "thought insertion"-presences that can be painful. 4 Translation slightly modified.

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From the wider perspective we have gained in an ecological sense, we can also better understand the phenomenon of ressentiment. A man consumed by ressentiment "has no need to lie!" (lugen) (Scheler 1972, 78)-as Scheler would say-simply because, prior to lying, he is in himself "mendacious" (verlogen) (Scheler 1972, 78); he is false, that is, in his selective activity of experience contents. He is imprisoned in his body­ a body that is no longer really "living"-as in an "organic mendacity" (Scheler 1972, 77). Yet in his self-deception or illusion, in his involuntarily attempt at "flight from self' (Scheler 1972, 95)5 (Selbstjlucht)-suffering from an "inability to 'remain at home' with oneself (chez soi)" (Scheler 1972, 95)6-in hisfalsification of self-image and self-knowledge !failure of self-knowledge) and of the value-images of others !failure of knowledge of others), along with all possible judgements based on it, nothing can save him from the assault of life: [ . . . ] he involuntarily "slanders" life and the world in order to justify his inner pattern of value experience. But this instinctive falsification of the world view is of only limited effectiveness. Again and again the ressentiment man encounters happiness, power, beauty, wit, goodness and other phenomena of positive life. They exist and impose themselves, however much he may shake his fist against them and try to explain them away. He cannot escape the tormenting conflict between mere appetite [Begehren] and impotence. (Scheler 1972, 75f

References Bortolotti, Lisa. 2010. Delusions and Other Irrational Beliefs. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Davidson, Donald. 1982. "Paradox of Irrationality." In Philosophical Essays on Freud, edited by Richard Wollheim and James Hopkins, 289305. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. -. 1985. "Deception and Division." In The Multiple Self, edited by Jon Elster, 79-92. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Dell' Anna, Alessandro. 2006. Ecologicamente corretto. L 'approccio sensomotorio alIa visione. Rome: Aracne. Dupuy, Jean-Pierre, ed. 1998. Self-Deception and Paradoxes ofRationality. Stanford: CSLI Publications.

5 Translation slightly modified. 6 Translation slightly modified. 7 Translation slightly modified.

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Fingarette, Herbert. 1969. SelfDeception. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul. Gallagher, Shaun. 2013. How the Body Shapes the Mind Oxford: Clarendon Press. Gibson, James J. (1979) 1986. The EcologicalApproach to Visual Perception. Erlbaum: Hillsdale (N.I.) - London. Guccinelli, Roberta. 2013. "Dal destino alla destinazione. L'etica vocazionale di M. Scheler." In II formalismo nell 'etica e l 'etica materiale dei valori by Max Scheler, XVII-XCVIII. Milan: Bompiani. -. 2014. "Desiderio e ReaM. Note sulla potenza e l'impotenza del volere secondo Scheler." Thaumazein. Rivista di Filosofia, Etica e Passioni 2: 343-79. http://rivista.thaumazein.itlindex.php?j ournal=ihaum&page�article&o p�view&path%5B%5D�29. -. 2015. "Value-Feelings and Disvalue-Feelings. A Phenomenological Approach to Self-Knowledge." Thaumazein. Rivista di Filosofia 3: 23347. http://rivista.thaumazein.itlindex.php?j ournal=ihaum&page�article&o p�view&path%5B%5D�40. -. 2016. Fenomenologia del vivente. Corpi, ambienti, mondi: una prospettiva scheleriana. Rome: Aracne. Martin, Clancy, ed. 2009. The Philosophy of Deception. Oxford: Oxford University Press. McLaughlin, Brian P. and Amelie Oksenberg Rorty, eds. 1988. Perspectives on SelfDeceptions. Berkeley: University of California Press. Mele, Alfred R. 2009. "Have I Unmasked Self-Deception or Am I Self­ Deceived?" In The Philosophy of Deception, edited by Clancy Martin, 260-76. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Noe, Alva. 2004. Action in Perception. Cambridge: MIT Press. Pedrini, Patrizia. 2013. L 'autoinganno. Che cos 'e e come Junziona. Rome: Laterza. O'Reagan, I. K. 201 1 . Why Red Doesn 't Sound like a Bell: Understanding the Feel of Consciousness. Oxford: Oxford University Press. o 'Reagan, I. K., and A. Noe. 2001. "A Sensorimotor Account of Vision and Visual Consciousness." Behavioral and Brain Sciences 24, no. 5: 939103 1 . Scheler, Max. (1923) 2009. The Nature of Sympathy. Translated by Peter Heath. With an introduction by Werner Stark and a new introduction by Graham McAleer. New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers. -. (1927) 2009. Der Formalismus in der Ethikund die materiale Wertethik. Neuer Versuch der Gnmdlegung eines ethischen Personalismus. Bonn:

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Bouvier Verlag. -. 1972. Ressentiment. Edited by Lewis A. Coser. Translated by W. W. Holdbeim. New York: Schocken Books. -. 1973. Formalism in Ethics and Non-Formal Ethics of Values: A New Attempt toward the Foundation of an Ethical Personalism. Translated by Manfred S. Frings and Roger L. Funk. Evanston: Northwestern University Press. -. 2005. Wesen undFormen der Sympathie-Die deutsche Philosophie der Gegenwart by Max Scheler. Bonn: Bouvier. -. 2007. Vom Umsturz der Werte-Abhandlungen und Aufsatze. Bonn: Bouvier. First published 1972 (Francke Verlag: Bern und Mtinchen). 2013. Ilformalismo nell 'etica e l 'etica materiale dei valori. Introductory essay, translation and notes by Roberta Guccinelli. Introduction by Roberta De Monticelli. Milan: Bompiani. Waldenfels, Bernhard. 2015. Sozialitat und Alteritat Modi sozialer Erfahrung. Berlin: SuInkamp Verlag. -.

CHAPTER 5 INTERSUBJECTIVITY IN PSYCHIATRY JORGE GON