Embodied Idealism: Merleau-Ponty's Transcendental Philosophy 9780192874764, 0192874764

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Embodied Idealism

Embodied Idealism Merleau-Ponty’s Transcendental Philosophy JOSEPH C. BERENDZEN

Great Clarendon Street, Oxford, OX2 6DP, United Kingdom Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford. It furthers the University’s objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education by publishing worldwide. Oxford is a registered trade mark of Oxford University Press in the UK and in certain other countries © Joseph C. Berendzen 2023 The moral rights of the author have been asserted All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of Oxford University Press, or as expressly permitted by law, by licence or under terms agreed with the appropriate reprographics rights organization. Enquiries concerning reproduction outside the scope of the above should be sent to the Rights Department, Oxford University Press, at the address above You must not circulate this work in any other form and you must impose this same condition on any acquirer Published in the United States of America by Oxford University Press 198 Madison Avenue, New York, NY 10016, United States of America British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data Data available Library of Congress Control Number: 2022950224 ISBN 978–0–19–287476–4 DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780192874764.001.0001 Printed and bound in the UK by Clays Ltd, Elcograf S.p.A. Links to third party websites are provided by Oxford in good faith and for information only. Oxford disclaims any responsibility for the materials contained in any third party website referenced in this work.

Contents Acknowledgements

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Introduction

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1. Prologue: Defining Idealism

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PART I. IDEALISM BEFORE PHENOMENOLOGY OF PERCEPTION 2. Merleau-Ponty’s Early Critique of Idealism: Text and Context

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3. Foundations of Transcendental Idealism in The Structure of Behavior

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4. Problematizing Transcendental Idealism in The Structure of Behavior

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PART II. IDEALISM IN PHENOMENOLOGY OF PERCEPTION 5. The Overt Critique of Idealism in Phenomenology of Perception

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6. Transcendental Idealism in Phenomenology of Perception: The Basic Framework

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7. Transcendental Subjectivity in Phenomenology of Perception

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8. Transcendental Analysis in Phenomenology of Perception

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9. Ontology and Intersubjectivity in Phenomenology of Perception

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Conclusion Bibliography Index

261 269 277

Acknowledgements There are many people whose support and encouragement impacted the writing of this book, both directly and indirectly. My entire family has always been supportive of my academic pursuits, but I owe an especially large debt of gratitude to my parents, Robert and Clarann. I greatly regret that they will not have lived to see this book on their living room bookshelf. There are also many teachers and academic colleagues that deserve thanks, with my friend and mentor Thomas Busch chief among them. Tom introduced me to the study of Merleau-Ponty’s works and set me firmly on the path that led to this book (though he might be a bit surprised with where that path ended up). Most importantly, I must thank my wife Tracy, whose love and support cannot really be adequately acknowledged here. The bulk of this book was written during the 2020–1 academic year, during which I had a research sabbatical. For most of that time, my daughter Margaret went to school on-line due to the global pandemic. She would sit near me, at a different computer in the same room, taking part in remote classes while I worked on my manuscript. During her class breaks we would go for walks and chat about the things we were studying or writing. While the circumstances that led to this situation were horrible, the coincidence of my sabbatical with her on-line schooling was a gift. Matching my schedule to hers provided a great deal of needed structure and support, and I would not have completed the work in the time or fashion I did without it. But more importantly it provided me with something invaluable—extra time with my young daughter. This book is dedicated to Margaret, the best writing companion I could possibly have.

Introduction 1. Merleau-Ponty’s Idealism? The aim of this book is to argue that Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s early philosophy, as exemplified primarily in The Structure of Behavior and Phenomenology of Perception, presents a unique form of transcendental idealism.¹ While I am not the first scholar to make this claim, it may seem prima facie odd to many. Idealism as a philosophical view is typically associated with the notion that reality is fundamentally mental or mind-dependent. Merleau-Ponty’s philosophy, on the other hand, is famously associated with the idea that minds are fundamentally shaped by embodiment. The two seemingly do not go together; if the mental is dependent upon the body it cannot be the fundamental aspect of reality. While the anti-idealist depiction of Merleau-Ponty’s philosophy just presented is very simplistic, it is not unreasonable. It does capture primary aspects of idealism and Merleau-Ponty’s views. More importantly, Merleau-Ponty is, at times, highly critical of idealism. Most prominently, early on in the Preface to Phenomenology he announces that his thought is “absolutely distinct from the idealist return to consciousness,” and he goes on to say that his preferred view “eliminates all forms of idealism.”² Merleau-Ponty’s anti-intellectualism and focus on embodiment are genuine problems for views that emphasize the role of the mental. It is also quite common in the scholarship to take Merleau-Ponty’s philosophy to be anti-idealist. For example, in the “Translator’s Introduction” to Phenomenology, Donald Landes writes that Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenology “offers a third way between the classical schools of empiricism and idealism.”³ Similarly, David Morris writes that Merleau-Ponty was always “looking for a way . . . between idealism and materialism.”⁴ One gets the sense idealism is, like Charybdis versus Scylla, the ¹ English translations referenced in this book are Maurice Merleau-Ponty, The Structure of Behavior, trans. Alden L. Fisher, Pittsburgh: Duquesne University Press (1983) and Phenomenology of Perception, trans. Donald Landes, London: Routledge (2012). Throughout the book Structure will be cited as SB and Phenomenology will be cited as PP. The original French texts consulted in this book are La Structure du comportement, 6th edn., Paris: Presses Universitaires de France (1967) and Phénoménologie de la perception, Paris: Gallimard (1945). The edition of Phénoménologie referenced here is from the 2018 printing, with pagination that corresponds to the marginal pagination in the 2012 Landes translation. ² PP, pp. lxxii, lxxvii. ³ See Donald Landes, “Translator’s Introduction,” in PP, p. xxxi. ⁴ David Morris, Merleau-Ponty’s Developmental Ontology, Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press (2018), 151.

Embodied Idealism: Merleau-Ponty’s Transcendental Philosophy. Joseph C. Berendzen, Oxford University Press. © Joseph C. Berendzen 2023. DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780192874764.003.0001

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worse of the two evils Merleau-Ponty must steer between. Morris says that we must be wary of “returning to,” “reverting to,” or “lapsing into” idealism and he worries that we might “never quite escape” it.⁵ Whatever one can say about it, it is apparently obvious that idealism is bad. Curiously, there are also many scholars who hold Merleau-Ponty to be an idealist.⁶ Often these idealist interpretations agree with the anti-idealist interpretations that idealism is mistaken. For example, Marvin Farber writes that MerleauPonty’s views problematically “recall idealistic tenets of a bygone generation.”⁷ More recently, John Searle has claimed that Merleau-Ponty’s conception of the lived body cannot be “the flesh and blood hunk of matter that constitutes each of us” because of Merleau-Ponty’s rejection of scientific realism. Following this, Searle takes Merleau-Ponty to be “an idealist in a rather traditional sense.”⁸ This is not meant to be a compliment. There are also scholars more sympathetic to Merleau-Ponty’s thought who interpret his early work as having problematic idealist tendencies. Perhaps most prominently, Renaud Barbaras argues that despite its anti-idealist leanings, Merleau-Ponty’s early thought (especially as displayed in Phenomenology) maintains a philosophy of consciousness and thus “gains access to the phenomenon by means of the categories of idealism.”⁹ In a somewhat different interpretation, Thomas Baldwin argues that Merleau-Ponty’s thesis of the primacy of perception “is incipiently idealist: perception cannot be a fact of nature precisely because it plays a crucial role in constituting nature.”¹⁰ But Baldwin takes Merleau-Ponty’s idealism to hamper his ability to sufficiently engage with the natural sciences, thus stunting his critique of scientific realism.¹¹ Again, idealism is a problem. The present book departs from the scholarship mentioned above by not assuming idealism to be necessarily problematic. The aim of the book is primarily exegetical, with a focus on showing that Structure and Phenomenology present a kind of idealist view. The main aim is not to present an apology for this view and I will not directly argue that Merleau-Ponty’s idealism is an acceptable or preferable metaphysical and epistemological position. I do not, however, take idealism

⁵ Ibid. These short quotes (which I have in some cases slightly adjusted to fit the grammar of my sentence) are on pp. 14, 24, 37, and 86. ⁶ For an overview see Christopher Pollard, “Is Merleau-Ponty’s Position in Phenomenology of Perception a New Type of Transcendental Idealism?,” Idealistic Studies, 44:1 (2014), 119–38. ⁷ Marvin Farber, Phenomenology and Existence: Toward a Philosophy within Nature, New York: Harper & Row (1967), 198. ⁸ John Searle, “The Phenomenological Illusion,” in Philosophy in a New Century: Selected Essays, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press (2008), 125. ⁹ Renaud Barbaras, The Being of the Phenomenon: Merleau-Ponty’s Ontology, trans. Leonard Lawlor and Ted Toadvine, Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press (2004), 16. ¹⁰ Thomas Baldwin, “Editor’s Introduction,” in Baldwin, ed., Maurice Merleau-Ponty: Basic Writings, New York: Routledge (2003), 4. ¹¹ Baldwin, “Merleau-Ponty’s Phenomenological Critique of Natural Science,” Royal Institute of Philosophy Supplement 72 (2013), 189–219.

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to be a sort of plague to be avoided. Insofar as I do not treat idealism to be obviously problematic, and present Merleau-Ponty’s philosophy as coherently maintaining a transcendental idealist view, I present elements of an indirect defense of that idealism. To lay my cards on the table, though, the overarching view I attribute to Merleau-Ponty is a view I find highly plausible and worth defending. Not all of the relevant scholarship presents idealism negatively. Sebastian Gardner’s essay “Merleau-Ponty’s Transcendental Theory of Perception,” which “claims to discover at the heart of his philosophical project an original form of idealism,” stands out as a work that does not take such a negative approach.¹² Gardner’s essay has helped foster renewed appreciation of Merleau-Ponty’s links to (especially transcendental) idealism in a manner that takes idealism seriously as a philosophical view. At the same time (though not really in connection with Merleau-Ponty scholarship) idealism in general has become a more prominent view in contemporary philosophy, and has moved over the past few decades from being primarily an object of derision to being a live (if minority) option in epistemology and metaphysics.¹³ The time thus seems ripe for a deeper consideration of Merleau-Ponty’s relationship to idealism that takes seriously the possibility that his philosophy is, in a positive way, idealist. This book should contribute to that scholarship.

2. Clarifying the Topic I say that the aim of the book is to show that Merleau-Ponty’s early works present a unique form of transcendental idealism. Aside from the potential prima facie implausibility of the notion that Merleau-Ponty was an idealist, there are a few points that require further explanation. Why is the focus on the “early works”? Why is the form of idealism described as “unique”? What, exactly is “transcendental idealism”? The second question is the easiest to answer, at least in brief. Merleau-Ponty’s idealism is unique because it is an idealism that takes the nature of our embodiment seriously. That is why this book is titled Embodied Idealism. That title is meant to sound provocative, as it may strike some readers initially as oxymoronic. My view, however, is that “embodied idealism” is not an oxymoron, and there is a

¹² Sebastian Gardner, “Merleau-Ponty’s Transcendental Theory of Perception,” in The Transcendental Turn, ed. Sebastian Gardner and Matthew Grist, Oxford: Oxford University Press (2015) 294–323, quote on p. 295. ¹³ There is a long and complex history behind the recent resurgence in idealist philosophy. One major driver of this change has been the so-called “Post-Kantian” scholarship on Hegel. For an overview of this general movement see Paul Redding, Analytic Philosophy and the Return of Hegelian Thought, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press (2007).

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way to square Merleau-Ponty’s emphasis on the body with the general tenets of transcendental idealism. Of course, a lot hinges on what those “general tenets” are. I have noted that on a typical view “idealism” is the idea that reality is mental or mind-dependent. But this is an imprecise definition that does not provide enough guidance for a scholarly interpretation that seeks to align a particular text or view with idealism. And beyond this the specifics of the transcendental version of idealism need to be defined. To this end, this book will first, in Chapter 1, turn to a discussion of idealism. That chapter will present a general definition of “idealism” and then move on to define “transcendental idealism” in particular. The definition of transcendental idealism will be bolstered by a brief consideration of the views of the two main figures in the history of philosophy who gave their views that name and who greatly influenced Merleau-Ponty: Immanuel Kant and Edmund Husserl. With a working definition of transcendental idealism in place, the rest of the book will be able to present an interpretation of Merleau-Ponty’s views following that guide.

3. The Focus on the Pre-Sorbonne Period That leaves the issue of the focus on the “early works.” This book will examine the role that idealism plays in Merleau-Ponty’s thought in his “Pre-Sorbonne Period.” This period runs from the beginning of his philosophical career until his taking a position at the Sorbonne in 1949.¹⁴ The Pre-Sorbonne Period is the time during which Merleau-Ponty published his most famous work, Phenomenology, and its predecessor, Structure. In terms of writings, this period also contains a few small publications written prior to Structure (which was completed in 1938 though not published until 1942). There are also a number of articles and essays published around the time of Phenomenology (which came out in 1945) through 1948, many of which were collected by Merleau-Ponty in the 1948 book Sense and Non-Sense.¹⁵ This specific division is somewhat arbitrary from a philosophical point of view, as it is based on Merleau-Ponty’s academic employment. There is no clear

¹⁴ I have taken the term “Pre-Sorbonne Period” from Ted Toadvine and Leonard Lawlor, “Editor’s Introduction,” The Merleau-Ponty Reader, ed. Toadvine and Lawlor, Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press (2007). Toadvine and Lawlor divide Merleau-Ponty’s work into three periods that are determined primarily by his academic employment: the Pre-Sorbonne Period, the Sorbonne Period, and the Collège de France Period. ¹⁵ Merleau-Ponty, Sense and Non-Sense, trans. Hubert Dreyfus and Patricia Allen Dreyfus, Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press (1964). For a full record of Merleau-Ponty’s works from this period (and beyond) see the extensive bibliography, in French, in Emmanuel de Saint Aubert, Du lien des êtres aux éléments de l’être: Merleau-Ponty au tournant des années 1945–1951, Paris: Librairie Philosophique Vrin (2015).

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philosophical turn that occurs in 1949. Furthermore, the choice to focus on the earliest period leaves out some of Merleau-Ponty’s most important works. In some cases, these texts directly discuss idealism; most obvious here are the Nature lecture notes.¹⁶ It would seem that a full discussion of Merleau-Ponty’s relation to idealism would have to take account of his complete oeuvre, and strictly speaking this is correct. Thus, the current work does not present a complete study of Merleau-Ponty’s relation to idealist philosophy. Despite this, there are a few reasons to justify limiting the study to the Pre-Sorbonne Period. First, this period contains Merleau-Ponty’s most significant works, in terms of their impact on the overall scholarship. While one might debate the philosophical merits of Merleau-Ponty’s early versus late thought, there is no question that Phenomenology has had the largest impact on the scholarship of any of MerleauPonty’s works.¹⁷ Phenomenology is also the focus of much of the recent literature on Merleau-Ponty’s idealism. It thus must be thoroughly considered in any examination of Merleau-Ponty’s idealism. And any thorough consideration of idealism in Phenomenology ought to consider its immediate context. From the point of view of providing context for Phenomenology, the single most important work from this period is Structure. While the two works differ in style and aim, they clearly come from a single stream of research. In many respects Structure is preparatory for and sets the stage for Phenomenology. This is particularly the case for the consideration of transcendental idealism in Phenomenology; Structure works toward, and ends with, a call for a new transcendental philosophy which Phenomenology then picks up. I also believe that Structure is an important work in its own right and that it is too often ignored in the literature. We thus have two substantive reasons for focusing on the Pre-Sorbonne Period: Phenomenology must be given a significant hearing due to its overall importance and Structure ought to be considered so that it can be given its due. While these points justify including the early works they do not on their own justify limiting the study to the early works. This is where practical considerations come in. Any work that takes account of idealism in the whole of Merleau-Ponty’s oeuvre would either cover certain works superficially, or would end up being very large. This book aims to avoid superficiality in the analysis of Merleau-Ponty’s early works, and in particular dedicates a lot of space to Structure and Phenomenology. While being large is not necessarily a bad thing in itself, limiting the study to the PreSorbonne Period should make the text much more manageable for the reader and

¹⁶ Merleau-Ponty, Nature: Course Notes from the Collège de France, trans. Robert Vallier, Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press (2003). ¹⁷ For a very imprecise indication of this fact (which focuses just on the English translations), at the time of writing Phenomenology has nearly four times (40,118 to 10,917) more citations on Google Scholar than the main late work, The Visible and Invisible (trans. Alphonso Lingis, Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press (1968)).

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writer. As it stands, the combination of thorough analysis of Structure and Phenomenology along with a consideration of the milieu in which those books were produced leads to a work of significant length. If more properly considered content were added, the study would risk becoming unwieldy. There is one other reason for limiting the study that is perhaps most important. The book is focusing on transcendental idealism in particular. One might find other forms of idealism to be operative in Merleau-Ponty’s works, given, for instance, that he wrote on Hegel and Schelling.¹⁸ But a stronger connection can be made between Merleau-Ponty’s early works and transcendental idealism. While Merleau-Ponty is overtly critical of idealism, he openly embraces transcendental philosophy in Structure and Phenomenology. Those works are also heavily influenced by thinkers—Kant and Husserl—who construed their philosophies as versions of transcendental idealism. Also, as will be discussed in Chapter 3 below, Merleau-Ponty was “raised” academically in a milieu that was heavily influenced by Léon Brunschvicg’s critical idealism. Critical idealism, while different from transcendental idealism in key respects, had a closeness to it via roots in Kant. There is another substantive reason for limiting the study to the Pre-Sorbonne Period. Merleau-Ponty would, in his later works, come to criticize his earlier views because they over-emphasized the role of consciousness. For example, in a working note from July 1959 he wrote that “the problems posed in Ph.P. [Phenomenology] are insoluble because I start there from the ‘consciousness’–‘object’ distinction.”¹⁹ This rejection of the emphasis on consciousness would appear to mark a strong departure from transcendental idealism. Given that the focus of this book is transcendental idealism, it would thus make sense to not consider the later works which depart from that view. This potential shift in Merleau-Ponty’s thought raises significant questions for how we should think about his earlier works; this issue will be further considered in the conclusion of this book. It remains a bit arbitrary to break the study off at 1949 on the basis of MerleauPonty taking new academic employment. It does mark a reasonable stopping point, however, insofar as Phenomenology is the latest major text to be considered in this book. The essays and lectures that follow it are referenced only to flesh out context or bolster certain points made there or in Structure. Texts from later periods will only be referenced in the conclusion, by way of suggestion for further study, or when they are directly pertinent to the early work in a way that does not raise further questions outside the scope of the present analysis.

¹⁸ For writings on Hegel, see e.g. Merleau-Ponty, “Hegel’s Existentialism” and “Concerning Marxism,” both in Sense and Non-Sense, 63–70 and 99–124 respectively. On Schelling, see MerleauPonty, Nature, 36–51. For an overview of Merleau-Ponty’s late connection to Schelling see William Hamrick and Jan Van der Veken, Nature and Logos: A Whiteheadian Key to Merleau-Ponty’s Fundamental Thought, Albany: SUNY Press (2011), 123–44. ¹⁹ Merleau-Ponty, The Visible and the Invisible, 200.

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4. Idealism, Realism, and Essential Manifestness Idealism is the view that reality is mind-dependent. What this really entails will be considered in much more detail in Chapter 1. I will initially note one important qualification that is fundamental for this book, however. To genuinely count as a version of idealism, the philosophical view under consideration must take reality to be in some way ontologically dependent on the mind. Views that entail a merely epistemological dependence—for example, views that hold that all of our knowledge of reality is dependent upon our conceptual frameworks—would not count as idealist. “Ontological dependence” might bring to mind views, such as Berkeleyan phenomenalism, wherein the existence of the external world is wholly dependent upon the mind. Merleau-Ponty clearly holds that our bodies engage with a concrete world, and thus cannot hold to such a strong view of mental dependence. But transcendental idealism differs from views like phenomenalism; it embraces a form of ontological mind-dependence while also allowing for what I call “basic realism” (the very general idea that some mind-independent reality exists). Lucy Allais (primarily in the book Manifest Reality) interprets Kant’s transcendental idealism as fitting ontological mind-dependence and basic realism together in a unique way which is central to my interpretation of Merleau-Ponty’s thought. I will present her view’s general terms here (setting the discussion of Kant to the side), in order to set the stage for the rest of this book. Allais presents a novel way of combining a genuine ontological claim about the mind-dependence of reality with basic realism. The key to this interpretation is what she calls “essential manifestness.” On this view, experience presents us with “essentially manifest qualities,” that are “relational qualities which are partly dependent on how . . . objects are in themselves and partly dependent on subjects (and also environmental context).”²⁰ Her explanation of essential manifestness is first built on a discussion of color perception.²¹ On the one hand, color perception clearly bears a subjective element and thus seems mind-dependent. Because color is not accessed by any other modality it must be essentially visual, and if it is essentially visual then it is essentially tied to our perception of it. On the other hand, though, color is clearly experienced as a property of objects. I experience blue as being in the sky, not as being in me, when I look at the sky. This sets color apart from other essentially subjective qualities like pain, which we experience as properties of ourselves. It prima facie appears that the reality of color is both mind-dependent yet also essentially connected to something outside the mind. The essentially manifest conception of color embraces this prima facie aspect.

²⁰ Lucy Allais, Manifest Reality: Kant’s Idealism and his Realism, Oxford: Oxford University Press (2015), 122. ²¹ See ibid. 125–31.

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Color is a property of objects, but it is a relational properly that is only made manifest when it is perceived. There must be something in the sky itself that appears to me as blue. The sky which appears as blue has being independent of me or any other color perceiver. But the sky as genuinely blue only has being insofar as it is related to me or some other color perceiver. There is thus a minddependent and mind-independent element of color. Of course, this consideration of color does not get us all of the way to idealism. If we accept this way of thinking of color, or even if we accept this kind of view of all so-called secondary qualities, it does not entail that all experience is mind dependent. The above point regarding color must generalize to all experiential qualities.²² All of our experience is composed of relational qualities that present external objects as they appear to us. These objects have being apart from us, and this grounds our ability to experience them. But it is also a part of their being, a part of what those objects are, that when they appear to us they do so in ways that only exist via that relation. Allais’s interpretation thus allows for a genuine sense of basic realism, insofar as there are aspects of objects themselves that ground our experiences. Insofar as we can only experience those aspects via the mind-dependent properties, we cannot know what they are like apart from their relation to our minds. Her point is summarized in the following passage (keeping in mind that the claim about color is meant to generalize): Kant says both that appearances represent things and that they do not represent things as they are in themselves. The essential manifestness view explains this. The idea that red is essentially manifest means that perceptual appearings of red do not present mind-independent things as they are in themselves; redness is a quality that belongs only to appearances. Experience of red things does not reveal or manifest the mind-independent qualities that are responsible for, or appear as, red. This means we cannot identify redness with its mind-independent grounds, and it also means that redness does not represent this ground as it is in itself. There is thus a sense in which colour presents things, things themselves, but it does not present them as they are in themselves.²³

I would like to highlight the last sentence of this quote, because it is crucial that color presents things themselves. The fact that there is an external world apart from us is presented in experience; this idea plays a key role in this book’s interpretation of Merleau-Ponty. The essential manifestness view is dependent upon a relational account of perception which holds that any “perceptual mental state is not merely a modification of an inner state of a subject but a relational state essentially involving the

²² Ibid. 125.

²³ Ibid. 130.

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object and a conscious subject.”²⁴ On this kind of view, perception involves a direct relation with external objects and thus grounds the possibility of the type of relational state she associates with essential manifestness. This puts Allais’s view clearly in touch with Merleau-Ponty’s thought.²⁵ Consider the discussion of perception as “communion” in Phenomenology. Merleau-Ponty says that “I offer my ear or my gaze with the anticipation of a sensation, and suddenly the sensible catches my ear or my gaze; I deliver over a part of my body, or even my entire body, to this manner of vibrating and of filling space named ‘blue’ or ‘red.’ ”²⁶ He then draws an analogy between the perceptual body–world relation and “the real presence of God”; “sensation is, literally, a communion.”²⁷ As Keith Allen points out, the fact that Merleau-Ponty is drawing an analogy with the Roman Catholic view of the eucharist (“real presence”) is significant. On Protestant views the eucharist merely “represents” Christ; by linking perception to the Catholic view Merleau-Ponty is emphasizing that “sensible objects become present to sensing subjects.”²⁸ This perhaps unusual analogy is meant to strongly drive home the point that perceptual states are not representations in the sense of inner intermediaries; they are directly related to the world. Yet, as will be repeatedly noted throughout this book, Merleau-Ponty also claims that perceptual qualities are dependent upon our bodily engagement with them. For example, the paragraph that ends with the reference to sensation being a literal communion opens with the claim that “prior to being an objective spectacle, the quality allows itself to be recognized by a type of behavior that intends it essentially.”²⁹ The implication is that my bodily behavior is required for making the perceptual quality appear. Thus, there is a “real presence” of the thing in my perception, but my perception allows certain qualities to become manifest. Following this point, the interpretations of Structure and Phenomenology in this book will depend on attributing an essential manifestness view to Merleau-Ponty’s thought that meshes with his emphasis on embodiment. It is fundamental to my interpretation that the relation between embodied minds and an independent reality allows certain elements of being to be manifested.

5. The Structure of the Text This book will argue that Merleau-Ponty’s early works employ a form of transcendental idealism that depends upon a version of the essential manifestness view. A key element of this interpretation will involve showing that his overt ²⁴ Ibid. 106. Allais is quoting John Campbell, Reference and Consciousness, Oxford: Clarendon Press (2002), 117. ²⁵ For an overview of the similarities between Merleau-Ponty’s views and contemporary relational views see Keith Allen, “Merleau-Ponty and Naïve Realism,” Philosopher’s Imprint, 19:2 (2019), 1–25. ²⁶ PP 219. ²⁷ PP 219. ²⁸ Allen, “Merleau-Ponty and Naïve Realism,” 4. ²⁹ PP 219.

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criticisms of idealism are aimed at particular ideas which, while often aligned with versions of idealism, are not obligatory for idealism in general. While MerleauPonty does not construe his views this way, he could have presented his view as a form of idealism that overcomes these problematic aspects while retaining the truth of idealism. And I believe that Merleau-Ponty does assert the truth of idealism (though using other words). To pursue such an interpretation, one first needs to know what they mean by “idealism” and “transcendental.” Thus, defining idealism will be the task of Chapter 1. This definition cannot avoid being somewhat stipulative. “Idealism” is a contested term and it is likely impossible to provide a definition that all will accept. Ultimately, I am not sure that this is a problem. I am confident that I correctly use the term “idealism,” and I will give reasons to support this. But I am more concerned with the interpretation of Merleau-Ponty than I am with making people agree with my definition of idealism. If someone were to fully agree with my interpretation yet insist on using a term other than “idealism,” the largest part of my aims would be met. With the definition of transcendental idealism in place, Part I of the book will focus on Merleau-Ponty’s publications prior to Phenomenology. Chapter 2 will examine considerations of idealism in Merleau-Ponty’s earliest works. The first point of this is to catalogue and discuss all of the direct, explicit references to idealism in those works. The second point is to try to understand what, exactly, Merleau-Ponty is referring to when he mentions “critical idealism” or “transcendental idealism” by examining their historical context. Importantly, this will include a consideration of Brunschvicg’s thought, as his massive influence on early twentieth-century French philosophy is under-appreciated in the scholarship. Chapter 2’s contextual/historical discussion will also consider MerleauPonty’s early thoughts on Kant and Husserl, because of the obviously central role those thinkers play in forming his relationship to transcendental idealism. Chapters 3 and 4 more deeply examine the ways in which transcendental idealism is operative in Structure. Chapter 3 presents an overarching interpretation of Structure as embodying a kind of “transcendental turn” that sets the stage for Phenomenology. In brief, I argue that the analysis of psychology entails a holistic conception of nature that emphasizes how living organisms structure their interface with their environments. In the midst of this discussion, however, Merleau-Ponty recognizes that there is a problem with third-person observational discussions insofar as they do not properly consider the extent to which the perspective of the observer structures the investigation. This leads to the view that human beings, as philosophical and scientific observers, find meaning present in nature for us, from our perspectives. This then leads to the preliminary discussion of a more general transcendental view. In presenting this interpretation, Chapter 3 ignores some problems for transcendental idealism that arise within Structure. Chapter 4 takes up those

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problems. First, it considers the possibility that while Merleau-Ponty discusses “consciousness,” he is actually reworking traditional views of the mind to an extent that undermines idealism. Second, it considers some remarks MerleauPonty makes regarding the problem of anthropomorphism in our examinations of nature, which lead to the possibility that he wants to find nature as meaningful in itself, apart from any human perspective on it. Third, the chapter considers the possibility that Merleau-Ponty’s use of scientific studies undermines the transcendental aspirations of his view, by improperly conflating empirical and transcendental reasoning. The ultimate upshot of the chapter is that each of these issues can be acceptably responded to by, or accommodated within, my transcendental idealist interpretation. Part II focuses on Phenomenology, and makes up the majority of the book. It follows a similar strategy to Part I’s discussion of Structure. First there is an examination of Phenomenology’s explicit references to idealism, then there is a presentation of a positive transcendental idealist interpretation of the text, and then there is a deeper consideration of problems in the text that arise for that interpretation. Because of the extent of Phenomenology’s references to idealism and the overall depth of that work, though, this strategy is played out through multiple chapters. Chapter 5 examines the overt critique of idealism in Phenomenology, as developed in its explicit references to that concept. This builds on the historical/ contextual discussion of Chapter 2. One of my main arguments is that while Merleau-Ponty primarily criticizes “idealism” in Phenomenology without qualifying it as “critical idealism” as he does in Structure, the referent is typically the same. To put the point a different way, I think one must understand Phenomenology’s references to idealism as primarily criticizing views like Brunschvicg’s, even though that is not explicit. Chapter 5 will also begin to show that Phenomenology implicitly embraces aspects of transcendental idealism while idealism is being overtly rejected. Chapter 6 opens with a general overview of Phenomenology’s arguments, and the transcendental idealist interpretation is situated in relation to this overview. In brief, the interpretive structure presented in Chapter 6 is as follows. In the Introduction, Merleau-Ponty presents his version of phenomenological analysis. This entails an explication of pre-objective experience, via an analysis of psychological research and a critique of empiricism and intellectualism. Pre-objective experience is revealed to be dependent upon the transcendental structures of our embodied subjective perspective. Parts One and Two of Phenomenology further analyze these structures, starting from the point of view of the body in Part One and the world in Part Two. Part Three then deepens the analyses of Parts One and Two by, primarily, clarifying the transcendental status of embodied consciousness in Merleau-Ponty’s discussion of the cogito, and with the discussion of the primary transcendental role played by temporality. As with the discussion of Structure in Chapter 3, certain problems that arise in Phenomenology are

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temporarily set to the side so that the full interpretation can be first elaborated in Chapter 6. Chapter 7 takes up the first set of problems for the transcendental idealist interpretation by focusing on consciousness and subjectivity. The aim is to further justify that Merleau-Ponty holds to what I call (based on Chapter 1) the thesis of transcendental perspectivism. It will show that Merleau-Ponty’s references to “anonymous” or “impersonal” structures operative “beneath” subjectivity do not (despite some appearances) support an anti-idealist view. The chapter will also fit Merleau-Ponty’s broader claims about subjectivity and temporality into the transcendental idealist interpretation and end by arguing that there is a basic way in which Merleau-Ponty takes our embodied subjective perspective to be fundamental and ineliminable. Chapter 8 focuses on the specifically transcendental element of Phenomenology. Transcendental idealism holds not just that reality is only experienced via our perspective, but also that we can analyze the structures of that perspective (e.g. what Kant called conditions of possibility). While Chapter 6 will present a framework for interpreting Phenomenology as engaging in such transcendental analysis, Chapter 8 will examine the problems for this view. Specifically, it will clarify Merleau-Ponty’s sometimes confusing take on philosophical reflection (and its limits) and examine how he can coherently combine empirical research with transcendental analysis. Chapter 9 will complete the analysis of Phenomenology. It will first examine the holistic ontology that is (mostly implicitly) presented in the text, and show how that ontology is compatible with the primacy of embodied subjectivity. This discussion will also connect the ontological claims in Phenomenology with Allais’s essential manifestness view. This discussion of ontology will require examining Merleau-Ponty’s views on perspective, which (via the consideration of the perspectives of others) will lead directly to a discussion of intersubjectivity. The chapter will thus end with an analysis of the transcendental role played by intersubjectivity in Merleau-Ponty’s thought. Finally, the book will end with a brief conclusion that will summarize the main results of the previous chapters, especially with an aim to clearly stating, one final time, why Merleau-Ponty’s philosophy should be referred to as an idealism. The conclusion will also look beyond the analysis of the Pre-Sorbonne works in two ways. First, I will briefly consider the relationship between the Pre-Sorbonne works and Merleau-Ponty’s later works. Second, I will briefly consider how one might apply the view presented in this book to contemporary philosophical research. I hope that readers will find it worthwhile to work through all of these chapters. Some readers may come to the text looking for specific aspects of my interpretation, though, so I will finish with some suggestions for how selections of the book can be coherently singled out. First, Chapter 1’s discussion of idealism can be read

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independently of the study of Merleau-Ponty. Hopefully it will prove useful to those who, like me, have struggled with determining exactly what idealism is before considering how that term applies to different thinkers. Those interested in Merleau-Ponty can pick out different parts of the book due to their specific focus. Chapter 2 should be useful for those interested in Merleau-Ponty’s earliest works and their historical background even if they are not particularly interested in idealism. Those interested solely in my interpretation of Structure could reasonably read Part I on its own (minimally one should also read §§ 6–7 of Chapter 1 to understand my interpretive framework). Similarly, those interested solely in Phenomenology could reasonably read Part II on its own (though again one should probably read the last two sections of Chapter 1). And if someone wants to know, at a minimum, what my interpretation of Phenomenology is in its basics, one could read Chapter 6 on its own. Of course, this will leave many questions unanswered, but it will present a coherent overview of the transcendental idealist interpretation.

1 Prologue Defining Idealism

1. Idealism and the Priority of the Mental This book will argue that Merleau-Ponty’s early works employ a unique form of transcendental idealism. To ground this argument, though, I need to first define “idealism” and “transcendental idealism.” The definitions should be broad enough to allow for the uniqueness but not depart too significantly from standard ways of thinking about idealism. This will insulate my interpretation from criticisms that over-emphasize some specific element of canonically idealist views.¹ Perhaps the easiest way to begin defining “idealism” is to use a reputable dictionary definition. The Oxford English Dictionary defines “idealism” as such: Any of various views according to which reality is ultimately in some sense mental or mind-dependent; any of various views according to which the objects of knowledge or perception are ideas (in various senses: see idea, n.); more generally, any view opposed to some form of realism or materialism.²

This definition needs a bit of unpacking. First, we should set aside the last clause as it suggests something broader than typical usage; academic philosophy would admit of views that are anti-realist or anti-materialist without being idealist. It is the first two clauses that appear to be doing the most work. Idealism is either a set of views according to which reality is mental or mind dependent or it is a set of views according to which the objects of knowledge or perception are ideas. On its face the second clause seems promising because it is natural to think that idealism would be a view about “ideas.” The OED’s construal is fairly narrow, however; the notion that the objects of knowledge or perception are ideas suggests a specific kind of view, such as Berkeleyan phenomenalism. One might rather

¹ Christopher Pollard’s argument against Sebastian Gardner’s interpretation of Phenomenology is like this insofar as he narrowly defines idealism as requiring a representationalist theory of perception that Merleau-Ponty would reject. See Pollard, “Is Merleau-Ponty’s Position in Phenomenology of Perception a New Type of Transcendental Idealism?,” 131–2. ² “idealism, n.”. OED Online. June 2020. Oxford University Press. https://www.oed.com/view/Entry/ 90960?rskey=cN7nir&result=1 (accessed June 30, 2020). This is the first of three given definitions and is marked as the one relevant to philosophy.

Embodied Idealism: Merleau-Ponty’s Transcendental Philosophy. Joseph C. Berendzen, Oxford University Press. © Joseph C. Berendzen 2023. DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780192874764.003.0002

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broaden the discussion of ideas and idealism by substituting “mind” with “idea” in the first clause. In that case we get “idealism is a set of views according to which reality is ideal or idea-dependent.” This adjusted definition brings us close to the historically earliest forms of idealism. On this kind of view “idealism” can be thought of (using Terry Pinkard’s wording) as “the thesis that the empirical world is either not as real or is somehow deeply dependent on non-empirical structures or principles (‘idealities’).”³ The Pythagorean view that the empirical world is metaphysically dependent upon a deeper mathematical reality is paradigmatic of idealism in this sense. But Pinkard further notes that by the early modern period (which is when the term actually came to be used⁴) “idealism came to be a thesis about the mind dependence of the empirical.”⁵ This emphasis on mind-dependence fits with the first clause of the OED definition. Given that it is the more common way of conceiving of idealism in philosophical discourse, the current attempt at a definition will use the idea that reality is mental or mind-dependent. The meaning of “reality is in some sense mental or mind-dependent” could vary greatly depending on how one conceives of the nature of mind/the mental and the nature of the dependence. Regarding the mind/mental portion of the definition, the standard ways of thinking of its meaning can be divided into three basic types:⁶ 1. “Mind” in the first instance is a spiritual entity that transcends individual subjects, like a divine mind or world soul. Depending on one’s interpretation, the Platonic good or Hegel’s absolute spirit could be examples.⁷ 2. Alternately one can focus on the minds of individual subjects. Descartes’ cogito would be a canonical version of this type. It also fits the standard modern sense of the term “mind.”

³ Terry Pinkard, “Idealism,” in The Oxford Handbook of German Philosophy in the Nineteenth Century, ed. Michael Forster and Kristin Gjesdal, Oxford: Oxford University Press (2015), 231. ⁴ The use of the term “idealism” to name ancient theories such as Pythagoreanism or Platonism is an anachronism (though potentially appropriate). For a description of how the term was first used by G. W. Leibniz and then popularized by Christian Wolff, see Paul Guyer and Rolf-Peter Horstmann, “Idealism”, The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Winter 2019 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.), URL = . The relevant discussion is at the end of §1. ⁵ Pinkard, “Idealism,” 231. ⁶ This division draws heavily from W. J. Mander’s similar list. While Mander lists four versions, I have combined his first and fourth and described the categories in slightly different terms. See Idealist Ethics, Oxford: Oxford University Press (2016), 11–13. ⁷ Readers familiar with Hegel might note that the three forms of “mind” noted here potentially correspond to the Encyclopedia’s division between absolute spirit, subjective spirit, and objective spirit. Of course, the extent to which Hegel’s ordering maps onto mine depends upon one’s Hegel interpretation.

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  3. Finally, one can emphasize what W. J. Mander calls “mind in general.”⁸ This version focuses on “products” of the mind, such as conceptual frameworks, cultures, social practices, institutions, etc. This is what Hegel refers to as “objective spirit”; something like the collective history of our shared mental lives.

These three ways of thinking about “mind” can come together in various ways. For example, one may espouse the first type of view, and then take the second and third ways of thinking of mind to be derivative upon, or to participate in, the larger mental entity. Also, one who emphasizes the third form will often incorporate some version of the second, as it is individual minds that somehow carry out the shared mental framework. But they can also clearly come apart. For example, one can hold to the second or third (alone or in combination) while rejecting the first. And one could potentially hold to the second without the first or third. One might wonder whether this list provides a conception of “mind” or “mental” that can actually be definitional, because of the stark differences between the first and second forms listed. Views from those forms might not have anything in common; for example, from the perspective of the majority of contemporary philosophy of mind, individual minds share no necessary connection to a transcendent spiritual entity. On the other hand, though, most who hold to first-form views likely take individual minds (as noted above) to participate in or be derivative of “mind” in the larger sense. There is furthermore a clear historical link between the two because of the way medieval and early modern philosophers conceived of individual minds as patterned on the mind of God. And from the opposite side, contemporary interpreters might try to construe views of the first type, in a deflationary fashion, as actually fitting into type three (this could be the case, for instance, with some interpretations of Hegel). Thus, while we have not hit upon a clear sense of “mind” or “mental” that is obviously shared by all forms of idealism, there are ways of linking together the different senses of “mind” in order to form a loose family grouping.

2. Ontological v. Epistemological Idealism While we have considered a broad catalogue of conceptions of mind, we have yet to consider what the “dependent” in the phrase “mind-dependent” means. In §4 of the introduction I suggest a distinction between “ontological dependence” and “epistemological dependence.” The former entails that reality is dependent on

⁸ Mander, Idealist Ethics, 12.

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mind or the mental for its being. The simplest versions of such a view would hold that mind(s) creates reality, or that all of reality simply is mental. Epistemological dependence, on the other hand, does not necessarily take the being of reality to depend upon the mind. Rather, the view is solely about our knowledge; for example, we might only be able to access reality through our conceptual frameworks. These two forms of dependence are separable; one could accept that while we cannot know reality apart from our mental framework, reality’s being is wholly extra-mental. This way of thinking is borrowed from the standard distinction between ontological idealism and epistemological idealism. In their Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy entry on “Idealism,” Paul Guyer and Rolf-Peter Horstmann present this in the following way: Within modern philosophy there are sometimes taken to be two fundamental conceptions of idealism: 1. something mental (the mind, spirit, reason, will) is the ultimate foundation of all reality, or even exhaustive of reality, and 2. although the existence of something independent of the mind is conceded, everything that we can know about this mind-independent “reality” is held to be so permeated by the creative, formative, or constructive activities of the mind (of some kind or other) that all claims to knowledge must be considered, in some sense, to be a form of self-knowledge.⁹

They then classify these as “ontological (or metaphysical) idealism” and “epistemological idealism” respectively, with Berkeley mentioned as an exemplar of the former view and Kant an exemplar of the latter. This distinction is common, yet it faces problems, mainly because of difficulties with the notion of epistemological idealism. First, one can accept the general view being defined as “epistemological idealism” but argue that it is not actually a form of idealism. Second, one can argue that the definition of epistemological idealism is mistaken because the relevant views which are thought to fit under it (such as Kant’s) make a claim about our experience that goes beyond the status of our knowledge. Thus, it is not merely “epistemological.” In connection with this, one might argue that the distinction between ontological and epistemological views is misleading because the latter still makes an ontological claim. In the rest of this section, I will argue that those who argue for the first point are wrong. The kinds of views typically classified as epistemological idealisms, such as Kant’s, are actually forms of idealism. But I will further argue that this fact is obscured due to the problems connected with the second problem. The views ⁹ Guyer and Horstmann, “Idealism,” the quote is early in §1.

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typically called “epistemological idealism” actually make claims that are not limited to the status of our knowledge and have ontological import. Thus, while I think there is a real distinction to be made between types of idealism that is in the vicinity of the ontological/epistemological distinction, that distinction must be recast. The first kind of problem is actually raised by Guyer and Horstmann after they present the distinction between ontological and epistemological idealisms. They initially pose this as comment on Kant’s views, which they find to “not provide a clear model of idealism at all.” The problem, on their view, is Kant’s conception of the thing in itself. Insofar as Kant takes space and time to be forms of intuition, and thus an element of our mental framework rather than external reality, he holds a partly idealist view, but insofar as he holds to “a kind of realism about the existence of things other than minds” his view is not idealist.¹⁰ Mander generally agrees with this point, claiming that “all idealists reject the theory of the thing-initself, the notion of that which has an existence and a nature in its own right, wholly separate from mind.”¹¹ He appends a note that states the same basic point as Guyer and Horstmann; while part of Kant’s view seems idealist, it cannot be idealist overall. Guyer and Horstmann go on to agree with A. C. Ewing’s assertion that all idealisms “have in common the view that there can be no physical objects existing apart from some experience,” with experience construed broadly so as to encompass both the first and second versions of “mind” noted in the previous section.¹² Thus to count as an idealism, reality must be considered wholly mental or mind-dependent. I believe that the definition of idealism that Ewing, Guyer, Horstmann, and Mander support is excessively narrow. We should accept a version of minddependence that allows us to consider objects existing apart from “experience” or mind. Their presentations of the narrow view seem to me primarily stipulative, but there are some reasons given that support their views. For instance, Mander claims that Kant’s thing in itself “would be anathema to nearly all other idealists.”¹³ Thus we might eliminate epistemological idealism from the definition of idealism for reasons of economy; there is no reason to expand the definition to include one aberrant view. Guyer and Horstmann, on the other hand, argue that including epistemological idealism would be too broad in a different way; they think it would include nearly all contemporary anti-realist views that hold that “knowledge is always formed within our own point of view, conceptual framework, or web of belief.”¹⁴ This would make the definition extremely broad, given the possibility that (as Guyer and Horstmann note) the majority of both

¹⁰ Ibid. ¹¹ Mander, Idealist Ethics, 10, see also 10 n. 15. ¹² A. C. Ewing, Idealism: A Critical Survey, London: Methuen (1934), 3. Cited in Guyer and Horstmann, “Idealism,” §1. ¹³ Mander, Idealist Ethics, 10 n. 15. ¹⁴ Guyer and Horstmann, “Idealism,” §1.

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Continental and Anglo-American philosophies in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries hold such an anti-realist view. Ultimately, though, neither of these reasons actually supports the narrow definition. Mander’s claim that nearly all idealists disagree with Kant is highly debatable. Note that his objection does not hinge on any particular interpretation of the doctrine of the thing in itself. Rather, the objection is directed at the very broad idea of a basic realism (any general belief in the existence of mind-independent reality) which would encompass most interpretations of Kant’s view and other views as well. While it is typical for certain specifics of Kant’s doctrine to be rejected, on at least some prominent interpretations there are multiple PostKantian idealists who would accept basic realism.¹⁵ Such interpretations are debatable, but it is clear that there is an established history of referring to Kantian and post-Kantian transcendental idealism as idealism. Thus, absent some (not purely stipulative) conceptual argument to show that it does not meet an appropriate standard, removing the Kantian view from the definition of “idealism” does not really fit traditional usage. Guyer and Horstmann’s claim that it would be excessive to include twentiethcentury anti-realisms in one’s definition is initially more persuasive. Not all such views entail a robust enough form of mind-dependence. This might be a bit of a red herring, however. Although Kant’s idealism (for example) shares an epistemological element with many other views, it could still differ in some substantive way that is pertinent for the definition of idealism. Perhaps there is something crucial to the idea of ontological mind-dependence, yet that enables us to distinguish between “full” or “strong” ontological idealisms that fit Ewing’s definition and “partial” or “limited” ontological idealisms, like Kant’s, that still allow for some sense of basic realism. This partial ontological dependence might then distinguish Kant’s view from the contemporary anti-realist views Guyer and Horstmann do not want to include. This point leads to the second problem; the term “epistemological” might obscure the relevant idealisms’ ontological import. This can first be seen by considering that “epistemological” implies that it is only knowledge of reality that is at issue. It is not clear, however, that it is really appropriate to cast the relevant views in this way. Consider the following alternate definition given, in a discussion of Husserl’s idealism, by Richard Holmes: “epistemological idealism can be characterized as the thesis that consciousness is the sole medium of access to whatever is seen as actually or possibly existing.”¹⁶ By

¹⁵ For a good example of scholarship that argues this point, see Günter Zöller, “German Realism: The Self-Limitation of Idealist Thinking in Fichte, Schelling, and Schopenhauer,” in The Cambridge Companion to German Idealism, ed. Karl Ameriks, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press (2007), 200–18. ¹⁶ Richard H. Holmes, “Is Transcendental Phenomenology Committed to Idealism?” Monist 59:1 (1975), 98–114.

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casting epistemological idealism as holding a view about conscious experience broadly construed (all “access”), Holmes’s definition better fits the actual point of epistemological idealism. Apart from Husserl, it better fits Kant. He takes sensibility to be shaped by subjectivity, when it is given spatio-temporal form, before concepts are ever applied. Thus, Kant’s transcendental idealism hinges on a point regarding our experiential perspective on reality, not on a narrower point about knowledge. There is still a problem with Holmes’s definition of epistemological idealism, however. That consciousness is the “sole medium of access” to reality does not really entail any kind of mind-dependence. To use a loose analogy, a hole in the fence could be my sole medium of access to my neighbor’s yard, but the things in that yard are in no way dependent upon the hole. In this regard, Holmes’s definition might be too broad in the way Guyer and Horstmann fear; conceptual framework or “web of belief” views might be akin to having to look at the yard through the hole, and thus they are not idealisms. There must be some kind of ontological claim being made by “epistemological” idealisms that connects with their conception of mind-dependence. The real crucial distinction between socalled ontological idealisms and so-called epistemological idealisms is over the nature and extent of the relevant ontological dependence. For example, one can interpret Kant as holding that there is an element of reality that is dependent upon our experience of it, such that it is a part of the being of things that they be structured transcendentally in a particular way. Nevertheless, this is compatible with the fact that there is some element of the being of things which is separate from our experience of them, and thus from the transcendental structure. There is being as it is for us, and being as it is in itself, and both of these are parts of being. There is something important captured by the distinction between ontological idealism and epistemological idealism. But the terminology is problematic, because the distinction does not hinge on views that make an ontological claim versus views that do not, nor does the distinction hinge on views that are limited to making claims about knowledge versus those that do not. The actual distinction is between views that conceive of the mind-dependence of reality as incompatible with basic realism and those whose conception of mind-dependence is compatible with basic realism in some form. Importantly, this way of marking the distinction still incorporates some of the spirit of Guyer and Horstmann’s complaint about epistemological idealism. Views that emphasize things like the theory ladenness of experience or the idea that all of our knowledge is shaped by our conceptual frameworks would not count as idealisms unless they understand the theories, conceptual frameworks, etc. to somehow determine the being of the things we experience. Thus, the terminology of ontological idealism and epistemological idealism should be changed. We can easily amend the former by calling it “strong

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ontological idealism.” It is “strong” insofar as its ontology is strongly idealist; there is no being apart from mental or mind-dependent being. This choice obviously suggests that the latter could be called “weak ontological idealism.” But this terminology does not really convey the crucial point regarding the acceptance of basic realism. Perhaps the best choice is just to refer to the latter views as “idealisms that are compatible with some sense of basic realism,” though that does not exactly roll off the tongue. Thankfully, most of the times in this book when some version of that view is considered, it will also be a version of transcendental idealism (which is a subset) and can be called such. Thus, the wordy replacement for “epistemological idealism” will not need to be frequently used in this book.

3. The Definition of Idealism: A Summary We have now reached a decent working definition of idealism that can be summarized before turning to Kant and transcendental idealism specifically. It can begin with the first part of the OED definition; Idealism names the “various views according to which reality is ultimately in some sense mental or minddependent.” These views can be further sorted depending on which form of “mind” and which form of “dependence” is at play. Given this, it should be possible to determine a matrix that categorizes idealist theories according to their views on “mind” and “dependence.” This is represented in Table 1. The matrix lists some modern philosophers whose views might be taken as characteristic of the different possible combinations of “mind” and “dependence” type. The listing is of course not complete, and it is not without some problems. Berkeley, for example, is typically taken as the exemplar of subjectivist idealism, but insofar as he holds that the being we perceive is also tied to God’s perception, his view might actually fit into the upper left box. While Fichte is often taken to be an arch-subjectivist, he at least attempted to claim that he accepted the existence

Table 1. Types of Idealism

Transcendent Spiritual Entity Individual Subject Collection of Mental Products or Acts

Strong Ontological Idealism

Idealism compatible with basic realism

Schelling, Hegel (traditional interpretation) Berkeley, Fichte Hegel (traditional interpretation)

? Kant, Husserl Hegel (“Post-Kantian” interpretation)

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of external reality, and thus might be shifted to the right.¹⁷ Similarly, there are interpretations of Kant and Husserl that would shift them to the left. A traditional interpretation of Hegel would seem to place him in both the top and bottom left boxes (as I have done), insofar as the development of objective spirit is tied to the development of spirit writ large. But on the prominent Post-Kantian interpretations his view goes in the bottom right box. Finally, it is hard to determine what view would go into the upper right box; any view that believes in some sort of overarching spiritual entity in an idealistic fashion (whether it be a deity, an impersonal Platonic idea, or nature construed as a single organic subject) is going to tend to believe that all being is dependent on that thing. It is not necessary here to fully work out all of these kinks, nor is it necessarily a problem with the definition that there is some blurriness at the edges of its internal distinctions. What is important is that it provides a general guideline for what counts as idealism. There is one more bit of terminology in the foregoing that needs to be discussed further. I have referred to “basic realism” at a few points, and said that it is compatible with some idealisms. But “realism” is typically opposed to “idealism.” Merleau-Ponty in fact uses the terms this way; for example in Phenomenology he says that his investigations “discovered the means of overcoming the alternatives between realism and idealism.”¹⁸ There is not space here to enter into a discussion of the meaning of “realism” and its different types (this would be as big a task as defining “idealism”) but something needs to be said to sort out the sense in which realism is and is not (necessarily) opposed to idealism. We can use Merleau-Ponty as our guide; when he criticizes realism, he is typically criticizing a kind of metaphysical view associated with what he calls “objective thought.” This is a view wherein the external world is made up of individual, externally related mindindependent objects that are somehow causally connected with the mind (as in empiricist causal theories of perception). The term “scientific realism” often refers to a view of this type. In this book, views of this type will be referred to as “metaphysical realism” (unless it is referred to differently in a quote, in which case context should make the meaning clear). This type of view is typically opposed to idealism because it would reject the kind of relationality between mind and world that idealism’s mind-dependence, in all forms, requires. As opposed to metaphysical realism, what I have been referring to as “basic realism” is just the general view that there is in some sense a reality that is mind independent. As was suggested by the previous section, I believe this type of view is compatible with (and in fact insisted on by) some idealist views. Those views

¹⁷ See Wayne M. Martin, Idealism and Objectivity: Understanding Fichte’s Jena Project, Stanford: Stanford University Press (2007), which emphasizes Fichte’s potential realism. ¹⁸ PP 454.

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that reject basic realism will be referred to as embracing “strong anti-realism.” Some scholars might call other idealisms “anti-realist” because they reject various forms of metaphysical realism. The rejection of metaphysical realism does not necessarily entail the total rejection of mind-independent reality, however. Of course, the primary form of idealism that is compatible with basic realism that this book is concerned with is transcendental idealism. That is the name Kant gave to his idealism, and any attempt to define it must begin with Kant. Transcendental idealism did not end with Kant, however; various Post-Kantian views have been placed in that category. For example, Edmund Husserl referred (for at least a long portion of his career) to his philosophy as a transcendental idealism. Because of his crucial influence on Merleau-Ponty, Husserl’s transcendental idealism must be discussed in the context of the present study as well. The rest of this chapter will thus define transcendental idealism, beginning with brief considerations of Kant’s and Husserl’s views, and ending with a general definition that should fit all views that have legitimately used the term.

4. Kant’s Transcendental Idealism: A Very Brief Overview Though the current study requires a discussion of the origins of transcendental idealism in Kant’s thought, it will be necessarily quite limited. It would potentially take multiple volumes to fully discuss Kant’s idealism; as Nicholas Stang contends at the outset of his Stanford Encyclopedia entry on transcendental idealism, there “is probably no major interpretive question in Kant’s philosophy on which there is so little consensus.”¹⁹ This section will provide a very brief overview of the most obvious aspects of transcendental idealism as it is discussed in Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason, briefly consider some interpretive problems the view faces, and suggest some interpretive choices. As this is not primarily a work of Kant scholarship, the interpretive choices are not presented as best capturing Kant’s actual views. I am not qualified to make such a claim, and am happy to leave debates about Kant’s views up to Kant scholars. Rather, they are justified on the basis that they help me develop a conception of transcendental idealism that is general enough to link Kant’s thought to Post-Kantian thinkers (such as Husserl) and pave the way for an analysis of transcendental idealism in Merleau-Ponty’s thought. At one point in the A edition of the Critique of Pure Reason, Kant defines transcendental idealism as follows:

¹⁹ Nicholas F. Stang, “Kant’s Transcendental Idealism”, The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Winter 2018 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.), URL = https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/win2018/ entries/kant-transcendental-idealism/, quote taken from the introductory paragraph.

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  I understand by the transcendental idealism of appearances the doctrine that they are all together to be regarded as mere representations and not as things in themselves, and accordingly that space and time are only sensible forms of our intuition, not determinations given for themselves or conditions of objects as things in themselves.²⁰

While this is just one brief passage, its key points can be used to draw out the general aspects of Kant’s view. The main points to focus on are that (A) appearances are merely representations, (B) appearances are not things in themselves, and (C) space and time are sensible forms of our intuition. An appearance is, roughly, an object of experience; Kant refers to it as “an object of sensible intuition.”²¹ “Appearance” is distinguished from “phenomenon” in Kant’s terminology in that appearances are structured through sensibility by space and time, while a phenomenon is an appearance further structured by the categories. A “representation” is, as Kant at one point puts it, an “inner determination of our mind,” such as a sensation or cognition.²² Setting aside Kant’s complicated division of representational types, representation is often understood generally as a mental act or content. Putting these definitions of “appearance” and “representation” together, we arrive at the following provisional restatement of (A): all objects of experience are merely mental acts or contents. Note that the “merely” here might seem to imply a form of strong ontological idealism.²³ Along these lines, Kant has been taken, from the first appearance of the First Critique, to be a Berkeley-style phenomenalist who believes that objects simply are mental entities.²⁴ An alternate interpretation, however, might understand “representation” in Kant’s work more along the lines of a “presentation” of something to consciousness rather than as a purely mental entity.²⁵ Thus we might amend our provisional restatement of (A) as all objects of experience are merely as they are presented to us. This might be somewhat clumsy phrasing, but it entails that our appearances are just of things as we experience them. The “merely,” then, does not reduce appearances to mental objects, it rather emphasizes that they are not of things as they are outside of our experience. While I will not take a stand on which is the truest interpretation of Kant, it will be clear that my way of defining transcendental idealism must sharply distinguish it from phenomenalism. ²⁰ Immanuel Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, ed. and trans. Paul Guyer and Allen W. Wood, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press (1998), 426 (A369). ²¹ Ibid. 115 (Bxxvi). ²² Ibid. 309 (A197/B242). ²³ For a relatively brief discussion of the various points that hinge on the interpretation of “merely” in Kant’s definition, see Henry Allison, “Kant’s Transcendental Idealism,” in A Companion to Kant, ed. Graham Bird, London: Blackwell (2006), 111–24. ²⁴ See Stang, “Kant’s Transcendental Idealism,” §2 for a brief history of this interpretation. ²⁵ For a brief discussion of the “representation” versus “presentation” issue see Allais, Manifest Reality, 25.

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This takes us to point (B), which separates appearances from things in themselves. The notion of the “thing in itself ” is perhaps the most vexed idea in all of Kant’s philosophy, yet some of its basics can be ascertained. As has been noted, Kant thinks that appearances must be grounded. Early in the First Critique he refers to the thing in itself as the “true correlate” of “representations of our sensibility.”²⁶ For phenomenalist interpretations, this grounding is often associated with a “noumenalist” conception of the thing in itself. On this view the thing in itself is a wholly non-sensible, non-spatiotemporal entity that is totally distinct from the objects of experience yet grounds them.²⁷ But Kant makes claims that do not fit well with the noumenalist split between the thing in itself and the objects of experience; for example he insists that the thing in itself is the thing, in an appearance, “that appears.”²⁸ This suggests that things in themselves are in some sense the worldly objects we experience, because if they are the things that appear they must, seemingly, show up in our appearances. But this also seems wrong, because we are also told that the thing in itself is “not known to us at all,” “cannot be cognized,” and is “never asked after in experience.”²⁹ These latter claims might better fit the noumenalist view. The apparent contradiction between noumenalist and “thing that appears” interpretations seems to leave us with three possibilities. First, maybe the contradiction is really in Kant’s work, and cannot be resolved. Second, one can embrace the first horn of the dilemma and accept noumenalism. Perhaps the reference to the “thing that appears” is just a clumsy way of marking something like a causal link, and does not entail that the thing in itself in any way shows up in our appearances. Third, one can embrace the second horn. Perhaps the idea that the thing in itself is “never asked after in experience” merely entails that we cannot “get around” our own experience to see things in a putative experience-free manner. This is compatible with the non-noumenalist idea that things themselves show up as we experience them. They show up as experienced, but not as they are apart from experience. Again, while I will not take a full stand on the Kant interpretation, my way of defining transcendental idealism will requiring rejecting the noumenalist interpretation. Whichever of the three options regarding the thing in itself that we choose, we should see that point (B) in general holds because of point (C). Space and time are sensible forms of our intuition, which is to say that all of our appearances are spatio-temporal. Point (C) also implies, however, that space and time are just sensible forms; they are not elements of reality in itself. Why Kant believes this will be set aside here. The upshot, however, is that things in themselves cannot be

²⁶ Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, 162 (A30/B45). ²⁷ For a brief general discussion of Kant interpretations that discusses noumenalism and its connection to phenomenalism, see Allais, Manifest Reality, 3–9. ²⁸ Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, 115 (Bxxvi). ²⁹ Ibid. 162 (A30/B45).

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experienced directly because all experience is spatio-temporal while things in themselves are not. This, furthermore, is why all appearances are representations. To use the language of “presentation” suggested above, appearances are of objects necessarily presented as spatiotemporal and thus have a form given by the mind that is not in extra-mental reality. On Allais’s interpretation (see §4 of the introduction), spatio-temporal qualities are essentially manifest qualities. Kant clearly wants to embrace the idea that there is some external, mindindependent reality that is in some way the basis of our experience. He also, however, wants to embrace the idea that our experience is ineliminably shaped by our own mental structure, such that there is no wholly mind-independent experience of that mind-independent reality. Insofar as the emphasis here is placed on experience, one might interpret transcendental idealism in a deflationary manner and say that Kant is only speaking to what we know about reality or how we “see” reality, thus leaving the actual being of reality untouched. But, alternately, we could follow Allais’s essential manifestness view in taking transcendental idealism to make an ontological claim. On this view there is an aspect of reality—its essentially manifest aspect—that is only available to the mind. This aspect is a part of what reality fundamentally is, and thus is not purely reducible to our knowledge. Allais takes this to be a moderate line between the extremes of phenomenalist/noumenalist interpretations of Kant on the one hand and deflationary interpretations on the other hand.³⁰ Allais’s interpretation allows us to see Kant’s transcendental idealism as genuinely an idealism, but one which is compatible with basic realism. The foregoing discussion does not fully explain what the “transcendental” means in transcendental idealism, however. But this is hinted at in point (C). Kant takes space and time to be forms of our intuition. What this means is that there is a particular way that our minds structure our experience. Kant calls these structures “transcendental,” and transcendental philosophy is meant to give a full accounting of the various structures that shape our experience. It is not just space and time that play an important role for Kant here; the categories also shape our experience as appearances are conceptualized. While they are obviously crucial for Kant’s philosophy, it is not necessary for a theory to hold to his specific views on space, time, and the categories to be called “transcendental.” The key is the more general point that transcendental philosophy analyzes the structures that enable us to have the kind of experience that we have. In principle there could thus be a transcendental philosophy which is not an idealism. Such a view might reject the idea that we cannot access reality directly yet still analyze the conditions of possibility of our experience. But considered a certain way, “transcendental” and “idealism” uniquely fit together. One might

³⁰ Allais presents her view in this manner at Manifest Reality, 3–11.

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interpret Kant’s idealism as being driven by the notion that in its (pre-Kantian) history, philosophy has too often forgotten or misconstrued the fact that human experience is limited. Henry Allison describes this as an adherence to the “theocentric paradigm,” which seeks to attain (or at least hold up as an ideal) something like a “God’s-eye” or perspective-less view on reality.³¹ Kant sees such philosophies as attempting, illicitly, to outstrip our cognitive capacities. By contrast, he emphasizes an anthropocentric paradigm for which “the conditions of human cognition, whatever they may turn out to be, rather than the unattainable ideal of a God’s-eye view of things, determine the norms of our cognition.”³² Insofar as the phrase “norms of our cognition” might imply a solely epistemological or otherwise intellectualist view, I would amend Allison’s phrasing to say “structure of our experience.” This should maintain the overall claim being made regarding the anthropocentric perspective. While Kant’s specific views on space and time are not necessary for this general point, they make the distinction between the theocentric and anthropocentric view clear. God might be thought of as taking in reality “from all sides” (and at all times) at once, but the spatio-temporal structure of human experience greatly restricts our access to reality. Any view that seeks to outstrip those limits (even if it does not literally seek to attain God’s knowledge) is problematic on Kant’s view. The emphasis on the human perspective is tied to the idealist element of Kant’s view. To say that our only access to reality comes through a form of experience that is permeated by some kind of activity of the mind amounts, for the anthropocentric paradigm, to saying that our only access to reality comes through the perspective of a being with a mind like ours. The thing that needs to be added to make the view genuinely an idealism is, per §2 above, to emphasize that this entails an ontological claim. If it is genuinely reality that is accessed—if the objects that appear genuinely show up in our appearances—yet our experienced reality is structured by our perspective, then it must be the case that the being of reality is, partly, dependent upon that perspective. There are aspects of objects (the qualities are a part of what the objects are) that, because they are structured by our perspective, only appear via the relation between objects and subjects who share the relevant perspective. This is, again, a key point of Allais’s interpretation. To sum up Kant’s transcendental idealism, we can say that it entails two points: all experience is ineliminably shaped by our human perspective (the idealist element) and we can seek to understand the structures of that perspective which do that “shaping” (the transcendental element). But before we move on, one important point of clarification is necessary. The term “perspective” as used

³¹ Allison, “Kant’s Transcendental Idealism,” 113–14. Such a view need not be literally theocentric, though historically many such views have been. The idea, rather, is that their model of knowledge is like that commonly attributed to God: a direct, non-perspectival view of reality. ³² Ibid. 114.

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above might be misleading. It could suggest a kind of subjective relativism along the lines, for example, of Friedrich Nietzsche’s “perspectivism.” Briefly described, while the lineage of Nietzsche’s view is rooted in Kant’s, Nietzsche takes humans’ perspectives on the world to be rooted in our psychology in a naturalistic fashion, and thus they are contingent. Because of this contingency, their aspects can also vary from subject to subject.³³ This is not Kant’s view; transcendental structures are a priori and necessary, not empirical and contingent. Thus, the human or anthropocentric perspective referenced above does not vary among subjects; it holds universally for those who have human (or human-like) experience. This must be kept in mind as references to “perspective” or “perspectivism” are made in the rest of this book.

5. Husserl’s Transcendental Idealism: A Very Brief Overview While Husserl disagrees with Kant on many points, he agrees with the general conception of transcendental idealism described at the end of the previous section, at least for a period. Husserl’s idealism has been a highly controversial issue, both during his life and after. It caused controversy among his followers, with his early Göttingen students disagreeing with his later Freiburg students over his supposed shift from realism to idealism.³⁴ For his own part, Husserl would strongly endorse the conception of phenomenology presented by his later students (such as Eugen Fink) and would continue to describe his views as idealist late in his career.³⁵ He does seem to have had a very late change of heart, however; in a 1934 letter to Émile Baudin he argues for a realist interpretation of his views and says that “idealist” is “a word which . . . I no longer use.”³⁶ Scholars continue to debate these issues.³⁷

³³ For a brief discussion of Nietzsche’s perspectivism which discusses its Kantian lineage, see R. Lanier Anderson, “Friedrich Nietzsche”, The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Summer 2017 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.), URL = , §6.2. ³⁴ Marianne Sawicki, “Edmund Husserl,” The Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy, ISSN 2161–0002, https://www.iep.utm.edu/, 8/20/20, §2 briefly describes this dispute. ³⁵ Husserl endorses Fink’s presentation of his views in his preface to Eugen Fink, “The Phenomenological Philosophy of Edmund Husserl and Contemporary Criticism,” in The Phenomenology of Husserl: Selected Critical Readings, trans. and ed. R. O. Elveton, Chicago: Quadrangle Press (1970), 73–147. For an example of Husserl’s later description of his views as idealist, see Husserl, “Epilogue,” in Ideas Pertaining to a Pure Phenomenology and to a Phenomenological Philosophy, Second Book: Studies in the Phenomenology of Constitution, trans. Richard Rojcewicz and Andre Schuwer, Dordrecht: Kluwer (1989), 417. This text was originally written in 1930 to be appended to the first English translation of Ideas I. ³⁶ Edmund Husserl, Briefwechsel. Husserliana Dokumente III/1–10, ed. K. Schuhmann, Dordrecht: Kluwer (1994), 17. ³⁷ For a discussion of some of these debates see Dan Zahavi, “Husserl and the ‘Absolute’,” in Philosophy, Phenomenology, Sciences: Essays in Honor of Edmund Husserl, ed. C. Ierna et al., Dordrecht: Springer (2010), 71–92.

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Though the full meaning of Husserl’s idealism is disputed, I will present its most basic aspects.³⁸ The transcendental aspect of Husserl’s phenomenology can be briefly described as fitting with the attempt to elucidate our connection to the world by describing the forms of our consciousness of transcendent objects (i.e. a description of forms of “constituting intentionality”).³⁹ Note that Husserl’s use of the term “transcendent” differs from Kant’s, and refers to external objects of experience. Though his full conception of the constitution of transcendence is highly complex and entails various levels, in general Husserl understands our experience of external objects as the grasping of meaningful sense unities. And transcendence is thus only meaningful as it appears to consciousness. This is stated in Ideas I: Unities of sense presuppose . . . a sense-bestowing consciousness which, for its part, exists absolutely and not by virtue of another sense-bestowal . . . An absolute reality is just as valid as a round square. Reality and world are names here precisely for certain valid unities of sense, unities of “sense” related to certain concatenations of absolute, of pure consciousness . . . If anyone reading our statements objects that they mean changing all the world into a subjective illusion and committing oneself to a “Berkeleyan idealism,” we can only answer that he has not seized upon the sense of those statements.⁴⁰

This passage most directly states the “idealism” in Husserl’s transcendental idealism. “Reality and world” are “unities of sense”; and sense only exists for a sense-bestowing consciousness. But that consciousness does not receive its sense from something else; thus, consciousness is absolute while reality is not. Yet Husserl denies, in his reference to “Berkeleyan idealism,” that this entails strong ontological idealism. Presumably, this is because the world receives its sense, rather than its existence, from consciousness. Curiously, Husserl takes this to be an obvious idea that is only obscured by a particular kind of (metaphysically realist) philosophical view. Many would likely disagree that the idea of an “absolute reality” (i.e. a reality that has sense in itself ) is analogous to a round square. Furthermore, many would likely find Husserl’s use of the word “absolute” troubling. Despite his protestations to the contrary, the idea of an absolute consciousness bestowing meaning on the world does conjure thoughts of subjectivist strong ontological idealism, and

³⁸ The discussion of Husserl’s idealism here draws heavily on Dan Zahavi’s writings. See e.g. ibid., and also Zahavi, Husserl’s Phenomenology, Stanford: Stanford University Press (2003), ch. 2. ³⁹ Zahavi, “Husserl and the ‘Absolute’,” 77. ⁴⁰ Edmund Husserl, Ideas Pertaining to a Pure Phenomenology and to a Phenomenological Philosophy: First Book, General Introduction to a Pure Phenomenology, trans. F. Kersten, Dordrecht: Kluwer (1983), 128–9.

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Husserl has been interpreted as a phenomenalist.⁴¹ On the other hand, per his rejection of the “subjective illusion” view, Husserl would frequently insist on the independent reality of the world. Early on he would claim that “the objects of nature are obviously true objects . . . and nature is real in the true and full sense of the word” and he would later affirm that “an idealism that so to speak beats matter to death . . . is nonsensical.”⁴² That the claim regarding absolute consciousness can be squared with the basic realism of these latter statements is crucial to understanding Husserl as a transcendental idealist. This connection can be clarified by examining Husserl’s 1923–4 First Philosophy lectures, especially the lecture “The Path of the Phenomenological Reduction to Transcendental Idealism.”⁴³ There he says the following: Already on the ground of the natural attitude, reflection teaches me that any entity of which I can ever know, of which I can ever speak meaningfully, can only be something known from my knowledge, something experienced in my experience, something thought in my thinking; in short, something conscious in my consciousness. And even if something came to me through a supernatural revelation, then such a revelation would again come upon me as a consciousness.⁴⁴

This passage makes a straightforward point—something can only be experienced through my experience. This is something that Husserl thinks that the everyday person can see with just a bit of reflection; I can only consider the world as I experience it. This, furthermore, makes the same basic point as the Kantian “anthropocentric paradigm.”⁴⁵ All experience, knowledge, thought, etc. of the world comes through our particular perspective on the world. Husserl goes on to ⁴¹ Standing out in this regard is Herman Philipse, “Transcendental Idealism,” in The Cambridge Companion to Husserl, ed. Barry Smith and David Woodruff Smith, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press (1995), 239–322. ⁴² The first quote is from Husserl, “Esse und Percipi. Einheit und Mannigfaltigkeit: Immanentes Sein und transzendentes Sein. Das immanente Sein und der ‘Fluss des absoluten Bewusstseins.’ Das Naturobjekt und die Mannigfaltigkeiten. Immanenz im engeren und weiteren Sinn,” in Transzendentaler Idealismus, Texte Aus Dem Nachlass (1908–1921), Dordrecht: Kluwer (2003), 70–1. The second quote is from Husserl, “Die transzendentale Phänomenologie als Wesenwissenschaft der transzendentalen Subjektivität und die Probleme möglicher Erkenntnis, möglicher Wissenschaft, möglicher Gegenständlichkeiten und Welten,” in Einleitung in die Philosophie: Vorlesungen 1922/23, Dordrecht, Kluwer (2002), 276. Both are quoted in Zahavi, Husserl’s Legacy, Oxford: Oxford University Press (2017), 99–100. The translations used here are Zahavi’s. ⁴³ Edmund Husserl, First Philosophy, Lectures 1923/24 and Related Texts from the Manuscripts (1920–1925), trans. Sebastian Luft and Thane M. Naberhaus, Dordrecht: Springer (2019), 381–90. ⁴⁴ Ibid. 382. ⁴⁵ It should be noted that, strictly speaking, Husserl rejects the anthropocentric paradigm because he rejects the idea that there could be other perspectives with differing structures, as seen in his claim that God would also have to experience objects through changing spatial perspectives (see Husserl, Ideas: First Book, 362). Nevertheless, he accepts the general point insofar as he argues that experience must happen through a particular perspective. On this difference between Kant and Husserl see Sebastian Luft, “From Being to Givenness and Back: Some Remarks on the Meaning of Transcendental Idealism in Kant and Husserl,” International Journal of Philosophical Studies 15:3 (2007), 367–94.

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say that this “natural” point is taken more seriously by, and explicitly thematized within, the phenomenological attitude. For Husserl, our standard, everyday attitude toward the world implicitly contains certain epistemological and metaphysical commitments that obscure our ability to properly describe our experience. Chief among these commitments is a kind of metaphysical realism. This “natural attitude,” which describes both our everyday pre-theoretical attitude and many common theoretical orientations (such as those of ordinary natural science), leads people to mistake a view shaped by these implicit commitments for a pure description of phenomena (this is the “philosophical absolutizing of the world”). Thus, the phenomenologist must, via the phenomenological reduction, suspend these “natural” commitments and reflect on experience in an undogmatic fashion.⁴⁶ When this happens, the phenomenologist can fully analyze the structures of the perspective through which experience is experienced. This is why Husserl says in First Philosophy that “in the phenomenological reduction, rightly understood, is predelineated in essence the marching route towards transcendental idealism.”⁴⁷ The idealism is already contained, to some extent, in the natural attitude as noted above. It is obscured, though, by the various implicit commitments that operate within that attitude. But as the phenomenological reduction suspends those commitments it makes the idealism—the fact that all experience of the world is bound by our particular perspectives—an explicit object of philosophical consideration. One thing that is recognized in this consideration is the fact that our perspective places limits on our view of the world. There is no possibility for a “view from nowhere” that takes in all perspectives at once. This recognition of limits might seem to not sit well with the notion that consciousness is “absolute,” insofar as that term might (out of context) suggest an absolute standpoint on reality that is not limited (after all, the term “absolute,” in German Idealism, has its roots in the notion of something unconditioned). Sebastian Luft clarifies the Husserlian notion of the “absolute”: Being is relative to the experiencing subject. This experiencing subject is, hence, the ‘absolute’ as that to which all being is relative. This is merely another way of phrasing the basic idea of transcendental idealism: being can only be experienced from a perspective, and hence is relative to the perspective from where it is experienced or from where it shows itself as appearing. That to which being appears is absolute being, which is not an ‘absolute’ standpoint. What is absolute is the existence of a reference point from which being is experienced.⁴⁸

⁴⁶ This paragraph draws heavily from Zahavi, Husserl’s Phenomenology, 44–6. ⁴⁷ Husserl, First Philosophy, 381–2. ⁴⁸ Luft, “From Being to Givenness and Back,” 374.

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While the broader connotations of the term “absolute” might make it an unfortunate terminological choice, it must be emphasized that as Husserl uses the term it refers to the fact that being is only ever accessed from our perspectives. This does not entail phenomenalism and certainly does not imply that consciousness creates the world. Husserl’s “absolute consciousness” is compatible with a form of realism.⁴⁹ Given that I have both linked Husserl’s view to Kantian perspectivism and insisted that he finds this compatible with basic realism, one might wonder what Husserl thought of Kant’s doctrine of the thing in itself. It turns out that he was not amenable to it and regarded an in-principle unknowable thing in itself to be absurd and worthy of exclusion from phenomenological philosophy.⁵⁰ This was effectively because of his emphasis on perspectivism, however; the “attempt to conceive the universe of true being as something lying outside the universe of possible consciousness, possible knowledge, possible evidence . . . is nonsensical.”⁵¹ One cannot conceive of something outside the sphere of the conceivable, or find meaning outside the sphere of the meaningful. “If transcendental subjectivity is the universe of possible sense, then an outside is precisely—nonsense.”⁵² But Husserl notes that “even nonsense is . . . within the sphere of insight,” which is to say that the strictly nonsensical idea is in the vicinity of expressing something meaningful.⁵³ In this case, the meaningful point is that there is transcendence, or an objective world. But crucially transcendence is not dependent upon a being which is outside of our experience. Rather things are “outside” us insofar as they are presented to us as not depending on us for their being.⁵⁴ As Thane Naberhaus artfully states the Husserlian view, “the transcendence of the thing, its independence from consciousness, in the end rests on its necessary manner of givenness to consciousness, i.e., on its dependence on consciousness.”⁵⁵ It is, of course, debatable whether or not Husserl’s rejection of the thing in itself as it is posed here is actually a criticism of Kant’s view. The view described in the previous paragraph actually bears a resemblance to Allais’s interpretation of Kant.⁵⁶ What Husserl is rejecting is the notion of a thing in itself that is wholly separate from our experience yet connected to it. He would accept the Kantian idea (though he used different terminology) that our appearances must be of the ⁴⁹ See Zahavi, “Husserl and the ‘Absolute,’ ” 84–7, and Zahavi, Husserl’s Phenomenology, 68–72. ⁵⁰ See e.g. Edmund Husserl, Cartesian Meditations, trans. Dorion Cairns, The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff Publishers (1960), 156. ⁵¹ Ibid. 84. ⁵² Ibid. ⁵³ Ibid. ⁵⁴ See Husserl, “Über den Begriff des An-sich der realen Objekte,” in Transzendentaler Idealismus, Texte Aus Dem Nachlass (1908–1921), Dordrecht: Kluwer (2003), 191. ⁵⁵ Thane M. Naberhaus, “Husserl’s Transcendental Idealism,” Husserl Studies 23 (2007), 247–60. ⁵⁶ Significantly for my point, Zahavi notes that there are parallels between his interpretation of Husserl’s transcendental idealism and Allais’s interpretation of Kant; see Zahavi, Husserl’s Legacy, 62 n. 1. It must be noted that his claim comes in the midst of a discussion of ontologically deflationary readings of Husserl, so the immediate point on which he draws a link to Allais is not exactly what I am discussing here. Nevertheless, I believe that he would accept the link I am drawing here as well.

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thing that appears; the transcendent thing that appears is given to us as transcendent. It is given to us, however, as meaningful for us; reality does not exist as a brute fact. Reality requires consciousness insofar as it is made manifest as meaningful (as “unities of sense”) through our experiential perspective.⁵⁷ The unities of sense are thus essentially manifest; it is a part of the being of the thing that it be made meaningful to us in particular ways. Thus, on this reading, Husserl is neither a strong ontological idealist nor does he have an ontologically deflationary view of the type Guyer and Horstmann want to exclude from “idealism.”⁵⁸ Husserl is a transcendental idealist; he holds that being is shaped by our perspective on it, yet our perspectives take in transcendent reality.

6. Defining Transcendental Idealism The preceding sections on Kant and Husserl suggest that we can define transcendental idealism as depending upon two core elements. The first core element is the idea of perspective-dependence. Following Husserl, we might refer to this as the “absolute” nature of consciousness, keeping in mind Luft’s caveat that absolute consciousness is not, in this sense, an absolute standpoint. As we will see in the discussion of Phenomenology, Merleau-Ponty does, at times, use the term “absolute” in this Husserlian sense. The Husserlian terminology will not be used in this book, however, for three reasons. First, the term “absolute” was famously used by the Post-Kantian German Idealists such as Hegel in a different way, and many readers would likely find the Husserlian use confusing due to this. Second, while Merleau-Ponty does sometimes use the term “absolute” in the Husserlian sense, he also uses it to refer to intellectualist theories of consciousness that he rejects. My terminology needs to avoid implying any necessary connections between transcendental idealism and that kind of view. Third, even taken on its own the term “absolute” seems somewhat inapt. As was mentioned in the previous section, it is typically connected to the notion of something that is unconditioned. Something unconditioned would not be limited from the outside. While there is no “outside” of our perspective in the sense that there is no question of experience that departs from that perspective, it is wrong to suggest that our perspective has to be unconditioned. The opposite is the case; our experience is in fact conditioned by the transcendental structures that shape our perspective. In order to avoid the problems with the Husserlian terminology, this text will refer to the first core element as transcendental perspectivism. This term emphasizes the point that our experience of the world must always take place from our perspective, while the addition of “transcendental” should clearly mark the ⁵⁷ Zahavi, Husserl’s Phenomenology, 69. ⁵⁸ For a criticism of deflationary readings of Husserl, see Zahavi, Husserl’s Legacy, ch. 3.

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difference between this kind of view and potentially relativistic notions such as Nietzschean perspectivism. The addition of “transcendental” also marks the connection between the first core element and the second, which is the idea that we investigate and analyze the structures of our perspective that lead us to have the kind of experience that we have. This will be termed transcendental structural analysis. Thus, the rest of this book will operate with the following definition. A philosophical theory can count as a version of transcendental idealism if it somehow incorporates the following two theses: 1. The transcendental perspectivism thesis—according to this view, being or reality are only accessed from the standpoint of consciousness. Consciousness is central or primary in the sense that all experience of reality is relative to it. Two very important qualifications have to be emphasized: 1.1. This thesis does not imply that consciousness holds an absolute standpoint, which is to say that consciousness does not present us with a “God’s eye” view of reality. Reality is always presented through the transcendental perspective and is in that way limited. 1.2. This thesis does not entail strong ontological idealism, yet it must make some limited ontological claim. It does not entail that consciousness creates reality or is in some way the primary ontological foundation for reality, and is thus compatible with basic realism. It does however entail that some aspect of reality is dependent for its being on its being made manifest through our perspective. 2. The transcendental structural analysis thesis—given that reality is accessed only through our specific standpoint, any analysis of reality must first entail an analysis of the structures of that standpoint. One must examine what our perspective is like such that it enables us to have experience from that perspective. There is an important qualification to be made to this point as well: 2.1. The genuinely transcendental structures of experience are not “subjective” in the sense that they do not vary according to the contingencies of individual subjects. They must in some sense be a necessary or universal part of the transcendental perspective being analyzed, and thus are shared by all beings to whom the perspective applies. This is compatible with the possibility that individual beings would also have contingent aspects of their perspectives that shape their experiences, but these aspects would not be properly transcendental. To elaborate, any philosophy that holds to the first thesis is a form of idealism. This terminology should be relatively non-controversial. If, in its most general definition, idealism is any view wherein reality is dependent on the mental, the

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first thesis fits insofar as it holds that our experience of reality is dependent on our experiential perspective. If the first thesis is what makes transcendental idealism an idealism, the second thesis is what makes it truly transcendental. Thus, a transcendental philosophy could possibly be non-or-anti-idealist. While the two theses seem to fit naturally together (if one thinks that reality is only accessed from a particular perspective, it makes sense to analyze that perspective), it is in principle possible to analyze aspects of our perspective on reality and yet hold that reality can also be accessed in some other way.

7. Requirements for a Transcendental Idealist Conception of Consciousness In Structure, Merleau-Ponty tells us that his “conception of consciousness . . . is profoundly modified” in relation to the conception developed by his philosophical (and idealist) forebears.⁵⁹ In that text, the modification entails describing the mental in terms of “structure” or “form.” What that means will be discussed in much more detail in Chapters 3 and 4 below. For now, though, I will note that it entails construing putatively mental elements or contents as being aspects of a holistic interface between an organism and its environment rather than inner entities. This link between organism—or body—and world is of course prominent throughout the Pre-Sorbonne works. This move would seem to “decenter” the standard notion of consciousness by shifting it from the inner life of the subject into the world. On its face, this decentering of the mental fits poorly with the idea that reality is dependent upon the mental. The rest of this book will go to great lengths to show that Merleau-Ponty’s modification of consciousness actually fits with the idealist view. To help set the stage for this, though, the definition of transcendental idealism needs to be fleshed out a bit more. There are three aspects of the conception of the mind required by transcendental idealism that we can single out. Any transcendental idealist has to hold to some version of these three aspects, which are primarily specifications of or additions to the thesis of transcendental perspectivism. They are perspectival boundedness, synthetic unity, and selfconsciousness. As we will see, they are not wholly separable, but they can be conceptually distinguished for the sake of clarity. To a large extent, the emphasis perspectival boundedness is just a restatement of the thesis of transcendental perspectivism. But I want to amplify and add some important points. Perspectival boundedness entails that being is relative to consciousness, for us, because we have no way of encountering being (by perceiving it,

⁵⁹ SB 172.

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knowing it, talking about it, theorizing about it, or any other contact we may have with it) other than from the transcendental perspective. Perspectival boundedness thus entails that philosophical theories should not determinately theorize an element of being that is not given to our transcendental perspective. This might seem problematic, though, because it might eliminate the idea that we can experience transcendence (in Husserl’s—and Merleau-Ponty’s— sense of the term). The point here is a general version of the criticism famously leveled by F. H. Jacobi against Kant’s doctrine of the thing in itself. According to Jacobi, Kant’s theory contradicted itself by holding that we can only know appearances while also holding that appearances are connected to things in themselves.⁶⁰ If we only know appearances we cannot, as Kant asserts, have knowledge of things in themselves, yet insofar as Kant has things in themselves play a role in his theory, he must have knowledge of them. Generalizing this criticism, it might seem contradictory that we could limit access to being to our perspective, yet claim to encounter transcendence. Transcendental idealism would thus either be self-contradictory or would have to drop its commitment to basic realism, and thus become a strong ontological idealism. Allais presents a way of alleviating this problem for Kant that can be generalized to all forms of transcendental idealism. It hinges on the difference between “positive” and “negative” conceptions of noumena.⁶¹ Generally, noumena are defined as things that are known by the intellect and not by the senses. Taken in a “positive” sense, a noumenon is something determinately grasped by an intuition that does not involve sensation. This would require a form of experience that differs from our perspective and thus positive noumena are genuinely beyond us. Considered in the “negative” sense, however, a noumenon is “a thing insofar as it is not an object of our sensible intuition, because we abstract from the manner of our intuition of it.”⁶² This, on Allais’s view, is how Kant construes the thing in itself. We might say that for Kant we can have knowledge that there are things in themselves but not knowledge of things in themselves. The former would involve negative noumena. By abstracting from our experience, we can have the following thought: there must be the thing that appears, but as it is apart from its appearance, apart from our perspectives. But such things cannot be cognized, which is to say that they cannot be grasped, determinately, as having particular properties or qualities in themselves. This leads to a general thesis about positive and negative conceptions of transcendence. The former, which requires a determinate, contentful grasping of something beyond our perspective, is impossible. But the latter, which requires thought that abstracts from our experience, is possible. For ⁶⁰ For a brief explanation of Jacobi’s criticism see Sebastian Gardner, Routledge Philosophy Guidebook to Kant and the Critique of Pure Reason, London: Routledge (1999), 269–70. ⁶¹ See Allais, Manifest Reality, 60–4. ⁶² Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, 360 (B307).

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transcendental idealism in general, full transcendence is presented to us negatively. This notion of positive and negative conceptions of transcendence shows that there is a qualified sense in which Husserl’s use of the term “absolute” was apt. Our transcendental perspective’s boundaries are absolute and this eliminates the possibility of positive, determinate knowledge of something apart from our transcendental perspective. Any theory that attempts to grasp being as it is apart from us is illicit from the point of view of transcendental idealism. As a specific extension of this, any ontology that presents a positive theory of being as rooted in something apart from, or prior to, our perspective on being—which some try to attribute to Merleau-Ponty’s Pre-Sorbonne works—is incompatible with transcendental idealism. The most transcendental idealism would allow is a theory that indicates, on the basis of what is given to us, that being has some ground apart from us, but the nature of this ground would be beyond our knowledge. The emphasis on synthetic unity initially comes from the thought that having a particular perspective on reality entails that all of our experiences can be attributed to that single perspective. The most famous specific version of this general point is found in Kant’s notion of the transcendental unity of apperception. While a full description and explanation of Kant’s view would take us far beyond the scope of the current discussion, a brief description of his view should help clarify the point being made here.⁶³ Kant holds that for us to have meaningful experience we must grasp objects as meaningful unities. This requires gathering together, or “synthesizing,” various perceptual inputs and grasping them as a unified thing. Kant describes this in roughly the following way, beginning from a consideration of an empiricist view in which perception takes in an array of sensory data. The empiricist would have it that the data somehow arranges itself into complex representations (of things such as objects). But Kant argues that could not happen in the way the empiricist describes, because it requires a priori operations that enable complex representations to be grasped. The data has to be arranged into spatio-temporal unities, associative regularities, and grasped under a concept (a bundle of spatio-temporally arranged similarities is grasped as something, like a tree or a dog). This synthesizing of the data cannot come from the data, it has to be driven by transcendental structures of experience. The key final step for Kant, however, is to note that the syntheses so far described do not yet provide enough meaningful unity. If our experience were of an array of spatio-temporally and conceptually unified objects that were not further unified in experience, we would still have disconnected elements that lack meaning. To be meaningful they have to be further unified into a single stream of activity in a single mental life.

⁶³ My summary of Kant’s view here draws heavily from Béatrice Longuenesse, I, Me, Mine: Back to Kant, and Back Again, Oxford: Oxford University Press (2017), especially ch. 2 §2 (pp. 26–32) and ch. 4 §2 (pp. 77–81).

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As we will see, Merleau-Ponty does not accept an intellectualist view of synthesis, and he has problems with Husserl’s corresponding notion of constitution. But the rejection of intellectualism does not necessarily entail a rejection of the general emphasis on synthetic unity. My interpretation holds that MerleauPonty presents his own embodied, non-intellectualist correlate to the transcendental unity of apperception. Self-consciousness is also famously connected to Kant’s notion of the transcendental unity of apperception. In the B edition of the First Critique he states that “I think must be able to accompany all my representations; for otherwise . . . the representation . . . would be nothing to me.”⁶⁴ I must be able to grasp the synthetic unity as mine. If I could not, there would be some experience that would not properly be mine, and thus it would not really be unified with that experience that is mine. A temporal stream of experience that has periods or elements that are unavailable to self-consciousness would be discontinuous; we would have moments of self-conscious experience punctuated by anonymous gaps. The same point made above regarding qualified absoluteness and unity can be made here regarding Merleau-Ponty’s relation to the notion of transcendental self-consciousness. Merleau-Ponty will reject an intellectualist construal of selfconsciousness. He also discusses an “anonymous” or “impersonal” aspect of experience that might seem to work against synthetic unity and self-consciousness. But I will argue (particularly in Chapter 7) that in the end he accepts both. The definition of transcendental idealism as entailing transcendental perspectivism and transcendental structural analysis, along with the three requirements of perspectival boundedness, synthetic unity, and self-consciousness, will provide an analytical framework for the interpretations of Structure and Phenomenology that follow. Broadly speaking, Chapters 3 through 9 will attempt to answer the question “Do Merleau-Ponty’s views as exhibited in Structure and Phenomenology incorporate the transcendental perspectivism thesis or the transcendental structural analysis thesis, and do so in ways that incorporate the three requirements?” On balance, the answer to this question will be “yes” for both texts. Before we enter the main analysis of Structure and Phenomenology, however, the next chapter will examine Merleau-Ponty’s direct references to idealism in his Pre-Sorbonne works prior to Phenomenology. These references will also be tied to Merleau-Ponty’s views on the idealist philosophers who most influenced his early work. The most significant (and typically under-appreciated in the literature) influence to be discussed is that of Brunschvicg. But the influence of Kant and Husserl on the early work will be considered as well. This background investigation will prepare the way for the deeper consideration of idealism in his works to follow.

⁶⁴ Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, 246 (B131–2).

PART I

I D EAL I S M BE FORE P H E N O M E N O L O G Y OF PERCEPTION

2 Merleau-Ponty’s Early Critique of Idealism Text and Context

1. Merleau-Ponty’s First References to Idealism This chapter has two main aims. The first is to examine the specific references Merleau-Ponty makes to idealism prior to the publication of Phenomenology (its references will be discussed separately in Chapter 5). This examination can help one get a better sense of what, exactly, Merleau-Ponty means by the term and what he is actually objecting to in his critical discussions. The second aim is to provide historical context for these references by discussing the three idealist philosophers—Brunschvicg, Husserl, and Kant—who most influenced MerleauPonty’s philosophical development. This textual and contextual investigation will show that Merleau-Ponty is targeting some very specific views—which are often directly tied to Brunschvicg’s thought—when he is critical of idealism. By presenting these targets a bit more clearly and explicitly than Merleau-Ponty does, we will be better placed to judge later whether his works wholly reject idealism (of course, my view is that he does not). Merleau-Ponty’s first publication, a review of Max Scheler’s Ressentiment from 1935, contains one reference to idealism.¹ It is noteworthy that the reference is to “subjective idealism,” which is not otherwise a common term in Merleau-Ponty’s works. It comes in the middle of a discussion of Scheler’s view that human emotive and affective states are not properly handled by scientific or metaphysical thought. The relevant passage is as follows: [The metaphysical dualist] manifests his vindictive turn of mind when he substantially reduces all the spiritual to the intellectual. By paying heed to the intentionalities of the emotional life, the real nature of value can be discovered. This can no longer be overlooked. Empiricism and subjective idealism explain ¹ Merleau-Ponty, “Christianity and Ressentiment,” trans. Gerald Wening, in Texts and Dialogues: On Philosophy, Politics, and Culture, ed. Hugh J. Silverman and James Barry, Jr., Atlantic Highlands, NJ: Humanities Press (1992), 85–100. The text Merleau-Ponty is reviewing can be found in English as Scheler, Ressentiment, 2nd edn., trans. Louis A. Coser, ed. Manfred Frings, Milwaukee: Marquette University Press (1994).

Embodied Idealism: Merleau-Ponty’s Transcendental Philosophy. Joseph C. Berendzen, Oxford University Press. © Joseph C. Berendzen 2023. DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780192874764.003.0003

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  consciousness as a composition of impressions. These “pathetic” philosophies deny that a content of consciousness can naturally have a meaning; consciousness is a fact of states which receive secondarily a signification, spatiality, for example, through means of association of ideas.²

There are a few things in this passage that we need to unpack. First, the complaint regarding the spiritual being reduced to the intellectual should be clarified. Although Christianity is discussed in the essay overall, “spiritual” here does not refer primarily to something religious or supernatural. Rather, it refers to the life of the mind. “Spiritualisme” was a term commonly used in late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century French philosophy to refer to various views that emphasized the epistemological and ontological primacy of the mind.³ This then makes sense of the reference to “the emotional life”; the claim is that the metaphysical dualist (a grouping which includes the subjective idealist) overlooks the affective and emotive elements of our mental lives by overemphasizing the intellectual. The remaining portion of the quoted passage bears a striking resemblance to Merleau-Ponty’s most famous work. The reference to “empiricism and subjective idealism” is clearly reminiscent of Phenomenology’s twin foils empiricism and intellectualism. The views being criticized all see perception as involving discrete bits of data that are arranged into full perceptual representations. They differ according to whether they see that data as coming from external causal impingements and being arranged via empirical laws such as association, or whether they are arranged by intellectual acts such as judgement. What this tells us is that while Merleau-Ponty is, strictly speaking, summarizing Scheler’s views, he is describing a general view that he endorses and will eventually build into his own. In fact, he seems to be importing something of his own concerns into Scheler’s discussion. The term “idealism,” much less “subjective idealism,” is not found in Scheler’s text. Merleau-Ponty is drawing on a couple of different sections in the above quote, and both discuss figures in the history of philosophy. The reference to metaphysical dualism is, straightforwardly enough, connected to Descartes and Neo-Platonism, while the reference to “pathetic philosophies” is connected to Hutcheson, Smith, Hume, Bain, and Rousseau.⁴ Notably the latter reference covers multiple figures typically thought of as empiricists, but no figures typically associated with subjective idealism are mentioned. Fichte and Hegel are briefly mentioned by Scheler, but the idealist elements of their views are not discussed in any significant way.⁵ ² Ibid. 93. “Pathetic” is a reference to Scheler’s text. ³ See Pietro Terzi, Rediscovering Léon Brunschvicg’s Critical Idealism: Philosophy, History, and Science in the Third Republic, London: Bloomsbury Academic (2022), 13 and 13 n. 45. ⁴ Scheler, Ressentiment, 51–2, 93. Scheler does not actually refer to the latter group of philosophers as “pathetic,” but they are linked to “the pathos of modern humanitarianism.” ⁵ See ibid. 48 for the reference to Hegel, 97 and 156 for the references to Fichte.

- ’     

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Why, then, does Merleau-Ponty reference “subjective idealism”? He is clearly finding in Scheler’s text ideas consonant with his own developing views. Scheler is generally critical of views that downplay affect and lived bodily experience in favor of the type of explanation that Merleau-Ponty will eventually associate with “objective thought.” But (at least in the section of the review where he mentions idealism) Merleau-Ponty is presenting Scheler’s views not so much in Scheler’s terms but in his own terms, which clearly prefigure the arguments of Structure and Phenomenology. And idealism—of a particular type, primarily associated with Brunschvicg—will play an important role in those texts as an object (primarily) of criticism. So what specific views is Merleau-Ponty associating with idealism in “Christianity and Ressentiment”? First, he objects to intellectualism in the reference to the reduction of the spiritual. While “the intellectual” is not defined here, Merleau-Ponty primarily associates intellectualism with views that construe consciousness in terms of the grasping of determinate contents via operations such as knowledge, judgement, or calculation. Intellectualism fails in neglecting forms of intentionality that are appropriate for things like emotion and affect, which do not fully admit of determination into discrete units of thought. And he is critical of views that create “a divorce between the mind and the body” by not properly grasping how bodily experience shapes our mental lives.⁶ By extension, he is critical of philosophies that do not properly grasp that our lived, bodily experience is inextricably linked to a world, such that “a direct intercourse with things, creatures, and consciousness” is present.⁷ Insofar as he is objecting to “subjective idealism,” then, he is primarily objecting to a view that forgoes analysis of our bodily engagement with the world in favor of an intellectualistic analysis of conscious experience that in turn results in a kind of strong anti-realism. The next time Merleau-Ponty would directly refer to idealism in print would be in Structure. Two of that book’s four references are to “critical idealism” and two are to “transcendental idealism.” Prima facie one might assume that these all refer to the same thing, given the fact that “critical” and “transcendental” are both terms associated with Kantian philosophy.⁸ But it is clear from context that the two versions of idealism are not being equated. The references to “critical idealism” are clearly negative insofar as Merleau-Ponty wishes to distinguish his conclusions

⁶ Merleau-Ponty, “Christianity and Ressentiment,” 93. ⁷ Ibid. 94. ⁸ The former term, which primarily names Léon Brunschvicg’s views, is partly connected to Kantianism. And it is common in the literature to refer to Brunschvicg as a part of the “French NeoKantian” movement of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. See, for example, Sebastian Luft and Fabien Capeillères, “Neo-Kantianism in Germany and France,” in The History of Continental Philosophy: Volume 3: The New Century, ed. Keith Ansell-Pearson and Alan D. Schrift, Durham: Acumen (2010), 47–85. As Luft and Capeillères make clear, the French view was unique and somewhat different from the German views typically associated with the name. Pietro Terzi is skeptical of applying the term “Neo-Kantianism” to Brunschvicg’s thought; see Rediscovering Léon Brunschvicg’s Critical Idealism, 5–6.

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from that view.⁹ As we will see, “critical idealism” refers to basically the same view that “subjective idealism” referred to in the Scheler review. The two references to “transcendental idealism,” however, are directly linked to Kant in the text— though one is also indirectly linked to Husserl—and both are somewhat ambiguous. While couched in a critique of intellectualism, they also point to positive elements that Merleau-Ponty wants to incorporate into his own view. As we will see, the shift from the terminology of “subjective idealism” to “critical idealism” makes clearer the fact that Merleau-Ponty’s main target is Brunschvicg. Thus, in order to understand those references we must first examine Brunschvicg’s views. The next section will present a general overview of Brunschvicg’s thought. The sections following that will consider, in order, Merleau-Ponty’s direct considerations of Brunschvicg, Kant, and Husserl, and link these considerations to the references to idealism in works published before Phenomenology.

2. Leon Brunschvicg’s Critical Idealism Two figures, primarily, dominated the French philosophical scene in the first decades of the twentieth century, Brunschvicg and Henri Bergson. While perhaps neither are considered major figures in the academic/philosophical pantheon today, Bergson is surely much better known and more widely read. Bergson was the more popular figure in his day as well, in part because of his ability to give free public lectures in his position at the Collège de France. But Bergson did not spend much of his career holding university positions where he taught and directly mentored students. Brunschvicg, on the other hand, spent more than thirty years teaching at the Sorbonne and (for part of that time) the École Normale Supérieure.¹⁰ It was at the latter institution that he would teach Merleau-Ponty. As both a teacher and academic bureaucrat, Brunschvicg would exert a much more thoroughgoing influence on French academia than Bergson. Thus, while Bergson is the better-known figure, Brunschvicg is arguably more historically significant. Despite his undoubtedly prominent influence on Merleau-Ponty, Brunschvicg is not mentioned that frequently in the Pre-Sorbonne works. For example, he is only directly mentioned once in the text of Structure, though he is referenced multiple times in the footnotes.¹¹ But Merleau-Ponty would frequently use terminology that was clearly associated with Brunschvicg. Perhaps most directly, the term “critical idealism” was used by the latter to name his specific view. This is

⁹ SB 184, 218. ¹⁰ On this difference between Bergson’s and Brunschvicg’s influence, see Terzi, Rediscovering Léon Brunschvicg’s Critical Idealism, 30–1. ¹¹ See SB 160 for the reference in the text.

- ’     

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seen, for instance, in the essay “De la méthode dans la philosophy de l’esprit,” where Brunschvicg describes critical idealism as developing from a unique combination of “Cartesian idealism and Kantian criticism” and as having a unique methodology.¹² The audience for whom Merleau-Ponty was primarily writing would thus have recognized Brunschvicg’s philosophy as connected to any references to critical idealism (or “critical philosophy” and “critical thought”). Furthermore, we will see that Brunschvicg openly and repeatedly embraced the term “intellectualism” for his thought, and this term names one of MerleauPonty’s main critical foils. Thus, while it is no longer so obvious to the contemporary reader, it would have been obvious to their first readers that Brunschvicg was one of the main critical targets of the Pre-Sorbonne texts. What were Brunschvicg’s views that lead to this critique? What is “critical idealism”? To fully explore Brunschvicg’s thought would require a book of its own. Such studies do not abound, especially in English, but helpfully the recent publication of Pietro Terzi’s Rediscovering Léon Brunschvicg’s Critical Idealism goes a long way toward filling this hole in the scholarship. It is an important reference for the general overview of Brunschvicg’s thought presented here. In the foreword to the collection of his essays published as L’Idéalisme contemporain, Brunschvicg notes that he frequently names the “characteristics of the method practiced by [his] current philosophy” as “idealism, spiritualism, intellectualism.”¹³ Following Terzi, we can get a good general sense of Brunschvicg’s philosophical commitments by more fully examining these terms.¹⁴ While they will be considered serially below, the discussion will show that they are thoroughly interrelated. For the present purposes, this most significantly shows that critical idealism cannot really be understood apart from its strong commitment to intellectualism. In providing his own brief gloss on these three terms, Terzi helpfully notes that Brunschvicg’s idealism can be thought of as having two main aspects. The first entails something akin to what, in the previous chapter, was called transcendental perspectivism. As Terzi puts it, “one cannot grasp the world directly, getting rid of his own representations” and he quotes Brunschvicg as saying “the world as I know it is within myself; if it were completely external, it would be unknowable.”¹⁵ Insofar as he rejects the notion that the world is completely external, the suggestion is that there is some external reality. In keeping with this possible basic realism, Brunschvicg would claim that the mind experiences “consciousness of resistance”

¹² Léon Brunschvicg, “De la méthode dans la philosophy de l’esprit,” in L’Idéalisme contemporain, 2nd edn., Paris: Félix Alcan (1921), 73–97. The quote is on p. 77, translation mine. ¹³ Brunschvicg, L’Idéalisme contemporain, 1. Translation mine. ¹⁴ See Terzi, Rediscovering Léon Brunschvicg’s Critical Idealism, 31–3. ¹⁵ Ibid. 31–2. The quote from Brunschvicg is taken from Introduction à la vie de l’esprit, ed. André Simha, Paris: Hermann (2010), 52.

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that “would imply the feeling of a positive reality, inherent to the external world.”¹⁶ But the second aspect of Brunschvicg’s idealism casts this issue in a much different light. As Terzi puts it, “the real that we consider objective is . . . the outcome of an intellectual formalization.”¹⁷ The “feeling of a positive reality” mentioned previously does not provide content for our experience of an objective world apart from our systematic judgements regarding reality: With respect to judgment, exteriority can only be absolute heterogeneity; there is no need to look for a common measure between the mind and what is not mind. Thus spirit, by positing being, does not project outside of it a world more or less similar to it, in any case a determined world. Being, in its primitive sense, is on the contrary the exclusion of any determination . . . It is a negation of intellectual activity which has sense only in relation to this activity, while being inexplicable by it.¹⁸

The mental/spiritual and external reality are wholly different kinds of thing, and the latter cannot determine the former, in the sense of providing contents for its judgements. It is worth noting that in the general context of the above quotes he links the feeling of reality to Fichte’s “Anstoß.”¹⁹ While a full description of this technical term is beyond the scope of this text, a brief explanation can be given. The Anstoß, for Fichte, is a sort of “check,” or limitation, that the self experiences regarding its own activity. It is thus a kind of correlate to Kant’s thing in itself, as it suggests something beyond consciousness to which consciousness is beholden. But Fichte is a staunch critic of Kant’s doctrine of the thing in itself, and the Anstoß is crucially different in that does not exist outside of consciousness. It is rather, as Dan Breazeale puts it, “the I’s original encounter with its own finitude.”²⁰ Thus, if this aligns with Brunschvicg’s view, the important element of “exteriority” is not strictly speaking external at all. In the reference to the “feeling of a positive reality,” what is important is its conscious aspect as a “feeling,” not a link to some mind-independent reality. Continuing this line of thought, elsewhere Brunschvicg links a firm rejection of Kant’s thing in itself with an approving view of Fichte:

¹⁶ Brunschvicg, La Modalité du jugement, electronic edition ed. Gemma Paquet, based on Paris: Presses Universitaires de France (1964) http://classiques.uqac.ca/classiques/brunschvicg_leon/ modalite_du_jugement/modalite_du_jugement.html, 107. All translations from this text are my own. ¹⁷ Terzi, Rediscovering Léon Brunschvicg’s Critical Idealism, 32. ¹⁸ Brunschvicg, La Modalité du jugement, 107. ¹⁹ See Terzi, Rediscovering Léon Brunschvicg’s Critical Idealism, 106–7. ²⁰ Dan Breazeale, “Johann Gottlieb Fichte”, The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Summer 2018 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.), URL = , §4.1.

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Since the thing-in-itself is never given in the world of knowledge, the concept of the thing-in-itself cannot play a role, even a negative or limiting one; for there is no concept at all of the thing-in-itself . . . Individual and environment, internal sequences and external sequences, are necessarily part of the same intellectual system: the system of science. To renounce the dogmatic distinction of the two planes of knowledge . . . would thus be, in the end, to interpret the critical revolution in its authentic sense . . . By discarding, with the ghost of the thingin-itself, the ontological apparatus that survived in the edifice of the Critiques, Fichte was led to free the self . . . to identify it with the universal and one activity of thought.²¹

The rejection of the thing in itself here is clear, given that there is no concept of it and it plays no role in our knowledge. There are not two “planes”—one of objects of experience and one of things in themselves—there is one system of science. The term “science,” in this case, is used in a general sense to refer to the overall development of rational knowledge. But it is worth noting that Brunschvicg would valorize the development of the more specific natural sciences as an exemplary element of this broader rational development, and he would seek to blend philosophy, history, and science within his overarching methodology.²² Ultimately, Brunschvicg’s ontological position regarding external reality is hard to definitively ascertain. On the one hand, his emphasis on the natural sciences leads him to embrace to some degree the idea that the world imposes itself on our knowledge. While he was far from an empiricist or scientific realist, he had to recognize that observation of the world plays a crucial epistemological role for the sciences.²³ In a more general sense, he would insist early on that “exteriority is not a creation of the mind, it is something absolute from which judgement cannot detach.”²⁴ On the other hand, though, Brunschvicg would continually insist on the primacy of the mental. Along these lines he would go so far as to claim that the “reality of the universe is not a reality absolutely independent of the mind . . . reality is therefore not what opposes us, but what is grounded in us.”²⁵ Brunschvicg appears to oscillate between a basic realism-embracing idealism and a stronger ontological view. This oscillation may be a persistent element of Brunschvicg’s thought; along these lines Terzi refers to such issues as being ²¹ Brunschvicg, Spinoza et ses contemporains, electronic edition ed. Jean-Marc Simonet, based on Paris: Presses Universitaires de France (1971) http://classiques.uqac.ca/classiques/brunschvicg_leon/ spinoza_et_contemporains/spinoza.html, 344. My translation. ²² See Terzi, Rediscovering Léon Brunschvicg’s Critical Idealism, 2–3, for a brief discussion of this point. ²³ To emphasize this point, Terzi references Brunschvicg’s discussion of the role that observations of Mercury’s orbit played in the move from Newtonian mechanics to Einsteinian relativity. See ibid. 113–14. ²⁴ Brunschvicg, La Modalité du jugement, 109. Emphasis added. ²⁵ Brunschvicg, Introduction à la vie de l’esprit, 125, quoted in Terzi, Rediscovering Léon Brunschvicg’s Critical Idealism, 113.

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connected to the “defining tension of Brunschvicg’s idealism.”²⁶ While his ultimate ontological position may be unclear, it is clear that Brunschvicg’s critical idealism in general only allows for a discussion of external reality insofar as that reality is grasped not just by the mind, but via an “intellectual system.” And thus, we are led to his intellectualism. In some instances, Brunschvicg defines idealism as intellectualism. For example, in a note to the entry on “Idealism” in André Lalande’s Vocabulaire technique et critique de la philosophie he asserts that “idealism maintains that all metaphysics is reduced to the theory of knowledge.”²⁷ This point perhaps sheds a little more light on the question of his ontology just discussed. If metaphysics is reduced to the theory of knowledge, the role of ontology may be usurped by epistemology such that there is no place within the theory to even make sense of talk about external reality apart from our knowledge of it. Terzi suggests this when he notes that Brunschvicg’s “defining tension” is concerned with “the epistemological status of reality” rather than ontological questions.²⁸ What stands out, though, is that reality is grasped through, and as, a broadly scientific system of judgements. Brunschvicg’s intellectualism is made clear in a form most pertinent to Merleau-Ponty’s interests in chapter 45 of his L’Experience humaine et la causalité physique (Human Experience and Physical Causality), which is titled “Théorie intellectualiste de la perception” (“The Intellectualist Theory of Perception”).²⁹ Brunschvicg opens that chapter by asserting that “the specifically irreducible element in perception . . . is the judgement: that is.”³⁰ The basic unit of perception is not a direct sensory experience but a judgement that expresses a demonstrative thought.³¹ He describes this basic judgement as being tied to “the point of contact with reality,” but this contact “in no way brings with it the determination of its object.”³² This returns us to his version of the Fichtean “Anstoß,” a conscious experience of reality that is a mere contentless point apart from its systematic elaboration. And insofar as our fully contentful experience of reality requires the systematic elaboration of connected judgements, Brunschvicg

²⁶ Terzi, Rediscovering Léon Brunschvicg’s Critical Idealism, 113. ²⁷ “Idéalisme,” in Vocabulaire technique et critique de la philosophie, 4th edn., ed. André Lalande, Paris: Presses Universitaires de France (1997), vol. 1, 443. My translation. ²⁸ Terzi, Rediscovering Léon Brunschvicg’s Critical Idealism, 113. Terzi’s full claim is that the defining tension was not concerned with “naïve ontological determinations, but rather with the epistemological status of reality.” Of course, a rejection of “naïve” ontological issues is not the same as a rejection of ontology. It is not clear in the broader context, though, why Terzi uses the term “naïve” in this instance or what he really means. Ultimately, Terzi does not really settle the issue of Brunschvicg’s views on the ontological status of mind-independent reality, either by arguing for a particular interpretation or by admitting that Brunschvicg’s view is unclear. ²⁹ Brunschvicg, L’Expérience humaine et la causalité physique, Paris: Felix Alcan (1922), 466–72. Translations from this text are mine. ³⁰ Ibid. 466. ³¹ One might hear echoes here of the more intellectualist elements of the view presented in John McDowell, Mind and World, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press (1996). ³² Brunschvicg, L’Expérience humaine, 466.

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draws a close analogy between perception and the work of science. Perception engages in a rational “systematization that gives birth to the sensible world” via “an unconscious work which is analogous to the conscious process which we shall find in the development of science, and which is definitely clarified by this analogy.”³³ This systematized sensible world, which Brunschvicg calls the “universe,” is thus properly a network of judgements rather than things, because perceptual inputs are always unconsciously intellectually elaborated prior to experience. Another passage from L’Experience humaine et la causalité physique that exhibits well Brunschvicg’s intellectualism is his claim that “the history of Egypt is in perpetual evolution, because it is, so to speak, only a second degree knowledge that presupposes the history of Egyptology.”³⁴ As Terzi discusses, this statement has frequently been mis-stated as “the history of Egypt is Egyptology,” and taken to entail that there is no reality to Egypt apart from the rational study of its history.³⁵ On Terzi’s reading, though, Brunschvicg accepted the independent reality of Egypt, and meant to claim rather that what counts as objective reality for us is constructed through the progressive development of our theories.³⁶ Given Brunschvicg’s views on external reality as they have been discussed so far, though, it is not entirely clear what his position here would really be. It is also not clear that Terzi’s recasting of the Egypt–Egyptology claim amounts to much of a defense. We have seen that Brunschvicg staunchly rejects the notion of a reality independent of the mental, reduces metaphysics to epistemology, argues that “exteriority” along with “interiority” is a part of the system of science, and claims that the basic unit of perception—our most basic contact with the external world—is a judgement which gets its reality through its elaboration in that scientific system. Thus, it is hard to see what meaning one could give, within his philosophy, to the claim that Egypt has some existence independent from the mental. Even setting aside this ontological question, though, his philosophy remains a radical intellectualism. As Merleau-Ponty will later complain, our embodied encounter with the concrete world plays no role in constituting objectivity for Brunschvicg independent of our rational, scientific elaboration of the “universe.” Most of what spiritualism would mean has already been covered in the discussions of idealism and intellectualism. Obviously, the way Brunschvicg deploys those first two concepts evinces a strong emphasis on the primacy of the mental. But there is one further aspect of his views, which Terzi discusses under the heading of spiritualism, that is worth mentioning. Brunschvicg valorized the mind as a dynamic, (intellectually) creative power.³⁷ This is implicit in the

³³ Ibid. 469. ³⁴ Ibid. 520. ³⁵ See Terzi, Rediscovering Léon Brunschvicg’s Critical Idealism, 127–30. ³⁷ Ibid. 32–3.

³⁶ Ibid. 129.

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Egypt–Egyptology discussion, insofar as part of the point there is that our conception of objectivity changes as scientific knowledge develops historically, through an in-principle infinite process. Egyptology, as it develops, changes what Egypt is to us. As a part of this view, Brunschvicg rejected formal-logical systems that he took to be excessively static and thus unable to accommodate the dynamic changes that may occur in this historical development. Along these lines, he strongly rejected Kant’s doctrine of the categories.³⁸ But one must emphasize that the dynamism in his views was still an intellectualist dynamism; what he rejected in Kant, for instance, was not so much the logical formalism but the fixed, immutable nature of the categories. He insists that the system of judgements that makes up our universe must be seen as “living”; the “being of judgment . . . testifies to a living activity” and if “reality is known as such thanks to judgment, we must give up placing it before us as an independent object . . . it is transformed with it [spirit] and passes through all the stages of its [spirit’s] living evolution.”³⁹ Following this discussion of the three terms—idealism, intellectualism, and spiritualism—we can return to the major question from the beginning of this section: what is critical idealism? First, we can say that Brunschvicg’s idealism strongly adheres to something like the thesis of transcendental perspectivism. In fact, he adheres to this point so strongly that he is inclined to reject the idea that talk of a reality apart from our minds even makes sense, as we see in his rejection of Kant’s thing in itself. And this marks a strong distinction between his idealism and Kant’s insofar as the latter argues that while we cannot cognize a mindindependent reality (i.e. we cannot conceptually grasp that reality as it is in itself ), we can clearly and sensibly think about such a reality (i.e. it makes sense for us to consider that such a thing exists). This rejection of the thing in itself leads to the thorny question of Brunschvicg’s views on the ontology of external reality. While he does not appear to be a phenomenalist—as we saw, he rejects the notion that exteriority is created by the mind—his conception of exteriority is unclear. There is even the suggestion that his intellectualism leads to a rejection of this ontological question. His tendency is to discuss reality and objectivity in terms of our rational system of judgements. Importantly, this reality is not subjective in the sense of devolving onto individual minds. Rather, it is dependent on the whole history of the development of our theories. In this regard, Chapter 1’s third sense of mind— the “mental” construed as the historical collection of our rational activities—is prominent in his view. But what is most prominent in his view is that this mental, or “spiritual” development is construed intellectualistically as a system of judgements, and all elements of reality (including the elements that Merleau-Ponty will

³⁸ Ibid. 65–7.

³⁹ Brunschvicg, La Modalité du jugement, 245.

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emphasize, such as human embodiment, affect, perception, and artistic expression) are understood insofar as they are a part of this rational system.

3. Merleau-Ponty’s Indirect and Direct Critique of Brunschvicg Structure begins by stating that its goal is “to understand the relations of consciousness and nature.”⁴⁰ This is to be done by steering a course between two ways of thinking about that relation that Merleau-Ponty finds unsatisfactory, as described in the following passage: [A]mong contemporary thinkers in France, there exist side by side a philosophy, on the one hand, which makes of every nature an objective unity constituted visà-vis consciousness and, on the other, sciences which treat the organism and consciousness as two orders of reality and, in their reciprocal relations, as “effects” and “causes.”⁴¹

The first of the two problematic views is referred to as “critical thought” or “critical philosophy” in Structure; the “contemporary thinkers” are Brunschvicg and his followers. As Emmanuel de Saint Aubert somewhat luridly notes with the title to his discussion of Brunschvicg’s influence on Merleau-Ponty, “Léon Brunschvicg, premier parricide,” early on Merleau-Ponty would seek to separate his views from his academic “parent.”⁴² He obviously held some respect for Brunschvicg in general, however, as is seen later in a 1959 interview. On the one hand, Merleau-Ponty would compliment Brunschvicg as a person (calling him “a man of the first order”), and laud him for his knowledge of the history of philosophy and science. But regarding Brunschvicg’s own philosophical views Merleau-Ponty was quite critical, saying that “it must be mentioned that its content is quite meager.”⁴³ In his early works, Merleau-Ponty was not quite so willing to criticize Brunschvicg by name, though as has been noted the relation was clear. In later works, such as the aforementioned interview or the 1956–7 Nature lectures, Merleau-Ponty’s critique was more direct.

⁴⁰ Ibid. 3. ⁴¹ Ibid. 4. ⁴² Emmanuel de Saint Aubert, Le Scénario cartésien: Recherches sur la formation et la cohérence de l’intention philosophique de Merleau-Ponty, Paris: Librairie Philosophique Vrin (2005), 60–70. “Léon Brunschvicg, premier parricide” is the title of section 3 of chapter 2. The overall discussion of MerleauPonty’s views on Brunschvicg in the next few pages draws on this text. ⁴³ Merleau-Ponty, “The Philosophy of Existence,” trans. Allen S. Weiss, in Texts and Dialogues, both quotes on p. 130.

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What, exactly, did Merleau-Ponty find objectionable in Brunschvicg’s “meager” philosophy?⁴⁴ In a brief text written in 1933 as a project description for a subvention application (which is clearly describing the project that became Structure) Merleau-Ponty says of critical philosophy that it “treats perception as an intellectual operation through which non-extended data (‘sensations’) are related and explained in such fashion as to finally constitute an objective universe.”⁴⁵ The target here is clearly Brunschvicg’s intellectualism as it was presented in the previous section. Merleau-Ponty’s description adds an emphasis on the atomism in Brunschvicg’s view, insofar as it is discrete bits of data that are taken up in the judgements of perception. This early passage regarding critical thought is elaborated on in Structure. As is noted above, there are only two references to “critical idealism” in that text, but there are various other references to “critical thought” or “critical philosophy.” The first reference to critical idealism comes at the very end of chapter III. After summarizing his view (which will be discussed in Chapter 3 §2) that the physical, organic, and mental aspects of nature are separate but interconnected, MerleauPonty states that his view has to be situated “in particular with respect to critical idealism.”⁴⁶ One should also note that the majority of the references to “critical thought” and “critical philosophy” occur in chapter IV, after Merleau-Ponty notes that he will be situating his views in relation to critical idealism in that chapter. The second reference to critical idealism is more substantive, and comes in the midst of a critique of views that analyze perception in terms of discrete distal stimuli that are arranged in objective space. For Merleau-Ponty these views get things backward; “access to the proper domain of perception has been rendered difficult for all philosophies which, because of a retrospective illusion, actualized a natural geometry in perception.”⁴⁷ These philosophies take a sort of second-order consideration, the notion that we confront discrete objects arranged in objective space, and mistake it for the primary aspect of perception. Critical idealism is one such philosophy. Considering the perception of one’s own body, Merleau-Ponty writes: The truth is that man first sees his image “through” the mirror, without the word yet having the signification which it will take on vis-a-vis the geometrical mind. Then he constructs a geometrical representation of this phenomenon which is founded on the concrete articulations of the perceived field, which makes them explicit and accounts for them—without the representation ever being able to be

⁴⁴ The point here is to present Merleau-Ponty’s view of Brunschvicg and critical philosophy. I will not attempt to assess the accuracy of Merleau-Ponty’s interpretation of Brunschvicg’s views. ⁴⁵ Merleau-Ponty, “The Nature of Perception: Two Proposals,” trans. Forrest Williams, in Texts and Dialogues, 74. ⁴⁶ SB 184. ⁴⁷ SB 218.

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the cause of the concrete articulations, as realism wants to do, and without our being able to substitute it for them, as critical idealism does.⁴⁸

Critical idealism substitutes a second-order intellectual “representation” for the “concrete articulations,” i.e. the things we actually perceive. This passage from Structure notably also suggests a strong ontological idealist interpretation of critical idealism. Insofar as representations are substituted for the “concrete,” the suggestion is that the world of objects is constructed out of mental entities. It is important to note that while Merleau-Ponty refers to critical idealism’s equally mistaken counterpart as “realism” without qualification, he is referring to what the present work is calling metaphysical realism, the view that the world is made up of discrete entities that impinge themselves on perceiving organisms in mechanistic, linear-causal fashion. Behaviorism is a species of this kind of view and is a main object of critique in Structure. Merleau-Ponty does not so much object to its basic realism (i.e. its assertion that we are linked to an extra-mental reality) as he objects to the specific way it conceives of that reality and that link. This is seen in a discussion of the mind–body problem as it specifically pertains to perception, which comes a few pages before the second reference to critical idealism. The problem of linking the “internal” event of conscious perceptual experience with the external world we perceive is a particular problem for metaphysical realism, because there are crucial aspects of perceptual experience that cannot be explained causally. They “have meaning only before the inspection of the mind.”⁴⁹ Importantly, Merleau-Ponty makes a (very qualifiedly) positive claim about critical thought in this context: The antinomy of which we are speaking disappears along with its realistic thesis at the level of reflexive thought; it is in perceptual knowledge that it has its proper location. Until now critical thought seemed to us to be incontestable. It shows marvelously that the problem of perception does not exist for a consciousness which adheres to objects of reflexive thought, that is, to significations.⁵⁰

Critical thought/idealism is correct insofar as it analyzes perception from the point of view of conscious experience (and this is not the only instance where Merleau-Ponty makes this point⁵¹). This enables it to grasp perceptions not as causal impingements but as “significations.” “Signification” is a technical term in Structure that will be discussed in more detail in Chapter 3 below; at this point it should suffice to note that perceptual experiences are taken to have meaning for the perceiver. A causal-mechanistic analysis cannot grasp this. ⁴⁸ SB 218. ⁴⁹ SB 215. ⁵⁰ SB 216. ⁵¹ See SB 206, where Merleau-Ponty also makes this kind of point, and notes that his critique of causal/mechanistic psychology leads to “rejoining the critical idea.”

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This point is very important for the overall analysis of Merleau-Ponty’s relation to idealism. The problem with critical idealism, at least in his earliest works, is not that it attributes some primacy to consciousness. Of course, at the same time that Merleau-Ponty lauds critical thought for grasping perception, through conscious experience, as meaningful, he criticizes the specific way it develops its view. This leads to the critique of its strong intellectualism and anti-realism; critical thought problematically substitutes the concrete world of perception for mental representations and their intellectual arrangement. “As a philosophy,” he notes, “realism is an error . . . but it is a motivated error; it rests on an authentic phenomenon which philosophy has the function of making explicit.”⁵² Metaphysical realism’s error is its dogmatic objectivist metaphysics, but it is correct in thinking that philosophy has to consider our connection with an extra-mental reality that is taken up in our perceptual experience. To foreshadow a main point of Chapter 3 below, in Structure Merleau-Ponty arrives at the conclusion that a properly amended form of transcendental philosophy can join the strengths of critical idealism and metaphysical realism and jettison the negatives; it can do justice to the meaningful, subjectively grasped element of perception while allowing for basic realism. The elements of Merleau-Ponty’s critique of critical idealism that are displayed in the earliest works are bolstered by his later, more direct critique in the section on Brunschvicg in the 1956–7 lectures on “The Concept of Nature.”⁵³ While the focus of this book is on the Pre-Sorbonne period, the later lectures can be helpful here and are worth referencing. First it is reasonably clear that there is not a significant change in Merleau-Ponty’s views on Brunschvicg, despite other changes in his views. And they add some clarity because they discuss Brunschvicg’s idealism more explicitly, and draw a helpful contrast between Brunschvicg and Kant. In those lectures, Merleau-Ponty says that Brunschvicg’s idealism is “more supple” than Kant’s by being “more total, more complete.” What he means by idealism being “supple” is that “there is no limit to freedom of construction.” Thus, the idealism is “total” in the sense that reality is wholly constructed via intellectual operations and not bound by external reality; “the universe is wholly immanent to our mind.”⁵⁴ Again, we see Merleau-Ponty accusing Brunschvicg of an extreme form of intellectualism which is tied to strong ontological idealism; the world is constructed by the intellect. Merleau-Ponty does not find Kant’s transcendental idealism to move so strongly in that direction; he appreciates its basic realism. In the Nature lectures Merleau-Ponty links the difference between Brunschvicg’s “total” idealism and Kant’s idealism with the former’s “refusal to distinguish the transcendental from the empirical, which eliminates every ⁵² SB 206. ⁵³ Merleau-Ponty, Nature; the section on Brunschvicg is on pp. 27–35. ⁵⁴ Ibid. All quotes in this paragraph are on p. 33.

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question of ground.”⁵⁵ Merleau-Ponty does note the tension in Brunschvicg’s work regarding external reality and admits that “in certain texts, Brunschvicg insists on the specificity of the real.”⁵⁶ But critical idealism’s extreme intellectualism with its emphasis on the systematic construction of nature or the “universe” cannot really accommodate that insight. And he quotes Brunschvicg defining idealism (following Jules Lachelier) in a manner that fits a strong ontological idealist interpretation: Idealism does not consist only in believing that phenomena can exist merely in consciousness . . . it consists rather in believing that phenomena are given, even in consciousness, only at the moment and to the extent that consciousness gives them to itself; that is, in other words, idealism also believes that these are only real-at-this-moment representations, and not phenomena in themselves.⁵⁷

Of all of the passages from Brunschvicg that have been considered in this chapter, this one comes closest to endorsing phenomenalism. Phenomena are only “realat-this-moment” when consciousness gives them to itself. This suggests that active occurrent thought is required to create the world, and one cannot help but hear echoes of the Berkeleyan dictum that to be is to be perceived (though one would need to add the qualifier that to be perceived is to be judged). The important point for the present context is that whatever Brunschvicg actually intends with this definition, Merleau-Ponty takes it in this strong ontological idealist sense. He questions how such a view of reality can “submit to something other than my here and my now,” i.e. something other than immediate aspects of my consciousness.⁵⁸ The suggestion is that it cannot, and so Brunschvicg’s critical idealism is left without any conception of a reality apart from my occurrent intellectual acts. It is clear that on Merleau-Ponty’s interpretation, this more intellectualistphenomenalist aspect of Brunschvicg’s view ends up trumping any realist thoughts he might have had. This discussion in Nature can be linked back to a passage in Structure where Merleau-Ponty discusses Brunschvicg’s view that “the point of contact with reality” is a simple judgement which “implies no determination of any content whatsoever.”⁵⁹ Merleau-Ponty takes this to entail that our conception of reality is not really tied to an experience of some concrete external world; rather it is ⁵⁵ Ibid. 33–4. ⁵⁶ Ibid. 34. ⁵⁷ Ibid. 34–5. As Merleau-Ponty notes, this is a quote of a quote of a quote. Merleau-Ponty is citing Leon Brunschvicg, L’Expérience humaine et la causalité physique, Paris: F. Alcan (1922), 532–3. Brunschvicg is citing Gabriel Séailles, La Philosophie de Jules Lachelier, Paris, Felix Alcan (1920), 161–5. Séailles attributes the definition of idealism to Lachelier, and says it was included in personal correspondence. ⁵⁸ Merleau-Ponty, Nature, 35. ⁵⁹ SB 163. The quotes are taken from a larger quote from Brunschvicg that runs from pp. 163 to 164. The full quote is taken from L’Expérience humaine et la causalité physique, 466–7.

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determined by the internal character of a judgement that swings free from the world. Thus, any genuine link between consciousness and embodied, worldly action is obscured, and we see another instance of Brunschvicg’s strong ontological idealism as a strong anti-realism. To put the point in Kantian terminology, while Merleau-Ponty wants to embrace some form of empirical realism, he associates Brunschvicg’s views with a form of empirical idealism, or the view that all we can directly know is our own mental entities. This fits with the claim, at the beginning of Structure’s introduction, that for critical thought “the world is the ensemble of objective relations borne by consciousness” such that there is no external physical nature apart from our representations.⁶⁰ There are representations and judgements which construct a world, but any genuine world is missing. Note that in his critique of subjective/critical idealism Merleau-Ponty has not objected to the thesis of transcendental perspectivism. There are multiple points in Structure where he voices qualified agreement with critical idealism’s emphasis on consciousness. The upshot of Merleau-Ponty’s critique of Brunschvicg is not so much that he objects to idealism in general, but that he objects to an excessively anti-realist strong ontological idealism that reduces perceptual consciousness to an intellectual operation. To properly describe the non-intellectual form of comprehension that MerleauPonty references at the end of Structure will require one to conceive of consciousness as embodied, and because the body is embedded in the world, such a view will also require a form of basic realism that is unobtainable from the point of view of critical idealism. The task being posed in Structure is meant to be carried out in Phenomenology, and this task is supposed to “define transcendental philosophy anew.”⁶¹ Given that fact, we should more fully examine how Merleau-Ponty conceives of transcendental idealism in his earliest works. The next section of this chapter will return to the direct references to transcendental idealism in Structure, examine their context, and tie them to Merleau-Ponty’s early relation to Kant.

4. Kant and Transcendental Idealism in Merleau-Ponty’s Earliest Works There are very few substantive references to Kant in Merleau-Ponty’s works prior to Structure. Kant is referenced once in “Christianity and Ressentiment” in a discussion of moral value. There Merleau-Ponty objects to Kant’s formalism in ethics. He admits that Kant is right to think that the good cannot be determined via induction from our experience of good things. But following this he notes that

⁶⁰ SB 3.

⁶¹ SB 224.

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“the error would be to believe with Kant that because it is not empirical, the good ought to be formal.”⁶² This passage is pertinent for the current study because it is a very early indication of one of Merleau-Ponty’s main issues with transcendental philosophy. He rejects Kant’s putative formalism (in general, not just regarding ethics), which he links to the notion that a priori structures of experience can be determined in an intellectualistic fashion, via pure thought. Nevertheless, at the same time Merleau-Ponty wants to hold on to the idea that there are a priori structures of experience that cannot be determined purely empirically. But they must be tied intimately to experience and derived from it. As he puts the point in the Scheler review, there are “a priori materials” that are “objects of concrete intention which manifest in their properties an essential and extratemporal necessity.”⁶³ The idea (which fits with Merleau-Ponty’s attraction to Husserlian phenomenology) is that essential structures can be somehow drawn directly from concrete experience. The next substantive references to Kant in Merleau-Ponty’s work occur in Structure, which is also where we first see him reference transcendental philosophy and transcendental idealism. These references are somewhat ambiguous. On the one hand, Kant is associated with intellectualism and Merleau-Ponty repeats the basic point of the critique of formalism found in the Scheler review. He rejects Kant’s “celebrated distinction between a priori form and empirical content” and complains that the “essence of Kantianism” limits the conception of the a priori such that important aspects of experience are relegated to “a variety of a posteriori contents.”⁶⁴ On the other hand, Kant is referred to positively in a few ways. As we will see, Kant is positively contrasted with Descartes and associated with basic realism in a fashion similar to Nature’s contrast with Brunschvicg. And despite Merleau-Ponty’s critique of the formalistic conception of the a priori, Kant is also associated with the idea that transcendental analysis genuinely connects with experience. In this regard, Structure exhibits the fact that Merleau-Ponty finds Kant’s philosophy to be, as Samantha Matherne puts in, “pulled in two directions” toward intellectualism and toward phenomenology.⁶⁵ The positive aspects of Merleau-Ponty’s interpretation of Kant are most clearly seen in the vicinity of Structure’s two direct references to transcendental idealism, ⁶² Merleau-Ponty, “Christianity and Ressentiment,” 92. ⁶³ Ibid. ⁶⁴ SB 171. In a footnote Merleau-Ponty qualifies his criticism by noting that for Kant “the distinction of matter and form is evidently not that of two factors” though it is still an element of intellectualist analysis. See p. 245 n. 90. ⁶⁵ Samantha Matherne, “Art in Perception: Making Perception Aesthetic Again,” PhD Dissertation, University of California Riverside (2013), ProQuest ID: Matherne_ucr_0032D_11343. Merritt ID: ark:/ 13030/m5gq72mh, 97–103, quote on p. 100. Matherne actually writes that “Kant’s philosophy is pulled in two directions: toward idealism and toward phenomenology.” As will be shown, I do not believe that idealism is the relevant contrast with phenomenology, because Merleau-Ponty praises Kant and phenomenology for an emphasis on the centrality of consciousness which can reasonably be called idealist (even if Merleau-Ponty does not explicitly call it that). It is also worth noting that Matherne’s claims here are based on passages in Phenomenology, not Structure.

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which both occur in chapter IV. That chapter is generally oriented toward a discussion of the “relations of soul and body” and the role that an analysis of perceptual consciousness can play in dealing with that issue. It first considers “naive consciousness,” or a kind of pre-philosophical view that is generally realist (Merleau-Ponty compares it to Kant’s “empirical realism”⁶⁶) and in which a split between mind and body is not typically countenanced. Merleau-Ponty then moves on to consider Cartesianism, which he connects with both scientific realist and intellectualist views. It is in the general context of the critique of Cartesianism that transcendental idealism is mentioned. The first reference comes in the middle of a discussion of Descartes’ analysis of the cogito, which Merleau-Ponty thinks could have led to a correct conception of the link between mind and body if Descartes’ thought had taken a different direction. Importantly, one aspect of Descartes’ thought that Merleau-Ponty approves of is its appreciation of the centrality of consciousness: One can say that here Descartes was very close to the modern notion of consciousness understood as the center in which all the objects about which man can speak and all the mental acts which intend them take on an indubitable clarity. With the help of this notion Kant was able to go definitively beyond skepticism and realism by recognizing the descriptive and irreducible characteristics of external and internal experience as the sufficient foundation of the world.⁶⁷

The key point here that Descartes suggested, and Kant more fully grasped, is that the external and internal are united in a subjective, first-person perspective that shows us that perception cannot be “the effect in us of the action of an external thing, nor the body as the intermediary of this causal action.”⁶⁸ Already in the discussion of formalism Merleau-Ponty praised Kant for going beyond empiricism by “discovering consciousness as the condition” of empirical associations between aspects of experience.⁶⁹ And now Kant is associated with the idea that consciousness is the “center” of our understanding of objects. While it is not overt in these passages, we will see that Merleau-Ponty is appreciating a move toward a kind of idealism. On such a view our experience of the external world is permeated by the structure of our subjective perspective, and in this way internal and external are for Kant (somehow) united. Instead of following through on the view that unites the internal and external as Kant did, though, Descartes arrives at his famous dualism. He “did not attempt to integrate the knowledge of truth and the experience of reality, intellection and sensation.”⁷⁰ Post-Cartesian philosophy would move toward correcting this, insofar as it would “permit surpassing the alternatives of realism and skepticism by

⁶⁶ SB 188.

⁶⁷ SB 196.

⁶⁸ SB 196.

⁶⁹ SB 171.

⁷⁰ SB 197.

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associating, following Kant’s terms, a transcendental idealism and an empirical realism.”⁷¹ Merleau-Ponty approves of Kant’s association of transcendental idealism with empirical realism, with the latter referring generally to an affirmation of basic realism that need not be associated with problematic metaphysical realism.⁷² Thus transcendental idealism is connected with the correction of one of the main errors of critical idealism, viz. its strong anti-realism. Importantly, immediately after the above quote Merleau-Ponty notes that critical philosophy picks up on a Cartesian analysis of consciousness, and perception in particular. This leads to a critique of a metaphysical realist conception of perception that contrasts with critical thought. Following this, Merleau-Ponty asserts that perception only “admits of an internal analysis.”⁷³ This view is then associated with Kant, insofar as (for Merleau-Ponty) Kant rejects a causal/mechanistic conception of perception; “it is always an internal “re-creation” . . . as Kant and Plato have said, a recognizance, a recognition.”⁷⁴ When taken in the full context, it becomes clear that Merleau-Ponty rejects the intellectualism associated with the Kantian (and Platonist) view noted. But what Merleau-Ponty is approving of here is the idea that perception can only be properly grasped as a firstperson experience, and the thought of external impingements giving us information of an external world is foreign to genuine perceptual experience. In this passage we begin to see Matherne’s point that Merleau-Ponty finds a “phenomenological direction” in Kant’s philosophy. In fact, Merleau-Ponty goes on to say that philosophy, if it engages in properly the first-person analysis of perception, “becomes a phenomenology.”⁷⁵ This phenomenology is immediately associated with transcendental idealism: Thus, philosophy returns to the evidences of naive consciousness. Transcendental idealism, by making the subject and object inseparable correlatives, guarantees the validity of perceptual experience in which the world appears in person and nonetheless as distinct from the subject.⁷⁶

The general point of the section in which this passage is found is to critique “classical solutions” to the relation between soul/mind and body, and to point the direction toward a better solution. That better solution is phenomenology. Here Merleau-Ponty is associating phenomenology with transcendental idealism and clearly finds the two to not be wholly problematic. And again, transcendental idealism is linked to a view that overcomes at least some of the problems associated with critical idealism. ⁷¹ SB 197. ⁷² For a good overview of this issue in Kant see Stang, “Kant’s Transcendental Idealism,” §1.1. While Kant’s “empirical realism” might, depending on one’s interpretation, refer to something different from what I am calling basic realism, Merleau-Ponty understands it this way. ⁷³ SB 199. ⁷⁴ SB 198–9, quote on p. 199. ⁷⁵ SB 199. ⁷⁶ SB 199.

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A caveat is in order, however. Merleau-Ponty is somewhat critical of transcendental idealism in this section at the same time that he lauds it. He associates transcendental idealism with critical idealism insofar as he takes both to move toward intellectualism. After the second reference to transcendental idealism he ties the views he has been describing (and thus Kant’s philosophy) to a conception of the world as comprised of objects that are constituted by consciousness, and the body is included as such an object. This type of view can overemphasize the role of consciousness which takes the world to be determined by thought. It is noteworthy, however, that the intellectualist view is most clearly pinned to “critical idealism” and the term “transcendental idealism” is associated with at least some ideas that Merleau-Ponty supports. There clearly is much more that needs to be said regarding transcendental idealism and its role in Merleau-Ponty’s thought. But at this point it is worth emphasizing that in Structure Merleau-Ponty maintains a kind of ambivalence toward Kant’s idealism. Of course, it is not just Kant’s transcendental idealism that influences Merleau-Ponty; Husserl arguably has a much greater influence on the Pre-Sorbonne works. And we have seen that Merleau-Ponty explicitly connects transcendental idealism to phenomenology in Structure (though he does not cite Husserl in doing so). Because of this we should look at Merleau-Ponty’s earliest relation to Husserl in a bit more detail.

5. Husserl and Transcendental Idealism in Merleau-Ponty’s Earliest Works Based on the early texts, it would appear that Merleau-Ponty’s interest in Husserlian phenomenology greatly intensified during the period in which he was working on Structure (which was completed in 1938 though not published until 1942).⁷⁷ He would have had some earlier familiarity with Husserl (and his transcendental idealism) as he attended Husserl’s 1929 Paris Lectures which were later revised into Cartesian Mediations (Merleau-Ponty did not, however know German at the time, so what he could have learned from the lectures is debatable). It is also likely that around the same time he attended lectures by Georges Gurvitch that discussed Husserl and Heidegger.⁷⁸ But in the 1933 subvention application no mention is made of Husserl or phenomenology. The next year,

⁷⁷ For a detailed historical examination of Merleau-Ponty’s references to, and use of, Husserl’s work throughout his career, see Ted Toadvine, “Merleau-Ponty’s Reading of Husserl: A Chronological Overview,” in Merleau-Ponty’s Reading of Husserl, ed. T. Toadvine and L. Embree, Dordrecht: Kluwer (2002), 227–86. ⁷⁸ Theodore F. Geraets, Vers une nouvelle philosophie transcendentale: la genèse de la philosophy de Maurice Merleau-Ponty jusqu’à la Phénoménologie de la perception, The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff (1971), 6–7.

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however, Merleau-Ponty would write a second proposal in hopes of having his subvention renewed. That text references “the appearance, notably in Germany, of new philosophies which call into question the guiding ideas of critical thought,” and it is later made clear that this refers primarily to Husserlian phenomenology.⁷⁹ It is thus in this research period that Husserl’s work becomes particularly important for Merleau-Ponty. Idealism is not mentioned in the 1934 text; the discussion of Husserl is mainly couched in a discussion of the relation of phenomenology to psychology. Merleau-Ponty does, however, note that “transcendental phenomenology” is a “new philosophy” and that it is “absolutely distinct from critical thought.”⁸⁰ There is thus a hint of the possibility for a transcendental philosophy that does not commit critical idealism’s errors. And while idealism is not mentioned, MerleauPonty would have been well aware of the fact that Husserl aligned his phenomenology with a novel form of transcendental idealism, and he would have understood much of what that view entailed. He approvingly cites Eugen Fink’s “The Phenomenological Philosophy of Edmund Husserl and Contemporary Criticism,” and wrote in a marginal reference to texts including Husserl’s Cartesian Meditations. In the latter text’s “Fourth Meditation,” Husserl describes his view as a transcendental idealism, and sets this idealism apart from other idealisms, including Kant’s.⁸¹ Regarding the former text, Fink was Husserl’s student and assistant; Husserl writes in a preface to the essay that “it contains no sentence which I could not completely accept as my own.”⁸² The essay seeks to distinguish Husserl’s views from contemporaneous Neo-Kantian views, and to respond to criticisms posed by Neo-Kantian philosophers. Crucially for the current study, Fink does not argue that the Neo-Kantians are idealists while Husserl is not. Rather, he seeks to distinguish the two forms of idealism, and to show that Husserl’s idealism is not a “subjective idealism.” In keeping with Husserl’s own terminology, it is assumed throughout that Husserl is some form of idealist and this fact is not criticized. It would, of course, be a large interpretive excess to claim that these references show that Merleau-Ponty accepts Husserl’s form of idealism. Nevertheless, given Fink’s acceptance of idealism, it would be odd for Merleau-Ponty to quote the essay in opposition to critical philosophy if he intended a strong critique of idealism in general. This at least provides a small amount of support for the possibility, displayed also by the distinction between “critical idealism” and “transcendental idealism” in Structure, that while writing Structure

⁷⁹ Merleau-Ponty, “The Nature of Perception: Two Proposals,” 75. ⁸⁰ Ibid. 77. ⁸¹ Edmund Husserl, Cartesian Meditations, 83–8. ⁸² Fink, “The Phenomenological Philosophy of Edmund Husserl and Contemporary Criticism.” The quote from Husserl’s preface is on p. 74.

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Merleau-Ponty did not take his critique of critical (or subjective) idealism to necessarily apply to all forms of idealism. Merleau-Ponty did not have his subvention renewed in 1934, but in 1935–9 he would hold a position as a tutor at the École Normale Supérieure that would enable him to continue his work on Structure and deepen his knowledge of German philosophy and psychology. During this time, he would help Aron Gurwitsch, who knew and worked with Husserl and the Gestalt psychologists Gelb and Goldstein, to prepare an essay on Gestalt psychology for French readers.⁸³ Most significantly for his study of Husserl, in 1939 Merleau-Ponty would travel to the newly established Husserl Archive in Leuven, where he would consult a number of Husserl’s unpublished texts.⁸⁴ In Leuven he would also have the opportunity to meet with Fink.⁸⁵ In Structure (which, again, was completed in 1938), Merleau-Ponty cites Husserl’s Formal and Transcendental Logic, Ideas I, Cartesian Meditations, and “Lectures on Internal Time Consciousness,” which gives a sense of his reading of Husserl prior to his use of the Leuven archives.⁸⁶ There is no extensive discussion of Husserl’s thought in the book, however, and the references are mostly suggestive rather than fully substantive. Among the important concepts that MerleauPonty links with Husserl in Structure are the idea that it is characteristic of humans to remake their environments via the creation of use objects and cultural objects,⁸⁷ the idea that perception encounters objects via perspectival profiles,⁸⁸ the idea that the link between soul and body can be considered via the analysis of original and secondary passivity,⁸⁹ and the need to make the phenomenological reduction in order to genuinely investigate conscious experience.⁹⁰ Merleau-Ponty also cites Fink regarding the need to shift the analysis of perception to the

⁸³ Aron Gurwitsch, with Maurice Merleau-Ponty, “Quelques aspects et quelques développements de la psychologie de la forme,” Journal de Psychologie Normale et Pathologique, 33 (1936), 413–70. For more on Merleau-Ponty’s relationship with Gurwitsch see Ted Toadvine, “Phenomenological Method in Merleau-Ponty’s Critique of Gurwitsch,” Husserl Studies 17:3 (2001), 195–205, especially §1 which briefly documents how they met and came to work together. ⁸⁴ For an overview of Merleau-Ponty’s use of the Husserl archives see Toadvine, “Merleau-Ponty’s Reading of Husserl,” 234–6. For a more detailed account of Merleau-Ponty’s research at the Husserl archives, see H. L. van Breda, “Merleau-Ponty and the Husserl Archives at Louvain,” in Merleau-Ponty, Texts and Dialogues, 150–61. For a discussion of the significance of this research for his reading of Husserl, see Dan Zahavi, “Merleau-Ponty on Husserl: A Reappraisal,” in Toadvine and Embree (eds.), Merleau-Ponty’s Reading of Husserl, 3–30. ⁸⁵ After Merleau-Ponty met Fink in Leuven, the two would correspond occasionally up to MerleauPonty’s death, and Merleau-Ponty would express a general appreciation of and interest in Fink’s work. For a detailed discussion of their relationship see Ronald Bruzina, “Eugen Fink and Maurice MerleauPonty: The Philosophical Lineage in Phenomenology,” in Toadvine and Embree (eds.), MerleauPonty’s Reading of Husserl, 173–200. ⁸⁶ SB 251–2. The citations are to German editions published in the Jahrbuch für Philosophie und phänomenologishe Forschung, except for Cartesian Meditations, which had been published in French translation in 1931. ⁸⁷ SB 162 nn. 73, 74, 244. ⁸⁸ SB 186 n. 2, 246. ⁸⁹ SB 210 n. 50, 249. ⁹⁰ SB 220 n. 56, 249.

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“transcendental attitude.”⁹¹ For the purposes of the present study, however, the most significant reference to Husserl comes in a paragraph that supports the Berkeleyan view that primary as well as secondary qualities are shaped by consciousness. Following a quote from Ideas I regarding the perceptual content not being true “in itself,” Merleau-Ponty asserts that “form is not a physical reality, but an object of perception.”⁹² Thus in Structure Merleau-Ponty approvingly aligns Husserl with the idea that our experience of (at least part of ) the world is shaped by our perceptual perspective, and brings his view into the orbit of idealism. Again, this suggests that, at least prior to Phenomenology, Merleau-Ponty is open to the idea that phenomenology is related to idealism.

6. Merleau-Ponty’s Thoughts on Idealism in the Pre-Sorbonne Period: A Summary The previous sections have examined all of the direct references Merleau-Ponty made to idealism in his published writings before Phenomenology, and considered their context. Phenomenology makes many more references to idealism and ties them to Kant, Brunschvicg, and Husserl in various ways. Because of the greater number of those references and the overall importance of Phenomenology, they will be discussed separately in Chapter 5. This section will conclude by summarizing the main points of Merleau-Ponty’s earliest considerations of idealism. But first, I will provide a brief overview of Merleau-Ponty’s references to idealism in writings from the Pre-Sorbonne Period that were published at the same time as, or shortly after, Phenomenology. From 1945 to 1948 Merleau-Ponty would publish multiple essays on a variety of topics, and he delivered multiple lectures which have since been published. Most of these works do not mention or discuss idealism, and the ones that do mention idealism do not greatly differ from the views on idealism that have been discussed in the earlier parts of this chapter. The most significant references are found in essays that Merleau-Ponty collected in Sense and Non-Sense and in lectures he delivered on Malebranche, Biran, and Bergson in 1947–8, later published as The Incarnate Subject.⁹³ Several of the lectures in Sense and Non-Sense deal with the relation between existentialism and Marxism, and idealism is frequently mentioned in those

⁹¹ SB 206 n. 40, 248. The reference is to Eugen Fink, “Vergegenwärtigung und Bild,” Jahrbuch für Philosophie und phänomenologishe Forschung, IX, 1930. ⁹² SB 143, 143 n. 39. Merleau-Ponty specifically says regarding Berkeley that “it remains correct to argue with Berkeley that space presupposes color.” ⁹³ The 1947–8 lectures are published in English as The Incarnate Subject: Malebranche, Biran, and Bergson on the Union of Body and Soul, trans. Paul B. Milan, ed. Andrew G. Bjelland, Jr. and Patrick Burke, Amherst, NY: Humanity Books (2001).

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discussions. Typically, Merleau-Ponty is responding to Marxist critics of existentialism who take it to be idealist in a negative sense. The general response is that existentialism is not idealist because it is not intellectualistic.⁹⁴ But he also argues that Marxist critics are too apt to think that “all philosophy is idealistic because philosophy always presupposes reflection.”⁹⁵ But again, Merleau-Ponty supports something like the idealist thesis of transcendental perspectivism, and even says in the essay “The Metaphysical in Man” that the “double sense of the cogito is the basic fact of metaphysics: I am sure that there is being—on the condition that I do not seek another sort of being than being for-me.”⁹⁶ Yet he rejects “idealism” because he associates it with intellectualism and strong ontological idealism. A few essays in Sense and Non-Sense also contain references to Hegel’s idealism that do add a point not typically seen in the earlier texts. Merleau-Ponty objects to the kind of totalizing, deterministic rationalism one can supposedly find in Hegel’s works. The meaning of human acts, such as the revolutionary act, cannot be found by reference to some overarching system wherein the meaning is pre-determined by the meaning of the whole.⁹⁷ But it must be emphasized that this is a critique of Hegelian idealism in particular, and it is not clear to what degree Merleau-Ponty would attach this point to idealism in general. The several references to idealism in The Incarnate Subject follow suit. Idealism is typically associated with intellectualism and totalizing rationalism.⁹⁸ Interestingly, the lectures make explicit that Merleau-Ponty wants to separate the emphasis on subjectivity and the first-person perspective from idealism; he claims that idealism wants to begin from the first-person perspective but must ultimately “suppress perspectivism” because it ends up emphasizing a kind of view from nowhere that presents a total picture of the world.⁹⁹ It is noteworthy, though, in this case, that idealism is discussed in relation to Brunschvicg’s critical idealism. Perhaps most interestingly, in a critique of Bergson’s realism, Merleau-Ponty notes that “Bergson criticizes subjective idealism, but not transcendental idealism.” Furthermore, Bergson’s view is mistaken in a way that transcendental idealism is not; there is in Bergson’s thought “a blindness toward the proper being of consciousness and its intentional structure . . . it would have been necessary to show that the body is unthinkable without consciousness, because there is an intentionality of the body, and to show that consciousness is unthinkable without the body, for the present is corporeal.”¹⁰⁰ Bergson misses the proper role of subjectivity, and the intentional correlation between consciousness and

⁹⁴ See e.g. Merleau-Ponty, “The Battle Over Existentialism,” in Sense and Non-Sense, 72. ⁹⁵ Ibid. 78. ⁹⁶ Merleau-Ponty, “The Metaphysical in Man,” in Sense and Non-Sense, 93. ⁹⁷ See Merleau-Ponty, “Concerning Marxism,” 120, “Marxism and Philosophy,” 128–9, and “Hegel’s Existentialism,” 44–6, in Sense and Non-Sense. ⁹⁸ See e.g. Merleau-Ponty, The Incarnate Subject, 29–30. ⁹⁹ Ibid. ¹⁰⁰ Ibid. 89. Emphasis added. I have also removed paragraph breaks from the text.

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world is seen as a positive aspect of transcendental idealism that Bergson does not grasp. In the end, these passages in Sense and Non-Sense and The Incarnate Subject repeat the points of the earlier Pre-Sorbonne texts. We can summarize all of these references to idealism as holding to the following general points. First, Brunschvicg’s critical idealism is Merleau-Ponty’s main, if not sole, object of critique. Critical idealism is faulted for excessive intellectualism, a tendency toward strong ontological idealism, and a corresponding inability to grasp how our bodily life is intertwined with an external environment. Second, transcendental idealism is distinguished from critical idealism, and taken to improve on it in certain ways. In particular Merleau-Ponty lauds Kant’s attempt to combine transcendental idealism with empirical realism. Kantian transcendental idealism is seen as tending toward intellectualism and missing the significance of embodiment, but there is some suggestion that Husserlian phenomenology might overcome these issues. Finally, transcendental philosophy (if not overtly transcendental idealism) is held out as a valuable philosophical view, though one that needs to be kept free of intellectualism. The upshot here is not that Merleau-Ponty clearly embraces transcendental idealism as an alternative to critical idealism. Though he embraces the term “transcendental” he appears wary of the term “idealism,” and will never explicitly endorse it. In fact, Chapter 5 will show that in Phenomenology he moves to more directly reject the term idealism. The argument of the rest of this book, though, is that despite the overt critique of idealism, Merleau-Ponty actually employs a form of transcendental idealism that avoids the errors of critical idealism. One can wonder why Merleau-Ponty persisted in being critical of idealism overall, rather than proposing his own version of idealism that corrects the failings of other idealisms (as did Husserl—for a time—and Fink). This chapter suggests one plausible, though still speculative, answer. It is possible that the French philosophical milieu of the 1930s and 1940s was so dominated by Brunschvicg that the term “idealism” was too strongly linked to Brunschvicg’s views. Perhaps for Merleau-Ponty a rejection of critical idealism had to be a rejection of idealism as a whole because critical idealism too thoroughly shaped his early philosophical milieu. There is, of course, another answer to this question that likely many MerleauPonty scholars would favor. It is perhaps the case that while there are idealist aspects of his views, there are important aspects of his views that push against any idealist interpretation. This answer can only be assessed by examining his views during the Pre-Sorbonne period—as they show up in Structure and Phenomenology—in more detail.

3 Foundations of Transcendental Idealism in The Structure of Behavior 1. Form and the Centrality of the Organism in The Structure of Behavior The previous chapter examined what Merleau-Ponty directly says about idealism in his Pre-Sorbonne works apart from Phenomenology. That investigation showed that Merleau-Ponty’s views on idealism are more ambiguous than they might seem on their face. Yes, he is highly critical of idealism, but his critique is aimed primarily at Brunschvicg’s views, and he says some qualifiedly positive things about transcendental idealism. This suggests the possibility that Structure actually employs an idealist view despite the overt criticisms. The overarching aim of Structure can be described in two parts. First, through a consideration of psychology (focusing on a critique of behaviorism and a mostly sympathetic analysis of Gestalt psychology), it establishes the importance of the concept of “form.” Second, “form” is shown to play an important role in our properly understanding “the relations of consciousness and nature” in a way that can go beyond the problems of both causal/mechanistic metaphysical realism and critical thought.¹ On my interpretation, a shift occurs in the analysis of form that stands as a “transcendental turn” in Merleau-Ponty’s thought. This is why the very end of the book calls for a philosophy that can “define transcendental philosophy anew.”² This chapter will reconstruct Structure’s arguments in a way that displays the transcendental turn and supports both the thesis of transcendental perspectivism and the thesis of transcendental structural analysis. It must be noted that Structure also poses certain problems for transcendental idealism, however; while those issues will be pointed out here, they will be more deeply considered in the next chapter. The early sections of Structure primarily present an extended critique of behaviorist psychology. In particular, Merleau-Ponty is critical of behaviorism’s commitment to a mechanistic atomism that sees nature as divided into discrete material units that are externally related via linear causal chains. For the purpose of linking Structure’s arguments with transcendental idealism, the most important

¹ SB 3.

² SB 224.

Embodied Idealism: Merleau-Ponty’s Transcendental Philosophy. Joseph C. Berendzen, Oxford University Press. © Joseph C. Berendzen 2023. DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780192874764.003.0004

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element of the critique of behaviorism is the resulting claim that organisms shape the way they interface with their environments. I will refer to this as “organism centrality”; it is similar to, and builds toward, the transcendental perspectivism thesis. In these early sections, one of Merleau-Ponty’s main strategies is to show that behaviorist experiments do not actually support the causal/mechanist framework. An excellent example of this is found in the first part of chapter II, “Pavlov’s Reflexology and Its Postulates,” where Merleau-Ponty critiques Ivan Pavlov’s famous salivating dog experiments. There he shows the ways in which Pavlov had to strain his explanations of his experimental results, and add in ad hoc explanatory elements, in order to maintain a prior theoretical commitment to atomistic explanation.³ Merleau-Ponty then argues that the experimental results actually suggest a kind of holism. For example, he thinks that Pavlov should have recognized that the “excitant of conditioned reactions is neither a sound nor an object considered as individuals . . . but rather the temporal distribution of sounds, their melodic sequence, the relations of the size of objects and, in general, the precise structure of the situation.”⁴ The use of the term “structure” at the end of that quote is crucial. MerleauPonty argues that behavior has to be understood in terms of “structures” or “forms” that describe holistic ensembles in nature. While the two terms are mostly used interchangeably in Structure, I will use the term “form” exclusively to refer to this concept.⁵ This is because I use the term “structure” to refer to the transcendental structures that condition our experiential perspectives, as in “the thesis of transcendental structural analysis.” Using “form” to name Merleau-Ponty’s concept and “structure” for transcendental structures will add clarity to the technical terminology employed in this book. The only exceptions will come in direct quotes, when Merleau-Ponty uses “structure” as a synonym for “form,” and of course in references to the title of the book. Merleau-Ponty borrows the term “form” from Gestalt psychology. Emphasizing form’s irreducibility to an atomistic view of externally related parts, Merleau-Ponty describes a form as possessing “original properties with regard to those parts which can be detached from it.”⁶ Forms are thus, in some sense to be determined, wholes that are greater than the sum of their parts. At times, forms are described as elements of the environment apart from the organism whose perception or behavior is being explained. This is seen in the

³ SB “Pavlov’s Reflexology and Its Postulates,” on pp. 52–60. ⁴ SB 56. ⁵ I find Merleau-Ponty to use “form” and “structure” more or less interchangeably. Sometimes “form” refers to an individual holistic unit and “structure” refers to the dynamic internal relations of the form. This is especially the case in the discussion of physical forms at the beginning of chapter III. But sometimes “form” names the internal relations (see e.g. SB 142) and “structure” refers to individual holistic systems (as in a “structure of behavior”). ⁶ SB 91.

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quote regarding Pavlov that references “the temporal distribution of sounds” and the “relations of size of objects.” Relations between sounds or object sizes appear to be individual holistic ensembles in the environment (and this is how they are typically understood in Gestalt psychology). Alternately, Merleau-Ponty describes the internal make-up of the organism itself in terms of form; for example, throughout chapters I and II he argues that the central nervous system cannot be appropriately described in terms of discrete entities, such as circuits, that interact via linear causal chains.⁷ Organisms are holistic totalities, and thus are forms as well. Ultimately, though, the main point is to stress the link between organism and environment in terms of form, and Merleau-Ponty rejects the idea that forms in nature can be taken strictly as individuals apart from the organisms that perceive them. In fact, while Merleau-Ponty does reference some forms in nature that seem to not require any direct link to an organism (mainly non-perceptual examples, such as the dynamics of the soap bubble, taken from physics⁸) most such examples are like the following: An ant placed on a stick allows itself to fall on a white paper marked with a black circle only if the sheet of paper is of definite dimensions, if the distance from the ground and the inclination of the stick have a definite value, and finally if there is a definite intensity and direction of the lighting. This complex of conditions corresponds to natural situations which release the “instinctive” acts of the animal.⁹

Elements such as distance, inclination of the stick, and lighting are clearly in the environment, not in the ant. But they are only described as related to one another this way—i.e. as being a form—because of how the arrangement enables the instinctive behavior of the ant. This brings us to the main point of this section. In Structure, the organism plays a primary role in the holistic organism/environment nexus, and this is seen from the beginning of chapter I. The chapter opens with a critique of reflex theory in which a passive organism has its behavior caused, in a linear fashion, by external stimuli. Merleau-Ponty notes that the physiology of his day had gone beyond such a simple construal of reflex, but he questions its attempt to amend the theory rather than changing methods. He then proposes that “value and signification” might “be intrinsic determinations of the organism which would only be accessible to a new mode of ‘comprehension.’ ”¹⁰ There is something internal to the

⁷ See e.g. SB 23. ⁸ SB 131, 146. This requires qualification; as we will see in the next section, even the meanings of physical forms are tied to the human order. ⁹ SB 104. ¹⁰ SB 10.

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organism—the intrinsic determination—that shapes the meaning of its holistic relation to its environment. This entails that the organism is intimately linked to its environment, as it is structured so as to give signification—meaning—to that environment.¹¹ A few pages later Merleau-Ponty rejects the idea that stimuli affect nervous systems in a mechanical fashion analogous to the playing of a keyboard (an analogy that was common in the physiological studies of his day). The nature of this rejection is crucial for our purposes: The organism cannot properly be compared to a keyboard on which the external stimuli would play and in which their proper form would be delineated for the simple reason that the organism contributes to the constitution of that form . . . stimulations could not be received without the movements by which I expose my receptors to their influence.¹²

Again, the centrality of the organism is emphasized; the organism constitutes the form. To put the point in terminology close to that of transcendental idealism, the organism has a particular perspective on its world that shapes the meaning of the external stimuli. There is a tension in this discussion, however. Merleau-Ponty tends to vacillate a bit between a view that emphasizes the constitutive role of the organism and a view that emphasizes the holistic relation between the organism and environment wherein neither side is primary. It is noteworthy that he says in the above quote that the organism “contributes to” the constitution of the form, not that it wholly constitutes the form. Furthermore, in the same paragraph Merleau-Ponty says that one can “treat behavior as an effect of the milieu” but one could “also say that the behavior is the first cause of all the stimulations.”¹³ The point of playing these two opposite claims off of one another is to emphasize the link between the two, rather than emphasizing one or the other. “Milieu” (environment) and “behavior” (organism) are treated as two sides of the same coin. This tension between an organism-centered view and an organismenvironment-equivalence view is seen throughout Structure. On balance, however, Merleau-Ponty favors the organism-centric view. And the suggestions of the ¹¹ This use of “meaning” raises a large terminological issue in Structure. In the original French Merleau-Ponty frequently uses the terms sens and signification. Sens can mean roughly the same thing as the word “sense” in English (like in English, it can refer to the perceptual senses, and also has a meaning that is close to “meaning”), though it can also mean “direction.” In the translation of Structure, sens is typically rendered as “direction,” “sense,” or “meaning” depending on context. Signification is typically translated as its English cognate, and is very close in meaning to the instances of “sens” translated as “meaning.” Often, they match the English “meaning” in a general way (and this is particularly the case for sens), with more specific meanings depending on context. But there is a technical sense (to be elaborated in the next section) in which Merleau-Ponty uses these terms— especially signification—that is tied to the concept of form. ¹² SB 13. Emphasis added. ¹³ SB 13.

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opposing view can be interpreted not primarily as a contradiction or unresolved tension in the text, but rather as a way of stressing that the organism-centric view must be posed in non-intellectualist terms. The beginning of the paragraph that directly follows the last quoted passage clearly states the organism-centric view: The form of the excitant is created by the organism itself, by its proper manner of offering itself to actions from the outside. Doubtless, in order to be able to subsist, it must encounter a certain number of physical and chemical agents in its surroundings. But it is the organism itself—according to the proper nature of its receptors, the thresholds of its nerve centers and the movements of the organs—which chooses the stimuli in the physical world to which it will be sensitive.¹⁴

The notion that the organism creates the forms in the environment is a strong claim. It must be understood, though, that the organism creates the form in the sense of giving meaning to the ensemble of elements in its environment, as it obviously does not create the “physical and chemical agents.” And the implication here is not that the creation of meaning occurs in a mentalistic fashion. When Merleau-Ponty referred to the “intrinsic determinations” of the organism at the beginning of chapter I he had to be referring to aspects of its bodily make-up—i.e. its receptors, nerve centers, and movements—rather than any kind of mental “inner life.” The organism-centric element of Structure continues throughout the book. Toward the end of chapter II, Merleau-Ponty critiques the behaviorist theory of learning via conditioning, noting that “the simple coincidence of two successive events” could not lead to new behaviors developing. Rather, “there must be a principle in the organism which ensures that the learning experience will have a general relevance.”¹⁵ While learned behaviors and new habits require a link with the appropriate environmental forms, the significance of the animal’s interactions with the environment is always driven by something within the animal; the “decisive factor lies in the manner in which fortuitous contiguities are utilized by the organism.”¹⁶ Shortly after the discussion of learning, Merleau-Ponty elaborates this in a way that begins to tie his view to transcendental idealism with the idea of the “species a priori.” As he puts it: In the hierarchy of species, the efficacious relations at each level define an a priori of this species, a manner of elaborating the stimuli which is proper to it; thus the organism has a distinct reality which is not substantial but structural.¹⁷

¹⁴ SB 13. Emphasis added. ¹⁶ SB 100. ¹⁷ SB 129.

¹⁵ SB both quotes on p. 99. Emphasis in the second quote added.

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The species a priori involves a manner of “elaborating stimuli”—constituting the form of the environment—that is driven by what is “proper to” the animal, i.e. what is driven by its biology. Non-human animals are then described as only interacting with the world in a way that is tightly structured by their own practical possibilities. They do not behave toward things “objectively” as existing on their own apart from the animal’s specific aims. This is seen, for instance, in the fact that monkeys will not use a thing that has “objectively” useful properties (its length, shape, etc.) unless it is placed in their environment in a way that makes it clearly connected to a specific task. The ability to treat the world as “made up of physico-geometric relations” is a higher-level ability that Merleau-Ponty associates with symbolic behavior (i.e. human behavior).¹⁸ This leads him to conclude that in instances when animals appear, in experiments, to react to stimuli in a way that fits with the behaviorists’ atomistic theory, it is actually a kind of distortion of their normal behavior caused by the experimental conditions. “The conditioned reflex is either a pathological phenomenon or a higher mode of behavior”; pathological in animals and (potentially) higher behavior in humans.¹⁹ The centrality of the organism and the way it structures animal experience is so complete that any seeming deviation is a sign of pathology. The fact that the species a priori is “structural” emphasizes that it plays something akin to a transcendental role in determining how the organism interfaces with its environment. In the initial discussion of the species a priori in Structure Merleau-Ponty notes that the development of animal behaviors “must occur in a certain organic framework which gives them meaning and efficacy; they presuppose a ‘sensory-motor a priori,’ practical ‘categories’ which differ from one species to another.”²⁰ The species a priori is not an element of the organism’s engagement with its environment, it is a framework that enables this engagement. The Kantian language used in that quote obviously brings Merleau-Ponty’s discussion of organism-centrality into the orbit of transcendental idealism. It is important to note that the views discussed so far do not (yet) fit with transcendental idealism for a couple of reasons, however. Perhaps most obviously, there is not yet a notion of mind-dependence in the discussion of organism-centrality, so it is not really an idealism. Secondly, despite the language of a priori structures, the analysis cannot be genuinely transcendental because it is not rooted in firstpersonal analysis.

¹⁸ SB 114. Merleau-Ponty notes that there are differences in ability between “lower monkeys,” “less intelligent chimpanzees,” and more intelligent chimpanzees; thus, this ability lies on a kind of continuum. But Merleau-Ponty clearly still takes there to be a significant difference between humans and the most intelligent apes. ¹⁹ SB 123. ²⁰ SB 100. Merleau-Ponty is quoting the Dutch animal psychologist Frederik Buytendijk. See Buytendijk, “Les Differences essentielles des fonctions psychiques de l’homme et des animaux,” Cahiers de philosophie de la nature, Paris: Vrin (1930), 53.

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The foregoing discussion makes clear that organisms play a central organizing role in their environments, and in this sense, there is not a strict organism– environment equivalence in terms of priority. This suggests a kind of subjectdependence, wherein the organism is the primary organizing factor in its world. And Merleau-Ponty even suggests a kind of ontological dependence, as the “form of the excitant is created by the organism.” However, insofar as organisms are described as in themselves being forms, and those forms are linked with forms in the environment, this still composes a single holistic unity. And given that it is just organisms—i.e. bodily, natural entities—that are being discussed, one might interpret the organism-centric view as merely entailing that one element of the environment has a kind of priority. To put the point a different way, it is not a subject or mind that is organizing nature; nature is organizing nature, and certain organisms play a particularly important role in that process. To move to a genuinely idealist view, there must be some uniquely mental element that stands apart from the being that it determines, and that thus plays an even more robustly central organizing role. Consciousness, and thus the mental, is perhaps not totally missing from the thesis of the centrality of the organism as it has been discussed so far. For all but the lowest animals, their perceptual experience of the world would play a role. Taken in the very basic sense of registering information about the environment, sensory activity is important even in the ant example. Insofar as the structure of perception would be shaped by the structure of the organism, one might say that the bodily “perspective” is prior to the conscious perspective. Of course, having receptors that are structured to register stimuli in particular ways is not the same as having full conscious perceptual experience in the sense that we associate with human experience. But these considerations do suggest that the early parts of Structure lead directly to Merleau-Ponty’s interest in perception, which of course comes to loom large over his philosophy as a whole and plays a key role in his potential idealism. But obviously more would need to be said about the role of perception, consciousness, and the mental in Merleau-Ponty’s view to show that the organism-centrality thesis actually leads to a form of idealism. Regarding the second issue, one must note that the discussion of organism centrality has been developed on the basis of an empirical analysis of animal behavior. So, while Merleau-Ponty refers to things like the species a priori and uses terms that suggest transcendental structural analysis, at this point it appears that his claims regarding animal behavior are actually rooted in a posteriori empirical analyses. This issue points to a large problem faced by the transcendental idealist interpretation of Structure. Merleau-Ponty intentionally blurs the line between transcendental and empirical reasoning. Given this, there is a question as to whether he does so in a way that maintains some revised version of genuinely transcendental philosophy, or whether he actually undermines his own transcendental aims. This problem will not be fully discussed until Chapter 4 §4. The rest

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of this chapter will assume that he does indeed move toward transcendental philosophy. But in order to do that, he will have to shift the perspective of his analyses away from the third-person viewpoint of the “outside spectator.”²¹ In order for his thought to take a transcendental turn, there will have to be an analysis of the perspective of the “spectator” from within that perspective. The rest of this chapter will argue that Merleau-Ponty does make this transcendental turn. In connection with this turn, he will transform organismcentrality into genuine subject-centrality, and employ a conception of consciousness and the mental that will allow for a genuinely idealist view. In order to understand these moves, we have to examine the way in which Merleau-Ponty describes nature as being composed of three “orders” or “fields” that move hierarchically from the physical to the human.

2. The Integration of the Three Orders and the Transcendental Turn Structure builds from a discussion of animal behavior to human behavior via a consideration of what Merleau-Ponty describes as three “fields” or “orders” that extends the analysis of form. In the title of chapter III, they are referred to as the “physical order,” “vital order,” and “human order”; Table 2 collects the other terms that are used to name or describe these orders.²² The orders name aspects or attributes of nature. They also provide a way of categorizing forms; the holistic unities discussed throughout the book can be differentiated according to the extent to which their primary attributes fit within a particular order. The fact that they are also referred to as “fields” suggests that rather than referring to discrete entities, the orders refer to attributes that can be found, in varying ways, throughout a particular given region. Table 2. The Three Orders Physical Order Physical Field Quantity Matter

Vital Order Physiological Field Quality; Order Life

Human Order Mental Field Quality; value, signification Consciousness

²¹ Merleau-Ponty refers to the “spectator étranger” or “outside spectator” at a couple of points in the text (see SB 162, 184). The role of the outside spectator and its relation to Merleau-Ponty’s later firstpersonal investigations is a major theme taken up in Geraets, Vers une nouvelle philosophie transcendentale. ²² The different terms in Table 2 are used throughout the text. See SB 131 for an ordered listing of the bottom two rows.

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All three of these orders are operative throughout nature in their own way, and it is wrong to reduce any one to any of the others. That they are interconnected yet differentiated is established in the following key passage: In fact, to the extent that a philosophy of structure maintains the original character of the three orders and accepts the fact that quantity, order and signification—present in the whole universe of forms—are nevertheless the “dominant” characteristics in matter, life and mind respectively, their distinction must once more be accounted for by means of a structural difference. In other words, matter, life and mind must participate unequally in the nature of form; they must represent different degrees of integration and, finally, must constitute a hierarchy in which individuality is progressively achieved.²³

If we grasp the idea that all three orders are present in “the whole universe of forms” yet they are structurally different and “constitute a hierarchy,” we will see that Merleau-Ponty does indeed hold to a novel, embodied version of the thesis of transcendental perspectivism that extends the idea of the centrality of the organism. To begin to unpack this passage, we should further elaborate on the notion of “form” and consider how forms constitute a “universe.” As has been noted, “form” refers to holistic ensembles of elements in the environment, in the organism, or (more significantly for Merleau-Ponty) in the organism–environment nexus. In chapter III Merleau-Ponty will add an important conceptual element to the discussion of forms, viz. the idea that they tend toward an equilibrium. The parts of the form are linked dynamically via a kind of continuously reciprocal causality wherein changes in one area require changes throughout the whole. This dynamic activity is working toward something. In the simplest examples the state toward which the dynamic is working is an equilibrium in the straightforward sense of a balance of forces at rest. In more complex examples, the equilibrium is a state wherein the forces work together to achieve a kind of meaningful unity out of a very diverse and complex set of interactions.²⁴ This idea will be further explained below as the three orders are defined. Forms have an “internal and dynamic unity which gives to the whole the character of an indecomposable individual,” and the equilibrium they work ²³ SB 133. ²⁴ In this regard it makes sense for Donald Landes to explain Merleau-Ponty’s views in relation to Gilbert Simondon’s concept of “metastable equilibrium,” insofar as it implies a kind of complex equilibrium state that is in flux. See Landes, Merleau-Ponty and the Paradoxes of Expression, London: Bloomsbury (2013), 21–7. But note that the descriptions of equilibrium taken from Simondon do not fit standard definitions in physics from which they are initially drawn (see p. 25). For example, for physics an unstable equilibrium is not “a system in motion” and “thus not an equilibrium at all.” First, a stable equilibrium can be in (constant) motion. Second, an unstable equilibrium is an equilibrium that, when changed, will not return to the same equilibrium state. That in no way means that it is not really an equilibrium. “Metastable” is also not used in any of its standard scientific senses.

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toward can be considered as an individual state. But their individuality is not absolute.²⁵ In the same pages as the initial discussion of the integration of the three orders, Merleau-Ponty critiques the Gestaltists for interpreting forms in the environment as discrete wholes that engage causally with the organism. Merleau-Ponty insists that forms are nested within forms, such that their linkages create bigger forms. Here one can think of the idea of the “field”; as one expands the region considered, the holistic relations broaden.²⁶ Though he thinks forms can be considered as individuals (they have that “character”), Merleau-Ponty wants a more thoroughgoing holism than that of the Gestaltists. One might wonder, then, if the “universe of forms” is referring to something like the totality of nature, or reality, considered as one single holistic unity (the form of all forms, so to speak). Merleau-Ponty clearly rejects that extreme holist view. In chapter I he notes that if “everything really depended on everything else . . . there would be no laws and no science” and he lauds Gestalt psychology for rejecting “a romantic conception of the absolute unity of nature.”²⁷ In chapter III he repeats his rejection of the idea that “everything would literally depend on everything else,” but he pairs it with a rejection of the materialist view of nature “in which processes would be knowable in isolation”; “what is demanded is neither fusion nor juxtaposition, rather it is structure.”²⁸ There is a sort of tension in Structure between stronger and weaker holisms, without the line between the two being clearly drawn. While the exact nature of Merleau-Ponty’s holism is not explicated, the notion of “form” is meant to allow for a reasonably strong holism that nevertheless allows for the consideration of (quasi) individuals to emerge via “cleavages” or differences in things.²⁹ Thus the reference to the “universe of forms” cannot be a reference to a single “form of all forms,” but it is a reference to the idea that nature is generally construed holistically. To return to the previous block quote, it is said that quantity, quality, and signification (the physical, vital, and mental) are present in the whole universe of forms. What this indicates is that at all levels forms can partake of aspects of all orders. But the orders are “dominant” in certain forms over others and they “participate” unequally. While they take part in holistic interrelations, there are structural differences between forms in which the physical, vital, and mental are dominant. And finally, we are told that there is a hierarchy of orders. Though it is not stated directly, presumably this hierarchy places matter at the bottom and mind at the top.

²⁵ SB 142. ²⁶ One could think of the progressive broadening through organism–population–community– ecosystem–biome–biosphere as an example of this point. ²⁷ SB 43. ²⁸ SB 140. ²⁹ The term “cleavage” is used in the greater passage at SB 140 from which the previous quote is taken.

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To understand how all three orders could be present throughout nature, yet be dominant in particular forms in a hierarchical fashion, we should define the three orders. Merleau-Ponty first distinguishes the physical order from the vital order, and then distinguishes the vital order from the human order. The key differences pertain to the type of equilibrium proper to the forms. Physical forms tend toward an equilibrium “obtained with respect to certain given external conditions.”³⁰ For example, the shape of the soap bubble will always be heavily determined by the external air pressure. Here the equilibrium fits the common definition of that term in physics. In distinction with physical forms, vital forms (i.e. the forms of living organisms) obtain equilibrium “not with respect to real and present conditions, but with respect to conditions which are virtual and which the system itself brings into existence.”³¹ “Virtual” here refers to aspects of behavior or action that are not tightly tied to specific environmental conditions. Thus “virtual” behavior is not determined in advance by external circumstances, but rather develops as the organism’s behavior develops.³² Human forms are distinguished by going even further toward the virtual; the human being “ceases to adhere immediately to the milieu.”³³ Two key aspects of this are that the human being shapes her milieu via the creation of “use-objects” and “cultural objects” (which are then constantly remade), and via the development of intellectual activity.³⁴ Thus the hierarchy in forms is tied to an increasing ability to attain the virtual by uncoupling from external forces. I earlier noted that at higher levels the “equilibrium” that forms are working toward cannot be thought of as a straightforward state of balance. A key reason for this is that in the vital and human orders, organisms “pose the terms” (per organism centrality) of their own equilibrium; the state the system is tending toward is determined, to a greater or lesser extent, by the actions of that system. In setting for itself the state it is trying to realize, Merleau-Ponty says that “the organism itself modifies its milieu according to the internal norms of its activity.”³⁵ These internal norms are described as a kind of “preferred attitude”; organisms take on regular types of activity that determine how the organism best goes about interacting with its environment. In these cases, the “equilibrium” is not exactly what that term typically means in physics; it rather refers to a kind of state that is seen as preferred because it satisfies some goal posed by the organism. This normative aspect of the ability to engage “virtually” with one’s environment is perhaps most easily seen in the case of human behavior. As Merleau-Ponty ³⁰ SB 145. ³¹ SB 145. ³² This explanation of “virtual” borrows from Morris, Merleau-Ponty’s Developmental Ontology, 65. ³³ SB 174. ³⁴ On “use-objects” and “cultural objects”; see SB 162. On “knowledge” and intellectual activity see SB 174. ³⁵ SB 154.

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notes, human beings exhibit the fact that their actions are not driven by their environments by remaking their environments to suit their purposes. Through this remaking of the environment via the creation of use-objects and cultural objects, humans set the terms for their own behaviors. Cars following appropriate traffic patterns at a four-way stop would be a simple example of a normative “equilibrium” of this type; when this happens human behaviors, and their extension into use-objects, are coordinated in a manner that properly suits the needs set by our created arrangements (in this specific case, by regulating traffic patterns so traffic flows smoothly and accidents are reduced). This also makes sense of Merleau-Ponty’s reference to “internal norms.” There is not a goal to that behavior set externally; rather as human behavior develops it takes on forms (such as automotive transport) that require regulation in certain ways. This normative aspect can be seen in animal behavior as well, even at the lowest levels.³⁶ In the lowest level, which Merleau-Ponty calls syncretic behavior, an animal’s actions are tightly tied to the environment, but driven by the organism’s own terms (its instincts). For example, a toad’s goal of grabbing a worm with its tongue is not given to it by the environment, though the way the behavior unfolds is tightly tied to the particular presence of the worm in the environment.³⁷ The goal, catching the worm, comes from its own biological make-up and can thus be seen as a goal it gives itself, though this is obviously not done self-consciously (or even consciously at all). We can now explicate the technical sense of “meaning” that Merleau-Ponty frequently associates with the term “signification.”³⁸ Forms have a meaning insofar as the parts fit together dynamically in order to satisfy their norms. And in the case of vital forms, that meaning is tied to the organism; there is a meaning to the toad’s behavior that is set by its own biological needs and abilities. Thus, the signification in forms is tied to the way in which the environment affords the organism’s behavior. This leads to an ambiguity in Structure which is similar to the ambiguity between the organism-centric and organism-environment equivalence views that were mentioned in the previous section. Merleau-Ponty sometimes refers to this signification as being intrinsic or immanent to forms, but he also refers to it as depending upon the organism.³⁹ Furthermore, as we will see, he often describes the meaning/signification as depending upon human

³⁶ In chapter II, Merleau-Ponty describes three levels of behavior, the syncretic, amovable, and symbolic. The description of the three levels of behavior is isomorphic with the description of the three orders; both are arranged in terms of a progressive move toward the “virtual.” The big difference, though, is that insofar as behavior is connected to organisms, the three levels of behavior exist within the vital and human orders. The physical order would be below the level of syncretic behavior, so to speak. ³⁷ SB 104–5. ³⁸ See n. 11 of this chapter. ³⁹ See SB 122 for an instance where Merleau-Ponty suggests that signification is immanent to forms in nature. This issue is further complicated by the fact that Merleau-Ponty frequently says that signification or meaning is immanent to the organism (e.g. SB 10) or behavior (e.g. SB 157, 160).

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consciousness of it, such that signification is potentially “anthropomorphic.” This issue will be taken up in detail in the next chapter. The vital order and human order are connected and lie on a continuum from less virtual to more virtual behavior. With this established, the connection between those orders and the physical order needs to be explained. First, we can note that aspects of the physical are always present in the vital and human orders. Merleau-Ponty insists that there is no animal that does not engage in some lowerlevel behaviors.⁴⁰ Thus all animals, including humans, engage in some behaviors that are driven by external stimuli, which is the primary mark of the physical. There are also aspects of our bodily being that are straightforwardly described in physical terms; for example, as I am standing still my body is in an unstable equilibrium as that term is used in physics. In these respects, aspects of the physical order show up in vital and human structures. The less straightforward claim is that physical forms contain elements of the higher orders. But Merleau-Ponty insists that physical forms can be considered in terms of quality along with quantity: There is . . . no reason whatsoever for refusing objective value to this category [quality] in the study of the phenomena of life, since it has its place in the definitions of physical systems. In the internal unity of these systems, it is acceptable to say that each local effect depends on the function which it fulfills in the whole, upon its value and significance with respect to the structure which the system is tending to realize.⁴¹

A physical form is a whole in which the parts have “significance and value” because of their role in working toward what the “system is tending to realize.” The operations of its parts have to be considered in terms of this overarching significance. Note that insofar as Merleau-Ponty attributes “quality” to physical forms, he attributes to them an aspect of vital systems (per Table 2). But he then goes further by attributing “value and significance” to the physical form, which are aspects of the mental order. For Merleau-Ponty, this point does not only apply to isolated instances, such as the soap bubble, in the physical world. Rather, he takes the laws of physics in general to only be explicable in relation to one another such that they form a “system of complementary laws” which are seen as working together in nature.⁴² Thus elements of both higher orders are seen in the whole of the physical. But how? Insofar as we can think of the physical form as “tending to realize” a particular state, the form is setting for itself a state it ought to attain. We can think of it in normative terms, which is indicative of the higher orders. For example, we ⁴⁰ See SB 104. ⁴¹ SB 131, emphasis added. ⁴² SB 138–40, quote on p. 139. On this point see Geraets, Vers une nouvelle philosophie, 48–51.

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can think of the dynamics of the soap bubble (i.e. the relations of the inner pressure, outer pressure, surface tension, etc.) as working together in order to reach a goal equilibrium (when floating freely, the spherical bubble) such that we see an element of norm-driven meaning in that physical system. To use MerleauPonty’s language, it is not out of place for us to define the soap bubble as working toward the goal of becoming a sphere. Insofar as this is the case, it has meaning, or “significance” in Merleau-Ponty’s technical terminology. This point is crucial in pushing Merleau-Ponty toward idealism. The foregoing discussion has resulted in the idea that even physical systems contain aspects of the mental. And at points the text suggests that significance and value—thus the mental order—is fully found throughout nature. The main aim, though, is to establish a claim about the meaning physical forms can be seen as having (their “value and significance”) from a certain perspective. This realization motivates a kind of “transcendental turn” in Merleau-Ponty’s thought.

3. Merleau-Ponty’s Transcendental Turn As established in §1 above, on Merleau-Ponty’s view all organisms have a particular “perspective,” tied to their organic make-up, that structures their environments. We now know, from the discussion of the three orders, that there is something special about this organic “perspective” for human beings. Because of our capacity for the virtual, we are not tightly bound by the species a priori. We are rather capable of taking on new structures that augment the species a priori and enable us to engage in higher-level behavior. This point establishes a significant part of the meaning of the aforementioned hierarchy in the orders; there is a hierarchical progression toward the virtual in nature. It is a part of the human ability to engage with the virtual that we perceive the world in distinctly human terms. This enables there to be an element of the higher orders in the physical. Crucially, it was noted at the end of the previous section that we—humans—can think of physical forms as operating according to an internal norm. That discussion was couched primarily in terms of how forms can be scientifically understood; “order” was said to have a place in definitions of physical systems. The point appears to be that from our perspective, human beings construe physical structures as manifesting aspects of the vital and mental orders. In this regard it is noteworthy that the block quote referenced at the beginning of the previous section refers to “the whole universe of forms.” Recall from Chapter 2 §2 that “universe” is a prominent term in Brunschvicg’s philosophy that refers to reality as it is systematically elaborated in rational/scientific thought. Obviously Merleau-Ponty does not want to carry over Brunschvicg’s intellectualism. But given the context in which Structure was written, there would have to be clear Brunschvicgian overtones to the term “universe.” This suggests

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Merleau-Ponty wanted to put his own, non-intellectualistic spin on the notion of nature as a whole that human experience grasps as meaningful. In fact, Merleau-Ponty thinks that humans cannot help but understand nature in terms of higher order forms. As he puts it, “all the terms of which we can make use refer to phenomena of human experience.”⁴³ Thus the analysis of the three orders extends support for the thesis of transcendental perspectivism. Human beings experience reality from a perspective that is structured by elements of the species a priori, but also by structures which enable virtual behavior. And this perspective is also structured such that we see elements of our own type of behavior in the rest of nature (and we have to see nature this way). At this point, we can begin to see the shift from the “outside spectator” to the first-person perspective that was mentioned at the end of §1. In the discussion of the physical and vital orders, Merleau-Ponty is, in the first instance, following along with the third-person analysis of the first two chapters of Structure. The initial description of the soap bubble, for example, clearly fits this kind of analysis. But in the midst of this description Merleau-Ponty realizes that we tend to describe such forms as though they are meaningful. This then motivates a further realization that this meaning is inextricably connected to how we perceive the forms. The discussion of the three orders establishes not only that there are meaningful forms in nature but that those forms are meaningful from our perspective. As Theodore Geraets puts this point regarding the specific instance of the biologist studying animal behavior, “his perception of the living organism is not that of a truly foreign spectator, but of someone who knows what he sees.”⁴⁴ The biologist “knows what he sees” insofar as he has a perspective that transcendentally structures his experience of the organism in a particular way. To put the point somewhat metaphorically, the biologist knows to look for qualitative order in nature because his human perspective orients him to look in this way.⁴⁵ To fully explicate this point, Merleau-Ponty’s analysis will have to shift from a thirdperson consideration of nature to a first-person consideration of our perspective on nature. This argument for shifting from the third-person to first-person perspective is effectively Merleau-Ponty’s argument for taking the “transcendental turn.” Sebastian Gardner considers, and quickly rejects, the possibility that the transcendental position assumed in Phenomenology is originally argued for in Structure, on

⁴³ SB 102. ⁴⁴ Geraets, Vers une nouvelle philosophie, 67. All translations of quoted passages from this text are my own. ⁴⁵ Of course, it is not actually a matter of knowing what to look for, because it is not a matter of knowledge at all. It is simply the case that our perception of the world is structured, a priori, to find life in nature.

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the basis that the latter “does not contain a convincing argument for the transcendental position.”⁴⁶ Gardner is, from the point of view of the current work, mistaken. The argument (dependent upon the material considered in this and the previous sections) can be summarized and reconstructed as follows. First, Merleau-Ponty shows that atomistic/mechanistic explanations of animal behavior fail, and this leads to the development of the concept of form. As a part of this analysis, Merleau-Ponty arrives at the organism-centric view, which holds that an organism’s holistic, meaningful interactions with its environment are structured by the species a priori. Implicitly, this argument provides the first motivation for the transcendental turn. Insofar as humans are animals, we see that our species a priori structures our interactions with the environment in a manner that is akin to a transcendental perspective. But because the shift to firstperson analysis has not yet been effected, this point alone does not support the transcendental turn. It is in the further consideration of the three orders that the turn is truly supported. The discussion of the meaningfulness of physical and organic forms leads, we might say, to the question of the being of that meaning. What is then revealed is that this meaning must be construed as being meaning for us, for the “spectator.” There is thus a “turn” from a third-person observational study of form in animal behavior to a first-person consideration of the conditions of possibility for the experience of meaningful form. While this argument is present in Structure it is not entirely explicit. It is also presented a bit too neatly here, and it presents certain difficulties. First, the notion that the “being of meaning” is dependent upon the perspective of the (human) observer is not entirely unproblematic for Merleau-Ponty, and throughout Structure he is worried that his analysis is overly anthropomorphic. As previously noted, this point will be examined in the next chapter. Second, there seems to be a gap between the two elements of the argument mentioned above. On the one hand, the transcendental turn is suggested by the analysis of the species a priori. On this view, the transcendental perspective would be aligned with our organic, bodily structure. That is, in itself, a debatable way of construing the transcendental, given that it is traditionally tied to structures of consciousness. But on top of that, the second part of the argument, regarding how we find meaning in natural forms, shifts back to a more traditional, consciousness-centered view. The emphasis in that discussion focuses on intellectual acts such as moments of scientific understanding and definition in our consideration of nature, rather than on the bodily structure of our (perceptual) interface with the environment. These two potentially disparate elements—organic bodily structure and conscious intellect— need to be brought together to complete Merleau-Ponty’s argument.

⁴⁶ Sebastian Gardner, “Merleau-Ponty’s Transcendental Theory of Perception,” n. 16 303–4.

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The belief that these two elements do go together, with consciousness tied inextricably to our bodily structure, is the most famous aspect of Merleau-Ponty’s early philosophy, and it is operative in the above considerations. To further quote Geraets, for Merleau-Ponty the biologist can understand animal behavior because it contains “affinities, potentialities implied in the experience of our own body”;⁴⁷ the transcendental structures that enable us to experience nature as meaningful are somehow found in our bodily structure rather than the intellect. They further enable the forms of intellectual consideration mentioned above. The next section will focus on this point by examining the relations between embodied perception and the intellect in Structure.

4. Consciousness, Perception, and Action While the centrality of the organism discussed in the early parts of Structure does not necessarily entail the centrality of consciousness (because non-conscious aspects of the organism, such as physiology and instinct, can be at play) consciousness still potentially plays a role via perception. Merleau-Ponty also holds that as the behavior of living organisms advances into higher forms by incorporating an increasing ability to engage with the virtual, eventually an ability for “cognitive conduct” is introduced.⁴⁸ This point, which is first made in the discussion of symbolic behavior in chapter II, is repeated in the discussion of the human order in chapter III, where the human ability to engage with the virtual is associated not only with the creation of use-objects and cultural objects, but also with intellectual activity. The human being elevates its milieu “to the status of spectacle and takes possession of it mentally by means of knowledge properly so called.”⁴⁹ There is thus a movement, which fits with the idea of a hierarchy in the orders, from forms where consciousness is not directly at play, to forms where progressive levels of perception are present, to higher forms of intellectual behavior. This section will more fully examine Merleau-Ponty’s thoughts on consciousness in this regard. While the recognition of elements of the human order in the lower orders has so far been presented in intellectualistic terms (such as definition and scientific understanding), it becomes clear through the end of chapter III and chapter IV of Structure that intellection is not the primary mode of consciousness. Consider a passage from chapter IV that combines a seemingly intellectualistic reference to Hegel with a rejection of intellectualism: By a natural development the notion of “Gestalt” led us back to its Hegelian meaning, that is, to the concept before it has become conscious of itself. Nature,

⁴⁷ Geraets, Vers une nouvelle philosophie, 67.

⁴⁸ SB 122.

⁴⁹ SB 174.

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we said, is the exterior of the concept. But precisely the concept as concept has no exterior and the Gestalt still had to be conceptualized as the unity of the interior and exterior, of nature and idea. Correlatively the consciousness for which the Gestalt exists was not intellectual consciousness but perceptual experience.⁵⁰

What is being suggested here is a way of interpreting the discussion of qualitative order in the physical and vital forms. Nature is the “exterior” of the concept in the sense that nature contains dynamic, holistic structures that work toward an equilibrium. The “concept” would be the meaningfulness or signification of those holistic arrangements that is embodied or “externalized” in the natural entities. But insofar as the concept is in nature itself it is not self-conscious; the soap bubble does not consider itself as a dynamic system working toward maintaining a spherical shape under the right conditions. This is why the “concept as concept” has no exterior. Strictly speaking as concept—as meaningful—it must be consciously grasped, but this conscious grasping does not occur on its own in the natural “exteriority.” This construal of the meaning in nature as conceptually articulated for a consciousness that grasps it initially seems intellectualistic. But one must note that the language of “concept” here is mainly a function of referencing Hegel. Setting aside the complex question of what “concept” means for Hegel, in this context for Merleau-Ponty it is referring to the signification in forms as described in §2. And he is clear that the consciousness which grasps this signification is perceptual consciousness rather than the intellect, and understanding this will help us better grasp the unity of mind and world (or idea and nature). This indicates a key aspect of the text, and one of the most important ideas in MerleauPonty’s philosophy overall; perception grasps meaning in a fashion that does not require intellectual acts. This point adds to an issue raised in §1 above. There it was provisionally noted that the idealism we are finding in Merleau-Ponty’s work would be an embodied idealism. This is because prior to any conscious perspective we have on the world, our perspectives on the world are shaped by the structure of our organic interface with our environments. The body was aligned with this organic “perspective” which then shapes our conscious perspective. While this point is generally correct, it is misleading insofar as it appears to place the body on the side of pre-conscious organic structures as opposed to conscious perceptual experience. The body actually cuts across the distinction between our preconscious organic structures and the structures of our conscious perceptual experience; the body is the home of both of these. Furthermore, while above we are placing perception on the side of embodied, lived action and thus seemingly opposing that to intellectual activity, such as judgement and conceptual thought, this is also not quite correct. As will be

⁵⁰ SB 210.

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discussed below, intellectual activity grows out of embodied action and there is not a hard split between the two. The body is thus central insofar as it is fully the site of our perspective on the world; it holds our organic, lived perceptual, and intellectual structures together. Perception and action must be thought together, and Merleau-Ponty chides traditional philosophy for conceiving the two in separation. Perception is aligned with consciousness, and “consciousness is defined by the possession of the object of thought or by transparence to self; action is defined by a series of events external to each other.”⁵¹ On this kind of view all consciousness is intellectual in the way described above because it involves the grasping of clear, determinate contents. Action is similarly construed in objectivist terms as a series of discrete events. Such a construal of the two is obviously burdened by the atomistic conception of reality that Merleau-Ponty decries throughout the text, but the holism developed through the analysis of form should allow the two to come together. That perception and action are inextricably linked is one of the main themes developed in Phenomenology, and the discussion of perception in chapters III and IV of Structure generally presents a much less detailed version of the view of perception that is developed in its successor text. One unique element of Structure’s discussion is that action is aligned with Hegel’s notion of “work,” which Merleau-Ponty construes in terms of humans remaking their environments.⁵² Perception is in turn consciousness of the environment as enabling “work,” or the actions through which organisms give meaning to their environments. This point leads directly to the notion (implicit though prominent in Structure) that our perceptual perspective is shaped by transcendental structures. Before turning to the discussion of the transcendental structures of our embodied perspective, it is important to raise an important caveat regarding the foregoing discussion. The overarching point of this section is that MerleauPonty transitions from the not-yet-idealist organism-centric view to his fully idealist position by emphasizing the role that perception, and thus consciousness, plays in the human order (and thus in the presence of value and significance throughout the orders). It has been noted that Merleau-Ponty wants to deintellectualize his discussion of consciousness by tying perception more thoroughly to embodied action than did his predecessors. This connection between perception and action—and the way in which it leads Merleau-Ponty to reincorporate the intellectual on a different level—will be discussed in the next two sections. One might argue, however, that my considerations here are question-begging regarding consciousness. While I note that Merleau-Ponty is shifting his view of ⁵¹ SB 164. ⁵² SB 162. Note that while the specific term “work” is taken from Hegel, Merleau-Ponty also links the general idea to Husserl.

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consciousness away from intellectualism, I am potentially still dealing with a traditional conception of consciousness. But it is possible that I have not taken a full account of the way in which Merleau-Ponty is transforming the very notion of consciousness such that it cannot really be employed in the manner I am using it here. Thus, rather than connecting perception and embodied action in a manner such that one arrives at a revised or altered version of idealism, Merleau-Ponty might be reworking the notion of consciousness so strongly that it cannot support an idealist conception of the mental. Of course, I would reject this point and argue that an appropriately idealist conception of the mental is maintained. The rest of this chapter will proceed as though that is the case, in order to fully present the transcendental idealist interpretation of Structure. But this issue will need to be reconsidered in Chapter 4 §1, where I will more fully make the case that Structure’s reworking of the notions of consciousness and perception does not undermine the idealist interpretation.

5. Work, Life, and the Transcendental Structures of Perception With the introduction of the concept “work” the transcendental aspects of Structure come more clearly into view, because we begin to see how MerleauPonty’s view incorporates something of the structural analysis thesis. In its most general statement, his argument is that perception is structured in such a way that it is possible for us to perceive signification in forms. But as is seen in the discussion of the centrality of the organism for lower animals, perception is structured to perceive form insofar as the holistic relations in the environment link up with our own action possibilities. The idea that humans perceive the environment as affording possibilities for action which we can then alter via the creation of use-objects is an extension of and enrichment of the way in which the species a priori structures the animal’s environment as enabling action. To put the point another way, we perceive the world as composed of systems of holistic relations in which we are engaged, and which enable us to live in that world. Merleau-Ponty does not provide a systematic description of the transcendental structures of consciousness that fit his view. Along with the above discussion of form and work, however, there are other aspects of his analyses in Structure that can be interpreted as presenting such structures. For example, in the section of chapter III on the vital order Merleau-Ponty notes that “living being is known long before the inorganic,” which is to say that children perceive living beings prior to perceiving things as objects.⁵³ He takes this to be indicative of perception

⁵³ SB 157.

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in general; it is oriented toward the grasping of life in things. What this means is that perception is oriented to recognize not just forms, but forms with an “immanent signification”; they set the terms of their own equilibrium. He frequently refers to such forms as “physiognomies,” and at one point goes so far as to say that “the truth is that there are no things, only physiognomies.”⁵⁴ He also claims that “this immediate apprehension of structure . . . is the condition of possibility of all judgements of recognition as well as of all associations of ideas.”⁵⁵ Thus we see a specific reference to a way in which perception underpins intellect. A few pages later in the discussion of the human order Merleau-Ponty presents another specification of the transcendental role of the perception of form. He notes that “nascent perception” is oriented toward human intentions rather than toward objective properties or “pure qualities.”⁵⁶ From the beginning human perception is oriented toward a particularly human world made up of living beings that engage in particular kinds of actions. Perceiving “things,” or objective qualities is a kind of abstraction or second-order experience: In adults, ordinary reality is a human reality and when use-objects—a glove, a shoe—with their human mark are placed among natural objects and are contemplated as things for the first time . . . and are brought to the condition of a pure spectacle and invested with a sort of eternity, we have the impression of acceding to another world, to a surreality, because the involvement which binds us to the human world is broken for the first time, because a nature “in itself ” is allowed to show through.⁵⁷

Merleau-Ponty immediately notes a possible criticism. Surely this is the case for adults because they have come to learn what the use-objects are used for, and they have been habituated to relate to them that way. This does not show anything about nascent perception, however; the infant would have no idea what a glove is for, and thus would initially view it as a mere object. Thus, for the infant the gloveas-object wouldn’t be a “surreality,” it would be straightforward reality. The orientation toward human action would thus be a learned trait rather than a transcendental structure. While Merleau-Ponty admits that infants could not perceive the specific uses of objects, he rejects the idea that they thus perceive ensembles of qualities. Language plays a role in the constitution of the perceived world from the beginning; infants perceive the world as being spoken of and designated by the language used by older speakers. Because of the role of language, and the fact that infants live, from the beginning, with older humans who constantly engage with use-objects, infants

⁵⁴ SB 168.

⁵⁵ SB 157.

⁵⁶ SB 166.

⁵⁷ SB 167.

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perceive a kind of world of use-objects in general even if they do not grasp the specific uses. As Merleau-Ponty artfully puts the point, infants perceive the world as “that minimum of stage setting which is necessary for the performance of a human drama.”⁵⁸ But this still suggests the possibility that the perception of the human world is learned; it may just be learned in a general way very quickly due to the fact that infants are immediately bombarded with language and other human-centered stimuli. Merleau-Ponty rejects this possibility: The simple de facto presence of other human beings and of use-objects or cultural objects in the infantile milieu cannot explain the forms of primitive perception as a cause explains its effect. Consciousness is not comparable to a plastic material which would receive its privileged structure from the outside . . . If language did not encounter some predisposition for the act of speech in the child who hears speaking, it would remain for him a sonorous phenomenon among others for a long time; it would have no power over the mosaic of sensations possessed by infantile consciousness; one could not understand how it could play the guiding role which psychologists agree in granting to it in the constitution of the perceived world.⁵⁹

The ability for language and the general ability to perceive a world of human actions must require that the structures are “prefigured” in consciousness. Merleau-Ponty indicates that this must be the case because the human world is present for the infant in a manner that happens far too quickly for it to be built out of a series of stimuli that are taken on board by the infant.⁶⁰ Nevertheless, Merleau-Ponty does not believe that the child could have an innate sense of the specific uses of objects; “it is clear that a child who had never seen an article of clothing would not know how to act with clothing.”⁶¹ What this shows is the transcendental nature of his view. The child is not born with substantive knowledge of language or human actions. Rather the child is born with a form of consciousness that is generally structured so as to be able to take part in language and human action. The knowledge of how to speak a specific language or engage in specific actions (like “acting with clothing”) would require this general structure to be combined with an encounter with the actual world. ⁵⁸ SB 168. ⁵⁹ SB 169. ⁶⁰ In a very general sense, Merleau-Ponty’s point is similar to Noam Chomsky’s poverty of stimulus argument for the innateness of language (which was also developed out of a critique of behaviorism). For a brief overview of this issue see Fiona Cowie, “Innateness and Language,” The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Fall 2017 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.), URL = . A possible difference is that Merleau-Ponty vehemently denies the “absurd thesis of an innateness of these fundamental structures of conduct” (SB 170). Rather than being innate, the structures are transcendental. ⁶¹ SB 170.

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The structure of perception provides the conditions of possibility for having a human world while lived perceptual experience provides the human world. This returns us to the discussion of the link between perception and intellect. When Merleau-Ponty says in chapter II that the ability to relate to objective stimuli is part of a “higher mode of behavior,” he clearly does not mean that the higher modes of behavior primarily relate to the world objectively. Regarding the world “objectively” (i.e. as being composed of determinate objects which are clearly differentiated from one another and from the conscious subject) is a kind of second-order ability of human beings that rests on a first-order active involvement with an environment filled with human meanings. This also suggests a caveat to the idea that humans must perceive the world as affording action. While this is generally true, our ability to engage in virtual action can be extended into an ability to consider the world objectively in intellectual analysis. Language facilitates this on Merleau-Ponty’s view. In the first instance, language is aligned with “work.” Merleau-Ponty lists it among the cultural objects that facilitate the development of new forms of behavior, and he describes speech as “a means of adaptation to the ‘unorganized mass.’ ”⁶² He then later notes, however, that language enables the human being to cease “to adhere immediately to the milieu” so that humans can “elevate [the milieu/environment] to the status of spectacle” and take “possession of it mentally by means of knowledge properly so called.”⁶³ Language gives us the ability to designate elements of the environment in declarative terms and thus take them as determinate, and this further allows us to link them via judgements, inferences, and other logical operations. Because lived perception is linked to intellectual activity via language in this way, Merleau-Ponty notes that “the knowledge of a universe will already be prefigured in lived perception.”⁶⁴ We should again remind ourselves that “universe” was Brunschvicg’s term for the totality of our rational/scientific judgements regarding nature. That that universe is prefigured in lived perception is significant. Lived perception is the fundamental element of consciousness and provides a basis for our ability to engage in scientific activity. It does not, however, comprise some sort of foundational layer that is wholly separable from intellectual behavior.⁶⁵ Lived perception directly leads to intellectual activity, and while Merleau-Ponty does not elaborate on this in the quoted passage, it is clear that intellectual activity becomes a part of lived perception as well, insofar as its creations (such as logic, mathematics, or natural science) become use-objects or cultural objects which inform our ability to engender new behaviors. Interestingly, Merleau-Ponty aligns

⁶² SB 162–3, quote on p. 163. ⁶³ SB 174. ⁶⁴ SB 176. ⁶⁵ Thus, Structure bolsters my arguments against Hubert Dreyfus’s foundationalist interpretation of Merleau-Ponty made in Berendzen, “Coping Without Foundations: On Dreyfus’s Use of MerleauPonty,” International Journal of Philosophical Studies 18:5 (2010), 629–49.

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art with intellect in this discussion as well, because the artist steps outside of lived perception to express a new perspective on the world. And again, art moves outside of, yet is prefigured in, lived perception. Merleau-Ponty insists that “the life of consciousness outside itself [i.e. in the environment, through perception] . . . on the one hand, and, on the other, the consciousness of self and of a universe [through intellect and art] . . . cannot be purely and simply juxtaposed. The problem of perception lies completely in this duality.”⁶⁶ Merleau-Ponty both sees non-intellectualistic perception as primary and sees intellectual activity as a natural extension, rather than distortion, of that primary mode. This helps further clarify the idea that the human perspective is oriented toward understanding nature (in all three orders) as involving qualitative order. This springs from the transcendental structure of consciousness. The human perspective, which is an extension of our particular bodily perspective (the species a priori) is structured so that we perceive “life,” internally meaningful wholes, in nature. And it is further structured so that we perceive those wholes as open to our bodily engagement with them; we perceive not just life in nature, but the possibility of living in nature. And finally, our perspective enables us to make a secondorder move wherein we judge nature, and know nature, to be so meaningfully structured.

6. The Critique of Critical Idealism and a Phenomenological Conception of the Transcendental The previous four sections of this chapter interpret the results of Structure, primarily as found in chapters I–III, as implying a form of transcendental idealism that supports an embodied form of the thesis of transcendental perspectivism. They also present the beginnings of a version of the transcendental structural analysis thesis which takes consciousness to be structured to experience a distinctly human world. With these points established, this section will examine some of the more specific things Merleau-Ponty says about transcendental philosophy in chapter IV of Structure, and will evaluate how these claims fit with the results of the earlier sections of this chapter. At the conclusion of chapter III, Merleau-Ponty notes that the analysis of the three orders leads to a “double aspect” or “double relation” between the mental and the physical. On the one hand, the mental is “liberated” from the physical, insofar as it cannot be explained in reductive, physicalistic terms. On the other hand, the mental is “founded” on the physical (and the living) insofar as there is a

⁶⁶ SB 176. Unlike Brunschvicg, Merleau-Ponty places art on the same level as science. Both play a role in our higher-level sense-making activities.

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progression of form within the three orders. Merleau-Ponty goes on to note that in order to clarify this conception of the relation of the mental and physical, he needs to situate his view “with respect to the classical solutions and in particular with respect to critical idealism.”⁶⁷ Because Merleau-Ponty’s views on Brunschvicg and critical idealism are discussed in Chapter 2 §§2–3 of this book, I will not go into his criticisms in great detail. But it is important to review Merleau-Ponty’s contrast between his view and critical idealism here, however, because it sets the stage for his novel construal of transcendental idealism in chapter IV. Merleau-Ponty actually approves of critical idealism insofar as it corrects the problems of causal/mechanistic thought by realizing that nature has a meaningful structure that is grasped by consciousness.⁶⁸ But critical idealism is overly intellectualistic; it construes all consciousness as the thought of determinate content which is related via logical structures. As such, for Brunschvicg perception provides access to “a superficial and mutilated world”; it provides bits of information that are only meaningful when elaborated in a scientific theory.⁶⁹ Such a theory does not so much join mind and body as it leaves out the body by transforming it into a bit of theory. Insofar as it ignores the body, critical idealism also ends up in an excessive anti-realism, as consciousness is shut off from genuine contact with the world. The point on which Merleau-Ponty agrees with critical idealism—that causal thought cannot properly explain the link between soul and body—is elaborated toward the end of chapter IV’s consideration of “classical solutions.” But MerleauPonty takes the point in a new direction: . . . the experience of a real thing cannot be explained by the action of that thing on my mind: the only way for a thing to act on a mind is to offer it a meaning, to manifest itself to it, to constitute itself vis-a-vis the mind in its intelligible articulations . . . In order to indicate both the intimacy of objects to the subject and the presence in them of solid structures which distinguish them from appearances, they will be called “phenomena”; and philosophy, to the extent that it adheres to this theme, becomes a phenomenology, that is, an inventory of consciousness as milieu of the universe.⁷⁰

Knowledge, and indeed experience as a whole, cannot be based on causal impingements because the “grounds of our affirmations” have to be found in the

⁶⁷ SB 184. ⁶⁸ In discussing this point, Theodore Geraets notes that “Merleau-Ponty fears empiricism even more than criticism . . . the latter does not seem to have lost all credibility” (Vers une nouvelle philosophie, 129–30). While Merleau-Ponty is clearly critical of Brunschvicgian critical idealism, it is important to note (as Geraets does at other points as well; see e.g. pp. 66, 96, 99) that his view is also indebted to it. ⁶⁹ SB 201, quoting Brunschvicg, L’Experience humaine et la causalité physique, 73. ⁷⁰ SB 199.

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“proper sphere.”⁷¹ That sphere is the sphere of meaning; on Merleau-Ponty’s view it is the sphere in which the world is grasped as composed of forms which enable human action. After asserting this point Merleau-Ponty makes a crucial move in relating this to phenomenology (this is the only instance of the term “phenomenology” found in Structure). Because our experience of the world cannot be grasped via causal analysis, it must be considered from an internal first-person analysis (“internal” here meaning internal to experience, not pertaining to internal mental contents). Phenomenology provides this analysis and the shift from the “outside spectator” to first-person analysis is completed. It must be noted that this reference to phenomenology comes in the midst of a consideration of both the strengths and weaknesses of intellectualist views, and while Merleau-Ponty accepts the rejection of naturalistic views of knowledge he also rejects critical idealism’s intellectualist view of perception. Merleau-Ponty will ultimately argue for a non-intellectualist construal of phenomenology. But linking phenomenology and transcendental idealism makes sense on Merleau-Ponty’s terms. Phenomenological analysis reveals the transcendental structures, of the type mentioned in the previous section, of our embodied perspective on the world. Near the beginning of the penultimate section of Structure, Merleau-Ponty casts the rejection of naturalistic/causal conceptions of experience in idealist terms: Since the relations of the physical system and the forces which act upon it and those of the living being and its milieu are not the external and blind relations of juxtaposed realities, but dialectical relations in which the effect of each partial action is determined by its signification for the whole, the human order of consciousness does not appear as a third order superimposed on the two others, but as their condition of possibility and their foundation. The problem of the relations of the soul and the body seems to disappear from the point of view of this absolute consciousness, milieu of the universe, as it did from the critical point of view.⁷²

Along with one of the most direct references to the thesis of transcendental perspectivism in Merleau-Ponty’s works, this passage contains a succinct statement of the general point of Merleau-Ponty’s argument in Structure. Recall that Structure’s introduction begins by announcing that the goal of the text is to ⁷¹ SB 199. There is a similarity here with the critique of the “myth of the given” popularized by Wilfred Sellars and his followers. For an overview of this comparison see Carl Sachs, “Discursive and Somatic Intentionality: Merleau-Ponty Contra ‘McDowell or Sellars’ ” International Journal of Philosophical Studies 22:2 (2014), 199–227. There is also a similarity with Fichte’s rejection of “dogmatism” in the “First Introduction” to the “nova methodo” version of the Wissenschaftslehre. See J. G. Fichte, Introductions to the Wissenschaftslehre and Other Writings 1797–1800, trans. Daniel Breazeale, Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing (1994), 20–5. ⁷² SB 202. Emphasis added. A paragraph break has been removed from the passage.

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understand the relation of consciousness and nature. In this passage, it is noted that the problem of the relation of soul and body—which maps onto consciousness and nature—disappears from the transcendental point of view. This is because consciousness and nature are seen to be linked dialectically. To put the point another way, we can see that nature has its meaning insofar as the perspective of “absolute consciousness” provides the conditions of possibility for it to be seen as meaningful. So, the meaning of nature and consciousness is inextricably linked. We might be wary of this passage, however. For one, it uses the language of intellectualism, and ends by tying the view expressed to critical philosophy. Furthermore, it comes at the beginning of a section titled “Is there not a truth of naturalism?” We might thus think that Merleau-Ponty is presenting a view with which he disagrees and which will later on be replaced by a view that displays this purported truth of naturalism. This suspicion is somewhat correct. The quoted passage above does not fully incorporate the element of naturalism that MerleauPonty thinks is true, and so his view will be amended somewhat. But this does not mean that the passage above expresses something significantly different from his considered view. Importantly the reference to critical philosophy notes a point of comparison and a point of contrast. The above passage expresses something of the comparison without making the point of contrast completely clear. That point of contrast is the “truth of naturalism” that Merleau-Ponty wants to incorporate in his view. It is the truth of basic realism and the fact that our connection with the “real” world comes through consciousness’s inherence in an organism. But this does not move us away from the transcendental attitude. Rather, Merleau-Ponty notes, after a brief consideration of perception from a physiological point of view, that his analyses show that “the living body and nervous system, instead of being like annexes of the physical world in which the occasional causes of perception would be prepared, are ‘phenomena’ emerging from among those which consciousness knows.”⁷³ The truths of naturalistic/ scientific analyses of the body must be incorporated into the transcendental point of view, otherwise their significance will be missed. Properly grasping this requires seeing the body, and the body’s link with the environment, in terms of form. The idea that the body and world are linked via meaningful holistic forms is thus the idea which distinguishes Merleau-Ponty’s theory from critical thought.⁷⁴ But Merleau-Ponty is emphatic that form can only be grasped as meaningful from the point of view of “a consciousness which considers it.”⁷⁵ In chapter IV Merleau-Ponty also crucially ties basic realism to the fact that perception presents objects “through a multiplicity of ‘profiles.’ ”⁷⁶ He refers to this as a logical necessity and it is in fact a transcendental structure of perceptual

⁷³ SB 205.

⁷⁴ SB 208.

⁷⁵ SB 209.

⁷⁶ SB 212.

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consciousness. To be an embodied perceiver is to confront objects that cannot be taken in all at once. This is seen from within our perceptual perspectives, and thus from within that perspective we experience the fact that there is an element of reality outside of our grasp (i.e. there is always the possibility of perceiving a new profile). Thus, the existence of an “external” world is grasped from within consciousness’s perspective; it does not have to be established via a third-person analysis that relates an external world with consciousness via a causal link. A crucial element of Merleau-Ponty’s view is that transcendence is given to immanence as transcendent. Intersubjectivity plays a significant role in this; the fact that we confront other perceivers who examine other profiles of objects than we do, and which allows for a “verbal account” that reconciles these profiles, points to the existence of an objective world beyond our limited view.⁷⁷ MerleauPonty takes this aspect of perception to be so important that he says “the connection of the soul and body signifies nothing other than the ecceitas of knowledge by profiles.”⁷⁸ When this givenness of transcendence is connected with Merleau-Ponty’s insistence that the significance in forms exists only for consciousness, a natural link with Allais’s ontology of essential manifestness (as discussed in §4 of the introduction) is suggested. Significance is presented to consciousness as an aspect of objects given as transcendent, yet it also is dependent upon our grasping it. Thus Merleau-Ponty seeks to overcome the problems of critical idealism—its intellectualism, and its excessive anti-realism which pushes it toward a strong ontological idealist view—from within transcendental philosophy. From the point of view of this book (though not from Merleau-Ponty’s explicit point of view) he does so from within a transcendental idealism. These analyses are formed quite briefly in chapter IV however, and the crucial discussion of perceptual profiles, objectivity, and intersubjectivity is truncated. Merleau-Ponty knows this, and that is why Structure ends on a promissory note, with its analysis of perception and corresponding development of a new transcendental philosophy to be fully delivered in a subsequent work. Thus, Structure can be seen as providing some crucial building blocks for the development of a new, embodied transcendental idealism which will be more fully explicated in Phenomenology. Or so this chapter claims. While the contention of this book is that the interpretation of Structure presented in this chapter is substantially correct, it has ignored some very important elements of the book which speak against the transcendental idealist interpretation. The next chapter will examine these elements, and argue that while they raise important issues that any Merleau-Ponty-inspired idealism must confront, they do not on balance undo the transcendental idealist interpretation of Structure.

⁷⁷ See SB 211–15; the reference to the “verbal account” is on p. 213.

⁷⁸ SB 214.

4 Problematizing Transcendental Idealism in The Structure of Behavior 1. Consciousness and the Mental in Structure Chapter 3 interprets Structure as arguing for a new form of transcendental idealism. It is a form of transcendental idealism because it holds to versions of the thesis of transcendental perspectivism and the thesis of transcendental structural analysis. It is a new form primarily because of the emphasis on embodiment. This new emphasis is not simple to accommodate, however. It poses problems for both of the main theses of transcendental idealism. This chapter will consider those problems, and show how the transcendental idealist interpretation can handle them. The most obvious problem has to do with Merleau-Ponty’s conception of the mental. It is possible that the emphasis on embodiment has altered the concept so extensively that it no longer supports an idealist interpretation. It should be helpful to frame this issue in terms of the three versions of the mental discussed in Chapter 1 §1. Transcendental idealism primarily thinks of mind in the second, individualist sense; reality is (at least in part) determined by the structures of our own, individual, subjective transcendental perspective. This does not entail subjective relativism; the transcendental structures of our perspectives are general and universal, and do not vary from subject to subject. But transcendental idealism is still subjective in the sense that the transcendental structures do not exist apart from their instantiation in the individual minds of conscious subjects. In order for his view to be a version of transcendental idealism, MerleauPonty’s views on consciousness and the mind must maintain some element of this individualist subjectivism. Insofar as the world is structured by the subject’s perspective, there must be a sense in which the subject is primary, or central, to the meaning of its world. But Merleau-Ponty’s emphasis on our embodiment appears to “decenter” elements of subjectivity insofar as putatively “mental” contents are re-described in terms of organism–environment interactions. And at the heart of his discussion of the human order in Structure he says that his “conception of consciousness . . . is profoundly modified” and that “one will doubtless be obliged

Embodied Idealism: Merleau-Ponty’s Transcendental Philosophy. Joseph C. Berendzen, Oxford University Press. © Joseph C. Berendzen 2023. DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780192874764.003.0005

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to abandon the notion of mental activity as the principle of all coordinations.”¹ Merleau-Ponty announces that he will present a modified view of consciousness and the mental, and he associates this with a decentering move—the rejection of a kind of coordinating mastery. The most straightforward way of stating Merleau-Ponty’s decentering move is that he construes the mental itself in terms of form.² Recall that a form is a holistic ensemble of dynamically interrelated elements that work together according to a norm. If the mind is a form, it cannot be an enclosed space wherein a single controlling element surveys a transparent stream of experience. Consciousness is, rather, “divided into different types of acts of consciousness” that comprise “a network of significative intentions which are sometimes clear to themselves and sometimes, on the contrary, lived rather than known.”³ Furthermore, MerleauPonty suggests that this network comprises not just a single form, but a collection of forms. For instance, he asserts that “representative consciousness is only one of the forms of consciousness.”⁴ This, then, fits with the fact that he aligns the human order with the mental field; consciousness and mind are associated with a particular region of human activity wherein certain forms (representation, perception, emotion, etc.) arise. Importantly, this ultimately leads Merleau-Ponty to claim that “the mental, we have said, is reducible to the structure of behavior.”⁵ This emphasizes that the mental is not just a form; insofar as it is “of behavior” it is a form comprised of relations between elements of the human organism and its environment. And the idea that the mental is reduced to interactions between organism and environment suggests a strong rejection of the idea that “mind” entails any purely subjective contents. This reductionism fits quite well with the very end of the discussion of the human order, which suggests a kind of rapprochement with behaviorism. While it is clear throughout the text that he rejects the atomistic/mechanistic view embraced by behaviorism, Merleau-Ponty agrees that “the mental . . . is comprehensible from the outside.”⁶ And while he disagrees with the behaviorists’ rejection of introspection, that is because “introspection itself is a procedure of knowledge which is homogeneous with external observation.”⁷ In this passage it appears that first-personal reports regarding consciousness do not really differ in kind from third-personal reports. Insofar as consciousness is a relation between an organism and its environment, it is open to external observation. When this section of the text is taken by itself, it suggests a kind of radically reductionist view of the mental. Merleau-Ponty appears to reject any uniquely subjective

¹ SB 172. ² I am indebted to an anonymous reviewer for Oxford University Press for emphasizing this point, which I did not fully consider in earlier drafts of this chapter and Chapter 3. ³ SB, quotes on pp. 172 and 173 respectively. ⁴ SB 173. ⁵ SB 221. ⁶ SB 183. ⁷ SB 183.

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experiential contents in favor of casting the mental wholly in the world and available for observation. If this were Merleau-Ponty’s position, it would be fatal for the transcendental idealist interpretation. Not only would it undermine any conception of consciousness and the mental that could support the thesis of transcendental perspectivism, but the idea that there is nothing special about the first-person perspective would obviously undermine the idea that there is a transcendental turn effected in Structure. The rest of the text makes abundantly clear, though, that MerleauPonty does not hold this reductionist position. Clearly, he wants to reject the idea of the conscious mind as a lucid, self-controlled entity that ranges over its world by clearly and distinctly grasping determinate contents. Instead he understands consciousness to encompass multiple relations between subject and world, many of which are indeterminate and implicit in action (in “lived consciousness”) rather than determinately thought. Nevertheless, he still emphasizes an ineliminably individual, subjective aspect of our experience that can sustain the transcendental idealist interpretation. To see this, one should note that just prior to the discussion of introspection and external observation, Merleau-Ponty asserts that “lived consciousness does not exhaust the human dialectic.”⁸ His point here is connected to “work,” or the human ability to remake nature in ways that fit with our activities. Crucially for the current discussion, he ties this to the “power of choosing and varying points of view”; we have the ability to regard things under different aspects. We can see a tree branch as a tool, a weapon, or an element of nature. Thus the “meaning of human work . . . is the recognition, beyond the present milieu, of a world of things visible for each ‘I’ under a plurality of aspects.”⁹ Two elements are very important here. First, the notion of having a “point of view” from which an “I”—a subject— takes in a visible “world of things” shows that Merleau-Ponty maintains a traditional notion of perception as involving awareness of the world as a subjective experience. This awareness may be thoroughly tied up with our embodied engagement with the world, but it is a subjective experience nonetheless. Second, and more importantly, the notion of “varying points of view” ties into his discussion of perceptual perspective—which is ineliminably individual—in chapter IV. Perception is necessarily perspectival; the perceiving subject experiences the world from their own unique bodily position: I cannot simply identify what I perceive and the thing itself. The real color of the object which I look at is and will always remain known to myself alone. I have no means whatsoever of knowing if the colored impression which it gives to others is

⁸ SB 175.

⁹ SB 175.

  

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identical to my own. Our intersubjective confrontations bear only upon the intelligible structure of the perceived world . . . But, the relationships being conserved, it could happen that the scale of colors which he sees is completely different from mine . . . It follows from this that perception, as knowledge of existing things, is an individual consciousness and not the consciousness in general . . . even when I pronounce the word “this,” I already relate a singular and lived existence to the essence of lived existence. But these acts of expression or reflection intend an original text which cannot be deprived of meaning.¹⁰

Again, it is clear that Merleau-Ponty cannot intend to completely eliminate the traditional sense of “mind.” His philosophy retains a place for individual, subjective experience, and this experience is the “original text” upon which expression and reflection are built. And this “building upon” the original text allows for “intersubjective confrontations” to elaborate a shared “intelligible structure” for the world. This extends the point discussed above in Chapter 3 §§4–5; humans have the ability to step back from that original involvement of the world and grasp things objectively—including through language—and elaborate a shared conception of the world. All beings with sensory organs would have a perceptual perspective, insofar as they would take in information about their environments from a particular embodied location. But it is a special aspect of the human order that we can engage with the virtual by considering the possibility of other perspectives. This ability requires bodily engagement with other objects, and, primarily through language, other subjects. But it is clearly a power of the individual subject who has an ineliminably individual perspective. The discussion of introspection and external observation has to be understood in relation to ability to engage with the virtual. Insofar as subjects describe their experience, they cast it in (linguistic) terms of the virtual shared perspectives, and in this sense their observations are on the same footing as any other observer. And insofar as their experience is of their interactions with the world, the form of that interaction is available to other perspectives that can also be cast in virtual terms. And thus, perceiver and observer can forge an objective understanding of that experience. But this does not override the point that each of these people has a “singular and lived experience,” an irreducibly unique perspective on the world.¹¹ Notably, the discussion of the uniqueness of our perceptual perspectives leads Merleau-Ponty to reject the idea that our conscious perceptual experiences could be reduced to physical correlates: The perceived is not an effect of cerebral functioning; it is its signification . . . the signification of nerve functioning has organic bases which do not figure in it.

¹⁰ SB 211.

¹¹ See SB 221–2.

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  Philosophically, this fact admits of the following translation: each time that certain sensible phenomena are actualized in my field of consciousness, a properly placed observer would see certain other phenomena in my brain which cannot be given to me myself in the mode of actuality. In order to understand these phenomena, he would be led to grant them a signification which would concur with the content of my perception.¹²

While he accepts that perceptual experience is correlated with certain “nerve functioning,” it is not reducible to it. They are different phenomena, and insofar as my brain functioning when I am perceiving could be observed by someone else, those functions become the phenomena of their own first-person experience, but not mine. He then goes on to tie this point to the fact that we cannot get outside of our own perceptual perspective except virtually. Throughout chapter IV he asserts that our perceptual perspectives are an irreducible element of our conscious, mental lives. When considering Merleau-Ponty’s claim that he will “profoundly modify” the notion of consciousness, we have to consider Structure’s context. His main targets in the book are atomistic materialism and critical idealism. The latter would have presented the primary views on consciousness and the mental that he would want to modify. This is, in the first instance, an intellectualistic conception of the mind as an entity which grasps, via judgement, determinate elements which are knit into a systematic, scientifically elaborated “universe.” This is the conception of mind he rejects as a “principle of all coordinations.” But this does not entail that he rejects all subject-centrality; he still embraces the view that we have a particular perspective on the world from which our worlds gain meaning. In considering Merleau-Ponty’s modification of the notion of consciousness, it is important to note that critical idealism actually strongly rejected introspectionism, and thus a sense of subjectivism.¹³ Both of the major figures of MerleauPonty’s philosophical youth, Brunschvicg and Bergson, argued consciousness is a kind of constant flow that is interrupted by, and thus modified by, rational thought. But the former rejected the latter’s view that non-rational, and thus non-modifying, access to conscious experience is possible. True insight comes, for Brunschvicg, from rational thought about the ideal structure of reality, not from some internal intuition. And insofar as that ideal structure is the structure of reality, or the “universe,” it is not subjective. In light of this, we can see that Merleau-Ponty’s modification of consciousness—insofar as it is a modification of critical idealism’s view—actually entails embracing of a kind of subjectivism. It is a part of his insistence on the

¹² SB 217. ¹³ For a discussion of these points, on which the rest of this paragraph relies, see Terzi, Rediscovering Léon Brunschvicg’s Critical Idealism, 40–3.

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notion that mind is intimately connected to the concrete world and not just a rational “universe” that our perceptual relation with the world happens from a particular perspective. That subjective perspectival experience reveals that we are intimately connected to the world that must be separate from us because of the possibility of other perspectives. Merleau-Ponty’s version of basic realism requires that we take seriously the analysis of our own conscious perspective. This is why Merleau-Ponty’s move away from critical idealism was attended by a move toward phenomenology. “The mental” names a form that obtains in the connection between body and world. But it is a special kind of form: The mind does not use the body, but realizes itself through it while at the same time transferring the body outside of physical space. When we were describing the structures of behavior it was indeed to show that they are irreducible to the dialectic of physical stimulus and muscular contraction and that in this sense behavior, far from being a thing which exists in-itself, is a whole significative for a consciousness which considers it; but it was at the same time and reciprocally to make manifest in “expressive conduct” the view of a consciousness under our eyes, to show a mind which comes into the world.¹⁴

Merleau-Ponty is clear that it is a new view of consciousness that he is considering, which is realized through embodied action and thus must be seen as coming “into the world.” But at the same time, he is at pains to emphasize the uniqueness of consciousness and the fact that behavior is only a significant whole for the consciousness that considers it. And this passage notably comes in chapter IV just a bit before the discussion of perceptual perspective. These discussions taken together add up to the idea that behavior is only meaningful for a consciousness that grasps forms from a unique, individual perspective. This consciousness is still intimately engaged with the world; it is because of a particular relation with the world that the subject can have a unique perspective on the world. This last quote raises a massive question, however. Previously, it was shown that Merleau-Ponty takes the mental to be a structure of behavior. But he also appears to say that one of the unique functions of the mental is to find meaning in forms. Thus, the mind is described as being a structure of behavior, yet structures of behavior only exist for a consciousness. At best this seems problematic, and potentially flatly contradictory. How can forms only exist for consciousness if consciousness itself is a form? To sort out this issue, we need to first dive more deeply into the idea that the meaning in forms does not exist for itself, but only for consciousness.

¹⁴ SB 208–9.

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2. Anthropomorphism and Idealism in The Structure of Behavior Does Merleau-Ponty really, on the balance of what is said in Structure, hold the view that forms are only meaningful for consciousness? On the one hand, he clearly presents “value and signification” as being an aspect of the mental field, such that meaning in physical and vital orders is dependent upon the human order. On the other hand, Merleau-Ponty frequently addresses the possibility that his claims in Structure are overly “anthropomorphic” and wants to say that they are not. The discussions of anthropomorphism (which the previous chapter ignored) would seem to put a very different spin on Merleau-Ponty’s view. There is thus a large question as to whether there is meaning in nature in itself apart from our human perspective, or whether there is only meaning present insofar as it is present for us. My interpretation is that the text appears to vacillate between the two options not because Merleau-Ponty’s views are fraught with contradiction, but because he wants to avoid extremes on either side. He wants to accommodate a kind of basic realism regarding natural forms while maintaining the truth of the transcendental perspectivism thesis. Thus, the arguments against anthropomorphism are not so much aimed at transcendental idealism as they are aimed at intellectualism and strong ontological idealism. Furthermore, while this is clearly a point that requires going outside the text, I believe that Structure is aiming at something like the essential manifestness view as it appears to oscillate around the anthropomorphism issue. It should be helpful to contrast the transcendental idealist interpretation with a prominent interpretation of Structure that looks at this problem very differently. In Merleau-Ponty’s Developmental Ontology, David Morris takes the anthropomorphism charge to be a crucial interpretive issue posed by Structure, and on his view it leads to an unresolved tension that runs throughout the book. He goes so far as to claim that this tension “drives Structure through tangled twists and turns” and because of this, the book is “deeply at odds with itself, and threatens to tear itself apart.”¹⁵ Morris interprets Structure this way because he thinks that its “deep ontological problem is precisely figuring out how there could be . . . sense within organisms, one that is not merely an anthropomorphic signification.”¹⁶ But insofar as “Structure fails to locate sense in nature” the text fails to solve the problem it sets for itself.¹⁷ “Sense,” as Morris uses it, translates Merleau-Ponty’s “sens,” and especially instances of the term that are translated as “meaning” in the English version of Structure. On the one hand, Morris understands “sense” to have the technical ¹⁵ Morris, Merleau-Ponty’s Developmental Ontology, quotes on pp. 66 and 60 respectively. ¹⁶ Ibid. 63. ¹⁷ Ibid. 60.

  

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meaning that I attributed above (see Chapter 3 §§1–2) to instances of both sens and (primarily) signification. Sense is thus tied to the dynamic interrelations among the parts of holistic forms that work together according to a norm.¹⁸ Morris adds an element to the meaning of sens which is not overtly present in Merleau-Ponty’s usage, though, at least in Structure. He takes sens (especially in those instances when it is translated as “meaning”) to specifically refer to “meaning as arising in and belonging to the being of [the] thing.”¹⁹ Thus his way of construing Merleau-Ponty’s terminology supports the idea that the “deep ontological problem” of the text is to determine how meaning can be present in “the being of the thing” apart from the human perspective. If it were indeed correct that Structure’s aim is to find meaning in nature apart from our perspective, the book would be “deeply at odds with itself,” given the very different conclusions it arrives at in certain points. For example, it is said that the organism “is a whole which is significant for a consciousness which knows it, not a thing which rests in itself.”²⁰ I do not think the text supports Morris’s conception of Structure’s “deep ontological problem” or his construal of “sens,” however.²¹ Based on the fact that Merleau-Ponty overtly calls for a new transcendental philosophy, combined with the elements that support the thesis of transcendental perspectivism, it is more likely that the deep problem in Structure is to figure out how nature can exhibit a qualitative order which is in it for us, for perceiving consciousness, while avoiding intellectualism and the problems of critical idealism. To really see this, however, we need to look more closely at the passages where Merleau-Ponty discusses anthropomorphism. At various points in the early sections of the book, Merleau-Ponty considers the possibility that the holistic analyses taken from Gestalt psychology are anthropomorphic. His typical response in chapter I is that such analyses are simply correct descriptions of nature. For example, at one point he claims that the holistic analysis, “far from being extrinsic and anthropomorphic, would belong to the living being as such,” and a few pages later he concludes chapter I by arguing against the charge of anthropomorphism that the “notion of form does nothing other than express the descriptive properties of certain natural wholes.”²² When

¹⁸ See ibid. 7–8. ¹⁹ Ibid. 63. I emphasize the instances where sens is translated as “meaning” because there are instances translated as “direction” or “sense” for which context indicates a different meaning, as Morris notes. ²⁰ SB 159. ²¹ I do not find “sens” to typically refer to meaning as it is embodied in nature apart from an anthropocentric perspective. Often, “sens” simply means “meaning” in a general way. And sometimes it means the opposite of what Morris claims; see SB 102, 125, and 206–7 for instances where “meaning” (sens) is linked with the idea that it must be expressed in human terms or is tied to our perspective. ²² SB, quotes on pp. 38 and 51. The discussion of anthropomorphism that concludes on p. 51 begins on p. 49 (“problems of ‘order’ can be rejected as anthropomorphic”). See also p. 15, where MerleauPonty suggests that anthropomorphic categories are used, but they are suggested “by the facts.”

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focusing on these passages, the ambiguity noted above seems tilted in favor of the non-anthropomorphic side, finding meaning in nature itself. The problem returns, however, in chapter III. Merleau-Ponty says of physical forms that in them “form is not an object of reality, but an object of perception.”²³ This point is later repeated regarding vital forms, and Merleau-Ponty claims that vital forms do not submit easily to physical descriptions. Instead he says that “the science of life can be constructed only with notions tailored to it and taken from our experience of the living being.”²⁴ On the one hand, life has to be understood through ideas “tailored to” life; the suggestion is that causal/mechanistic explanations are empirically inadequate and that organisms themselves display qualitative order. On the other hand, though, Merleau-Ponty notes that the ideas are taken from our experience. The latter point is suggested a few pages further on when Merleau-Ponty notes that “the organism which biological analysis is concerned with is an ideal unity”; it is arrived at via breaking up “the global ensemble of concrete events according to categories” and then reassembling them according to their “immanent significance and truth of events.”²⁵ Unlike in chapter I, in chapter III the tension tilts toward the side of anthropomorphism, or at least toward the view that meaning cannot be found in nature itself apart from consciousness. Examined in their full context, though, chapter I and chapter III are not really in tension. Rather, chapter III is presenting a development of a view that is only initially presented in chapter I. Keep in mind that in chapter I Merleau-Ponty’s analysis is fully ensconced in the “outside spectator” third-person perspective. In chapter III, the earlier analysis is recognized as inadequate precisely insofar as the role of the spectator’s own perspective has not been questioned. In some sense the discussion of chapter III goes back over the issues presented earlier, but with a new appreciation for the need to analyze the first-person perspective. Nevertheless, within chapter III there is still the question of how nature is presented as meaningful to that perspective. How can something be meaningful in itself for us? Perhaps the solution to this problem can be found between these chapters. In chapter II Merleau-Ponty makes a crucial amendment to the nonanthropomorphic response of chapter I, which is worth quoting at length: If we consider behavior objectively . . . we are never dealing with anything except particular movements responding to particular excitations; all other language would be “anthropomorphic.” But it would still have to be explained why this socalled anthropomorphic interpretation is possible with respect to certain ways of behaving and impossible with respect to others . . . If one refuses to take into consideration, as the object of science, every property of phenomena which is not

²³ SB 143.

²⁴ SB 149.

²⁵ SB 152, emphasis added.

  

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manifested in the intuition of a particular case and which appears only to reflective consciousness—by an analysis of the varied concordances or by a reading of the statistics—it is not anthropomorphism which is excluded, it is science; it is not objectivity which is defended, it is realism and nominalism . . . When one speaks of the structure of the situation and its meaning, these words evidently designate certain givens of human experience and are consequently suspect of anthropomorphism. But “colors,” “lights,” and “pressures” or their expression in physical language are no less so. It is clear that all the terms of which we can make use refer to phenomena of human experience, naive or scientific. The whole question is to know whether they are truly constitutive of the objects intended in an intersubjective experience and necessary for their definition.²⁶

On the one hand, the point of this passage is that the charge of anthropomorphism only makes sense from the standpoint of objective thought; if one sets aside the presuppositions of objectivist metaphysics, what was once “anthropomorphic” merely stands as proper description. Insofar as this is the case, the passage supports the point that the description fits certain observed phenomena and its terms should grasp what is “truly constitutive of the objects.” On the other hand, though, it is noted that some of the properties of the phenomena that are included in what Merleau-Ponty finds to be the proper analysis (on pains of not “excluding science”) are those which “appear only to reflective consciousness.” This fits with the point regarding biology dealing with an “ideal unity”; the correct understanding of behavior should include phenomena grasped according to categories that can only be drawn from human reflective thought. One might respond that because he is talking about biology, it is only the scientific understanding that depends on categories of human thought. But the end of the passage speaks against this. The meaning of the “structure of the situation,” i.e. the broader meaning of the organic form, is such that “all the terms of which we can make use” to describe it reference human experience. One might counter that it is only what we say about the organic form’s meaning that is constrained by the terms of human experience, and this leaves the meaning itself, apart from what we say about it, untouched. But this response is ultimately incoherent; one cannot talk about (or write about, in a philosophical text) the meaning of something as it exists apart from the terms in which we talk about it. At least Merleau-Ponty clearly does not argue for such a thing in Structure. It is also highly suggestive that he says that it is not just the terms used by “reflective consciousness” that are anthropomorphic, but also “ ‘colors,’ ‘lights,’ and ‘pressures.’ ” The qualities that we perceive to be directly in objects are also (in this case, presumably “naive” rather than “scientific”) terms of human

²⁶ SB 102, emphasis added.

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experience. While this is not elaborated on, the reference to perceptual qualities suggests Allais’s point regarding color (see §4 of the introduction); it must be taken as both of the object and dependent upon us. And here it is clear that the issue is not just with language, as though anthropomorphic terms are layered on non-anthropomorphic meaning. Color is necessarily experiential and depends upon us for its being. The upshot of this passage, then, is that Merleau-Ponty wants, in a way, to both accept and reject anthropomorphism. He rejects it insofar as he rejects the idea that external categories are wholly forced upon the phenomena; the categories used should be in some way adequate to their objects. But he embraces something like anthropomorphism insofar as he believes that the categories of human experience are adequate to the phenomena he is considering, and they are in fact the only categories we can use. And while this goes beyond what MerleauPonty says, it may be the case that the categories of human experience are the only categories that are adequate to the phenomena because the phenomena exhibit essentially manifest attributes. The following passage from later in chapter II must be interpreted in terms of this partial rejection and partial acceptance of anthropomorphism: Nothing would be served by saying that it is we, the spectators, who mentally unite the elements of the situation to which behavior is addressed in order to make them meaningful, that it is we who project into the exterior the intentions of our thinking, since we would still have to discover what it is, what kind of phenomenon is involved upon which this Einfühlung [empathy] rests, what is the sign which invites us to anthropomorphism.²⁷

We do not grant meaning to animal behaviors via an intellectualistic process by projecting our intentions onto the thing. Meaning cannot be projected in this way because it has to match up with the phenomenon via something akin to empathy; there is something in the behavior itself that motivates us to find it as meaningful. And this fact invites us to anthropomorphism; we are motivated to grasp animal behavior in human terms because there is something that leads us to feel meaning (Einfühlung) in it. Again, while this goes beyond what Merleau-Ponty says, the somewhat mysteriously described sign that invites anthropomorphism might be elaborated in terms of essential manifestness. Something like this is suggested by the reference to Einfühlung, as the essentially manifest attribute would be something that is part of the thing (in this case the behavior) but which necessarily requires our “feeling” it.

²⁷ SB 125.

  

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This general point is seen in chapter III as Merleau-Ponty discusses the ways in which biological analyses must find significance in organisms. As is argued in Chapter 3 §3, “life” is a transcendental structure on Merleau-Ponty’s view; vital order refers to a way that our perception categorizes certain appearances. The category of vital order is nonetheless adequate to the organism, or, to put the point another way, the organism itself embodies that order. These two points, that significance is in the organism but only for us, must be held together. This is seen when Merleau-Ponty approvingly quotes Jakob van Uexküll’s claim that “every organism is a melody which sings itself.”²⁸ He immediately adds the claim that has been quoted (in part) above; “this is not to say that it knows this melody and attempts to realize it; it is only to say that it is a whole which is significant for a consciousness which knows it, not a thing which rests in itself.”²⁹ The organism itself is the meaningful whole, but this whole is only seen as “singing its melody” by the perceiver who can make the meaning manifest. It is noteworthy that Morris quotes the first part of this passage but ignores the second part.³⁰ Taken alone, the first part, with the idea that the organism is a melody which sings itself, supports his interpretation. But when one takes the full passage (along with the rest of the arguments in Structure) it becomes clear that the deep ontological problem of the text is not to construe meaning as belonging to the being of nature in itself. There is something in nature that is seen as meaningful. Merleau-Ponty is clearly concerned to establish this point; he is not a strong ontological idealist, and his view is not that consciousness creates nature. But that thing only becomes meaningful insofar as a consciousness “knows” it.³¹ Contra Morris’s interpretation, making sense of this idea is a deep problem for Structure. Does Merleau-Ponty’s theory in Structure entail anthropomorphism? That depends on how one defines the term. If anthropomorphism means, in this context, to force human concepts onto non-human things where they do not actually fit, then the answer is no. He does argue that behaviorism is anthropomorphic in that bad sense, because it imposes the terms of objective thought (via theoretical impositions and via experimental laboratory conditions) onto nature.³² If, on the other hand, anthropomorphism means that nature contains attributes ²⁸ SB 159. Merleau-Ponty does not directly reference Uexküll, rather he cites Buytendijk, “Les Differences essentielles,” 131. Buytendijk does not provide a reference for the quote. ²⁹ SB 159. ³⁰ See Morris, Merleau-Ponty’s Developmental Ontology, 63. In a footnote (n. 7 on p. 63) he does mention that the passage is “shot through with the question of anthropomorphism” but without completely finishing the quote. This is fairly misleading. The implication is that Merleau-Ponty is primarily supporting Morris’s interpretation but with a hint of the anthropomorphic problem, while in fact the full passage clearly says the opposite of what Morris wants it to say. ³¹ I have put “knows” in scare quotes because while Merleau-Ponty uses the term “knows” in the passage under consideration, it is clear from the broader context of Structure that meaning can be present to perceptual consciousness in a non-intellectual manner. See Chapter 4 §4 above. ³² See e.g. SB 44.

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that only show up for human consciousness, then Merleau-Ponty’s theory does embrace anthropomorphism. A major caveat is necessary at this point, however. The point being argued for above is that nature can only be understood from a transcendental perspective. There is a particular way in which human consciousness is structured such that nature is only made manifest to us in certain ways, and in that very particular sense our perspective is anthropomorphic. This point can help us understand why Merleau-Ponty’s preferred view is not anthropomorphic in the bad sense mentioned above while behaviorism is. Behaviorism developed a standpoint using specific cultural objects and use-objects (such as its theoretical beliefs and experimental tools). That standpoint is not transcendental, it is a specific historical creation that is imposed on phenomena it does not wholly fit. On Merleau-Ponty’s view, his theory of form is different. While the theoretical specifics of “form” are clearly connected to historical/cultural developments, Merleau-Ponty thinks the theory better fits the phenomena because it accords with how we actually perceive nature. And we perceive nature that way because our perception is transcendentally structured to find order in our bodily engagement with the environment. That fact is not a cultural creation, it is a condition of possibility for our having perceptual consciousness. Thus, it would perhaps be more appropriate to use the term “idealism” rather than “anthropomorphism” to describe Merleau-Ponty’s view.

3. Meaning in Itself and for Us in Structure While an analysis of the texts in which Merleau-Ponty discusses anthropomorphism shows that a view like Morris’s cannot be correct as an interpretation of Structure, there is still a large philosophical issue to be worked out. What does it really mean for meaningful forms to be in nature but for that meaning to only be available for us? Merleau-Ponty rejects strong ontological idealism, so there has to be a sense in which the forms in nature are not created by us. But if that is the case, why would meaning not simply be in nature, in the way that Morris wants Structure to support? Merleau-Ponty says that a middle position between these two options in correct, and I have said (going beyond the text) that something like Allais’s essential manifestness view could stand as such a middle position. But while Structure suggests such a position, an elaborated description of that view is not provided in the text. Insofar as this is the case, Morris is correct to find some tension present. While the “middle position” is not elaborated in Structure, there are aspects of the text that provide some support for attributing something like the essential manifestness view to Merleau-Ponty. The main point here is that we can interpret Merleau-Ponty as holding that our experience brings us directly into contact with a transcendent reality, yet our experience of that reality is essentially dependent on

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the relation between reality and our embodied, subjective conscious perspective. And again, insofar as the character is essentially manifest, essentially relational, its being is neither wholly immanent nor wholly transcendent. It genuinely entails idealism and basic realism. Meaning can be understood as essentially manifest in this way. The first aspect of Structure that supports the essentially manifest view is the way in which Merleau-Ponty, following Husserl (see Chapter 2 §5 above), describes the transcendence of reality as being given in experience. As is presented in chapter IV of Structure, one key aspect of phenomena that presents this transcendence is their givenness in profiles, or (to use Husserlian terminology) the fact that they are presented as having an “open horizon” of possible determinations.³³ This is crucially tied to the uniqueness of our perceptual perspectives, as was discussed in §1 of this chapter. And this opens up the possibility of both other subjects’ horizons that are beyond us, and the merely virtual notion of a “view from above,” or a taking in of all profiles. Merleau-Ponty initially ties the realist aspect of this view to the position of “naive” consciousness, for which perspective “does not appear to me to be a subjective deformation of things but, on the contrary, to be one of their properties” and it “is precisely because of [perspective] that the perceived possesses in itself a hidden and inexhaustible richness, that it is a “thing.”³⁴ There is a strong realism in naive consciousness; there is no question, from the point of view of normal everyday experience, that we are brought into contact with a world that is independent of us. The key point for the present purposes is that the realist element is tied to a subjective element; the existence of perspectival profiles shows us that there is more to reality than what we take in. Thus, shortly after the above passage Merleau-Ponty notes that “the perceived is grasped . . . as ‘in itself,’ that is, as gifted with an interior which I will never have finished exploring; and as ‘for me,’ that is, as given ‘in person’ through its momentary aspects.”³⁵ This is, however, a description of naive consciousness and is thus not fully considered from a philosophical point of view. Merleau-Ponty shifts to a consideration of a problem for naive consciousness when he notes that there is a “resistance of the body proper,” as seen, for example, in illness, and “the body appears capable of fabricating a pseudo-perception.”³⁶ Merleau-Ponty is considering here, in different terms, the problem that contemporary philosophy of perception often associates with illusion or hallucination. The fact that the body can fabricate false perceptions suggests that our experience is not actually directly of reality. Rather, we might resort to a representationalist view wherein the body is

³³ See SB 214. On Husserl’s view see “Über den Begriff des An-sich,” 192, and the discussion in Luft, “From Being to Givenness and Back,” 381. ³⁴ SB 186. ³⁵ SB 186. ³⁶ SB quotes on pp. 189 and 190 respectively.

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a causal mediator between outer world and inner experience. Inner experience can thus be false insofar as the causal link goes wrong (perhaps because of illness). While this view (which Merleau-Ponty, like Allais, associates with Cartesianism and “pseudo-Cartesianism”³⁷) gains something in its ability to explain perceptual error, it falls into multiple other problems which Merleau-Ponty discusses over several pages.³⁸ The result is that he is led back to a more sophisticated version of the position of naive consciousness. And it is clear that he links this view with transcendental philosophy. It is notable that the discussion of causal views of perception leads to a discussion of Descartes that ends with Merleau-Ponty (qualifiedly) favoring the Kantian position that pairs transcendental idealism with empirical realism.³⁹ Merleau-Ponty’s response to the problem of “pseudoperception” is not to jettison the “in-itself for me” position of naive consciousness in favor of some version of representationalism. Rather, his response is to embrace phenomenology, which can “indicate both the intimacy of objects to the subject and the presence in them of solid structures which distinguish them from appearances” and thus “philosophy returns to the evidences of naive consciousness.”⁴⁰ Naive consciousness implicitly embraces two ideas that are crucial for the essential manifestness view. First, it embraces the notion that perceptual experience relates us directly with the world. Second, it embraces the idea that both subjective and objective elements are present in experience, and in fact go together. Perceptual profiles are clearly subjective in that they are specific to our perceptual perspective; we grasp that they both differ from another person’s perspective and do not take in the object itself in entirety. Yet they are also presented as being of the object rather than as part of us (that the top of the table differs from the bottom of the table is part of the table). This element is analogous to the point Allais makes about color being distinctly subjective while also clearly being presented as a quality of the colored object. Furthermore, the point regarding subjectivity and objectivity in perceptual profiles is already more generalized than the point regarding color because it is a point about all perceptual experience. Although this point alone does not substantiate that Merleau-Ponty holds to the essential manifestness view, it does show that his conception of experience incorporates one of the essential manifestness view’s main components. The second aspect of the text that suggests something like the essential manifestness view can be found in the idea (discussed in Chapter 3 §4) that human consciousness is transcendentally oriented toward human intentions. Recall that Merleau-Ponty begins with the idea that children perceive living beings prior to

³⁷ “Pseudo-Cartesianism” is first referenced, in this discussion, at SB 192, and is linked to scientists and psychologists. Allais prefers the term “Cartesian” to “representationalism” when discussing the theory of perception that she opposes to her favored relationalism; see Manifest Reality, 104. ³⁸ SB 189–95. ³⁹ SB 196–7. ⁴⁰ SB 199.

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things and that “nascent perception” is oriented toward use-objects. While it requires development and enculturation for the child to come to grasp the specific uses of specific objects and to live and act in the world in specific ways, this is enabled by the fact that perceptual experience is, from the very beginning, oriented toward human action in general. We experience the world directly as connecting with our action possibilities. On the one hand this evinces a necessarily subjective element, because these actionenabling aspects cannot exist apart from our (implicit and explicit) intentions. On the other hand, they are clearly presented as transcendent aspects of the world. Consider the following passage: For the player in action the football [soccer] field is not an “object,” that is, the ideal term which can give rise to an indefinite multiplicity of perspectival views and remain equivalent under apparent transformations. It is pervaded with lines of force (the “side lines”; those which demarcate the “penalty area”) and articulated in sectors (for example, the “openings” between the adversaries) which call for a certain mode of action . . . At this moment consciousness is nothing other than the dialectic of milieu and action. Each maneuver undertaken by the player modifies the character of the field and establishes in it new lines of force in which the action in turn unfolds and is accomplished, again altering the phenomenal field.⁴¹

One should not mistake Merleau-Ponty’s point when he says that the football field is not an object with a multiplicity of perspectival views. He is denying that the field is experienced objectively in an idealized way as a thing, separate from our intentions. He is not denying that the field is experienced from a particular perspectival view as transcendent. The key point is that it is experienced directly as calling for a mode of action. The implication is that the “lines of force” and “sectors” are aspects of the transcendent field, yet their character as enabling action is clearly dependent on a relation to the player. Thus, the lines of force are manifest aspects of the field. One should also not interpret the claim that “consciousness is nothing other than the dialectic of milieu and action” as entailing that consciousness is reduced to non-subjective worldly interactions. “Action” in this sense is subject-driven behavior. This has to be the case, or else the description of the milieu as enabling soccer-specific action would not make sense. It has to be the milieu of the soccer player, who is a subject whose perspective can grasp things like openings for ⁴¹ SB 168–9. The translation is amended because Fisher was evidently confused about what sport Merleau-Ponty was referring to as “football.” He translated “les lignes de touche” as “yard lines” rather than the appropriate “side lines,” yet he translated “surface de réparation” appropriately as “penalty area.” Yard lines exist on a gridiron football field but not on a soccer/association football field, while the opposite goes for a penalty area.

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action. The point here is, per §1 of this chapter, to “profoundly modify” critical idealism’s intellectualist understanding of perception by showing that consciousness does not entail a detached, rational consideration of the ideal meaning of the situation. Rather consciousness is directly awareness of the meaning of the milieu as it arises in action. The fact that the meaning of this situation is driven by the specific subjective perspective of the soccer player complicates the transcendental interpretation, though. Clearly one who has no idea of the game would not experience the lines of force and openings for action. Thus, while these are manifest aspects of the field for the player, one might think they are not essentially manifest. But that actionenabling aspects in general are experienced is essential. Merleau-Ponty would insist on the point made regarding an infant knowing the use of clothing that was discussed in Chapter 3 §5. While the specific abilities connected to specific useobjects are learned, that learning is based upon a more basic, transcendentally structured ability to engage in a world of use-objects. Thus, while the specific lines of force are not essential in their specifics, the general fact that the player, or anyone else, experiences the field as enabling some action is essential.⁴² MerleauPonty thinks that we experience the world in a general and pervasive way as fitting our actions. These aspects are relational; they are dependent for their being on subject and object. Insofar as such essentially manifest aspects of experience only arise from the perspective of beings like us, they support an idealist view. Insofar as they are given as a part of transcendent reality, they support a form of basic realism. There is one final element of Structure that supports something like the essential manifestness view that hinges on the notion that the meaning in nature must be grasped self-consciously. Consider the following passage from chapter III’s section on the Human Order: There is no question . . . of returning to any form whatsoever of vitalism or animism, but simply of recognizing that the object of biology cannot be grasped without the unities of signification which a consciousness finds and sees unfolding in it. “The spirit of nature is a hidden spirit. It is not produced in the form of spirit itself; it is only spirit for the consciousness which knows it: it is spirit in itself, but not for itself ”⁴³ ⁴² This point fits with Allais’s color example, as people perceive color differently. Consider the internet phenomenon of “the dress” (see K. R. Gegenfurtner et. al. “The Many Colours of ‘the Dress’,” Current Biology 25 (2015), R543–4). Thus, it must be color quality in general, rather than a specific tone or shade, that is an essentially manifest quality of the object. There is of course still a difference, however, in that differences in color perception are not learned in the same way that skills are. ⁴³ SB 161. The quote is taken from Hegel, and Merleau-Ponty is getting it from Jean Hyppolite, translation adjusted. See Hyppolite, “The Concept of Life and Consciousness of Life in Hegel’s Jena Philosophy,” in Studies on Marx and Hegel, trans. John O’Neil, New York: Harper Torchbooks (1969), 5.

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In this passage, Merleau-Ponty is referencing Hegel (slightly incorrectly) through an essay by Jean Hyppolite.⁴⁴ This fact further supports the idea that MerleauPonty does not favor a view like Morris’s, because Hyppolite makes clear that Hegel’s interest is in grasping nature not on its own terms but as it is conceptualized by consciousness.⁴⁵ The opening sentence of this passage notes that consciousness “finds” meaningful unities in nature, which suggests that they are given as transcendent (there must be something in nature for us to find). This point is extended in the second sentence (which is part of a quote from Hegel’s early Jena philosophy of nature) insofar as spirit is “hidden” in nature. But the quote from Hegel shifts this point in an importantly different direction. Spirit is hidden in nature, but not “in the form of spirit itself ” and it is only spirit for consciousness. There is something “hidden” in nature which consciousness finds; thus, the meaningful unities cannot be created by consciousness yet they are not fully in the form of spirit. For Hegel, the difference between “hidden spirit” and “spirit for itself ” hinges, in part, on self-consciousness. Insofar as it is spirit “in itself ” rather than “for itself ” nature does not grasp itself as meaningful. Thus, one thing the “consciousness which knows it” adds is the ability to consciously grasp that meaning (and it could, furthermore, be conscious of itself as grasping nature that way). This would be one way, then, of construing the difference between nature in itself and nature for us. Note that this point fits with the discussion in Chapter 3 §2 regarding finding attributes of the human order in the vital and physical. On the one hand, a description that understands the soap bubble in terms of dynamic relations between inner pressure, outer pressure, surface tension, etc. is grasping the actual attributes of the soap bubble. It is, however, only from our perspective that the soap bubble is a physical system in which the parts are working together to attain a particular equilibrium state. This involves thinking of it as something that is working toward a norm, and the soap bubble clearly does not think of itself in this way. The holistic relations in nature are transformed by the human consciousness which fully, self-consciously grasps them as meaningful. The focus on self-consciousness presents us with a way to construe the difference between nature in itself versus the meaning found in nature in-itself for us, and it is consistent with Merleau-Ponty’s arguments in Structure. At various points in the final section of the book, Merleau-Ponty references the importance of “consciousness of self.” It shows up, for example, in one of the instances where

⁴⁴ The reference is slightly incorrect because it is twice misattributed, though in a minor fashion. Merleau-Ponty’s note, taken from Hyppolite, references the Jena logic. Hyppolite actually associates the quote with the Jena metaphysics in the text, though the logic is named in his reference. As it turns out, the quote is actually taken from the 1804–5 Jena philosophy of nature, not the logic or metaphysics (though the three texts go together). See G. W. F. Hegel, Jenenser Logik, Metaphysic, und Naturphilosophie, ed. Georg Lasson, Hamburg: Felix Meiner Verlag (1967), 193. ⁴⁵ See Hyppolite, “The Concept of Life,” 4–5.

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he notes the closeness between his own analyses and critical idealism. There he notes that however much one emphasizes the external conditions “upon which the development of consciousness depends,” the very idea that consciousness has a history in which it develops is “only a view consciousness gives itself with regard to the acquired consciousness of self.” ⁴⁶ The very idea of considering the mind to be linked, in a meaningful fashion, with the world is something that comes about through self-consciousness. Then a few pages later, Merleau-Ponty notes (in a passage already considered in Chapter 3 §3) that “the notion of ‘Gestalt’ led us back to the Hegelian meaning, that is, to the concept before it has become conscious of self.”⁴⁷ Merleau-Ponty’s analyses in general lead to the recognition of the importance of self-consciousness, and the analysis of the “Gestalt” specifically leads to the idea that nature (which Merleau-Ponty immediately notes “is the exterior of the concept”) is a sort of proto-meaningful unity without selfconsciousness. It requires consciousness to grasp this meaning and thus bring it to the concept; to be fully meaningful it must become self-conscious. Thinking of the role of self-consciousness in this way not only supports the essential manifestness interpretation. It can also resolve the problem noted at the end of §1 of this chapter. There it was noted that Merleau-Ponty both says that the mind is a structure of behavior, or a form, but that forms exist only for consciousness. These two points can go together if consciousness is a special kind of form, which can be for itself. It would thus be coherent to say that consciousness is a form which is only meaningful for (self-)consciousness. This would further support the argument of §1 that Merleau-Ponty’s “profound modification” of consciousness which sees it as a structure of behavior would still maintain a unique sense of the mental. It is a special power of the subjective mind that it can be for itself. On its face this discussion of self-consciousness might sit poorly with the earlier point regarding the perception of manifest action-enabling attributes of the environment. While it was not emphasized above, one of the key elements of Merleau-Ponty’s view of the perception–action link is that the experience of action-enabling attributes need not be fully thematized in determinate thought. Our “motor intentions” (to use a term found in Phenomenology) can unfold implicitly in our actions rather than being directly considered. This is part of what Merleau-Ponty means when he says that consciousness is the dialectic of milieu and action. The notion that essentially manifest attributes have to be brought to self-consciousness would seem to imply the opposite point. But Merleau-Ponty recognizes this issue. Immediately after the reference to the Gestalt bringing us back to Hegel, he notes that “the consciousness for which the Gestalt exists was not intellectual consciousness but perceptual experience.”⁴⁸ Thus he appears to think that there is some element of self-consciousness that is

⁴⁶ SB 206.

⁴⁷ SB 210.

⁴⁸ SB 210.

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present in perceptual experience and that does not require an explicit, determinate grasping of the self. Merleau-Ponty’s last references to self-consciousness in Structure involve asserting that it is an achievement rather than an eternal transcendental structure. On his view “ ‘transcendental consciousness,’ the full consciousness of self, is not ready made; is to be achieved, that is realized in existence.”⁴⁹ This point can be connected to the reference to critical idealism and self-consciousness above. While critical thought is right to note that the very idea of consciousness developing historically requires self-consciousness (it is a view consciousness takes of itself ) this point does not invalidate the idea that there is such a history. One must still see that “consciousness of self is not given in man by right; it is acquired only by the elucidation of his concrete being.”⁵⁰ Though this point is not developed in Structure, one might combine this with the notion that there is an implicit form of self-consciousness in perceptual experience (and this ends up being developed in the discussions of the tacit cogito and temporality in Phenomenology; see Chapter 7 §4). Perhaps that implicit form is the basis upon which explicit selfconsciousness develops. Thus determinate, intellectual self-consciousness could not be properly understood unless grasped as developing out of a “concrete being,” a body that is immersed in a world.

4. Transcendental and Empirical Structures of Consciousness Before we can turn to Phenomenology to see if Merleau-Ponty follows through on Structure’s promise of developing a new transcendental philosophy, there is a major issue left in Structure to discuss. The putative transcendental structures of consciousness discussed in Chapter 4 are developed out of an analysis of physical forms, animal behavior and human perception. One can thus wonder whether Merleau-Ponty is actually arriving at transcendental structures, or whether he is taking contingent empirical aspects of behavior and perception and inappropriately lifting them to transcendental status. From the Kantian point of view, transcendental and empirical analyses are clearly distinct; if you are seeking answers to philosophical questions in experience (as does the empiricist) you will not find the (transcendental) conditions upon which that experience is possible. The two forms of analysis seemingly ask two fundamentally different types of question.⁵¹ In combining scientific and philosophical analysis as he does in Structure, however, Merleau-Ponty rejects this hard distinction.

⁴⁹ SB 221. ⁵⁰ SB 223. ⁵¹ I have taken this way of construing Kant’s view from David Carr, “On the Difference Between Transcendental and Empirical Subjectivity,” in To Work at the Foundations: Essays in Honor of Aron Gurwitsch, ed. J. Claude Evans and Robert Stufflebeam, Dordrecht: Springer (1997), 181.

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While Merleau-Ponty does obliquely comment on this issue in Structure, it is not taken up directly or extensively. It becomes clear in later works, however, that he regards the blurring of the transcendental and empirical to be an important element of his new transcendental philosophy. For example, a decade later he will ask “how can the borders of the transcendental and the empirical help becoming indistinct?,”⁵² with the implication that his investigations necessarily push in this direction. While Merleau-Ponty takes this blurring to be a strength, for others it has been a point of criticism. Perhaps most famously, Michel Foucault argues in The Order of Things that Merleau-Ponty’s analysis of lived experience becomes viciously circular as “what is given in experience and what renders experience possible correspond to one another in endless oscillation.”⁵³ This issue is also problematized by feminist critics of Merleau-Ponty, who accuse him of mistaking contingent aspects of a particular form of male experience for essential aspects of human experience.⁵⁴ To begin considering this issue in Structure, we can examine the notion of the species a priori. The general idea is that by observing the animals’ behavior, one can determine that the behavior is structured by the animals’ sensory-motor abilities. For example, only animals like apes and monkeys are capable of stacking and standing on boxes to reach for items in the way the chimpanzee does, because of their particular capacity for balancing on a precarious surface.⁵⁵ Or perhaps it would be better to say that the surface is not, for them, precarious because of their sensory-motor structure. Note that the species a priori cannot, at this point in the analysis, be properly called a transcendental structure. This is because it is arrived at from the perspective of the outside spectator. By examining various instances of animal behavior, the observer determines that the form of the organism must be shaping its interface with its environment. Transcendental reasoning, on the other hand, must happen from an internal perspective. Barry Stroud aptly states this point: [T]his special feature [the internal perspective] would seem to be the very mark of the ‘transcendental’ method. If there are certain ways in which we must think if thought and experience are to be possible at all, it will not be surprising to find that we can think about those ways of thinking only from ‘within’ them. We ⁵² Merleau-Ponty, “The Philosopher and Sociology,” trans. Richard C. McCleary, in Signs, Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press (1964), 107. ⁵³ Michel Foucault, The Order of Things: An Archaeology of the Human Sciences, trans. Alan Sheridan, London: Routledge (2000), 366. ⁵⁴ Judith Butler presents an excellent example of this type of critique, focusing specifically on Merleau-Ponty’s analysis of sexuality in Phenomenology, in “Sexual Ideology and Phenomenological Description: A Feminist Critique of Merleau-Ponty’s Phenomenology of Perception” in The Thinking Muse: Feminism and Modern French Philosophy, ed. Jeffner Allen and Iris Marion Young, Bloomington IN: Indiana University Press (1989), 85–100. ⁵⁵ SB 99. Merleau-Ponty takes this example from Wolfgang Kohler, The Mentality of Apes, trans. E. Winters, London: Routledge (1925), 135–52.

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could stand ‘outside’ them only by violating the very conditions that make thought possible. So if we also manage to ‘legitimize’ those ways of thinking we will have to do so ‘from within’ as well.⁵⁶

Strictly speaking, the point regarding the species a priori is that it structures the animals’ behavior, not their experience. As was noted at the end of Chapter 4 §1, we might, given the role that sensory receptors play in the animals’ behavior, assume that there is perceptual experience that is structured by the species a priori. But insofar as the human outside observer does not share the animal’s experience, the observer cannot be making a transcendental argument regarding that experience. It is not possible for the outside observer to make an “indispensability claim” about some aspect of that experience (assuming such experience even exists) and to then determine the conditions of possibility for that indispensable aspect.⁵⁷ The outside observer, when making determinations regarding animal behavior, would thus rely on standard types of empirical reasoning, such as induction. Their claims would be subject to the standard types of problems associated with such reasoning, such as drawing general conclusions from a too small, or unrepresentative, sample. For example, one must not make claims about chimpanzee behavior on the basis of observing one or two particularly physically capable apes.⁵⁸ The observer needs to take care that the observed behaviors are actually general in the species. This point regarding the outside observer is, of course, one of the reasons that Merleau-Ponty makes the shift to the consideration of human perception, which, via the phenomenological method, considers experience from the first-person perspective. This shift is not totally completed in Structure, and that is why the end of the text promises a new transcendental philosophy to come in subsequent works. In the analyses of human perceptual experience that present transcendental structures of consciousness (as is discussed in Chapter 3 §§4–5), MerleauPonty still relies on the outside observer perspective. For example, he builds his arguments on the basis of results in child psychology which show that consciousness is structurally oriented to perceive a human world. It is clear that MerleauPonty takes “nascent perception” to reveal structures of all human perception, such that the elements of perception he finds in the child’s experience should, in principle, be accessible to an adult from the first-person perspective. That latter form of first-person analysis of course plays a much more prominent role in

⁵⁶ Barry Stroud, “Transcendental Arguments and Epistemological Naturalism,” Philosophical Studies 31 (1977), 105–15, quote on p. 106. ⁵⁷ This way of construing transcendental arguments, and the “indispensability claim” terminology, is taken from Charles Taylor, “The Validity of Transcendental Arguments,” Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, 79 (1978–9), 151–65. ⁵⁸ This is just an example, and is not meant as a criticism of Kohler’s work on chimpanzees from which Merleau-Ponty draws.

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Merleau-Ponty’s later phenomenological analyses. But famously Merleau-Ponty continues to build his arguments on the basis of third-person psychological studies in Phenomenology. Thus, a more specific way of asking the question of how the transcendental and empirical fit together for Merleau-Ponty is to ask how phenomenological and psychological analyses fit together. While that question will be considered in more detail when we take up Phenomenology’s arguments, there are some clues to be found in Structure. One such clue is found in the conclusion to chapter II. There Merleau-Ponty briefly sums up his discussion of psychological studies of animal behavior by noting that the “object of the preceding chapters was to establish that behavior is not reducible to its alleged parts.”⁵⁹ But he immediately makes the curious claim that “this long inductive research”—i.e. the exhaustive consideration of psychological studies—can “never even be finished” because behaviorists could always concoct new theoretical models to accommodate new empirical results. Instead, Merleau-Ponty claims “a moment of reflection” could reveal the truth he is after. Reflection can show us that behavior has to be understood in terms of a “for itself ” structuring its encounter with the world, instead of being understood in terms of causal linkages between external objects. His reason for thinking that a moment of reflection could show us this amounts to an admission of the thesis of transcendental perspectivism; “we would have no knowledge of any thing if we did not first have a knowledge of our thinking and that even the escape into the world and the resolution to ignore interiority or to never leave things, which is the essential feature of behaviorism, cannot be formulated without being transformed into consciousness.” While third-person observations focus on objects other than the subject, these observations are still made from the perspective of the observer. This fact—that the first-person perspective is primary in this way—is an “indispensability claim” that is evident from a moment of reflection on what it means to observe, and the observer should be sensitive to the way the first-person perspective structures her observations. This is effectively a bit of transcendental rather than empirical reasoning. And Merleau-Ponty takes it to show that behaviorism— at least insofar as it attempts to “ignore interiority”—is incoherent. This thus expands on the argument for the transcendental turn discussed in Chapter 3 §3. But if a moment of reflection could establish the critique of behaviorism, why would Merleau-Ponty go through pages and pages of the “long inductive research”? His answer is that “by following this short route we would have missed the essential feature of the phenomenon . . . behavior is not a thing, but neither is it an idea.”⁶⁰ Importantly, this claim is echoed in the Introduction to Phenomenology, where Merleau-Ponty says that it is necessary to work through psychology or else phenomenology would end up being placed, like “reflective

⁵⁹ SB 127. All quotes in this paragraph are from this page.

⁶⁰ SB 127.

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philosophy,” “immediately into a transcendental dimension that we would have to assume to be eternally given.”⁶¹ In both cases Merleau-Ponty is claiming that transcendental reflection, done on its own, is in danger of falling into intellectualism. An advantage of empirical research is that it is focused on the world. Behaviorism might take this too far by attempting to “escape into the world,” but this must not be countered by a corresponding attempt to escape into consciousness. One crucial reason for continuing to focus on empirical research is to balance out the potential intellectualism of his own transcendental philosophy. Notably, this way of thinking about the connection between the empirical and transcendental does not necessarily trample the distinction between the two. Merleau-Ponty’s “moment of reflection” argument regarding behaviorism can be cast as a proper transcendental argument that has no necessary connection with empirical, inductive reasoning. The information we draw from the psychological research merely constrains the way the conclusion is cast. The point here can be illuminated by considering it in relation to Charles Taylor’s considerations in “The Validity of Transcendental Arguments.” As Taylor notes, the first stage of a transcendental argument should be easy to grasp and appear self-evident. In the argument under consideration, this would be the fact that all third-person observations are made from the perspective of the observer. But as we move from this first step to an elaboration of the conditions of this element of experience, “we are moving into an area which the ordinary practice of life has left unarticulated, an area which we look through, rather than at.”⁶² Perhaps for Merleau-Ponty, empirical research can help us properly articulate that previously unarticulated “practice of life” by helping us properly situate consciousness in the (empirically observed) world. It is not the case, though, that Taylor’s way of combining the empirical and transcendental can alleviate all of the problems associated with the combining of those forms of reasoning in Structure. Consider Merleau-Ponty’s claim that the perception of living beings is primary, such that human perception is structured so as to perceive a “phenomenal body” or “phenomenal organism.”⁶³ The upshot is that because our perspective is (transcendentally) structured to perceive animals as “phenomenal organisms,” i.e. as forming meaningful unities with their environments, we can grasp them as containing “animal essences” or typical ways of dealing with their environments. He indicates that these essences are grasped via “intuition,” in “common perception.” Shortly after this he suggests that the perception of essential attributes in things is likely not based on “the inductive rapprochement of a large number of isolated facts; on the contrary, it is likely that it was read in a single glance.” Thus, he appears to think that essential structures ⁶¹ PP 64. ⁶² Taylor, “The Validity of Transcendental Arguments,” 164. ⁶³ SB 157. All quotes in this paragraph are from the same page.

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are presented directly in a single experience, rather than requiring inductive reasoning based on multiple observations. Merleau-Ponty appears to be claiming that because of the transcendental structure of the observer’s consciousness (which is structured to perceive vital order) the third-person observations directly grasp that order in animal behavior. The problem with this, though, is that Merleau-Ponty derived his claims regarding that structure of consciousness from a third-person analysis of infantile perception. Thus, we potentially have an instance of the problematic “oscillation” that Foucault notes; the idea that we are transcendentally structured to perceive vital order is justified on the basis of a set of empirical observations, but then it is claimed that our empirical observations are of vital order because of the transcendental structure. This is perhaps not directly circular because two different sets of observations are operative in each case, with psychological studies of infant perception in the first and observations of animal behavior in the second. But it still seems problematic, especially because it is not totally clear whether the claim regarding intuition is meant to apply to the study of child psychology, or whether induction is operative in that instance. Do we, in this case, intuit the essential structure of our perspective by examining children? This discussion of intuition is also complicated by the reference to “common perception.” Once again, we confront an issue that is raised in Structure but not really clarified until Phenomenology. Common perception is akin to perception in the natural attitude, and, as we will see in Phenomenology, while the natural attitude is not wholly false or problematic on its own, it can only be properly understood from a philosophical point of view by undertaking the phenomenological reduction(s). This problematic nature of common perception leads Merleau-Ponty to say that the “apprehension of structure is neither complete nor exact in common perception.”⁶⁴ And it is actually immediately after this that he mentions intuition, and because of this indirectness “one does not mean that intuition is innate.”⁶⁵ This is a confusing passage, because it is just a few lines after this that Merleau-Ponty appears to reject “inductive rapprochement” in favor of reading essential structures in things “at a single glance.” Do we directly grasp essential structures in intuition, or not? What does it mean for this to be incomplete and not innate? The idea that the apprehension of structure is not complete suggests that vital order is not, in fact, grasped “at a single glance” but requires more work for it to be made complete or exact. This conflict is clarified a bit on the next page: [T]o understand these biological entities is not to note a series of empirical coincidences; it is not even to establish a list of mechanical correlations; it is to

⁶⁴ SB 157.

⁶⁵ SB 157.

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unite the ensemble of known facts by means of their significations, to discover in all of them a characteristic rhythm, a general attitude toward certain categories of objects, perhaps even toward all things.⁶⁶

What Merleau-Ponty actually appears to be objecting to here is the idea that biological entities are understood on the basis of association construed atomistically (via the series of empirical coincidences) or on the basis of causal reasoning (via the list of mechanical correlations). But the notion that the ensemble of known facts leads to the discovery of a general attitude seems to allow for a form of generalization on the basis of a sample of observations. This is further seen in the following substantive note that Merleau-Ponty attaches to the above quote: This determination of essences is practiced all the time by the scientists although it is not recognized as such. The physiologists take it into account in their experiments with the physiognomy of behavior. They will mention in their results that the animal was “tired,” and they recognize it from the general character of its behavior rather than from the physico-chemical characteristics of fatigue. It is also the norm of behavior which Pavlov came up against when experiments of repeated conditioning provoked genuine experimental neuroses in his subjects.⁶⁷

The determination of essences referenced here is not described as a determination based on intuition as opposed to induction. Rather, the point is that qualitative determinations like “tired” (determinations that take the meaning of the situation for the animal into account) are made in opposition to purely causal-mechanistic determinations. It is not directly mentioned in this note whether these qualitative determinations are made on the basis of single observations or are generalizations from multiple observations. But given the reference to the “ensemble of known facts” in the sentence to which the note is attached, and the fact that MerleauPonty finds the determination of essences to be implicit in standard scientific work, it is more likely that they are derived from, or confirmed by, multiple observations. Thus, Structure should not really be interpreted as opposing the intuition of essences to induction. Rather Merleau-Ponty is opposing something like a broadly inductive (insofar as it is a generalization from an ensemble of facts) form of qualitative determination from causal mechanistic reasoning. This potentially alleviates the circularity or “oscillation” mentioned above. Rather than taking there to be a circular movement from the consideration of the structures of infantile perception to the claims about the perception of qualitative order in

⁶⁶ SB 158.

⁶⁷ SB 158 n. 69 (244).

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animal behavior, it could be the case that the same form of hybrid inductive/ qualitative reasoning is at play in both. This also suggests that transcendental and empirical reasoning are not separate with the latter only playing the role of a sort of auxiliary helpmate to the former; they are indeed joined together in MerleauPonty’s view. These brief passages in Structure still leave much to be explained, however. How exactly the form of empirico-transcendental reasoning works is unclear. It is possible that Merleau-Ponty’s claims can be explained by contrasting them with Taylor’s view of transcendental arguments (and by filling in some gaps). As noted, Taylor takes transcendental arguments to begin with easy to grasp, self-evident aspects of experience. The argument then reasons back to the conditions of possibility for that aspect of experience. The initial self-evident aspects might be analogous to common perception grasping something in a single glance. But Merleau-Ponty complicates the point, and departs from Taylor, in thinking that common perception is not actually clear and unproblematic. Thus its “single glance” deliverances cannot be trusted directly; they must be bolstered by further investigations, and the study of psychology can play this role. What we find in investigating the psychological studies however, is that we (with “we” potentially referring to both the scientists engaging in the studies and those reading the studies) frequently deploy certain kinds of qualitative assessments or claims when analyzing behavior. This serves, then, as a kind of proof of common perception’s intuitions; we can take those structures that have been “verified” to be genuinely transcendental by the fact that they consistently come up in research. Yet they are never purely empirical insofar as they must match up with something directly given to perceptual experience. Another way of putting the point is that empirical research can help us determine what common perception’s glance is genuinely delivering to us. In this case there is no circular reasoning because, for example, the study of infant psychology does not establish the point that perception is oriented toward life out of bits of empirical information that are initially free of that point. Rather, infant psychology reveals an aspect of our perception that was always present and graspable from the first-person perspective (though perhaps only through a glass darkly, because of the assumptions of the natural attitude). This point is thus further bolstered, in this example, by the study of animal psychology. What I am suggesting here is not directly presented in the text as MerleauPonty’s view, however. Thus, taken as is, Structure may still fall into the kind of problems that Foucault notes. If we want to see if Merleau-Ponty himself resolves these issues, we must turn to Phenomenology. We can draw some conclusions regarding Structure, however. In the end, the problem with Structure is not that it is so fraught with internal tensions that it is tearing itself apart. It is not arguing for multiple views at once, it is approaching a single view—which Merleau-Ponty calls transcendental and I believe stands as a form of idealism—that it does not have the

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tools to fully establish. Structure’s problem is that it presents views that it cannot fully argue for on its own terms. But this is only a major problem if we have to assess Structure’s views in isolation. Thankfully, we have another option, and can go on to examine the work in which Merleau-Ponty followed through on Structure’s promise to develop a new transcendental philosophy.

PART II

IDEALISM IN PHENOMENOLOGY OF PERC E P TIO N

5 The Overt Critique of Idealism in Phenomenology of Perception 1. Transcendental Perspectivism and Being in the World The last paragraph of Structure announces that all of the major problems considered in the work “are reducible to the problem of perception,” and that working this out will make it “necessary to define transcendental philosophy anew in such a way as to integrate it with the very phenomenon of the real.”¹ Phenomenology was, of course, the work that took up the problem of perception via this new transcendental philosophy. But it would not directly embrace transcendental idealism. Idealism is directly referenced twenty-six times in the book. Most of those references are spread throughout the text, with the biggest concentrations in two places: the Preface (eight references) and the chapter in Part Three titled “Freedom” (nine references).² The bulk of these references, especially in the Preface, are highly critical. This chapter will examine the passages in Phenomenology where idealism is explicitly criticized, focusing on the Preface and the “Freedom” chapter. As we will see, overall Merleau-Ponty equates idealism with a particularly strong form of intellectualism that does fail to integrate “the real.” Whether this means that Merleau-Ponty’s own view as a whole is antiidealist is to be determined. The first step in determining this is to examine his overt critique. The Preface to Phenomenology famously contains Merleau-Ponty’s most direct discussion of Husserlian phenomenology, and was added, after the completion of the main text, to justify the reference to phenomenology in the title of the book.³ While phenomenology is the main topic of the Preface, idealism is a prominent topic as well. The discussion of idealism there is linked to both Descartes and Kant, but the main aim is to distinguish phenomenology from idealist philosophy. A notable aspect of Merleau-Ponty’s critique of idealism in the Preface is that he ignores the possibility that phenomenology presents a new form of idealism rather than a non-idealist position. Yet this was, for much of his career,

¹ SB 224. ² These numbers are based on an electronic search of the text, using the search term “idealis.” ³ For an analysis that challenges the common view that Merleau-Ponty misrepresents Husserl’s views, see Dan Zahavi, “Merleau-Ponty on Husserl: A Reappraisal,” 3–29.

Embodied Idealism: Merleau-Ponty’s Transcendental Philosophy. Joseph C. Berendzen, Oxford University Press. © Joseph C. Berendzen 2023. DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780192874764.003.0006

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Husserl’s stated view, and it is a view argued for vigorously by Eugen Fink in texts Merleau-Ponty approvingly cites. Husserl would have agreed with many of Merleau-Ponty’s criticisms; he rejected the strong anti-realism, strong ontological idealism, and lack of emphasis on embodiment and intersubjectivity that he finds in many other idealisms (such as the Berkeleyan subjective idealism he criticizes in Ideas I).⁴ But he continued to use the term for his own view. And Fink’s Sixth Cartesian Meditation, which is cited in the Preface, includes a section on transcendental idealism in which Fink defends the use of “idealism” as a label for Husserlian phenomenology. He also argues that transcendental idealism is “beyond idealism and realism” in their mundane senses.⁵ One could reasonably expect Merleau-Ponty to address this possibility for a new phenomenological idealism. There is a much more significant unusual aspect to his rejection of idealism, however. Before he presents any of his critical points, Merleau-Ponty appears to explicitly endorse idealism at the beginning of the Preface. The text begins by stressing phenomenology’s focus on description over explanation.⁶ This sets phenomenology apart from the natural sciences, which attempt to provide causal explanations of mental phenomena. Merleau-Ponty rejects this strategy because it uses third-person investigation when first-person analysis is necessary. “I cannot think of myself as a part of the world” Merleau-Ponty notes, because “everything I know about the world . . . I know from a perspective that is my own.”⁷ A thirdperson perspective will never properly capture mental or bodily experience. Moreover, third-person explanations can only be given from the first-personal perspective of the observer. Because of this latter point, Merleau-Ponty states that “I am the absolute source . . . my existence does not come from my antecedents, nor from my physical and social surroundings; it moves out toward them and sustains them.”⁸ This is the clearest instance in Merleau-Ponty’s early writings where he uses “absolute” in the Husserlian sense discussed in Chapter 1 §§5–6. Thus MerleauPonty begins Phenomenology with an avowal of the thesis of transcendental perspectivism. My perspective cannot be seen as a part of the world because it is my standpoint on the world. And all investigations of worldly phenomena must take this into account. It is striking, then, that right after these claims MerleauPonty says that phenomenology “is absolutely distinct from the idealist return to ⁴ Edmund Husserl, Ideas: First Book, 128–30. ⁵ See Eugen Fink, Sixth Cartesian Mediation: The Idea of a Transcendental Theory of Method, trans. Ronald Bruzina, Bloomington, ID: Indiana University Press (1995). The section on transcendental idealism is on pp. 152–9; quote on p. 159. “Mundane” here refers to any philosophy that does not engage in the transcendental reduction. Fink defends his use of the term “idealism” for two main reasons. First it draws connections with other philosophies that are similar to phenomenology, and this might spark dialogue. Second, transcendental phenomenology leads to the “idealistic thesis” that the external world is a correlate to lived subjective processes (p. 157). ⁶ PP, p. lxxi. ⁷ PP, pp. lxxi–lxxii. ⁸ PP, p. lxxii. Emphasis added.

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consciousness.”⁹ Merleau-Ponty appears to accept the core transcendental idealist view of consciousness and then immediately reject it. In order to fully grasp his critique of idealism, we need to consider if we can make sense of these passages without seeing Merleau-Ponty’s thought as flatly contradictory. How can Merleau-Ponty’s acceptance of something like the thesis of transcendental perspectivism fit with his rejection of the idealist return to consciousness? One possible answer is that when taken alone these passages are in contradiction, but Phenomenology as a whole resolves this by dropping one or the other claim. Given that we are here considering Merleau-Ponty’s putative critique of idealism, it makes sense to consider the possibility that he actually drops his adherence to the thesis of transcendental perspectivism. This possibility is suggested a bit later in the Preface. In a discussion of Descartes and Kant, MerleauPonty notes that they both understood consciousness as “the absolute certainty of myself for myself.”¹⁰ This grasping of the unity of consciousness is, on such an idealist view, the foundation for having a unified experience of the world, and in this way consciousness and world are linked. But Merleau-Ponty laments the nature of this link, as “the relations between subject and world are not strictly bilateral.”¹¹ The implication is that a non-idealist phenomenology should find the relation between subject and world to be “strictly bilateral.” This would seemingly have to be opposed to transcendental idealism, because if the world is dependent on the subject for its meaning, there is an asymmetrical—not strictly bilateral— relation. The rest of his overt discussions of idealism do not necessarily support the antiidealist interpretation just described, however. Consider the discussion in the Preface of Husserl’s concept of essences. On the one hand Merleau-Ponty criticizes transcendental idealism for espousing “separated essences” that are not properly situated in the world. But he goes on to support Husserl for uniting essences with “the living relations of experience” precisely because of his emphasis on consciousness. “In fact,” he notes, “all the significations of language are measured against this [conscious] experience.”¹² Thus he is in some sense appealing to Husserl’s conception of the “absolute” nature of consciousness to argue against an element of Kant’s idealism. And acceptance of transcendental perspectivism is included in his critique. There are other references to idealism that seem to support something like the thesis of transcendental perspectivism as well. At the very end of the chapter “The Spatiality of One’s Own Body and Motricity” in Part One, Merleau-Ponty states that “the strength of intellectualist psychology, as well as of idealist philosophy, comes from the ease with which they show that perception and thought have an intrinsic sense and cannot be explained through an external association of

⁹ PP, p. lxxii.

¹⁰ PP, p. lxxii.

¹¹ PP, p. lxxii.

¹² PP, p. lxxix.

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fortuitously assembled contents.”¹³ This type of passage is found in various places in Phenomenology, though most instances do not mention idealism directly. The general point is to note the positive aspect of intellectualism’s emphasis on the priority of conscious experience which makes it preferable to empiricism. The meaning in perception has to be grasped from the point of view of the first-person perspective (the “intrinsic sense”) rather than via causal/mechanistic “external associations.” Notably there is a criticism of idealism that follows the last quote. It over-intellectualizes this correct insight by pinning it to a conception of the “pure ‘I’ ” that valorizes thought over lived experience. But the corrective Merleau-Ponty suggests does not entail a non-consciousness-centered view, because it still valorizes experience. It just asks for a broader conception of (presumably conscious) experience that does not limit experience to acts of intellection.¹⁴ Merleau-Ponty makes a similar point in the chapter “Others and the Human World” in Part Two when he claims that “idealism, by making the exterior immanent in me” renders the relation between exterior and interior “incomprehensible.”¹⁵ This criticism of idealism comes immediately after the following claim: [T]he question is always to know how I can be open to phenomena that transcend me and that, nevertheless, only exist to the extent that I take them up and live them, how the presence to myself (Urpräsenz) that defines me and that conditions every external presence is simultaneously a depresentation (Entgegenwärtigung) and throws me outside of myself.¹⁶

Merleau-Ponty is fairly clear here in stating that providing a proper answer to the question he notes requires accepting something like the thesis of transcendental perspectivism. Transcendent phenomena “only exist to the extent that I take them up and live them” and “presence to myself ” “conditions every external presence.” Again, a version of the transcendental perspectivism thesis is appealed to in arguing against intellectualism. Husserlian phenomenology can somehow accept the idea that presence to self conditions all transcendence yet also grasp our true link to transcendence. “Idealism” apparently focuses on a conception of consciousness (the “pure ‘I’ ”) that obscures this link. Given the way Merleau-Ponty makes this point, however, it again raises the question of why he simply rejects “idealism” in this discussion rather than entertaining Husserl’s and Fink’s arguments that phenomenology presents a new form of idealism. This, then, returns us to the issue of whether Merleau-Ponty is contradicting himself at the beginning of the “Preface” when he both asserts that “I am the absolute source” and that phenomenology is “absolutely distinct from the idealist return to consciousness.” If we focus on the last few passages regarding idealism ¹³ PP 148. ¹⁴ PP 148. ¹⁵ PP 381. ¹⁶ PP 381. The German terms in parentheses are taken from Husserl; see PP 533 n. 13.

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discussed above, it might seem like Merleau-Ponty is, in fact, contradicting himself. In this case he does, despite his claims to the contrary, embrace an idealist conception of consciousness by embracing a form of the transcendental perspectivism thesis. It might be an idealist conception of consciousness that overcomes some of the problems of other idealist conceptions of consciousness, but it is idealist all the same. There is, however, another aspect of the critique of idealism in the “Preface” that speaks against the idea that Merleau-Ponty embraces an idealist conception of consciousness, and might thus resolve the apparent contradiction. The strongest anti-idealist statement made in Phenomenology is found in a brief discussion in the Preface of the “true Cogito.” The conception of the cogito to which the “true Cogito” is opposed is effectively the same as what has been called the “Pure ‘I’ ”; it is a conception of consciousness that over-focuses on immanence and reduces transcendence to thought of transcendence. The “true Cogito,” on the other hand, properly conceives of a genuine relation to transcendence, and as such MerleauPonty says that it “eliminates all forms of idealism by revealing me as ‘being in the world.’ ”¹⁷ Taken by itself, the implications of this claim are unclear. On the one hand, we might link the notion of “being in the world” with the earlier reference to “strictly bilateral relations” between subject and world. On the other hand, the discussion of the “true Cogito” seems to accept a sense of the primacy of consciousness (it is, after all, still a cogito), yet wants to link this with the proper conception of transcendence. There is something important added to the discussion of the “true Cogito” however. In discussing the negative and positive conceptions of the cogito Merleau-Ponty mentions two specific things that the negative conception obscures—our relation to other people and our relation to our bodies. Straightforwardly enough, Merleau-Ponty associates the negative conception of the cogito with Cartesian dualism, insofar as it conceives of the body in causalmechanistic fashion and then separates it from the “Ego” or “I.”¹⁸ A crucial aspect of the “being in the world” that the “true Cogito” grasps, then, is our embodiment. This might give us the key reason that all forms of idealism are eliminated by “being in the world.” One clear reason for taking Merleau-Ponty’s philosophy to be anti-idealist is that idealism places mind at the center of reality, while MerleauPonty’s philosophy decenters mind by showing how it is dependent on the body. The transcendental perspectivism thesis could thus be transformed into a nonidealist thesis about the centrality of the body. This possibility is borne out by the rest of Phenomenology insofar as there are several passages that present a view that is quite similar to the transcendental perspectivism thesis, yet focus on the centrality of the body. A good example of

¹⁷ PP, p. lxxvii. Emphasis added.

¹⁸ PP, p. lxxvi.

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this is found in chapter II of Part One (“The Experience of the Body and Classical Psychology”), which opens by criticizing psychological views that understand the human body as an object among other worldly objects. Merleau-Ponty argues that the body cannot be considered an object among objects because it is clearly the source of our perspective on the world through which we come to experience objects. It is not an object, objects are given to it. As a specific element of this discussion he considers the permanence of the body versus the permanence of perceived objects, and notes that “its [the body’s] permanence is not a permanence in the world, but a permanence on my side.”¹⁹ Furthermore, if the body “is permanent, then this has to do with an absolute permanence that serves as the basis for the relative permanence of objects that can be eclipsed, that is, of true objects.”²⁰ Object permanence can only come about through a perspective provided by the body, which has an absolute permanence to which object permanence is always relative. This sounds very much like the thesis of transcendental perspectivism, yet with a crucial difference. It is not consciousness that is mentioned as “absolute,” but rather the body. And along these lines, it is not uncommon in the literature for the role played by the body in Merleau-Ponty’s thought to be described as something like a substitute for the role of transcendental subjectivity in Kant’s thought. This, then, presents us with a way of resolving the seeming contradiction between Merleau-Ponty’s “I am the absolute source” claim and the rejection of “the idealist return to consciousness.” Note that Merleau-Ponty does not say “I am absolute consciousness” or “My consciousness is the absolute source.” There does not have to be any contradiction because it is not consciousness which is the absolute source, it is the body, and thus there is no question of returning to idealist consciousness. Merleau-Ponty is thus transforming transcendental philosophy into an anti-idealistic variant rooted in the body. This interpretation seems a bit hasty, however, because it is not clear that the body-centrality view makes sense when divorced fully from consciousness. It is clear that bodily experience, as exemplified in perceptual experience, is what is most at issue in Phenomenology. The first-person perspective—which Merleau-Ponty obviously wants to valorize and which is closely tied to the “absolute source” claim in the Preface—requires considering the experience of the organism which is at the center of its world. Experience is tied closely to embodiment throughout Phenomenology, and thus it seems to be embodied consciousness that is at issue. This is seen, for instance, in the criticism of intellectualism and idealism in “The Spatiality of One’s Own Body and Motricity” that is discussed earlier in this section. There, the issue is not that intellectualism and idealism focus on conscious

¹⁹ PP 93.

²⁰ PP 94. Emphasis added.

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experience rather than embodiment. Rather, the issue is that they focus on an impoverished, intellectualist conception of experience over embodied experience. Thus, the thrust of the critique of idealism being considered here is still ambiguous. We have considered interpretations that eliminate idealism either by rejecting the centrality of mind/consciousness in favor of its “strict bilaterality” with the world or by rejecting consciousness in favor of the body. We have seen, however, that neither interpretation fits that well with the overall text. This might leave us with a softer rejection of idealism that takes conscious experience to be in some sense central, but claims that this is a non-idealist conception of consciousness because of its emphasis on embodiment. But then it is not clear that the rejection of idealism is anything other than terminological, and we might instead take a route (similar to Husserl’s and Fink’s) that embraces transcendental idealism yet argues for a new, distinct, and superior version of that claim. We would then have an “embodied idealism.” The consideration of Merleau-Ponty’s overt references to idealism provides a good introduction to the problem of aligning the thesis of transcendental perspectivism with his overall views in Phenomenology. Ultimately, though, the question of which interpretation listed in the previous paragraph best fits the text goes well beyond the consideration of those explicit references. In fact, this has opened up one of the most crucial interpretive issues facing the text and which is at the heart of the attempt to find idealism or anti-idealism at play in Phenomenology. Thus, the issues first broached in this section will be elucidated in much greater detail Chapters 6 (§2) and 7. The rest of this chapter will move on to consider other points of critique developed in the explicit references to idealism.

2. Reflective Analysis and the Critique of Idealist Method Immediately after he rejects the “idealist return to consciousness” Merleau-Ponty draws a contrast between phenomenological and idealist methodology. “Pure description,” which would fit the methodology of phenomenology, “excludes the process of reflective analysis just as much as it excludes the process of scientific explanation.”²¹ Reflective analysis, the putative methodology of idealism, is explained a bit further on the next page: Beginning from our experience of the world, reflective analysis works back toward the subject as if toward a condition of possibility distinct from our experience and presents universal synthesis as that without which there would be no world. To this extent, reflective analysis ceases to adhere to our experience and substitutes a reconstruction for a description.²²

²¹ PP, p. lxxii.

²² PP, p. lxxiii.

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Both phenomenology and idealism begin with our experience of the world. But idealism departs from this beginning; by reconstructing the world rather than describing it, reflective analysis ultimately misses the actual world. This is because the reconstruction is an idealized rationalization produced in the thought of the pure I. On this kind of view the reality of perception is “based solely on the intrinsic coherence of ‘representations,’ ” and idealist reflective analysis reduces the world to “thought about the world” whose evidentness is based upon “the absolute clarity of my thoughts for myself.”²³ Idealism’s reflective methodology is also criticized in the “Freedom” chapter, which contains the largest collection of references to idealism in a single chapter of the text. In that chapter Merleau-Ponty contrasts a kind of absolute freedom with causal determinism and rejects the former because it would require one to “renounce not only the idea of causality, but even the idea of motivation.”²⁴ Merleau-Ponty wants to steer a course between “total freedom” and “none at all,” finding a view that supports the existence of freedom while doing justice to the ways in which our lived situation constrains and motivates our choices. It is in this context that we find a further critique of idealism. He argues that a free choice cannot really be meaningful for us unless it modifies our existing situation, which would be a “preexisting acquisition” that forms the choice.²⁵ To use his example, the choice to become a socialist revolutionary could only arise in a situation wherein one is shaped by the condition of being a worker.²⁶ Thus, as he puts it, “freedom has a field,” and this is a point that idealist methodology obscures: Certainly nothing has sense or value except for me and through me, but this proposition remains indeterminate and is again mistaken for the Kantian idea of a consciousness that only “finds in things what it has put there” and for the idealist refutation of realism, so long as we fail to clarify how we understand the words “sense” and “me.” By defining ourselves as the universal power of SinnGebung [giving sense], we have returned to the method of the “that-withoutwhich” and to the classical style of reflective analysis, which seeks conditions of possibility without worrying about conditions of reality. Thus, we must again take up the analysis of the Sinngebung [sense-giving] and show how it can be at once centrifugal and centripetal, since it has been established that there is no freedom without a field.²⁷

There is a lot to unpack in this passage. First, Merleau-Ponty begins by accepting something like the thesis of transcendental perspectivism (nothing has sense except through me) before criticizing an overly intellectualized theory attached to that view. And he associates the “idealist refutation of realism” with that overly ²³ PP, pp. lxxiv, lxxvii, lxxx. ²⁵ PP 463. ²⁶ PP 467–71.

²⁴ PP 459. ²⁷ PP 463–4.

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intellectualistic view. Very broadly the point of this passage is the same as the discussion of immanence and transcendence considered in the previous section. Idealism, and Kant’s specifically, is associated with taking the idea that there is no sense “except for me” too far in the direction of immanence—the “centripetal” movement—such that justice is not done to transcendence—the “centrifugal” movement. The correct view will, metaphorically, hold the centrifugal and centripetal forces together. How those “forces” are properly held together is an important issue that will come out in the full discussion of Phenomenology in later chapters. What is most important for the context of the current section, however, is the aligning of idealism and reflective analysis with “the method of ‘that without which’ ” and that method’s connection with transcendental conditions of possibility.²⁸ We have already seen this language in the passage from the “Preface” quoted earlier in this section. Reflective analysis loses sight of its beginning in experience by rationally reconstructing a “universal synthesis as that without which there would be no world.”²⁹ What the passage from the “Freedom” chapter adds is the explicit contrast between “conditions of possibility” and “conditions of reality.” The implication is that by engaging in a rational reconstruction of the conditions under which we can have any possible experience, reflective analysis denudes experience of its actual character. This is why Merleau-Ponty will say, a few pages later in the “Freedom” chapter, that “idealism is unaware of the interrogative, the subjunctive, the wish, the expectation, and the positive indetermination of these modes of consciousness.”³⁰ By grasping transcendence only as possible objects of cognition, idealism misses the actual lived character of experience, of how we actually deal with things and live in the world. In the case of the analysis of freedom, this means that idealism cannot really grasp the character of the situation out of which free decisions arise. To an extent, these passages just repeat the criticisms raised against critical idealism which were discussed in Chapter 3. Idealism is overly intellectualistic insofar as it replaces experience of the world with rational thought about the world, and it thus misses the lived, embodied character of experience. There is also a hint of the earlier criticism that idealism is overly anti-realist; note the association of the “idealist refutation of realism” with a position that valorizes immanence over transcendence. But if we look more closely at this last point—the critique of anti-realism—we will see a new aspect to Merleau-Ponty’s critique of idealism being developed in Phenomenology.

²⁸ For a discussion of this issue see Samantha Matherne, “Toward a New Transcendental Aesthetic: Merleau-Ponty’s Appraisal of Kant’s Philosophical Method,” British Journal for the History of Philosophy 27:2 (2019), 1–24. ²⁹ PP, p. lxxiii. ³⁰ PP 472.

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For the most part, Merleau-Ponty’s critique of Brunschvicg’s anti-realism entailed finding critical idealism to result in a form of strong ontological idealism. He does suggest something similar about idealism in general at one point in Phenomenology when he refers (in the Part Three chapter “Temporality”) to “the idealist perspective (according to which nothing exists except as an object for consciousness)” that differs from the realist perspective.³¹ After this, though, he says that “idealism admits that every signification is centrifugal,” which is to say that it moves outward, metaphorically, toward transcendence.³² This immediately softens the strong ontological idealist sound of his description of the idealist perspective, with its reference to “existence.” But his main claim is that while idealism might connect somewhat with transcendence, it does not do so fully enough; “perception revealed to us a deeper relation to the object . . . than this idealist one.”³³ And insofar as Kant is being associated with idealism in Phenomenology it is unlikely that Merleau-Ponty’s aim is to criticize the view for being a strong ontological idealism. As we saw in Chapter 3 above, he draws a contrast between Kant and Brunschvicg on this point, and we have also seen that in Structure he lauds Kant’s alignment of transcendental idealism with empirical realism. What, then, is his more specific critical point in Phenomenology? Merleau-Ponty clearly acknowledges that some forms of idealism, such as Kant’s, in some way accept basic realism. The subtler aim of his critique, however, is that the conception of transcendence in such idealist views is paired with an impoverished view of our link with the world. This is a primary upshot of his claim that transcendental idealism “treats the world as a unity of value that is not divided between, say, Paul and Pierre.”³⁴ The point here is that for transcendental idealism, the world can be construed in a clear, logical fashion as an objective meaning structure that is the same for all consciousnesses. But this overlooks the fact that Paul and Pierre have differences in individual perspective and that communication between those differences is not always clear. Because of this, transcendental idealism has the following problem: A consistent transcendental idealism strips the world of its opacity and its transcendence. The world is precisely the one that we represent to ourselves, not insofar as we are men or empirical subjects, but insofar as we are all one single light and insofar as we all participate in the One without dividing it. Reflective analysis is unaware of the problem of others, just as it is unaware of the problem of the world.³⁵

Reflective analysis, with its method of the “that-without-which” effectively replaces the actual world with a rationalized image of a possible world. Insofar ³¹ PP 452. Emphasis added. ³² PP 452. ³⁴ PP, p. lxxv. ³⁵ PP, p. lxxv.

³³ PP 453. Emphasis added.

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as this misses the character of our actual engagement with the world, it strips the world of its transcendence by reducing it to thought about the world. Thus, Kant’s transcendental idealism is actually only giving lip service to transcendence through its embracing of empirical realism. Also, insofar as transcendental idealism’s picture of the world is rationalized into the “unity of value” shared by Peter and Paul it is stripped of its opacity. The implication is that we do not grasp the world in complete clarity. Recall that in the “Freedom” chapter Merleau-Ponty says that idealism cannot grasp the “positive indetermination” of modes of consciousness such as wish, expectation, and the subjunctive. One of Merleau-Ponty’s main claims in Phenomenology is that an adequate description of our actual experience of the world reveals a measure of indeterminacy in that experience. And if this indeterminate aspect of our experience is removed by a philosophy that focuses on rationally reconstructing rather than describing the world, the true character of the world is missed. Furthermore, Merleau-Ponty emphasizes that as the true character of the world is missed, the true character of subjectivity is missed as well. Reflective analysis thinks that reflection terminates in a focus on the “inner man” or an “invulnerable subjectivity.” But Merleau-Ponty responds that “this is a naïveté, or, if one prefers, an incomplete reflection that loses awareness of its own beginning.”³⁶ There is a pre-reflective experience of the world that is the basis for any reflection, and, furthermore, this basis can never be made fully clear to reflection. For MerleauPonty, genuine reflection (which he associates, in the Preface, with the phenomenological reduction) “does not withdraw from the world toward the unity of consciousness as the foundation of the world.”³⁷ Rather, it must recognize its inherence in a world that it will never completely encompass. “Radical reflection,” Merleau-Ponty tells us, “is conscious of its own dependence on an unreflected life that is its initial, constant, and final situation.”³⁸ Thus, we can say that Merleau-Ponty adds to his critique of critical idealism two points, which he now takes to apply to transcendental idealism. First, idealism employs a conception of reflection which misses the fact that reflection is always based on an unreflected relation to the world that reflection alters, and that reflection can never wholly encompass. In connection with this, transcendental idealism thinks that reflection can grasp the subject and the world fully; there is an “absolute clarity of my thoughts for myself ” which provides “absolute evidentness” of the world.³⁹ But this obscures the subject’s and the world’s opacity. These two points go hand in hand. The fact that reflection can never fully grasp the unreflected is connected to the fact that the world exhibits a kind of resistance to reflection; there is a stronger element of transcendence to the world than idealism can accommodate. Furthermore, the existence of other people (other

³⁶ PP, p. lxxiii.

³⁷ PP, p. lxxvii.

³⁸ PP, p. lxxviii.

³⁹ PP, p. lxxx.

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consciousnesses) is a unique element of this transcendence which hinders the transcendental idealist’s attempt to construct a fully objective view of the world. The method of phenomenological description and “radical reflection” that Merleau-Ponty favors will be discussed in much more detail in Chapter 8 below. There is, however, one last element of his critique of idealist method that comes out of these considerations. As was shown in the previous section of this chapter, there is much ambiguity surrounding Merleau-Ponty’s acceptance of the first basic tenet of transcendental idealism (the transcendental perspectivism thesis). There is similar ambiguity surrounding the second basic tenet of transcendental idealism, the transcendental structural analysis thesis. On the one hand, the discussion above would seem to imply that Merleau-Ponty’s view cannot accept the structural analysis thesis, and thus cannot really be transcendental in method (despite his claim to embrace the “true transcendental”). After all, his rejection of the method of “that-without-which” entails the rejection of the search for conditions of possibility. If the phenomenological method can only examine “conditions of actuality,” i.e. it simply gives a pure description of actual experience, it would seem to eliminate the possibility of determining general, universal structures that necessarily shape experience.⁴⁰ This point is compounded by the reference to individual perspectives in the discussion of Peter and Paul. If the importance of individual perspective is paired with the rejection of universal structures, what might result is not transcendental idealism but something akin to Nietzschean perspectivism. It is not clear from the “Preface” that Merleau-Ponty intends to completely give up on transcendental structural analysis, however. Immediately after noting that all forms of idealism are eliminated by the recognition of being in the world, he embraces a conception of the transcendental deduction presented by Eugen Fink. Not to belabor the point, but this is again curious insofar as Fink explicitly associates the view Merleau-Ponty endorses with a new form of transcendental idealism. The relevant passage from the Preface is as follows: Perhaps the best formulation of the reduction is the one offered by Husserl’s assistant Eugen Fink when he spoke of a “wonder” before the world. Reflection does not withdraw from the world toward the unity of consciousness as the foundation of the world; rather, it steps back in order to see transcendences spring forth and it loosens the intentional threads that connect us to the world in order to make them appear; it alone is conscious of the world because it reveals the world as strange and paradoxical. Husserl’s transcendental is not Kant’s, and Husserl criticizes Kantian philosophy for being a “worldly” philosophy because it ⁴⁰ This kind of argument is made in Andrew Inkpin, “Was Merleau-Ponty a ‘transcendental’ phenomenologist?,” Continental Philosophy Review, 50:1 (2017), 27–47. This is discussed in Chapter 8.

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makes use of our relation to the world, which is the engine of the Transcendental Deduction, and makes the world immanent to the subject, rather than standing in wonder before the world and conceiving the subject as a transcendence toward the world.⁴¹

The first key point to draw from this passage is the distinction between “Husserl’s transcendental” and Kant’s. The argument of the First Critique’s transcendental deduction is here taken to be the paradigm case of reflective analysis’s use of the method of “that-without-which.” Such a philosophy is “worldly” because it begins from, as Fink puts it, an “intramundane belief in the world” which he associates with the natural attitude.⁴² Without getting too deep into the details of Fink’s arguments, the general claim is that (Neo-) Kantian philosophies take for granted a belief in the world as composed of determinate objects linked to the subject. They “make use” of that link in deducing a set of conditions under which such supposedly determinate objects can be experienced. Phenomenology, on the other hand, calls this belief into question. Fink notes: After the first and necessarily provisional determination of the essence of the natural attitude as a believing in the world, as the universal flowing apperception of the world which is carried out on its own terms (i.e., upon the basis of this belief itself ), what is of decisive importance is the awakening of an immeasurable astonishment over the mysteriousness of this state of affairs. To accept it as a selfevident fact is to remain blind to the greatest mystery of all, the mystery of the being of the world itself, the world which first receives meaning and the acceptance of its being from the flowing world apperception, and this in terms of every content with which the world could conceivably be given to us at any moment.⁴³

The term rendered as “astonishment” here is “Verwunderung” in the German; this is what Merleau-Ponty renders as “wonder” (étonnement). The “wonder,” for Fink, is thus directed at the world insofar as it can come to have its being for us. The point is that rather than taking belief in the world as determinate in a particular way for granted, the phenomenological reduction involves going behind this belief to examine how there can even come to be a meaningful world for us. Put this way, it is clear that Husserlian phenomenology maintains a version of the structural analysis thesis which is directly tied to the “wonder.” The aim is to

⁴¹ PP, p. lxxvii. Merleau-Ponty cites Fink, “Husserl’s Philosophy and Contemporary Criticism”; see PP 494 n. 30. ⁴² See e.g. Fink, “Husserl’s Philosophy and Contemporary Criticism,” 106–10. While Merleau-Ponty attributes this critique of Kantianism to Husserl, he is taking the notion of worldly philosophies that make use of the relation to the world from Fink, who makes this a major argumentative motif of his defense of phenomenology against Neo-Kantianism. ⁴³ Ibid. 109–10.

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determine how “the world could conceivably be given to us” through an analysis of the structures of actual conscious experience freed of any prejudice imposed by a particular theoretical belief. To determine how the world is given to us precisely involves a determination of the structures of givenness. Merleau-Ponty appears to accept this insofar as he thinks genuine reflection loosens the intentional threads “in order to make them appear.” The analysis of those intentional threads is a version of transcendental structural analysis. The foregoing does not settle all questions regarding Merleau-Ponty’s relation to transcendental analysis. Far from it. But it does show that, in the context of his critique of idealism in the “Preface,” Merleau-Ponty appears to still embrace some form of transcendental philosophy. How radical reflection, which steps back from the world without leaving the world, operates is still a major question, as is the legitimacy of a transcendental analysis that is tied to the actual rather than the possible. These issues will be discussed further in Chapter 8. One other issue that the reference to Fink raises is the question of Merleau-Ponty’s acceptance or rejection of phenomenological constitutive analysis. The specific role this plays in his critique of idealism will be the topic of the next section.

3. Constitution and the “Idealism of Synthesis” Shortly after the initial critique of reflective analysis is presented in the “Preface,” Merleau-Ponty asserts that the “real is to be described, and neither constructed nor constituted. This means that I cannot assimilate perception to syntheses that belong to the order of judgments, acts, or predication.”⁴⁴ Merleau-Ponty distinguishes his method from three related concepts: construction, constitution, and synthesis. In doing so, he marks a departure from transcendental idealism, as these terms (particularly the latter two, which we will focus on here) play a prominent role in the thought of Kant and Husserl. As was discussed in Chapter 1 §7, transcendental perspectivism entails synthetic unity, or the idea that all of our experiences can be attributed to that single perspective. For Kant, it requires some subjective mental processing to synthesize objects into unities that are meaningful for us.⁴⁵ Broadly, Husserl agrees with Kant that something must happen on the side of the subject in order for us to be able to experience a world of meaningful objects. Constitution names this element of Husserl’s thought. As Zahavi defines it, “constitution must be understood as a process that allows for manifestation and signification . . . [it] permits that which is constituted to appear, unfold, articulate, and show itself as what it is.”⁴⁶ And ⁴⁴ PP, p. lxxiv. ⁴⁵ See Stang, “Kant’s Transcendental Idealism,” §1. ⁴⁶ Zahavi, Husserl’s Phenomenology, 73. It is important to point out that, as Zahavi establishes, constitution is not a purely subjective process for Husserl.

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transcendental analysis, for Husserl, describes the conditions of possibility under which constitution takes place. It is not surprising that Merleau-Ponty would object to those views as described. He takes synthesis and constitution to be (at least in many cardinal instances) overly intellectualistic and, crucially, objectivist. While his critique of objectivism in Phenomenology will be discussed in much more detail in Chapter 6 §3, the basic point is that he rejects metaphysical views that take the world to be primarily comprised of atomic, causally related entities. Kant’s view seems most susceptible to such an interpretation, as it can suggest a kind of sense-data view of perception wherein sensory quanta have to be arranged by the mind into perceived objects. Whether or not this is a correct interpretation, Merleau-Ponty construes Kant’s view this way.⁴⁷ And Merleau-Ponty rejects intellectualist views wherein perception is “constructed with states of consciousness as a house is built with stones and a mental chemistry is imagined that could fuse these materials into a compact whole.”⁴⁸ He thus rejects the idea that perception takes discrete sensory units that are meaningless on their own and holds them together with some sort of mental meaning “glue.” It has to be emphasized, though, that Phenomenology does not reject the concepts of synthesis or constitution entirely. In fact, Merleau-Ponty uses both terms throughout the text as a positive element of his view, and it becomes clear that he is only rejecting certain ways of construing those concepts. The narrower purpose of this section, however, is to examine how his critique of these concepts fits with his overt critique of idealism. In brief, he typically presents idealism as directly connected to the intellectualist and objectivist versions of these concepts. This is nowhere seen more clearly than in his criticism of “the idealism of synthesis,” or a form of transcendental idealism according to which consciousness constructs the object in thought.⁴⁹ In the context of this discussion Merleau-Ponty again endorses something like an “embodied” version of the transcendental perspectivism thesis, wherein “what is given is not the thing alone, but the experience of the thing.”⁵⁰ And this experience is always mediated by the body, such that in perception “there is a logic of the world that my entire body merges with and through which intersensory things become possible.”⁵¹ While he refers to a “logic” and “system,” Merleau-Ponty is careful to distinguish this from the Kantian view associated with the idealism of synthesis, wherein the world “is an invariable system of relations . . . like a crystal cube, where all possible presentations can be conceived by its law of construction and that even allows its hidden sides to be seen in its present transparency.”⁵² The “crystal cube” stands as a metaphor for the idealism of synthesis, and captures one of Merleau-Ponty’s main criticisms of idealism in ⁴⁷ See e.g. PP 250–1, where he critiques the idea that “synthetic apperception” arranges sensation. ⁴⁸ PP 23. ⁴⁹ PP 340. ⁵⁰ PP 340. ⁵¹ PP 341. ⁵² PP 342.

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general. For such a view all “sides” of the world can be seen and its clear structure can be cognized. After an extended discussion, Merleau-Ponty summarizes his critique of the idealism of synthesis by making the provocative claim that if “the synthesis could be actual, if my experience formed a closed system . . . then nothing would exist.”⁵³ The reason for this hinges on the idea that we can only experience things through our bodily perspective. The idealism of synthesis does not properly grasp the nature of our perspective by mistaking it for an absolute standpoint. To genuinely have a perspective is to “inhabit” the world, and thus the perspective is limited to the world as it currently engages with it. Insofar as our perspective is limited to our bodily engagement with the world and we experience this limitation, we encounter transcendence by grasping that there can be something beyond that limit. But insofar as we only ever encounter that limitation from our perspective, and we can never get outside of that perspective to “look at” the other side of the limit. The crystal cube view misses this. The critique of the idealism of synthesis has reached an interesting conclusion. It appears that Merleau-Ponty is basing his critique of one aspect of transcendental idealism on a defense of a different aspect of transcendental idealism. The critique of the intellectualist aspect of transcendental analysis, which purports to reflectively grasp a transparent structure according to which our experience of the world is synthesized, is built on the idea that we can only experience the world through an embodied perspective. The discussion of the idealism of synthesis thus suggests an adherence to the transcendental perspectivism thesis. The idealism of synthesis’s “crystal cube” view is impossible, precisely because of the limitations entailed by transcendental perspectivism. It should also be noted that in the midst of the critique of the idealism of synthesis, Merleau-Ponty does allow that the structure of our bodily perspective can be thought of in terms of synthesis. And this fits with his claim that there is a “logic of the world that my entire body merges with.” But he describes the synthesis as a “transition synthesis” (a term that he takes from Husserl⁵⁴) which is a form of synthesis that is accomplished, without thought or intellectual control, via our bodily interface with the world.⁵⁵ As will be discussed in more detail in Chapter 8, while there are issues with Merleau-Ponty’s conception of transcendental philosophy, he does not wholly give up on the concepts of synthesis and constitution and the role they play in transcendental analysis. This critique of the “idealism of synthesis” sheds new light on the critique of idealism presented in the “Preface.” In his discussion of the phenomenological reduction there, Merleau-Ponty notes that insofar as it should lead to radical ⁵³ PP 347. ⁵⁴ For a discussion of the sources of this term see Samantha Matherne, “Merleau-Ponty on Style as the Key to Perceptual Presence and Constancy,” Journal of the History of Philosophy 55:4 (2017), 693–727, n. 35. ⁵⁵ PP 344–5.

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reflection, which is conscious of its inherence in unreflected life, the reduction is not “the formula for an idealist philosophy” but is “in fact the formula for an existential philosophy.”⁵⁶ The crucial difference between these philosophies is that existential philosophy is attentive to the actual lived perspective that the reflecting consciousness inhabits, while (what is here called) idealist philosophy takes itself to be capable of clearly reflecting on a fully determinate world which it constitutes. In the quote just taken from the Preface, “idealist philosophy” appears to stand for what is later called “the idealism of synthesis.” To repeat a crucial point for the thesis of this book, it is not clear that the idealism of synthesis is coextensive with all idealism, and in fact we see aspects of transcendental idealism’s two main theses at work in the passages where Merleau-Ponty critiques intellectualist conceptions of constitution and synthesis. This suggests that he might have opposed “the idealism of synthesis” with “existential idealism” (or “embodied idealism”) rather than opposing idealist philosophy to existential philosophy.

4. Idealism Is Intellectualism? In the “Freedom” chapter, Merleau-Ponty presents a generally compatibilist view of freedom that is posed against idealism, which purportedly cannot properly conceive of our situatedness. After presenting the basics of his compatibilist view, Merleau-Ponty considers the following possible response from a hypothetical idealist interlocutor: One might respond from the idealist side that I am not for myself a particular project, but rather a pure consciousness, and that the attributes “bourgeois” or “worker” only belong to me insofar as I place myself back among others, insofar as I see myself through their eyes, from the outside, and as an “other.”⁵⁷

It is highly revealing of his overall attitude toward idealism that Merleau-Ponty considers this as the idealist’s response. It is not really much of a response at all; rather the hypothetical interlocutor is effectively doubling down on the idealist view Merleau-Ponty has presented, and critiqued, in the preceding pages. Rather than try to refute Merleau-Ponty’s arguments the (imagined) idealist simply restates that one is a pure consciousness that constructs its world via “placing” itself amongst transcendence. This passage makes abundantly clear that in Phenomenology Merleau-Ponty does not countenance the possibility of an idealist philosophy, at least in name, that overcomes the problems he associates with the idealism of synthesis. “Idealism” simply is his name for views that construe the self

⁵⁶ PP, p. lxxviii.

⁵⁷ PP 473.

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as a pure I or pure consciousness, and construe the world as a transparent, rationally-arrayed structure that the I reconstructs (if not constructs) in thought. In this case idealism is a particularly strong form of intellectualism; for it “every object of thought . . . only subsists before and by the consciousness that constitutes it as an object.”⁵⁸ Construed this way, idealism misses key elements of both subject and object. On the subject side, it cannot properly accommodate forms of experience other than rational thought. On the object side it cannot properly accommodate indeterminacy and opacity. For the idealist there is nothing other than the cognition of the crystal cube. While his critical points are stated in new ways and some new specifics are drawn out, there is nothing in the overt critique of idealism in Phenomenology that greatly departs from the critique of critical idealism developed in the other PreSorbonne texts. This critique of idealism can be categorized as a rejection of multiple interrelated problematic theoretical tendencies. Most generally, it rejects intellectualism. There is also the paired rejection of strong ontological idealism and strong anti-realism. While these three points cover most of Merleau-Ponty’s critique, we can also single out his rejection of views that take consciousness to construct the world via active mental operations. That point is a specification of the general critique of intellectualism, as is his rejection of views that involve “pure” reflection or those that impose totalizing rational schemes on the world. Finally, one general problem with all of these views is that they ignore embodiment and our bodily engagement with the world. All of the aspects of the critique of idealism in Phenomenology that have been elaborated in this chapter can be slotted into one or more of these points, and most are tied, at least in part, to the rejection of intellectualism. As has been noted throughout this chapter, Merleau-Ponty’s overt equation of idealism with intellectualism in Phenomenology is often at odds with the implicitly idealistic elements of his thought. In particular, he appears to both accept that transcendental analysis plays a role in his philosophy and frequently claims a position on the centrality of embodied experience that is at least similar to the thesis of transcendental perspectivism. Of course, this chapter has pointed out various problems with those potentially idealist elements as well. The next step in the consideration of Merleau-Ponty’s relationship to idealism in Phenomenology, then, will be to look beyond the explicit critique of idealism and more fully investigate the idealist elements. This will both further make explicit those implicit elements and expand on the problems faced by the interpretive attempt to find idealism in the book. The next four chapters will thoroughly establish the fact that although Phenomenology presents some problems for transcendental idealism, it handles these problems from within a novel transcendental idealist view.

⁵⁸ PP 472.

6 Transcendental Idealism in Phenomenology of Perception The Basic Framework

1. The General Aims and Structure of Phenomenology of Perception It is difficult to present an overarching interpretation of Phenomenology of Perception. The text is not rigorously systematized; arguments are repeated in various ways and views are presented in varying levels of depth throughout. Many key ideas of the text presuppose and/or entail other ideas that are considered elsewhere, and these multiple co-implications make it difficult to interpret the text as posing a single clear argumentative structure. This chapter will attempt to overcome these problems by first presenting, in this section, a general overview of the structure of Phenomenology’s argument in as straightforward a fashion as possible. This will conclude with a description of how the transcendental idealist interpretation can be slotted into the general overview. The remaining sections of the chapter will then elaborate on the ways in which the general structure embodies a transcendental idealist view. For the sake of coherent presentation, certain elements of Merleau-Ponty’s arguments will be ignored. Those elements will be taken up in the next three chapters, which examine specific aspects of Phenomenology in more detail. It should be noted, though, that in those three chapters the problem of ignoring certain elements in order to clearly present others will recur. Thus, the transcendental idealist interpretation of Phenomenology will only be complete when Chapters 6–9 are taken as whole. With this said, one can reconstruct the arguments of Phenomenology as fitting the following framework. After summarizing his views on Husserlian phenomenology in the Preface, Merleau-Ponty presents the general terms of his own version of phenomenological analysis in the Introduction. Parts One and Two then engage in that phenomenological analysis. Those parts take up the same general issues but different starting points; first the body, then the world. Part Three then more deeply examines certain fundamental philosophical issues that crop up in the earlier analyses. We can thus divide the structure into roughly three sections, corresponding to the Introduction, Parts One and Two, and Part Three.

Embodied Idealism: Merleau-Ponty’s Transcendental Philosophy. Joseph C. Berendzen, Oxford University Press. © Joseph C. Berendzen 2023. DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780192874764.003.0007

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Three elements of the Introduction are particularly noteworthy. First, Merleau-Ponty presents his correlate to the Husserlian concept of the natural attitude, which he associates with “objective thought.” In brief, the idea is that we are prone to mistakenly take an objectivist view of the world to be common sense. This objectivism, which sees reality as composed of discrete, externally related objects, has to be overcome in phenomenological analysis. Second, Merleau-Ponty presents the analysis of psychological research as important for critiquing objective thought. Third, he describes the twin argumentative foils of empiricism and intellectualism, which also allow for an analysis of objective thought via a consideration of their failings.¹ In terms of methodology, the second and third points typically go together. Merleau-Ponty will present clinical/observational psychological results, consider how those results might be understood according to empiricist and intellectualist theories, and examine the shortcomings of each analysis. This reveals the problems with objective thought, and motivates understanding the psychological phenomena in a different way. This different way of understanding the phenomena motivates a consideration of the “pre-objective,” or the element of our experience that is not properly captured by the categories of objective thought. Parts One and Two of Phenomenology further carry out this analysis. Part One, “The Body,” examines psychological studies that consider bodily experiences such as phantom limb phenomena, double sensations, and inhibitions of sexual functioning. Part Two, “The Perceived World,” follows the same basic method as Part One but focuses on analyses of objects in the world, such as considerations of the spatialization of objects, perceptual constancy phenomena, hallucination, and the experience of other persons. For both sections, one upshot is that while one can begin the analysis from either the body or world, the two are in fact thoroughly coimplicated in all of the relevant phenomena. In both sections, empiricist and intellectualist analyses of the discussed phenomena are shown to share the failings of objective thought. In many cases the consideration of empiricism and intellectualism has a “dialectical” structure in that the first view is shown to have failings that are partly corrected by the second view, but this also reveals the failings in the second view and thus the analysis points beyond both. In some cases, this structure is driven by an immanent critique, insofar as empiricism and intellectualism are shown to be lacking on their own terms. But this is often bolstered by a more external critique driven by first-personal phenomenological descriptions that show the empiricist and intellectualist views to be incorrect. Ultimately, the analyses of Parts One and Two establish that our experience is, in a fundamental sense, pre-objective, which is to say that it does not encounter a

¹ For an overview of Merleau-Ponty’s use of empiricism and intellectualism, see Komarine Romdenh-Romluc, Routledge Philosophy Guidebook to Merleau-Ponty and Phenomenology of Perception, London: Routledge (2011), 49–61.

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world of discrete, determinate objects that are clearly linked via causal or rational relations. Various aspects of our embodiment, and our embodied link with our environments, are picked out as crucial elements of pre-objectivity. As such Parts One and Two elaborate on multiple structures of pre-objective experience, such as the body schema, habituation and sedimentation, and the perspectival/horizonal character of perception. Various aspects of the analyses in Parts One and Two indicate that certain fundamental philosophical questions need to be considered in more depth. First, Merleau-Ponty’s consideration of the role our embodiment plays in shaping our perceptual experience suggests a new, “embodied” version of consciousness. Second, the ways in which our experience is horizonal, and shifts or flows from perspectival view to perspectival view, suggests a particular relation between our experience and time. Third, the discussion of the ways in which our actions are constrained by and enabled by our links to the environment suggests a particular view of free action. Part Three then dives more deeply into these issues in the chapters “The Cogito,” “Temporality,” and “Freedom.” These chapters reveal that the structures of pre-objectivity already mentioned are undergirded by even more fundamental aspects of consciousness and temporality. It must be noted that this is a reconstruction that presents a clearer structure than Phenomenology actually contains. While the Introduction contains the three key elements noted above (the discussion of objective thought, the use of psychological research, and the critiques of empiricism and intellectualism), they are not so systematically presented. And while Parts One and Two do generally follow the strategy described above, they do not always neatly follow the scheme of presenting psychological data, considering empiricist and intellectualist takes on that data, and then refuting those views. Also, Merleau-Ponty does not explicitly lay out all of the structures of pre-objectivity in anything like a table or list. Rather, their presentation is repeated in various ways and the discussions of different structures bleed into one another. Because of this Part Three does not quite have the character of a clear concluding section in the manner described above. To some extent it continues the kind of critical analysis of objective thought that is found in Parts One and Two. Nevertheless, it is clear—particularly in the chapter “Temporality”—that Merleau-Ponty is moving beyond the critical analysis that is meant to primarily reveal the pre-objective to a deeper description of the character of the pre-objective. Thus, while the reconstructed framework can be used as a template for interpreting Phenomenology, the reader should be aware that the text does not neatly fit the format described here. Rather, the framework presents a general view of the type of analysis Phenomenology provides. One can then wonder how my transcendental idealist interpretation fits into this framework. To count as a version of transcendental idealism, Phenomenology would have to include the two definitional aspects presented in Chapter 1 §6, the thesis of transcendental perspectivism and the thesis of transcendental structural

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analysis. It is easiest, initially, to fit the latter of those two theses into the above framework. The structures of the pre-objective mentioned above, such as the body schema and the horizonality of experience, can be considered as transcendental structures. For example, our bodily orientation in space (which is part of the body schema discussion) is prior to our experience of the world and determines something of the character of that experience. Furthermore, insofar as MerleauPonty uses phenomenological descriptions to display the failings of objective thought, the pre-objective structures are arrived at through a consideration of the first-person perspective. And that adherence to the first-person perspective leads to the importance of the thesis of transcendental perspectivism as well. While that thesis is not exactly argued for directly in Phenomenology, there are multiple passages that show that Merleau-Ponty takes our experience to be ineliminably shaped by, and limited by, our individual perspectives. But these issues are problematized in the text as well. For example, the discussion of our embodied connection with an environment calls into question transcendental perspectivism, and the combination of first-person phenomenological results with third-person psychological results calls into question the thesis of transcendental structural analysis. On balance, however, I think that the transcendental idealist elements of the book stand out as shaping its overall view. The rest of this chapter will focus on further explaining the aspects of the general framework of Phenomenology presented above with the assumption that it does, in fact, embody a transcendental idealist view. To get this analysis off the ground, the next section will first have to establish the way in which Phenomenology’s arguments require adherence to the thesis of transcendental perspectivism.

2. Perspectivism, Transcendental and Otherwise, in Phenomenology of Perception One aspect of the structure described in the previous section would seem not to fit well with the transcendental idealist interpretation. There is no element or section where the thesis of transcendental perspectivism is presented or argued for. One might argue, as Sebastian Gardner does, that Merleau-Ponty simply assumes such a standpoint, and directs his arguments primarily at readers who already agree with that view. Contrary to this, I think that Merleau-Ponty does provide certain arguments in the text to support the thesis of transcendental perspectivism and cast it in terms of the analysis of embodiment.² But while he gives arguments that ² See Gardner, “Merleau-Ponty’s Transcendental Theory of Perception,” 303–4. As has been noted in Chapter 3 §2 above, I also disagree with Gardner by thinking that the arguments of Structure support Merleau-Ponty’s transcendental turn.

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are meant to establish something like the thesis of transcendental perspectivism, they do not occur in any early, stage-setting section. They rather come out in the midst of the other analyses throughout the text. This marks a clear instance of the point raised in the introduction to this chapter, that Merleau-Ponty presents various interconnected ideas at multiple points in the text rather than in a clear single strand of argumentation. A good method for teasing out these arguments is to track Merleau-Ponty’s overt discussions of the concept of “perspective.” Of course, perspectivism is not necessarily transcendental perspectivism. Thus, we need to pull on this thread to see if it leads to an emphasis on a perspective that is appropriately general and essential for human experience that can stand as a truly transcendental element. “Perspective” appears throughout Phenomenology, though most instances of the term do not refer (at least directly) to something like a transcendental perspective.³ The bulk of the instances refer to variations that occur within a single subject’s perceptual experience.⁴ For example, we might say that looking directly at one face of a cube versus its opposite would give one two different perspectives on the cube.⁵ This kind of discussion can be found at the beginning of the Part Two chapter “The Thing and the Natural World,” where Merleau-Ponty discusses the problem of squaring the fact that objects appear to us through multiple “perspectival variations” or “perspectival presentations” with the idea that objects are unities.⁶ He connects this way of thinking about perspective with Husserl’s notion that objects are experienced in “horizons.”⁷ As Zahavi describes Husserl’s view, “our intuitive consciousness of the present profile [or perspectival appearance] of the object is always accompanied by an intentional consciousness of the object’s horizon of absent profiles.”⁸ The sides of the cube I do not see are intended as absent—but possibly present—profiles in the perceptual experience of one side. Furthermore, the object is connected to a background environment which also connects with a horizon of absence.⁹ For example, as I look at the cube, it is not just the other sides that could potentially appear. The entire perceptual field could shift as I move, and thus there is always a

³ “Perspective” and its variants in English typically translate the French “perspective” and its variants. There are some instances that depart from this, however. For example, “se profiler” is sometimes translated as “to appear perspectivally,” on this point see PP 550 n. 67. It also translates “vue” in some instances. This is, for example, the case with the first three instances of “perspective” in the Landes translation. See PP, p. lxxii and Merleau-Ponty, Phénoménologie de la perception, Paris: Gallimard (1945), 8–9. ⁴ It is also used to refer to differences in perspective between people; see e.g. PP, pp. lxxv–lxxvi. ⁵ Merleau-Ponty uses the example of the vision of a cube in connection with perspectival appearances at multiple points in the text. See e.g. PP 151–3 and 209–11. ⁶ PP 312–18. ⁷ See e.g. PP 69–73. ⁸ Dan Zahavi, Husserl’s Phenomenology, 96. “Profiles” translates Husserl’s Abschattungen. MerleauPonty uses the German term directly but also uses the term “profile”. See PP 440–3 for the former and PP 209 for an example of the latter. ⁹ Zahavi, Husserl’s Phenomenology, 97.

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potentially new background horizon that is intended, as absent, in the current horizon. Perspectival appearances are always connected with further appearances of the object and the greater environment. Merleau-Ponty emphasizes that it is an objectivist mistake to think of these appearances as discrete entities which must be connected and held together intellectualistically by a synthesizing consciousness. He tells us that “we do not have a series of profiles of the world whose unity would be established in us by consciousness,” but nevertheless the “world certainly appears perspectivally.”¹⁰ He then goes on to introduce the idea of a “transition synthesis”; the general point is that the horizonal profiles of our experience are held together passively in our embodied engagement with the world, rather than via an explicit, intellectual synthesis.¹¹ This anti-intellectualist aspect of Merleau-Ponty’s perspectivism is connected, at the end of the Introduction, with a criticism of transcendental philosophy. He construes as a limitation on “classical transcendental philosophies” the fact that “the meditating Ego can never suppress its inherence in an individual subject who knows all things from a particular perspective.”¹² This is in particular a limitation on transcendental philosophy’s conception of reflection, which purports to grasp reality in the “crystal cube” fashion discussed elsewhere in Phenomenology (see Chapter 5 §3). Classical transcendental philosophies believe that reality can be grasped “from all sides,” as it were, in thought, as a rationally complete totality. But this does not implicate all transcendental philosophies, and phenomenology is posed as an alternative. Most importantly for the present point, however, the argument against classical transcendental philosophies appears to itself rest on a transcendental claim. The perspectival limitations of the individual subject are not described here as being due to certain contingent circumstances. Rather, the implication is that the “meditating Ego” is incapable of grasping the world as rational totality because its experience is essentially structured by the horizonbound perspective. That Merleau-Ponty intends there to be a transcendental sense to his discussion of perspective is further seen in the discussion of the body’s role in establishing perspective. At the beginning of Part One, chapter II (“The Experience of the Body and Classical Psychology”) he notes that one’s specific perspective on an object is due to “physical necessity” or “factual necessity”; if I can only see the steeple of a church through a window, it is the facts of my position and the placement of the window that impose this perspective. I could potentially go outside the window and see the church in a different way.¹³ While he refers to factual “necessity” in this passage, the general point is that the specific perspective is contingent upon the physical facts. But he goes on to say that the existence of perspective in general is not contingent in this way:

¹⁰ PP 343.

¹¹ See PP 276–7 and 343–5.

¹² PP 62.

¹³ PP 93.

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[M]y own body is the primordial habit, the one that conditions all others and by which they can be understood. Its near presence and its invariable perspective are not a factual necessity, since factual necessity presupposes them: for my window to impose on me a perspective on the church, my body must first impose on me a perspective on the world, and the former necessity can only be a purely physical one because the latter necessity is metaphysical. Factual situations can only affect me if I am first of such a nature that there can be factual situations for me.¹⁴

This passage establishes the idea that the specific, contingent perspectives that we can take on the world are enabled by a transcendental perspective. The term “transcendental” is not used here, but the distinction between contingent and transcendental that I am employing maps onto Merleau-Ponty’s distinction between factual necessity and metaphysical necessity. The bodily perspective is a “metaphysical necessity” that is prior to, and enables, the ability to perceive via various factual perspectives. This passage provides an example that, contra Gardner’s interpretation, offers a genuine argument for the transcendental view. It can, furthermore, be reconstructed as a standard transcendental argument. Merleau-Ponty begins with an element of our experience that is easily recognizable: its “factually” perspectival nature. This is a point he thinks everyone—not just partisans of transcendental philosophy—should grasp. He then attempts to show that this basic “factual” perspective must be underpinned by a general, necessary bodily perspective. The reference to the body’s “invariable perspective” means “transcendental perspective” in this case. On the one hand, the idea that the body has an invariable perspective seems obviously wrong, given that our perceptual perspective would constantly vary with our movements (this is a part of its horizonal nature). Merleau-Ponty could not deny that, so his point has to be that the general perspectivally-bound nature of perception is invariable. To put the point another way, we cannot have a view of reality that is not from the general embodied perspective. This is the point Merleau-Ponty is making a couple of pages later when he notes that “I myself am in a certain place from which I see them [objects], but which I cannot see.”¹⁵ I “cannot see” my perspective because I can only see from my perspective. I might be able to get around the perspectival limitations of the window by leaving the building, but I cannot leave my body to get a different view of things. All experience is conditioned by the “metaphysical necessity” of my bodily perspective. This way of describing our bodily perspective comes up later in Phenomenology as well. For example, in Part Three, chapter I (“The Cogito”) Merleau-Ponty says that one’s body “is inseparable from a perspective and is this very perspective

¹⁴ PP 93.

¹⁵ PP 95.

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brought into existence.”¹⁶ Tellingly Merleau-Ponty casts this point in transcendental terms; the body as perspective “is the condition of possibility . . . of all the expressive operations and all of the acquisitions that constitute the cultural world.”¹⁷ And the link to the thesis of transcendental perspectivism is strengthened later in this chapter when the bodily perspective is tied to consciousness. Merleau-Ponty introduces the idea of the “tacit cogito,” which he describes as an “indeclinable subjectivity,” and a “presence of self to self.”¹⁸ He refers to the tacit cogito as our “first perspective,” and the implication is that “first” here implies a kind of metaphysical rather than temporal priority. Our transcendental perspective, which is the condition of possibility of having a world, is thus an element of an embodied consciousness (a tacit cogito). The link between our perspectives and conscious experience is thus present in these passages, but is still under-explained. All of the passages that have been marshaled here in service of attributing a notion of transcendental perspective to Merleau-Ponty have focused on the body rather than consciousness, except for the tacit cogito passage. And the notion of the tacit cogito is ambiguous; while it is described as an experience of self-consciousness it is also, qua “tacit,” said to be not thought. Of course, it is crucial to grasp that thought and consciousness are precisely not coextensive on Merleau-Ponty’s view; as was already established in Structure, there is a form of consciousness that does not require explicit intellectual acts. But the nature of this tacit consciousness, which Merleau-Ponty calls “a pure self-affection,” is a bit unclear. This raises a point that has been previously mentioned—if transcendental idealism hinges on a particular view of the centrality of the mind, or consciousness, is this truly compatible with Merleau-Ponty’s emphasis on embodiment? If we set aside the ambiguous discussion of the tacit cogito (which will be taken up again in more detail in Chapter 7), the passages that focus on the body’s perspective would seem to entail that conscious experience is at play, insofar as it is perceptual perspective that is most directly discussed (and visual experience dominates Merleau-Ponty’s examples). The “primacy of perception” (to recall the title of a text in which Merleau-Ponty summarizes the views of Phenomenology) would seem to necessarily entail a kind of primacy of conscious experience. Thus, our embodied perspective would have to be an embodied conscious perspective. The idea that it is genuinely a conscious subjectivity that is at play in the discussion of perspective is strengthened as Merleau-Ponty transitions from the chapter on “The Cogito” to the chapter on “Temporality.” The end of the former introduces the notion of temporality and links it to perspective in an interesting way:

¹⁶ PP 408.

¹⁷ PP 408.

¹⁸ PP 426.

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[W]hen I move around an object, I do not obtain a series of perspectival views that I subsequently coordinate through the idea of a unique geometrical plan . . . so too am I not a series of psychical acts, nor for that matter a central I who gathers them together in a synthetic unity, but rather a single experience that is inseparable from itself, a single “cohesion of life,” a single temporality . . . It is this advent or rather this transcendental event that the Cogito recovers. The fundamental truth is certainly that “I think,” but only on condition of understanding by this that “I belong to myself” in being in the world.¹⁹

Perspectival views or profiles are not discrete psychic events or acts that have to be unified by a transcendental I in the manner that the “idealism of synthesis” would describe. Rather, they are unified by the cogito construed as a single temporality, and this temporal unity is a (perhaps the) transcendental condition for having experience. And a few pages later he refers to the establishment of such temporality as occurring when “a subjectivity comes to shatter the plenitude of being in itself, to sketch out a perspective there.”²⁰ Our experience of reality is transcendentally structured to appear, from our bodily perspective, through a series of horizonal profiles. But one must further grasp that these horizons and profiles do not comprise a series of discrete, externally related events; they rather flow together due to the deeper transcendental unity of our subjective temporality. Temporality is thus the ultimate condition of our perspective on the world. And insofar as subjective temporality is tied to the flow of conscious experience, the above way of talking about perspective further asserts that it is a conscious perspective that is at play. Consciousness clearly plays a role, and is intimately tied to, the discussion of perspective. And the passages noted above provide a great deal of support for the notion that an embodied transcendental perspective is fundamental to MerleauPonty’s thought. The rest of this chapter will proceed on the basis that this point is established, and examine how a version of the thesis of transcendental structural analysis is built upon this basis. It has to be pointed out, however, that there are problems for the transcendental view that have been glossed over here. The discussion of perspective above has considered the notion that our experience is dependent upon a horizonal background, but this issue was considered solely in terms of occurrent perception (i.e. the other side of the cube, or the visual background that shifts as I move). There are other aspects of our experiential background, however, that need to be considered. Most importantly, MerleauPonty construes some of these elements as “anonymous,” or “impersonal,” which might entail that they somehow stand outside of our conscious experience yet determine it in a way that is problematic for transcendental idealism. Along with

¹⁹ PP 430.

²⁰ PP 444.

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this problem, the concepts of the tacit cogito and temporality are introduced in this section but not adequately considered. These problems will be taken up in detail in Chapter 7, where the anonymity in experience and its links to temporality and the tacit cogito will be explored.

3. Objective Thought and the Natural Attitude With a basic notion of an embodied transcendental perspective established, we can shift to finding the thesis of transcendental structural analysis operating in the general structure of Phenomenology described in §1. This will first entail examining how Merleau-Ponty casts phenomenological analysis, primarily in the Introduction, in relation to the critique of objective thought. Objective thought can, borrowing Komarine Romdenh-Romluc’s definition, be initially thought of as “a series of theoretical positions that share the basic presumption that the world is composed of determinate entities that stand in external relations to one another.”²¹ In turn, the pre-objective can be initially defined as a kind of experience, which Merleau-Ponty takes to be basic, that does not present the world as composed of such determinate entities. This section will further elaborate on these definitions and situate objective thought in terms of Merleau-Ponty’s transcendental method. A good starting point for this is to examine what Merleau-Ponty means when he says that both empiricism and intellectualism are burdened by an “unquestioned belief in the world” that keeps them from recognizing the preobjective.²² Prima facie an “unquestioned belief in the world” sounds like a pre-theoretical faith in the existence of the external world. But Merleau-Ponty is rather referring to a more developed metaphysical view (though one still more basic than philosophical or scientific theories) that is perhaps better grasped by the phrase “unquestioned belief in a universe perfectly explicit in itself.”²³ This unquestioned belief is connected to objective thought, and is perhaps most easily seen in the empiricist view that perception, conceived in terms of sensation, causally links us with a world composed of externally related discrete objects.²⁴ While intellectualism rejects the idea that consciousness and the world are external to one another and related causally, it maintains an objectivist metaphysics by construing the ²¹ Romdenh-Romluc, Routledge Guidebook to Phenomenology of Perception, 219. ²² The phrase “unquestioned belief in the world,” or very similar phrases, shows up at multiple points in Phenomenology. For instances in the Introduction see PP 5, 6, 7, 28, 44, 54, 58, 59. ²³ PP 44. ²⁴ Throughout Phenomenology Merleau-Ponty critiques “objective thought,” which names a particular kind of metaphysical theory. He sometimes uses the term “objective” in connection with “objective thought,” but it sometimes refers to objectivity generally. In this text I use the word “objectivism” to refer to views that hold to “objective thought” and the term “objectivity” to refer to the more basic sense of a shared external world.

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world as something grasped in fully determinate thoughts. In both cases the world is believed to be present to us as atomistic, determinate units. This is the unquestioned belief in the world. This belief plays a key role in Merleau-Ponty’s conception of the natural attitude which, from the point of view of Husserlian phenomenology, is “bracketed” within the phenomenological attitude. For Husserl, our standard, everyday attitude toward the world implicitly contains certain epistemological and metaphysical commitments that obscure our ability to properly describe our experience. Chief among these commitments is a kind of metaphysical realism. This “natural attitude,” which describes both our everyday pre-theoretical attitude and many common theoretical orientations (such as those of the natural sciences) leads people to mistake a view shaped by these implicit commitments for a pure description of phenomena. Thus, the phenomenologist must, via the “epoché” and “reduction,” suspend these “natural” commitments and reflect on experience in an undogmatic fashion.²⁵ Merleau-Ponty’s desire to describe our experience in a fashion unburdened by the “unquestioned belief in the world” fits generally with the Husserlian imperative to suspend the natural attitude, though MerleauPonty’s discussion of the natural attitude is somewhat ambiguous. Clearing up this ambiguity can help us further understand the transcendental aspirations of his phenomenology, and the relations between the natural attitude, preobjectivity, and objective thought. On the one hand, Merleau-Ponty depicts the natural attitude as connected to pre-objective perceptual experience, and thus it seems to stand opposed to objective thought and its “unquestioned belief.” For example, in his discussion of the illusion of the moon appearing larger at the horizon than at its zenith he claims that “in the natural attitude, the parts of the field act upon each other and motivate this enormous moon on the horizon, this measureless size that is nevertheless a size.”²⁶ Insofar as the moon has a “measureless size” it is perceived as indeterminate, and this indeterminacy is present in the natural attitude. Grasping this kind of indeterminacy moves us to realize the “true role of philosophical reflection”—to unveil consciousness’s “unreflective life in things”; i.e. the pre-objective perspective. On the other hand, Merleau-Ponty describes the unquestioned belief in the world as tied to the natural attitude. This is seen when he notes that the “kinship of intellectualism and empiricism” is found in the fact that they both define the world “by the absolute exteriority of its parts.” Insofar as this is the case, “both maintain the natural or dogmatic attitude.”²⁷ The dogmatic attitude is objective thought; it is the view that the world is made up of absolutely exterior parts. And this is equated with the natural attitude. ²⁵ See Zahavi, Husserl’s Phenomenology, 44–6. ²⁶ PP, all quotes in this paragraph are on p. 34. ²⁷ PP, all quotes in this paragraph are on p. 41. Emphasis added.

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If we isolate these two passages, there is an apparent contradiction in MerleauPonty’s construal of the natural attitude. It is both aligned with pre-objective experience and dogmatic objectivist beliefs. This contradiction can be resolved however, by a deeper consideration of Merleau-Ponty’s views. In brief, MerleauPonty believes that the move toward objective thought springs from a pretheoretical aspect of perception, yet perception also displays attributes that belie objective thought.²⁸ Properly understanding this complex relation between objective thought and the pre-objective is crucial for establishing the transcendental idealist interpretation. In this context, a general interpretive problem with Phenomenology needs to be raised. Merleau-Ponty tends to describe human perception and action in various ways as entailing levels or layers that are built upon one another. The master example of this regards the relation of the objective to the pre-objective. For example, in the last chapter of the Introduction (“The Phenomenal Field”), he says that the “fundamental philosophical act” would be “to return to the lived world beneath the objective world” and to recover “the layer of living experience through which other people and things are first given.”²⁹ On the basis of this fundamental distinction, Merleau-Ponty makes many other “layer” claims, for example regarding a layer of embodied habit beneath intentional action and a layer of non-conceptual signification beneath language use.³⁰ These examples suggest a kind of strong foundationalism wherein the pre-objective layer is analogous to a concrete foundation upon which a wood frame structure is built; the layers are different in kind and separable. But while Merleau-Ponty’s language can suggest this kind of interpretation, we will see that it is not actually his view. Consider the passage from which the reference to the “fundamental philosophical act” is taken. He notes that the examination of the lived world enables us “to understand the law as much as the limits of the objective world.”³¹ In understanding its “law,” we can grasp the extent to which the move toward objective thought is warranted. As we will see, part of this warrant comes from the fact that objective thought springs directly from the pre-objective, and they are thus intertwined. Yet we also see the limits of the objective world, i.e. the ways in which objective thought illicitly goes beyond perception toward objectivistic beliefs. Objective thought comes out of the preobjective but tends toward a position that exceeds its limits. Along these lines Merleau-Ponty notes that philosophy can “awaken perception and thwart the ruse by which perception allowed itself to be forgotten.”³² Because the natural attitude involves our everyday perceptual consciousness of the world,

²⁸ Romdenh-Romluc, Routledge Guidebook to Phenomenology of Perception, 16–20 gives a very good overview of this point. ²⁹ PP 57, emphasis added. ³⁰ PP, habit example at p. 84 and language example at p. 188. ³¹ PP 57. ³² PP 57. Emphasis added.

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it includes genuine perception, and thus has ties to the positive aspects noted in the moon illusion example. But insofar as that perception allows itself to be “forgotten,” it moves toward a conception that obscures our genuine relation with the world. Merleau-Ponty thinks that the natural attitude is particularly marked by this “forgetting.” But what this means needs further explanation. Perception “allows itself to be forgotten” insofar as it motivates us to grasp a world of “things,” and this movement is part of “a dialectic by which perception hides itself from itself”:³³ [I]f the essence of consciousness is to forget its own phenomena and to thus make possible the constitution of “things,” then this forgetting is not a simple absence, it is the absence of something that consciousness could make present. In other words, consciousness can only forget phenomena because it can also recall them; it can only neglect them in favor of things because they are the birthplace of things.³⁴

Perceptual consciousness makes possible the constitution of determinate things; the move toward objectivity is a part of its nature. Later in the Part Two chapter “The Thing and the Natural World,” Merleau-Ponty says that “human life is defined by this power that it has of denying itself in objective thought, and it draws this power from its primordial attachment to the world itself.”³⁵ Because we are immersed in a world that is the milieu of our daily behavior (our “primordial attachment”), we are motivated to deal with objects and to consider them in different ways as determinate. It thus has to be emphasized that on MerleauPonty’s view, objective thought is not a complete aberration, nor a complete departure from the genuine character of our experience, and it cannot be right to say (as Henry Somers Hall does) that there is a “difference in kind between the structure of perception and the structure of objective thought.”³⁶ Merleau-Ponty echoes the claim in the Introduction about the objective world having its “law” when he ends Part Two by saying that Part Three must describe “a more fundamental Logos than that of objective thought, one that provides objective thought with its relative justification and, at the same time, puts it in its place.”³⁷ The move to grasp a world of determinate objects is relatively justifiable, but the objective thought that obscures our ability to describe experience correctly has gone beyond this justifiable place. Christopher Pollard describes this well in saying that “ ‘objective thought’ builds its theories on the basis of a mutually reinforcing interaction between objective thought and the basic movement

³³ PP 59. ³⁴ PP 59. ³⁵ PP 341. ³⁶ Henry Somers-Hall, “Merleau-Ponty’s Reading of Kant’s Transcendental Idealism,” The Southern Journal of Philosophy, 57:1 (2019), 103–31, quote on p. 113. ³⁷ PP 382. Emphasis added.

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from indeterminacy to determinacy inherent in the perceptual process.”³⁸ Pre-objectivity and objectivity are co-implicated in this movement from indeterminacy to determinacy. If consciousness focuses on determinacy in an improper way (as it does in “common sense”), it “forgets” the perceptual indeterminacy out of which determinacy springs, and thus objective thought moves “out of place.” The move from justified determinacy to the “forgetting” can be elucidated using Merleau-Ponty’s example of walking on a beach and coming across a ship that has run aground. From a distance, the perceiver in this example sees elements of the ship, such as the mast, merging with the forest on the other side of the dunes. At this point, the visual perception is indeterminate; the seen object is not clearly a part of the forest, yet it is not yet grasped as a ship. As the perceiver gets closer to the ship, the elements that previously merged with the forest “reunite with the superstructure of the ship in an unbroken picture.”³⁹ At this point, the ship is more determinately perceived, and this motivates consciousness to grasp it as a determinate thing (to which, for example, concepts may be applied). It may seem “common sensical” to think that the indeterminacy in the early stages of that example was due to a kind of temporary error or failure to perceive the determinate ship that was actually present. But this “common sense” is in fact the dogmatism of the natural attitude. The initial indeterminacy was a genuine part of the experience. Furthermore, that kind of indeterminacy is pervasive in our experience; determinacy only arises out of a background of relations that are not clear until we get a particular hold on the scene. That the ship is grasped as a determinate object is justifiable and not in itself a forgetting of perception; Merleau-Ponty clearly does not argue for the absurd position that perceptual experience does not present us with determinate objects. But it would be a forgetting of perception to neglect the indeterminacy that preceded determinacy, or to consider it aberrant or anomalous. This is why Merleau-Ponty calls on us to “recognize the indeterminate as a positive phenomenon.”⁴⁰ Indeterminacy is not merely due to a failure or lack in perception; it is a constitutive element of perception. We can now expand on the claim that the apparent contradiction regarding the natural attitude is resolved through the proper understanding of objective thought. Insofar as the natural attitude involves perceptual consciousness, it necessarily involves consciousness of perceptual indeterminacy, and thus provides a constant link to our pre-objective experience. This is why Merleau-Ponty would positively link the natural attitude with the “unreflective life in things” as he does in the discussion of the moon’s “measureless size.” But note that the moon illusion calls for consciousness to be “awakened,” and calls for a special sort of philosophical ³⁸ Christopher Pollard, “What is Original in Merleau-Ponty’s View of the Phenomenological Reduction?,” Human Studies, 41 (2018), 395–413, quote on p. 411. ³⁹ PP 17–18, quote on p. 18. ⁴⁰ PP 7.

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reflection. The natural attitude will not “wake up” on its own; it requires a form of phenomenological reflection to do so. This is because the move toward determinacy in perception—the “birth of things” out of our “power of denying ourselves”—leads those in the natural attitude to take on a belief in a “universe” of determinate things. Put another way, we take on the belief that the results of our movements toward determinacy reveal the true character of reality, and in doing so forget (or denigrate) the experience of grasping determinacy out of indeterminacy. This distinction between perception and belief needs to be clarified. It would be wrong to think, on Merleau-Ponty’s view, that the natural attitude is primarily marked by an explicit, cognitively entertained thesis regarding the determinate objectivity of the world. The belief in objectivity that is a part of the natural attitude rather typically lies implicit in our practices. As Merleau-Ponty notes later in “The Philosopher and His Shadow,” “the natural attitude really only becomes an attitude—a tissue of judicatory and propositional acts—when it becomes a naturalist thesis.”⁴¹ Thus phenomenology’s task requires more than taking a second-order attitude toward an explicitly held first-order belief. It rather must attempt to look past a belief which springs from (and thus gains limited legitimacy from) the structure of perception itself, and which has become embedded in our daily practices. One interpretive upshot of this discussion is that there is an ambiguity in the term “pre-objective.” On the one hand, that term appears to refer literally to something prior to or more fundamental than objectivity tout court. As we have seen, though, Merleau-Ponty clearly does not intend this, at least if we take it in a strongly foundationalist fashion. Pre-Objectivity and objectivity are co-implicated just as indeterminacy and determinacy are, so they do not form separable layers in fact. On the other hand, “pre-objective” might be interpreted as referring to our experience prior to or more fundamental than objective thought. In that case, a kind of foundationalist relation does hold. It is only on the basis of experience prior to objective thought, and its movement toward “forgetting,” that we are ever able to form such a metaphysical belief. But it must be noted that insofar as determinacy is rightly motivated out of indeterminacy, the objectivity that “has its law” is not necessarily a part of objective thought (i.e. the overcoming of that belief does not make it such that perception does not attain some objectivity). The relation between pre-objectivity and objectivity is too complex to be thought of in terms of simple foundationalism. Merleau-Ponty still wants to maintain that there is some sense in which pre-objectivity is fundamental, however, and this is what leads to his confusing language. His point is clarified somewhat in the Part Three chapter “The Cogito,” when he discusses the notion of “Fundierung”:

⁴¹ Merleau-Ponty, “The Philosopher and His Shadow,” trans. Richard C. McCleary, in Signs, 163.

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The relation between reason and fact, or between eternity and time, just like the relations between reflection and the unreflected, between thought and language, or between thought and perception, is the two-way relation that phenomenology has called Fundierung. The founding term (time, the unreflected, fact, language, perception) is primary in the sense that the founded term is presented as a determination or a making explicit of the founding term, which prevents the founded term from ever fully absorbing the founding term; and yet the founding term is not primary in the empirical sense and the founded is not merely derived from it, since it is only through the founded that the founding appears.⁴²

This passage does not mention pre-objectivity and objectivity, but the specific relations it does mention (such as thought and perception) stand as specific instances of this relation, so we can apply the Fundierung concept to the present discussion. The founding term is primary in that the founded term comes out of it yet does not completely capture it. Objectivity in the acceptable sense involves making explicit an aspect of pre-objectivity, but we must acknowledge that the latter does not wholly encompass the former. But the latter part of the passage tells us that pre-objectivity is not separable from objectivity, it necessarily leads to it, and it is only through our objectifications that we come to grasp pre-objectivity. There must be a way for this to occur that does not lapse into objective thought. Understanding the links between objective thought and the natural attitude in Phenomenology is the first step in grasping how the text stands as a work of transcendental philosophy. Merleau-Ponty accepts Husserl’s general construal of phenomenology as a transcendental philosophy. The epoché, which suspends our belief in the implicit epistemological and metaphysical commitments of the natural attitude, opens up the possibility of making the transcendental reduction. Once we set the prejudices of the natural attitude aside via the epoché, we are able to properly grasp the character of our conscious experience via the reduction. As Zahavi puts the point, “the reduction is the term for our thematization of the correlation between subjectivity and world . . . [an] analysis that leads from the natural sphere back to (re-ducere) its transcendental foundation.”⁴³ This opens up the possibility of analyzing the transcendental structures that shape our standpoint on reality.

4. The Phenomenal Field and Transcendental Philosophy In the Preface, Merleau-Ponty references “the impossibility of a complete reduction,” but this point is in keeping with the results of the previous section.⁴⁴ The

⁴² PP 414. ⁴³ Zahavi, Husserl’s Phenomenology, 46. ⁴⁴ PP, p. lxxvii. This claim is sometimes incorrectly interpreted as showing that Merleau-Ponty rejects the Husserlian reduction. For an example see Stephen Priest, Merleau-Ponty, London: Routledge (1998), 23–4.

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“complete reduction” refers to a version wherein consciousness fully grasps a determinate world via absolute reflection.⁴⁵ But the revealing of unreflected preobjectivity negates this possibility. Thus, he is somewhat paradoxically claiming that only via the reduction can we recognize the inherent indeterminacy of perceptual consciousness which in turn shows the “complete reduction” to be impossible. Merleau-Ponty does not reject the phenomenological reduction. In fact, his embracing of the reduction is an embracing of a form of transcendental philosophy, as is established in the final sections of Phenomenology’s Introduction. Repeating a point made in Structure, Merleau-Ponty takes the analysis of thirdperson psychological studies to be an important tool for this transcendental analysis: [W]e had to begin a study of perception through psychology. Had we not done so, we would not have understood the full sense of the transcendental problem, since we would not have followed methodically the steps that, beginning from the natural attitude, lead us there. If we did not want to follow reflective philosophy in placing ourselves immediately into a transcendental dimension that we would have to assume to be eternally given and if we did not want to miss the true problem of constitution, we had to frequent the phenomenal field and we had to familiarize ourselves with the subject of phenomena through psychological descriptions.⁴⁶

Methodically working through psychological descriptions leads us to see the transcendental problem in a manner that “reflective philosophy”—the kind of philosophy that might believe in a “complete reduction”—does not grasp. The implication is that reflective philosophy fails to actually work through the reduction, presumably by not properly attending to the character of experience. But while Merleau-Ponty is rejecting the path of reflective philosophy here, he is clearly not rejecting transcendental philosophy. Even more significantly, the path through psychology helps us see the “true problem of constitution.” Despite the criticism of the concept of constitution (see Chapter 5 §3), some form of it is retained at the end of the Introduction. Based on chapter IV of the Introduction, one can reconstruct the reduction as arriving at the transcendental dimension via two steps. First, as the analysis of

⁴⁵ Andrew Inkpin interprets this issue as hinging on the fact that for Husserl, the reduction involves bracketing our belief in the existence of the world, while Merleau-Ponty holds that we have an embodied, pre-theoretical commitment to the world’s existence. Thus, the reduction cannot be complete for Merleau-Ponty because we cannot completely bracket the existence of the world. See Inkpin, “Was Merleau-Ponty a ‘Transcendental’ Phenomenologist?,” especially pp. 36–7. But this misconstrues Husserl; his aim is to put out of play a particular metaphysical attitude toward the world’s existence, not that existence overall. On this point see Zahavi, Husserl’s Phenomenology, 44–6. Merleau-Ponty shares this part of the view, so Inkpin cannot be correctly construing the “incomplete reduction.” ⁴⁶ PP 64.

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psychology shows the concepts of objective thought (such as sensation and judgement) to be questionable, the considerations are moved toward “a new genre of analysis” that considers the phenomenal field, which is referenced in the passage above.⁴⁷ In the second step, the phenomenologist considers how the phenomena are constituted, and “at that very moment, the phenomenal field becomes a transcendental field.”⁴⁸ These two steps will need to be elaborated, beginning with a deeper consideration of the phenomenal field. The phenomenal field is, effectively, the field of our perception considered as “beneath the objective world”; it is “the layer of living experience through which other people and things are first given to us.”⁴⁹ This is the layer of experience which reflective philosophy misconstrues. But again, it should be recognized that Merleau-Ponty’s language of “layers” here is inapt for expressing his actual view. It can obscure the fact that objective thought has its “relative justification” insofar as a move to grasp the world objectively is rooted in lived perceptual experience. Furthermore, the language of layers, along with the language of the objective “world,” suggests an ontological distinction that Merleau-Ponty does not really intend. There are not two “worlds,” one of which is pre-objective and one of which is objective. There is one world made up of beings which have (in different ways) pre-objective and objective, or determinate and indeterminate, characteristics. Objective thought is a set of implicit and explicit metaphysical commitments about that one world, which misconstrues its nature. There is a sense, then, in which that set of metaphysical commitments can be thought of as “layered on top of” that one world. But this language should not lead us to miss the legitimate element of thought regarding objectivity, or the ways in which objectivity and preobjectivity intertwine. The Introduction to Phenomenology presents a brief overview of the phenomenal field, in part via the introduction of the critique of empiricist and intellectualist views on perception. It also begins to touch on some of the fundamental structural aspects of the phenomenal field, such as the role of indeterminacy. This consideration of the phenomenal field’s structure fits with the move toward analyzing the “transcendental field,” which is just the phenomenal field considered from the perspective of constitutive analysis. The two steps of the reduction mentioned earlier can now be made more precise: the first step is to grasp the phenomenal field “beneath” the objective world via the analysis of psychological reflection. The second step is to analyze the constitutive role played by the phenomenal field and to examine how objectivity is constituted. As stated, Merleau-Ponty appears to clearly embrace the thesis of transcendental structural analysis. A very large caveat is in order, however. The quote above is inappropriately decontextualized, and when placed in the context of the rest of

⁴⁷ PP 54.

⁴⁸ PP 61.

⁴⁹ PP 57.

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the section “Phenomenal field and transcendental philosophy,” Merleau-Ponty’s point is somewhat ambiguous. The text goes on to describe a view that MerleauPonty calls the “standard perspective of a transcendental philosophy,” wherein the constitutive analysis makes the structures of the transcendental field fully explicit. In such a case, I take “full possession of my experience and would achieve the adequation between the reflecting and the reflected upon.”⁵⁰ We know that this “full possession” idea cannot fit with Merleau-Ponty’s own views. And he begins the next paragraph by stating that “the phenomenal field, such as we have discovered it in this chapter, resists in principle being directly and completely made explicit.”⁵¹ Another interpretive point regarding Phenomenology is in order here. MerleauPonty frequently uses the strategy of presenting opposing views in his own voice, sometimes proceeding in this manner for multiple paragraphs before he takes a critical turn and presents his actual view. In some cases, his actual view runs directly counter to the view he had been describing, but in many (often difficult to interpret) cases, he is to some degree amending rather than totally rejecting the view he first described. The beginning of “Phenomenal field and transcendental philosophy” is an instance of the second type of case. Merleau-Ponty does not agree with the “standard perspective” of transcendental philosophy because he rejects its conception of reflection. But he does not wholly reject transcendental analysis. Consider how the section, and the whole of the Introduction, ends: [N]ow that the phenomenal field has been sufficiently circumscribed, let us enter into this ambiguous domain and secure there our first steps with the psychologist until the psychologist’s self-critique carries us, by way of a second-order reflection, to the phenomenon of the phenomenon, and definitively converts the phenomenal field into a transcendental field.⁵²

This passage is meant as statement of Merleau-Ponty’s own program and what the rest of Phenomenology is aiming to do. First, Merleau-Ponty will engage with psychological studies until they lead us to the phenomenal. Then, crucially, a second-order reflection will engage with the “phenomenon of the phenomenon,” which is to say that the investigation will move from grasping the phenomenal field to examining its structure. Thus Merleau-Ponty ends the Introduction by positively embracing the transcendental field as the object of his investigation. But Merleau-Ponty wants to amend transcendental philosophy. First, without directly stating the point in this way, he emphasizes that his philosophy will take a phenomenological rather than Kantian direction in its transcendental analyses.

⁵⁰ PP 61.

⁵¹ PP 61.

⁵² PP 65.

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This is connected to his claim that “form” (understood in the sense developed in Structure) “is the very appearance of the world, not its condition of possibility.”⁵³ “Form” is a crucial aspect of the structure of the phenomenal field. Insofar as Merleau-Ponty says that form is not a “condition of possibility,” he seems to be saying that it is not a transcendental structure. What he is really indicating, however, is that it is not something that can be determined via a deduction of the general structure of transcendental consciousness. Rather, insofar as it is the “very appearance” of the world, it is a structure that can only be revealed via an attentive analysis of our actual experience of the world; transcendental analysis must “preserve the descriptive characteristics of the object upon which it bears.”⁵⁴ Merleau-Ponty is embracing one of the primary elements that distinguishes Husserl’s method from Kant’s; transcendental analysis requires careful descriptive analysis of actual conscious experience. A second aspect of Merleau-Ponty’s emendation of transcendental philosophy is the main point of his rejection of the “standard perspective”—his insistence that the world can be opaque, and not fully explicable by reflective consciousness. This is clearly meant as a limitation on reflective reason, but importantly MerleauPonty does not think this makes it impossible to engage in transcendental analysis. In the Preface Merleau-Ponty makes clear that he does not reject the notion of eidetic analysis; in fact he notes that any philosophy requires the consideration of essences because “our existence needs the field of ideality in order to know and to conquer its facticity.”⁵⁵ The term “conquer” might be a bit ill-fitting for his point, however, because his main critical point is to emphasize that eidetic analysis has to happen through an investigation into that facticity, into the actual world. This would oppose it to a purely deductive investigation or to something like a merely linguistic conceptual analysis.⁵⁶ Thus Merleau-Ponty ends the Introduction by calling for a form of transcendental philosophy that determines essential structures of our experience via reflection. But this reflection must deal directly with the actual character of lived experience, rather than attempting to ideally reconstruct that experience. And in dealing with the actual in this way, reflection will be open to the fact that it does not grasp experience as a fully rational, explicable whole. To twist the quote in the previous paragraph in a way that fits Merleau-Ponty’s views, the “field of ideality” that reflective analysis opens up can never wholly conquer facticity, and our analyses must not lose sight of this “opaque” pre-reflective aspect of experience. In this way genuine transcendental analysis can avoid the problems of reflective analysis. At this point, though, the idea that genuine transcendental analysis can avoid the problems of reflective analysis has been more stated than established, and there are many questions to be answered. First, Merleau-Ponty’s complex view of ⁵³ PP 62. ⁵⁴ PP 62. ⁵⁵ PP, p. lxxviii. ⁵⁶ See his criticism of the Vienna Circle at PP, p. lxxix.

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reflection needs to be further examined. On the one hand, he appears to insist that transcendental reflection is possible. On the other hand, he also aligns the main target of transcendental analysis, the pre-objective, with a pre-reflective or unreflected aspect of experience. And in some instances, “unreflected” seems to mean “unreflectable,” at least without alteration by reflection (see Chapter 5 §2). It is not clear how these points can go together; how can transcendental analysis really grasp the structures of the pre-objective if it is pre-reflective in this strong sense? Second, the link between facticity and ideality discussed above is under-explained. Transcendental analysis determines general, necessary structures of experience. How can this be linked with the factual, which must be contingent? And along these lines, how are we to interpret the negative claims (seen in this section and in Chapter 5 §3) Merleau-Ponty makes regarding conditions of possibility? Finally, a third problem (which is an important specification of the second) is that the role of psychological investigations in transcendental analysis needs to be clarified. We have seen that Merleau-Ponty takes this to be crucial, but the fact remains that empirical scientific investigations are typically taken to be quite different from (and potentially anathema to) transcendental argumentation. More needs to be said about how these things fit together for Merleau-Ponty. A deeper investigation of these issues will be taken up in Chapter 8, which will more thoroughly justify the claim that Phenomenology engages in a genuinely transcendental form of structural analysis. The rest of this chapter will proceed, however, on the basis that Merleau-Ponty’s use of transcendental analysis has been provisionally established. The next two sections will thus examine some of the main transcendental structures that this analysis reveals.

5. Transcendental Structures of Embodied Experience Keeping in mind the caveats noted in §1 regarding this chapter’s reconstruction of Phenomenology’s argumentative organization, we can think of Merleau-Ponty’s analysis of the transcendental structures of consciousness as occurring primarily in Parts One (“The Body”) and Two (“The Perceived World”). The analysis of these structures is then elaborated on and deepened in Part Three. This section will list and describe the most significant of those structures as they come up in Part One, with the next section focusing on Part Two. The analyses of Part One take the body as their starting point, with the main overarching claim that the body itself is the site of our transcendental perspective; as Merleau-Ponty puts it, “my body is the unperceived term at the center of the world.”⁵⁷ A key concept that Merleau-Ponty develops in elaborating this view is the notion of the body schema, which can stand as the first significant

⁵⁷ PP 84.

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transcendental structure. The term is borrowed from the work of early twentiethcentury neurologists who took it to refer to a general postural awareness of the body, built out of “kinesthetic and articular impressions” bolstered by visual information regarding the body’s position.⁵⁸ On this view the body schema is something learned or developed in childhood via the association of various acquired sensations. Merleau-Ponty rejects this conception, which is not surprising given the objectivist elements of the idea that a collection of discrete sensations are joined via association. He notes that “the global awareness of my posture in the inter-sensory world” should rather be considered a holistic “form.” But even that amendment to the neurologist’s view doesn’t really capture the way MerleauPonty is using the concept. While he does not put the point this way, describing the body schema as a form is still to examine it from the third-person perspective; it is just a change to the way psychologists talk about a phenomenon of embodied human behavior. But Merleau-Ponty will rather give the concept a first-personal, and indeed transcendental significance. He claims that the proper understanding of the body schema will see it as the “law of constitution” of our behavior and that “the spatial and temporal unity, the inter-sensorial unity, or the sensorimotor unity of the body is, so to speak, an in principle unity.”⁵⁹ There is a unity of the body that is prior to any experience and which makes it possible for us to have sensations of the body in space. MerleauPonty further describes the body schema as something that “designates the installation of the first coordinates, the anchoring of the active body in an object” and as “the zone of non-being in front of which precise beings, figures, and points can appear.”⁶⁰ This language makes clear that the body schema plays a fundamental transcendental role. On the one hand, this description of the body schema simply states the embodied version of the thesis of transcendental perspectivism already discussed in §1 above; it describes the body as the zone in front of which beings can appear. The crucial point that is added here is the notion of unity; there is a “synthetic” role that the body plays in experience. Insofar as the body schema provides this unity, it provides the body with a world. “World” is used in a special sense in Part One; to “have a world” is to “hold a system of significations around [oneself] whose correspondences, relations, and participations do not need to be made explicit in order to be utilized.”⁶¹ In the passage quoted here Merleau-Ponty contrasts “having a world” with “positing a world,” and this highlights the importance of the body schema. There is a system of significations, which ⁵⁸ PP 101. For a brief discussion of the history of the development of the concept see Shaun Gallagher, “Body Image and Body Schema: A Conceptual Clarification,” The Journal of Mind and Behavior 7:4 (1986), 541–54. ⁵⁹ PP 101–2. ⁶⁰ PP 103. ⁶¹ PP 131. One should note, here, a non-intellectualist correlate to Brunschvicg’s “universe”; see Chapter 2 §2.

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means that our abilities to act in our environments, and the elements that enable this action, are tied together via meaningful interrelations. But, as is noted, these relations do not need to be made explicit; their unity can be lived by the body, through the synthetic power of the body schema, without the intellectual positing that Merleau-Ponty associates with the Kantian subject. It is important to consider the implications of this usage of the word “world.” On its face, “world” typically refers to an ontological structure that is apart from or external to the subject. Insofar as it is here called a “system of significations,” though, “world” must refer, at least in part, to a structure of the subject. Signification can be understood in the technical sense used in Structure; it is a holistic system of relations between the organism and its environment that dynamically works to achieve the norms of the organism’s action (see Chapter 3 §2). This notion of signification conceives of meaning as dependent upon some element of the subject. But while it is driven by the organism/subject, signification still entails a system of links with the environment. This is why the use of the term “world” here, while technical, is not entirely non-standard. The system of significations must be a part of the environment, yet their being cannot be uncoupled from the subject. In this regard, we find an instance where Merleau-Ponty’s view is, again, open to a comparison with Allais’s essential manifestness view. The “world” is something that is both clearly external to the subject yet can only be what it is insofar as it is manifest to the subject; for there to be a “world” one must have that world. This ontological claim will be further examined in Chapter 9. As in Structure, Merleau-Ponty discusses the centrality of the embodied subject initially in terms of a species a priori.⁶² There are biological imperatives and natural aspects to our organic make-up that necessarily structure our interface with the world. This is seen in Merleau-Ponty’s claim that, contra Pascal, “a man without hands” is inconceivable.⁶³ His point, clearly, is not that we literally could not conceive of a human without hands. He is rather playing off of Pascal’s claim that the body is a contingent aspect of the human being to assert that “the organization of our body” in general is not contingent, but is rather a “functional whole” that is the natural, necessary basis for our experience.⁶⁴ This point is complicated, however, by the fact that human beings are able, through the virtual behavior and “work” already discussed in Structure (see Chapter 3 §§4–5), to reshape our milieu and thus the terms of our behavior. An upshot of this is that for human organisms, the species a priori is augmented by and mixes with various historical, cultural, and personal elements that further ⁶² See PP 80, 90. ⁶³ PP 173–4. In the Pensées Pascal claims that while the body is a contingent element of human being, thought is a necessary element; “I can certainly conceive of a man without hands, feet, head . . . But I cannot conceive of a man without thought.” See Blaise Pascal, Pensées, ed. and trans. Roger Ariew, Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing (2005), 31. ⁶⁴ PP 173.

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structure our interface with our environment. This is seen in Merleau-Ponty’s fairly curious reference to Nicolas II of Russia toward the end of the section that discusses the species a priori. He notes that “the subject of history does not create his role from scratch,” as seen in the fact that Nicolas II’s actions in the face of revolution mirrored those of Louis XVI. Nicolas II’s actions expressed “an a priori of the threatened prince, just as our reflexes express a species a priori.”⁶⁵ Thus Merleau-Ponty thinks that somehow learned or acquired elements— including elements which seemingly come from beyond the individual’s direct experience, through culture and history—can mediate human experience in a manner akin to our biological imperatives. The system of significations involved in having a world would have to unite these multiple elements. Thus, that unity might exceed the transcendental role of the body schema, which is primarily described as maintaining spatiotemporal and sensory unity. At one point, Merleau-Ponty describes this unity as being maintained by an “intentional arc” (though he does not use the term frequently) that ties together “our past, future, our human milieu, our physical situation, our ideological situation and our moral situation.”⁶⁶ He further aligns this with consciousness’s existence as “an activity of projection, which deposits objects around itself like traces of its own acts.”⁶⁷ The idea is that the elements of our world are linked together intentionally insofar as they are meaningful for our acts, though clearly this is a form of bodily intentionality, rather than something that requires explicit thought. We might say, then, that the general ability to have a world is enabled by the transcendental structures of the body schema and the intentional arc, which unify differing elements of our experience as meaningful for us. There are two significant problems with this discussion, however. First, the activity of projection is said to deposit consciousness’s own acts. This would fit many of the elements of our “world” that we control, such as when we intentionally habituate new skills. But history (human and natural/biological), ideology, and morality must include elements that are outside of our direct acts. And insofar as their roots lie outside our experience, this might be a threat to the thesis of transcendental perspectivism. This issue, which is connected to the notion of anonymity in our experience, will be taken up in Chapter 7. The second problem is that the specific aspects of one’s world would vary amongst individuals, who live within different histories and traditions and have taken on different habituated abilities. Transcendental structures are supposed to be general and atemporal, not contingent and historical as our “worlds” would have to be. One can attempt to get around this problem by noting that the ability to have a world in general is

⁶⁵ PP 90. ⁶⁶ PP 137–9, quote on p. 137. The intentional arc is also mentioned on p. 160, where it is said to “ground” “perception, motricity, and representation.” ⁶⁷ PP 138.

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transcendental, while the specific elements that are synthesized are contingent. Nevertheless, this issue pertains to Merleau-Ponty’s linking of the transcendental to the actual, which will have to be clarified in Chapter 8. The rest of this section will set these problems aside in order to further examine the transcendental aspects of Merleau-Ponty’s view. Merleau-Ponty discusses our ability to fold multiple elements (biological, historical, ideological, habituated, etc.) into our ability to have a world in terms of “sedimentation.”⁶⁸ This, again, suggests a kind of layering, but he insists that “this word ‘sedimentation’ must not trick us;” it “is not an inert mass at the foundation of our consciousness.”⁶⁹ To further the anti-foundationalist sense of sedimentation, Merleau-Ponty refers to “acquired worlds” of habit that are “cut out of,” rather than layered on top of, a “primordial world.” This is to emphasize the point that while there is perhaps a possible conceptual split between something like the species a priori and our acquired structures, in fact they combine to form a total structure. We rely on this “sediment” without consciously considering or intending its elements. Having a world thus enables a kind of “anonymous” existence: [My] life is made up of rhythms that do not have their reason in what I have chosen to be, but rather have their condition in the banal milieu that surrounds me. A margin of almost impersonal existence thus appears around our personal existence, which, so to speak, is taken for granted . . . so too can we say that my organism—as a pre-personal adhesion to the general form of the world, as an anonymous and general existence—plays the role of an innate complex beneath the level of my personal life.⁷⁰

We can initially take the references to the “impersonal” and “anonymous” to mean that the background significations that structure our experience do so in a way that is not directly guided by our choices or ways of conceiving of ourselves. In the Part Three chapter “Freedom,” Merleau-Ponty will refer to this anonymous aspect of experience as the ego’s “halo of generality.”⁷¹ This ability to have this halo, or background, of generality marks another significant transcendental structure of our embodied existence. Insofar as it provides the background upon which novel actions can occur, it is tied to another fundamental transcendental structure, the capacity for “virtual” action. Virtual action is free, directly intended by the subject and is potentially innovative, but it is ⁶⁸ This is adapted from Husserl’s essay “The Origin of Geometry.” That essay and Merleau-Ponty’s notes on it (written for a course he gave at the Collège de France in 1960) can be found in MerleauPonty, Husserl at the Limits of Phenomenology, Including Texts by Edmund Husserl, ed. Leonard Lawlor and Bettina Bergo, Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press (2002). See pp. 100–1 and 104–6 for Husserl’s discussion of sedimentation. ⁶⁹ PP 131. ⁷⁰ PP 86. ⁷¹ PP 476–7.

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not wholly separate from the general sedimented background. They are rather co-implicated; as Merleau-Ponty puts it, “the structure ‘world,’ with its double moment of sedimentation and spontaneity, is at the center of consciousness.”⁷² Insofar as we can engage in habitual action by being “immediately situated in relation to a thousand virtual coordinates,” we can treat the environment as a kind of general milieu ready made for our actions.⁷³ This is how we can engage in habitual actions in differing environments, as is shown by Merleau-Ponty’s example of an organist who quickly and without extensive explicit thought is able to play a different organ from the one on which he learned.⁷⁴ His ability is not strongly tied to the original organ; he has picked up the habit of playing the organ in general. This point is further shown in Merleau-Ponty’s discussion of the patient Schneider.⁷⁵ Schneider’s pathology shows that in a non-pathological human case, habits allow the subject to abstract from, or uncouple from, the specific environment and relate to its general aspects. One of Merleau-Ponty’s primary points in the discussion of habit and Schneider’s pathology is that for the normal human subject, action frequently depends on our ability not to be strictly guided by the environment but rather to act in novel ways. It is a condition of possibility for normal human experience that we are able to be situated in the virtual, and both sedimented generality and the virtual are necessary elements of having a world. Merleau-Ponty summarizes the foregoing points in the following way: The body is our general means of having a world. Sometimes it restricts itself to gestures necessary for the conservation of life, and correlatively it posits a biological world around us. Sometimes, playing upon these first gestures and passing from their literal to their figurative sense, it brings forth a new core of signification through them—this is the case of new motor habits, such as dance. And finally, sometimes the signification aimed at cannot be reached by the natural means of the body. We must, then, construct an instrument, and the body projects a cultural world around itself. At all levels, the body exercises the same function, which is to lend ‘a bit of renewable action and independent existence’ to the momentary movements of freedom. Habit is but a mode of this fundamental power. The body, then, has understood and the habit has been

⁷² PP 132. ⁷³ PP 131. ⁷⁴ PP 146–7. ⁷⁵ See especially PP 105–14. Schneider is generally considered to have had visual agnosia or “psychic blindness,” though there is a debate in the literature about the specific diagnosis. There is also much debate over the proper interpretation of Schneider’s case, and of Merleau-Ponty’s use of it. For an overview of these issues, see Rasmus Thybo Jensen, “Motor Intentionality and the Case of Schneider,” Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences 8:3 (2009), 371–88. Along with the overview, Jensen also presents arguments to show that Merleau-Ponty’s account of the Schneider case is ambiguous in ways that cause problems for the discussion of motor intentionality. I generally agree with Timothy Mooney’s claim that Jensen overstates these problems; see “Plasticity, Motor Intentionality and Concrete Movement in Merleau-Ponty,” Continental Philosophy Review 44:4 (2011), 359–81.

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acquired when the body allows itself to be penetrated by a new signification, when it has assimilated a new meaningful core.⁷⁶

The “fundamental power” is a transcendental role played by the body. In it, the species a priori (“gestures necessary for the conservation of life”) combines with acquired significations to provide the basis for our stable “anonymous” life and our virtual actions. Merleau-Ponty goes on to link this power with “a new sense of the word ‘sense.’ ”⁷⁷ He agrees with intellectualism and earlier idealist philosophies that “perception and thought have an intrinsic sense,” but those philosophies mistake this sense as coming from “a universal constituting consciousness.”⁷⁸ The “new” sense rather comes from the body; the body provides the transcendental basis for our having a world in which our behaviors take on meaning.

6. Transcendental Structures in the World In Part One it is argued that the body schema and intentional arc compose a holistic form. In Part Two it is further emphasized that the world is connected holistically with the body; the “thing and the world are given with the parts of my body . . . in a living connection comparable, or rather identical, to the living connection that exists among the parts of my body itself.”⁷⁹ In Part One “world” is defined from the point of view of subjectivity as a system of significations that we are engaged with through our behavior; in Part Two this will be flipped to a focus on the environment side of the nexus. In the chapter “Sensing” Merleau-Ponty gives various examples to show that our perceptual experience is not in the first instance of externally related atomic objects, but rather of objects which we deal with and which have significance for our behaviors.⁸⁰ And the condition of possibility of this type of pre-objective experience is the having of a world in the sense described in Part One. Before we can grasp elements of our environment objectively, those elements must be perceived on the basis of an embodied structure of behavioral significances. And it follows from the fact that “objects” of sensation are in the first instance grasped as a part of the system of significances that things in the world are linked together in a meaningful way for us. Thus Merleau-Ponty asserts that “My body is the common texture of all objects and is, at least with regard to the perceived world, the general instrument of my ‘understanding.’ ”⁸¹ The reference to “understanding” comes in a discussion of the synthetic role of the body schema, which Merleau-Ponty says allows for a new sense of the unity of the body, of the senses, and of the object. Thus “understanding” is clearly meant in ⁷⁶ PP 147–8. ⁷⁷ PP 148. ⁷⁸ PP 148. ⁸⁰ See e.g. PP 217–19. ⁸¹ PP 244.

⁷⁹ PP 211.

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Kant’s sense. For Kant, the understanding plays the key transcendental role of presenting us with a meaningful world by synthesizing experience through the application of concepts. For Merleau-Ponty, the conceptual role of the categories is replaced by the body, which is “a ready-made system of equivalences and of inter-sensory transpositions” that unifies experience. Merleau-Ponty thus shifts from an intellectualist to an embodied framework, but the transcendental element is maintained. This embodied reworking of the Kantian transcendental view continues in the next chapter, “Space.” There Merleau-Ponty argues that space construed as a medium in which objects are arrayed is secondary to “lived” space. Things are in the first instance oriented in space insofar as we are capable of dealing with them in particular ways. And this is a condition of possibility of the perception of objects, as “orientation in space is not a contingent property of the object, it is the means by which I recognize the object and by which I am conscious of it as an object.”⁸² This ability is again dependent on our ability to have a world. The virtual plays an important role in this; “what counts for the orientation of the spectacle is not my body . . . as a thing in objective space, but rather my body as a system of possible actions, a virtual body.”⁸³ The body allows for a perceptual field of possible meanings to appear. But note that Merleau-Ponty does not argue, like Kant, that space has to be wholly subjective (i.e. that things in themselves cannot be in space). His argument, rather, is that our experience of space is primarily the experience of oriented space, or space determined by our embodied system of meanings. And our experience of space is, per the point of transcendental perspectivism, the only sense in which space is present for us. This obviously places an emphasis on the subject, insofar as space, and objects in space, are oriented in relation to the embodied subject’s perspective. But, in keeping with Part Two’s emphasis on the world, Merleau-Ponty makes clear that our connection with external objects is important, and is not arbitrary or contingent transcendentally. We can see here another link with Allais’s essential manifestness view. There is crucially an element of our experience that is given as external, as separate from us. Yet the things we experience as transcendent are also thoroughly marked by a subjective element insofar as they are oriented by our bodily perspective. In this sense Part Two of Phenomenology repeats (typically in a more general sense) the point of Merleau-Ponty’s arguments regarding the perception of “life” or “work” in Structure (see Chapter 3 §4). External objects are essentially manifest to us as suiting our embodied actions, or as fitting into our “world.” This is the case even insofar as the environment resists our actions or presents obstacles; as Merleau-Ponty puts the point, “an unclimbable rock face . . . only has sense for someone who intends to climb it.”⁸⁴ He expresses the general

⁸² PP 264.

⁸³ PP 260.

⁸⁴ PP 460.

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point regarding the fact that the environment is essentially manifest to us as something to actively engage with in terms of “gearing into” the world.⁸⁵ The very notion of a world being perceptually given to us requires that we deal with it, or come to grips with it, through our continued embodied actions. The notion of gearing into a world of transcendent objects is also connected to the horizonal nature of perceptual experience, especially in the chapter “The Thing and the Natural World.” This discussion importantly qualifies my description of horizonal profiles in §2 above. In the discussion of transcendental perspective, I focused on Merleau-Ponty’s visual examples, such as viewing one side of a cube or looking at a steeple through a window. Along with (over) emphasizing the visual, these examples—especially the cube—give the impression of a kind of objectivist view that Merleau-Ponty clearly wants to reject. The thought of the vision of different sides of the cube as different variations gives the impression of a series of discrete images that are held together. Of course, I noted above that Merleau-Ponty rejects the intellectualist version of this kind of view in favor of unity through transition syntheses. But even if we think of the profiles flowing together via temporal transitions, that might still not overcome the thought of a succession of images. We might imagine perspectival variations fitting together on analogy with a flip-book, where a series of static images (each a variation on the “moving” object) “flow” together. On Merleau-Ponty’s view, though, perspectival variations are not like this. First, the image-viewing thought is wrong because perceptual profiles are not merely visual. Merleau-Ponty is adamant (throughout the text, but particularly in Part Two) that while they are separable, the different sensory modalities work together. Thus any visual horizonal profile is inextricably presented with other modal qualities, as is seen when he notes that color-experience is necessarily tied to the other qualities of the colored object, and “the blue of a rug would not be the same blue if it were not a wooly blue.”⁸⁶ From context one can see that his point is not just that the color quality is tied to the visual aspects of the rug’s texture; rather he thinks that tactile qualities (and other modal qualities) are tied to visual qualities. All perception is inter and/or multimodal; “it is not merely colors, but also geometrical characteristics, all of the sensory givens, and the signification of objects, which form a system.”⁸⁷ The second problem with the image-viewing conception of horizonal profiles is connected to the idea that it is not sensory contents but significations of objects that form a system. As we have seen, signification, in this sense, is tied to the subject’s ability to deal, practically, in an embodied manner with objects. Thus, perspectival variations do not just appear to us as differing views of an object, as though we stand apart from the object as a disinterested observer. Rather,

⁸⁵ See e.g. PP 261.

⁸⁶ PP 326.

⁸⁷ PP 326.

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perspectival variations arise with action variations, so to speak; as we deal with the world in differing ways objects are presented in differing ways. And the synthesis of these variations does not happen through pure succession, on analogy with the flip-book. They are rather synthesized as we gear into the world. Merleau-Ponty takes this point to be key to understanding the possibility of objective experience, in the sense not only of grasping determinacy but also as grasping determinate objects as things that stand apart from us. The unified object is not just a totality of variations or presentations, nor is it a substratum of those variations, it is a “unique manner of existing of which its properties are a secondary expression.”⁸⁸ It is clear that this “manner” is tied to the object’s signification, or the meaning it has within our dealings. The thought of a collection of successively perceived properties or qualities is secondary to this embodied significance; as we become more and more able to engage in behaviors that deal with the possible actions the world affords, more and more aspects of the world are articulated for us. This is seen in Merleau-Ponty’s discussion of the proper distance from which one should view an object: For each object . . . there is an optimal distance from which it asks to be seen . . . Hence, we tend toward the maximum of visibility and we seek . . . a better focus point, which is obtained through a certain equilibrium between the interior and the exterior horizons . . . The distance between me and the object is not a size that increases or decreases, but rather a tension that oscillates around a norm . . . Variations of appearance are not increases or decreases of size, nor real distortions; quite simply, sometimes its parts mix together and merge, sometimes they are clearly articulated against each other and reveal their riches.⁸⁹

While the discussion here is specifically of distance and the vision of the object, Merleau-Ponty’s broader point is conveyed. The correct distance cannot be determined as in objective thought, via specific measurements. Rather, it requires coming to an “equilibrium” in our dealing with the object, which requires a certain harmony between the object (the inner horizon), the broader environment (the outer horizon), and myself. That this requires a kind of constant activity is shown in the reference to a “tension that oscillates around a norm.” The norm, presumably, is the determinate grasping of the object, and the language here suggests that it is not a single specifiable state but rather a possibility that is in constant tension with indeterminacy.⁹⁰ As we engage with the world, new views pop up and recede ⁸⁸ PP 333. ⁸⁹ PP 315–16. ⁹⁰ For a fuller discussion of normativity in perception that deals with these issues, see Berendzen, “Picking out the ‘Right’ Color: Perceptual Normativity in Merleau-Ponty,” in Living Existentialism: Essays in Honor of Thomas W. Busch, ed. Gregory Hoskins and J. C. Berendzen, Eugene, OR: Pickwick Publishing (2017), 61–77.

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and elements shift from indeterminacy to determinacy and back (“parts mix together and merge” or are “clearly articulated”). The object is determinately grasped when our actions merge with its “unique manner of existing,” which is to say that our intentions come into equilibrium with the thing. This discussion repeats the analysis of Structure with slightly different terminology. In Structure’s terms, our interface with our environment is a form with quality and signification. It thus has an equilibrium that is not posed solely by external forces but by our own internal norms. Unlike lower animals that (on a continuum) have instincts that strictly pose their internal norms, the human ability for virtual action makes those internal norms fluid. This is why the “tension oscillates” around a norm. The norms we pose—the actions we aim to accomplish, the goal state that would determine equilibrium—can shift depending on how we are living. And as this shifts, our coming to grips with the world shifts. Nevertheless, these shifts do not change the general point that we aim to come to grips with the world; articulating the world is always our general goal. Thus, having a world—i.e. having a system of significations that is tied up with the environment—is the transcendental condition for objectivity. We can only come to grasp a world of determinate objects insofar as we have the general ability to deal with the world in an embodied fashion and come to grips with it. And on Merleau-Ponty’s view this requires all of the structures that have so far been discussed. There is, however, one more element of our connection with the external world that plays a crucial transcendental role, but which has yet to be discussed. We do not just encounter objects, we encounter other subjects. Because this is such a crucial issue, it will be taken up separately in Chapter 9. This section and the previous discuss the main transcendental structures of our perspective on the world that are elaborated in Parts One and Two of Phenomenology. The body schema, intentional arc, sedimentation, and the horizonal nature of perception all describe fundamental structures that allow us to “have a world” or to be able to come to grips with our environment in ways that suit our purposes and allow determinate objects to appear. This discussion has stopped short, however. As was indicated by the interpretive structure elaborated earlier, the discussion of these transcendental elements is deepened in Part Three. And as we have seen at the end of the discussion of transcendental perspective in §2, Merleau-Ponty takes the general structure of our perspective to be dependent upon his particular views on subjectivity and temporality that are presented primarily in that last section of the book. These issues, which are of crucial importance for the transcendental interpretation, will be taken up in detail in the next chapter.

7 Transcendental Subjectivity in Phenomenology of Perception 1. Foundational Anonymity? Chapter 6 §2 argued that Phenomenology employs the thesis of transcendental perspectivism. It also showed that Merleau-Ponty’s particular conception of transcendental perspective is inextricably tied to his views on embodiment. Nevertheless, Chapter 6 §2 also raises various problems for the embodied idealist view. First, the emphasis on the connection between body and world suggests the possibility that our experience is shaped by elements outside the scope of subjectivity. Second, while it is clear that body and mind are tied together on MerleauPonty’s view, such that we can speak of embodied consciousness, the full nature of this connection has not been explored. Until we genuinely grasp the link between body and mind on Merleau-Ponty’s view, we cannot really call his philosophy an embodied idealism. A specific problematic issue is Merleau-Ponty’s notion of the “anonymous” element of our experience. This idea poses difficulties for all three of the requirements for a transcendental idealist conception of the mind discussed in Chapter 1 §7. Most obviously, it presents a problem for self-consciousness and transcendental unity; the suggestion is potentially that a significant, foundational element of our experience is not self-consciously grasped. And though this does not follow as straightforwardly from the above considerations, there is an aspect of MerleauPonty’s views on anonymity that suggests an ontology rooted in a level beneath the subject which would thus be prior to, and more fundamental than, our transcendental perspective. Despite these problems, this chapter will argue that Merleau-Ponty’s view is ultimately compatible with the transcendental interpretation. The discussion of the anonymous will also lead to a consideration of the tacit cogito and temporality. Overall, this chapter will show that Merleau-Ponty’s views do, in fact, meet the requirements for a conception of transcendental subjectivity. The discussion of pre-objectivity and objectivity in Chapter 6 noted that Merleau-Ponty frequently uses the foundationalist language of “layers” or “levels” in experience, yet aspects of his views speak against strong foundationalism. This tension exists, as we will see, in the discussion of anonymity. There are a number

Embodied Idealism: Merleau-Ponty’s Transcendental Philosophy. Joseph C. Berendzen, Oxford University Press. © Joseph C. Berendzen 2023. DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780192874764.003.0008

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of passages that describe our “anonymous life” as a kind of foundational layer beneath our explicit intentional action and reflective thought. The antitranscendental idealist interpretation that I am considering here will entail embracing this foundationalism.¹ My pro-transcendental idealist interpretation, on the other hand, will entail finding anonymity to be inextricably tied to explicit reflection and action. We must see anonymity as being engaged in a “Fundierung” relation; anonymity only appears through an explication of it and is not separable from this possibility of explication.² There is a fair amount of complexity surrounding the notion of anonymity in Phenomenology, as there is a basic sense to the concept that is then complicated by further analyses. Throughout, it is unclear whether Merleau-Ponty takes this anonymous level to be an implicit aspect of behavior which could, under the right circumstances, be made explicit in my own thought, or whether there are aspects that are closed off from my own subjective experience. This latter possibility is deepened by Merleau-Ponty’s idea that our subjective and intersubjective backgrounds have a history that stretches far beyond me. Most striking in this regard is Merleau-Ponty’s claim, at the end of the Part Two chapter “Sensing,” that “reflection only fully grasps itself if it refers to the prereflective fund it presupposes, upon which it draws, and that constitutes for it, like an original past, a past that has never been present.”³ Several commentators take this quote to indicate an anonymous layer to our experience that is tied to something that, as never present, must precede our subjectivity. For example, Alia Al-Saji ties this notion of the original past to a level “anterior to the distinctions of subject and object and to the divisions between the senses; it is the generative ground of these divisions.”⁴ If interpretations like Al-Saji’s are correct, Merleau-Ponty’s ontology in Phenomenology is dependent upon the uncovering of a primordial layer or ground that comes before the subject–object distinction, and thus is prior to something like a transcendental perspective. To understand if the anonymous is actually tied to such an ontological foundationalism, we need to examine its full discussion in Phenomenology. The concept first becomes prominent in Part One. There Merleau-Ponty draws a distinction between “personal” and “impersonal” existence. Personal existence refers most directly to our living through actions we intentionally choose. Our

¹ The scholars I reference below do not necessarily overtly construe their views as foundationalist. Notably, the foundationalist position is overtly taken by M. C. Dillon in Merleau-Ponty’s Ontology, Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press (1988). See e.g. pp. 51–2. ² See PP 414. ³ PP 252. Emphasis added. ⁴ Alia Al-Saji, “ ‘A Past Which Has Never Been Present’: Bergsonian Dimensions in Merleau-Ponty’s Theory of the Prepersonal,” Research in Phenomenology 38:1 (2008), 41–71, quote on p. 48. Al-Saji notes that her interpretation of this passage is similar to Leonard Lawlor’s; see his Thinking Through French Philosophy: The Being of the Question, Bloomington IN: Indiana University Press (2003), 87–92. See also Scott L. Marratto, The Intercorporeal Self: Merleau-Ponty on Subjectivity, Albany: State University of New York Press (2012), 62–5.

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ability to engage in such intentional actions is supported, however, by a more basic level of bodily abilities. Merleau-Ponty notes this (in a passage already quoted at length in Chapter 6 §5) when he says that a “margin of almost impersonal existence thus appears around our personal existence.”⁵ And shortly after this he links the impersonal to our organic existence; “my organism—as a pre-personal adhesion to the general form of the world, as an anonymous and general existence—plays the role of an innate complex beneath the level of my personal life.”⁶ This uncovers the first sense of anonymity that we can find in Phenomenology. The anonymity of our organic existence is closely tied to the notion of the species a priori. A few pages prior to the above quotes, Merleau-Ponty introduces some key concepts from Structure by comparing animal behavior to a drop of oil that reaches an equilibrium through the interactions of external forces. The crucial difference, of course, is that the animal is not merely guided by external forces; “the animal itself projects the norms of its milieu and establishes the terms of its vital problem; but here it is a question of an a priori of the species and not of a personal choice.”⁷ But it is not necessarily just personal choice that is missing. For the animal, consciousness overall might be missing; “when we say that an animal . . . has a world . . . we do not mean that it has a perception or an objective consciousness of the world.”⁸ He goes on to describe instinctual actions as having a “practical signification,” so the animal’s organic structure fits into a set of holistic relations that are working toward some outcome. This signification is connected to “merely a bodily recognition.”⁹ The general discussion implies that for the animal, the organic interaction with the environment is strongly impersonal; it is purely bodily and entails no mental aspect. While this discussion is focused on non-human animals, in the broader context the implication seems to be that this animal aspect is maintained in human life, and may mark the “innate complex” beneath the personal. In the following passage Merleau-Ponty links this organic anonymous or impersonal level (indirectly, via contrast with the “personal”) to an “absolute past”: Consciousness projects itself into a physical world and has a body, just as it projects itself into a cultural world and has a habitus. This is because it can only be consciousness by playing upon significations given in the absolute past of nature or in its personal past and because every lived form tends toward a certain generality, whether it be the generality of our habitus or rather that of our “bodily functions.”¹⁰

⁵ PP 86. ⁹ PP 81.

⁶ PP 86. ⁷ PP 80. ¹⁰ PP 139, emphasis added.

⁸ PP 80.

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Two points in this quote are crucial for the current discussion. First, consciousness can only “project itself ” in an embodied way into the world because it can “play upon” significations tied to its habits and bodily functions. This suggests a form of foundationalism that is problematic for transcendental idealism because consciousness is founded on a deeper bodily basis. Second, those significations are tied to an “absolute past.” What, exactly, “absolute” means here is not entirely clear, but the past might be absolute relative to consciousness, i.e. something prior to consciousness that consciousness does not structure. In this sense, it would be the flip-side of Husserl’s notion of absolute consciousness; there is a past to which consciousness is relative. And note that the absolute past is “of nature”; this suggests that consciousness is founded upon a natural history of the species that consciousness itself does not grasp. This reading of the passage would help support Al-Saji’s interpretation of the original past that is never present. It is highly noteworthy, however, that the above passage connects anonymous generality to our bodily functions and “habitus.” The anonymous does not refer solely to our underlying biological make-up or species a priori; there is also an anonymity of our habituated actions. As has been discussed in Chapter 6, sedimentation allows our organic basis to be integrated with acquired aspects, and habit describes one crucial way in which we come about such acquisitions.¹¹ The extent to which habits structure our daily actions is made clear, for MerleauPonty, by examining the actions of people who suffer from phantom limbs. The fact that someone would act, in part, as though they continue to have a limb that has been lost reveals the ways that habits combine with our “actual” bodies (i.e. our physical nature or biology).¹² This habitual manner of inhabiting the world is anonymous in the straightforward sense that we do not have to self-consciously think through our actions. The habituated actions become so ingrained that the subject of the phantom limb is motivated to continue the habitual actions that involve the relevant limb even after it is lost. Merleau-Ponty describes the pathological repression of trauma that exists in cases like the phantom limb as connected to a more general structure of “repression,” and he claims that “as the advent of the impersonal, repression is a universal phenomenon.”¹³ Just after this claim is the passage discussed above where he describes a “margin of almost impersonal existence” that is connected to our organic being. Repression is universal, then, insofar as we rely, as a part of a general structure of human life, on a combination of our organic make-up and

¹¹ The specific mechanism according to which habits are sedimented is not fully explained. At points, however, Merleau-Ponty describes them as literally becoming part of our body. For example, he describes the “habitual body” as “engaging in the world through stable organs and preestablished circuits,” and the context makes clear that the reference to “organs” is not metaphorical. See PP 89. In Structure he describes habits as being acquired by muscles and the central nervous system and associates their “permanence” with structures in the brain; see SB 30, 229 n. 77. ¹² PP 84. ¹³ PP 86.

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habits that is primarily anonymous. This is “repressed” insofar as it is impersonal, below the level of our explicit thought. Yet while “repression” is universal, it is not always thoroughgoing. Typically, “personal existence represses the organism without being able to transcend it or to renounce it” yet also “personal existence is intermittent”;¹⁴ the implication is that being in the world requires both of these levels to be operative: What allows us to center our existence is also what prevents us from centering it completely, and the anonymity of our body is inseparably both freedom and servitude. Thus, to summarize, the ambiguity of being in the world is expressed by the ambiguity of our body.¹⁵

The ambiguity is that our ability to rely on our anonymous, habituated background is what enables us to engage in free activity, yet insofar as we are dependent upon the anonymous (which we do not explicitly control) we are stuck in a form of “servitude.” This repeats the point made in Chapter 6 §5 regarding the intertwining of sedimented generality and the virtual. One might consider the actions of high-level athletes here. A soccer player, for instance, can only properly engage in a bit of improvisational high-level skill, such as executing a Cruyff Turn or Zidane Roulette, after having practiced and inculcated a base level of general soccer expertise. The ability to freely pull off the special skill in the moment is dependent upon an unthought, physiologically supported and habituated basis. Again, this appears to support a kind of foundationalism; the organic and habitual combine to form a non-conscious layer of our existence upon which freedom, our life in personally chosen actions, is built. This issue will be further examined in the next section. The combination of organic make-up and habit still does not fully exhaust the nature of anonymity in this discussion, however. So far, the main discussion is of an individual organism, with an individual body, that picks up and maintains its own habits. But there is also an anonymity of our historical background. This element of sedimentation was discussed in Chapter 6 §5, in the notion that the intentional arc integrates things like ideology and morality, and with the example of Nicolas II’s “a priori of the threatened prince.” History, in the form of various cultural traditions, formations, and stereotypes, provides a background that structures our actions in a manner analogous to the species a priori. And it is not just analogous; the organism “is not beyond the reach of history,” suggesting that these historical formations combine with the organic level in the same way that habit does.¹⁶ Thus our freedom, or our personally guided actions, depends

¹⁴ PP 86.

¹⁵ PP 87.

¹⁶ PP 90.

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not only on our individual anonymous make-up, but on a whole history of other people’s actions. All of the elements that are sedimented together create a background for our lives that affects more than our ability to take on social roles. It structures our very ability to encounter the world perceptually, as Merleau-Ponty makes clear later in the Part Two chapter “Space.” There we find a passage that appears to strongly support the foundationalist interpretation of anonymity: [M]y first perception and my first hold on the world must appear to me as the execution of a more ancient pact established between X and the world in general; my history must be the sequel to a pre-history whose acquired results it uses; my personal existence must be the taking up of a pre-personal tradition. There is, then, another subject beneath me, for whom a world exists before I am there, and who marks out my place in that world. This captive or natural mind is my body, not the momentary body that is the instrument of my personal choices and that focuses upon some world, but rather the system of anonymous “functions” that wraps each particular focusing into a general project.¹⁷

This passage is ambiguous, however. On the one hand, the body is associated with anonymity and described in foundational terms. But this layer is not presubjective insofar as it is referred to as a subject; it is the “subject beneath me” that is the “captive or natural mind.” On the other hand, the foundational layer is described as deeper than this, it is an “ancient pact established between X and the world in general” that would have to be prior to my body’s existence. And insofar as it is ancient and general, it would be anterior to my subjectivity. In connection with this ambiguity, the reference to “X” is obscure. It would seem that “X” refers to the body, designated with an open variable because it is a general subjectivity that is not yet “I.” But it is not clear how my bodily subjectivity could make an “ancient pact” with the world. Taken by itself this passage is unclear; its notion of an ancient pact lends support to interpretations like Al Saji’s, but it also appears to tie anonymity to subjectivity and the mind. The notions of an ancient pact, absolute past, and original past that has never been present are all problems specifically for transcendental idealism’s selfconsciousness requirement. The foundationalist interpretation of anonymity would entail that significant aspects of our experience shaped by the anonymous background are never consciously grasped. Nicolas II, for example, may not have really grasped the way his actions capitulated a kind of historical stereotype. And this in turn is a problem for the synthetic unity requirement. If experience is punctuated by elements driven by non-conscious forces mixed with intermittent

¹⁷ PP 265.

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moments of personal existence (the “momentary body”), it is subject to a pervasive form of discontinuity. The foundationalist interpretation of anonymity is problematic for the perspectival boundedness requirement also, but in a different way. Foundational anonymity directly undermines self-consciousness and synthetic unity, as just stated. Perspectival boundedness, however, is problematized in a second-order manner connected to the broader philosophical implications of the foundationalist interpretation. The ontological theory attached to the foundationalist interpretation could not be arrived at from within our perspectival boundaries. This is because that interpretation takes the absolute or original past to refer to a fundamental ontological structure that is prior to the distinction between subjectivity and objectivity. If we are capable of determinately cognizing an ontological structure that is prior to subjectivity, we must be outstripping, or simply rejecting, transcendental perspectival boundaries. There are ways to interpret Merleau-Ponty’s thoughts regarding anonymity and the impersonal that keep them from rejecting the three elements of transcendental perspectivism, however. Two points will be crucial to this interpretation. First, I believe that Merleau-Ponty would reject a strong version of the notion that there are fundamental aspects to our impersonal backgrounds that cannot be made explicit. While he clearly rejects the intellectualist view that reflection enables us to grasp our experience in rational clarity, he does not embrace the strongly opposing view either. Second, I believe that Merleau-Ponty would (at least in Phenomenology) reject the pre-subject-object ontology discussed in this section. This point can be bolstered by interpreting references to things like the absolute past or ancient pact through the lens of the Kantian distinction between positive and negative noumena discussed in Chapter 1 §7’s analysis of the perspectival boundedness requirement. These references present a negative indication of something potentially beyond the boundary of our experience, but Merleau-Ponty’s analyses do not warrant the move to develop a positive ontology on this basis.

2. The Personal in the Impersonal The anonymity of our organic and historical backgrounds lends itself most clearly to the foundationalist interpretation. In each case we have aspects of our being that are clearly anterior to our personal decisions. Something like the species a priori is strongly antecedent to any personal decision, and from an evolutionary perspective many aspects of it would be prior to the very possibility for thought and decision making. And while human history may be shaped in part by personal acts and decisions, they are the personal acts of others that came long before my own.

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Habit, on the other hand, seems quite different. While some basic everyday actions might be habituated without explicit thought, a large number of habits require explicit thought, as a part of study and practice, for us to inculcate them. When it comes to many habituated skills, it would appear as though something that was initially personally chosen and thought out by me (such as when I, hypothetically, learn to play a musical instrument) becomes a part of my impersonal background as the skill progresses. Thus, the personal and impersonal intertwine. One might still interpret the development of such skills in a foundationalist manner; most notably in the context of Merleau-Ponty scholarship, this is argued for by Hubert Dreyfus.¹⁸ Dreyfus takes habituated action to exist at the level of embodied “coping,” which comprises a foundational layer to human existence that is in principle separable from cognitive activity.¹⁹ As I have argued elsewhere, however, Dreyfus’s view is implausible both as an interpretation of Merleau-Ponty and as a phenomenology of skilled action.²⁰ It is clear that highly skilled behavior depends upon our engaging habits in ways that are not consciously thought. Merleau-Ponty provides an excellent example of this with his consideration of the organist who is able to adapt to playing a new organ so quickly that he could not be explicitly reasoning through the whole process.²¹ But Dreyfus’s theory of coping over-extends this point, and a more plausible phenomenological description would find moments of “mindlessness” intertwined with moments of explicit thought during highly skilled behavior.²² More importantly for the present circumstances, we will see that Merleau-Ponty does not really support this kind of foundationalism. Consider the discussion of habit as it fits into the section of “The Body as an Object and Mechanistic Physiology” on “repression.” At one point Merleau-Ponty describes the move to take on anonymous habits in terms that suggest a personal decision: “by renouncing a part of his spontaneity . . . man can acquire the mental and practical space that will free him.”²³ It is interesting that the notion that one renounces an element of spontaneity suggests that one deliberately takes on habits in order to use them as a basis for further free action (along the lines of the intertwining of sedimented generality and the virtual). This way of thinking about habit suggests a kind of circulation from the personal to impersonal and back

¹⁸ See e.g. Hubert Dreyfus, “Intelligence Without Representation—Merleau-Ponty’s Critique of Mental Representation: The Relevance of Phenomenology to Scientific Explanation,” Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences 1:4 (2002), 367–83. ¹⁹ Dreyfus, “The Return of the Myth of the Mental,” Inquiry 50:4 (2007), 352–65, refers to his view as foundationalist in this manner. ²⁰ See Berendzen, “Coping Without Foundations.” ²¹ PP 146. ²² See Barbara Montero, “A Dancer Reflects,” in Mind, Reason, and Being-in-the-World, ed. Joseph Schear, London: Routledge (2013), 303–19. ²³ PP 89.

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again; we deliberately inculcate skills that become embodied habits and which then later show up in facilitating our free action. This point is further suggested by Merleau-Ponty’s claim that the phantom limb is, “like repressed experience, a previous present that cannot commit to becoming a past.”²⁴ It is possible that Merleau-Ponty is, in the context of the phantom limb here, referring to a form of repression that differs from habituation or the anonymous in general. But keep in mind that the discussion of the phantom limb in this section facilitates a discussion of psycho-physical repression that is then developed into a general notion of repression as universal phenomenon that is taken to be the model for anonymity. If we put the last quote in the context of this general view of repression (which is established two pages earlier), MerleauPonty could be suggesting that the anonymous in general cannot commit to becoming a past. One assumes that they cannot commit to becoming wholly past; experiences can recede into the impersonal yet we continually recover them in our actions. As Merleau-Ponty goes on to say, we rediscover the past by “plunging into these horizons (of the lived past) and by reopening time.”²⁵ The notion of a kind of circulation from the personal to impersonal and back is further suggested in “The Body as a Sexed Being” where Merleau-Ponty refers to impersonal bodily functions (vision, hearing, and sexuality) as intertwined with personal existence. “Personal existence takes them up and gathers them in their given and anonymous existence” such that, he notes, “bodily or carnal life and the psyche are in a reciprocal relation of expression.”²⁶ Expression is a crucial concept in Merleau-Ponty’s philosophy that cannot be fully explicated in the immediate context. We can provide a brief explanation here, however, by drawing on Donald Landes’s notion of expression as involving “a trajectory of metastable equilibriums.”²⁷ The anonymous background out of which expression occurs is “metastable” in the sense that it is a reservoir of multiple potentials that do not necessarily fit together in constant, stable relations. Rather, multiple stable “equilibriums” are possible within the field, and the act of expression draws on these potentials and crystallizes them.²⁸ While an expression stands as a kind of individual act, it also creates something that can be added, so to speak, to that reservoir of potentials and become the background of a new expression in turn. This is the sense in which the relation between body and psyche would be reciprocal. The body carries along an anonymous structure made up of elements taken from all of the various contributing factors (biology, history, habit, repressed personal decisions, etc.). This structure is “metastable.” In the sense used here, that means that the elements of the

²⁴ PP 88. ²⁵ PP 88. ²⁶ PP 162. ²⁷ Landes, Merleau-Ponty and the Paradoxes of Expression, 13. See Chapter 3 n. 24 on the misgivings I have regarding Landes’s terminology. This is why I place “metastable” in scare quotes. ²⁸ Ibid. 20.

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background fit together in multiple, meaningful ways that are not determined via some set of clear, rational linkages. There is rather an abundance of potentials that are neither a meaningless jumble nor a stable logical framework. Expression requires creatively carving something specific out of this field. The possibility of expression requires that the field is open to this “carving out,” however. The anonymous is available to expression and thus cannot “commit” to being fully past. In turn, expression reciprocally adds to the anonymous field by creating new potentials. This general point can be clarified, I think, by considering practicing a skill, such as playing a sport or a musical instrument, as an example. Apart from the rank beginner, the person acting on a skill will begin by drawing on some basic habituated elements. The defender in basketball, for example, will take up a particular initial stance and position, and move in certain basic ways in relation to the offensive player, somewhat automatically on the basis of ingrained habits. But these habitual elements cannot be so tightly linked together that they specify an exact course of action, as though the defender enacts a program. They enable variation and deviation; the basketball defender’s habituated situation allows for the possibility of making different kinds of movements if the player or the situation calls for them (perhaps, for example, to attempt to steal the ball).²⁹ One of the points of practice is to build on this ability to engage in variations both to (A) turn some of the variations into more sophisticated habits and thus (B) enable the possibility for even further variation. This reciprocity between anonymous habit and spontaneous variation is an example of what Merleau-Ponty was thinking of when he referred to the anonymity of the body as both freedom and servitude. It is not only habits, or bodily skills, that play this role in the reciprocity between the personal and impersonal. Merleau-Ponty is clear that conceptual or intellectual activity plays the same kind of role. This is seen, for instance, in the fact that Schneider is capable of engaging in certain intellectual activities (such as mathematical operations) when they fit his rote habituated behaviors. This leads Merleau-Ponty to refer to intelligence as an anonymous function, and to claim that there is a “previously constructed ‘world of thought’ ” on which consciousness relies.³⁰ It is also in this context that the intentional arc is introduced and said to

²⁹ The reference to the player or situation calling for variation is intended to capture both instances where the player explicitly decides to do something different from the norm (moving away from covering your player to try to cut off an anticipated pass, for instance) versus that variation occurring “automatically” in the flow of play. And there is likely a wide range of possibilities between the two poles of explicit decision and completely automatic action. ³⁰ See PP 131, 135–9. Curiously, Merleau-Ponty refers to the personal being beneath the impersonal in this section. This flips his standard ordering, and is possibly anomalous. In the total context of my arguments, however, I think this “flip-flopping” supports my interpretation. Merleau-Ponty is struggling with the fact that while he finds a kind of founding–founded relation between the two, he does not ultimately see them as comprising distinct layers.

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integrate the physical, cultural, and intellectual. Thus, various kinds of personal acts, involving both embodied action and intellect, are capable of being made anonymous so that they can later be drawn on by future personal acts. This reciprocity speaks against a strong foundationalist conception of anonymity. Rather than comprising a distinct layer of anonymous capabilities upon which our explicit actions are built, the anonymous is continually drawn on by our living actions and added to through our new ways of acting. Our personal lives, in turn, are not distinct superstructures built on a separable base; the personal rather continually takes up, gathers, varies, and adds to the impersonal. But perhaps the focus on habit in this discussion is obscuring the elements of the anonymous with which the personal cannot reciprocally engage. The basketball example might exhibit this. Some aspects of my biology seemingly limit, rather than enable, free variation and the virtual; no matter how hard I train I can never totally overcome the fact that I am under six feet tall and have short arms. History also limits variation in basketball in a certain way. The rules of the game, which developed out of various intersubjective interactions apart from me and are carried on by institutions that are much older than me, make it such that there are certain things I cannot do. No matter how much I may explicitly consider picking up the ball and running with it or tackling my opponent, I cannot do so, at least while still claiming to play basketball. While not meant to be exhaustive of the point, these examples might illustrate the sense in which biology and history do form a basis for our action that is strongly antecedent to, and not reciprocally engaged with, the level of our personal actions. There is an aspect to this point regarding biology and history that is clearly correct, and the transcendental idealist interpretation must have a way of handling the notion of an originary past that eludes subjectivity. It is not clear, however, that Merleau-Ponty intends to countenance a hard split between these elements and the other aspects of the anonymous that engage in the personal–impersonal reciprocity. The passage in the chapter on sexuality that refers to the reciprocal relation of expression discusses the role that “vision, hearing, sexuality, and the body” play in our anonymous existence. And just before this Merleau-Ponty claims that “biological existence gears into human existence.”³¹ Thus MerleauPonty’s point here is not just that habits we consciously take on (whether active or intellectual) engage in the reciprocity of the personal and impersonal. Our biology does as well. This is then made clear in the chapter “The Body as Expression, and Speech”: Even [behaviors] that seem inscribed in the human body; such as paternity, are in fact institutions. It is impossible to superimpose upon man both a primary layer

³¹ PP 162.

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of behaviors that could be called “natural” and a constructed cultural or spiritual world. For man, everything is constructed and everything is natural, in the sense that there is no single word or behavior that does not owe something to mere biological being—and, at the same time, there is no word or behavior that does not break free from animal life.³²

Here we find Merleau-Ponty explicitly rejecting much of the foundationalist “layer” talk he established elsewhere. All of our behavior is dependent upon biological being but it is impossible to refer to a biological layer because of the fact that those elements are inseparable from the cultural. The reciprocity between the personal and impersonal is linked to the current passage via the reference to the ambiguity that defines “man.” The human being is defined by the reciprocity between “freedom” and “servitude” discussed previously. Merleau-Ponty makes the same kind of point regarding history in the Part Three chapter “Freedom.” There he emphasizes the extent to which “impersonal forces” such as economy and society shape who I am and how I live. But he notes that as impersonal forces, these do not determine me; “rather society or the economy such as I bear them within myself and such as I live them” shape my situation.³³ These things are more “ancient” than me, but they are available to me to express in my own style. Because of this, “the generality or the individuality of the subject . . . are not in each case two conceptions of the subject between which philosophy would have to choose, but two moments of a single structure that is the concrete subject.”³⁴ This again speaks against a strong anonymityfoundationalism. Merleau-Ponty clearly does not think that the anonymous comprises a layer wholly separate from our personal, conscious lives in the manner of a concrete foundation beneath a wood-framed house. Our generality and our “pure subjectivity” form a single structure. This single structure is tied together by expression in the way that has been discussed. All elements that form the background of our behavior—biological, cultural, historical, etc.—are available as potentials that can be gathered up in expression. And insofar as these elements are available to expression, they are available for conscious explication. The movement associated with this ambiguity is not an optional element of human life, as though we could potentially exist solely in a lower layer of anonymous existence without ever expressing its elements anew. Rather, “the acquired . . . is only truly acquired if it is taken up in a new movement of thought.”³⁵ Merleau-Ponty ultimately does not accept the notion that the anonymous or impersonal forms a distinct foundational layer that supports, but is not touched by, our personal, free actions. There is still a large issue to be settled in this regard,

³² PP 192.

³³ PP 469.

³⁴ PP 476–7.

³⁵ PP 132.

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though. How does this rejection of foundationalism fully mesh with the emphasis on the “ancient” aspects of the anonymous—the absolute or original past—that are not present to us? The answer to this question will present us with a way of explaining how Merleau-Ponty’s views accommodate, rather than reject, the transcendental idealist emphases on synthetic unity and self-consciousness. Furthermore, it will entail that his theory fully accepts perspectival boundedness.

3. Anonymity, Absence, and the Field of Presence The previous section shows that Merleau-Ponty rejects a strongly foundationalist construal of the relationship between the anonymous/impersonal and the personal. There is, rather, a reciprocal relationship between the personal and impersonal such that the anonymous elements of our experience are able to be taken up in occurrent behavior and can be enriched and modified by that behavior. Or at least that appears to be the view that Merleau-Ponty takes toward most aspects of the anonymous. The discussions of the previous section have not explained, however, why Merleau-Ponty would speak of an “absolute past” or a “past that has never been present.” These passages appear to entail that there is some aspect of the anonymous that shapes our experience yet which cannot be taken up in it (and thus cannot be modified by it). In the context of Merleau-Ponty’s discussion, a past that has never been present could never be present; it could not factor in experience in that way. We can sort out how Merleau-Ponty can accommodate this form of nonpresence by examining what he has to say about presence. Merleau-Ponty first references the notion of a “field of presence” near the beginning of the Part One chapter “The Experience of the Body and Classical Psychology.” In a discussion of object permanence, he notes that objects can only appear in a field marked out by the body; the “presence and the absence of external objects are only variations within a primordial field of presence, a perceptual domain over which my body has power.”³⁶ The perceiving body, qua perceiving, is not an object, it is rather that which enables objects to appear by enabling a perceptual field of presence. That field of presence is “primordial” insofar as it is the fundamental and sole way in which being appears for us. This is another way of naming our transcendental perspective. Later, in the Part Two chapter “The Thing and the Natural World,” MerleauPonty will note that “the perception of the world is nothing but an expansion of my field of presence, it does not transcend the essential structures of this field.” This is to further assert that the field of presence is primordial and perspectivally

³⁶ PP 94–5.

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bounded. Prima facie this would make the notion of a past that was never present nonsensical. Seemingly, something that could not be potentially present could not be experienced as absent; such an experience would transcend the structures of the field of presence. The “never present” would simply be nothing to us. Notably, Al Saji recognizes that Merleau-Ponty emphasizes the field of presence throughout the text, and thus claims that the never present past “seems to have no place in the conceptual map of the Phenomenology of Perception.”³⁷ How, then, can we make sense of Merleau-Ponty’s references to the absolute or originary past? One interpretive option, which neither Al Saji nor I would favor, would be to take those references to simply not make sense. They are, after all, a very small number of references in a very large book which typically emphasizes presence, and thus might be seen, as Al Saji notes, as incongruities that should be set to the side in an interpretation of the text. A second interpretive option, which Al Saji favors, is to interpret these passages as illuminating an “unthought” strand in Merleau-Ponty’s thought.³⁸ In essence, this interpretation seizes on a line of thought present in the text that runs counter to the main thrust of the text. To build on Al Saji’s language, there might be a meaningful undercurrent of thought beneath the text’s primary conceptual map. These first two interpretive options share the view that there is a tension or discontinuity in the text. Both take the notion of the originary past to contradict the primary emphasis on presence, but they differ on whether the anti-presence claims should be taken to have significance in their own right. An interpretation like Al Saji’s can claim to find an ontological structure prior to subject and object in Phenomenology only by finding a significant undercurrent that is in tension with the main current of the text.³⁹ In this section, though, I will propose a third interpretive option, which rejects the notion that the references to the absolute or originary past are in tension with Phenomenology’s emphasis on presence. In order to find the notion of past that was never present to fit coherently with the emphasis on presence, I will rely on the Kantian distinction (explained in Chapter 1 §7 above) between positive and negative noumena. To begin to elaborate this interpretation, we should more fully examine what Merleau-Ponty’s notion of the field of presence entails. When he says that “the perception of the world is nothing but an expansion of my field of presence” two points follow. First, it entails an experience of finitude. As Merleau-Ponty immediately notes, perception cannot transcend the structures of the field of presence; thus, it cannot transcend the horizonal nature of our embodied perspective. Second, it entails that all aspects of the perception of the world are connected to ³⁷ Al Saji, “ ‘A Past Which Has Never Been Present,’ ” 42. ³⁸ Ibid. 42–4. ³⁹ In this regard Al Saji’s reading of Phenomenology is similar to Morris’s reading of Structure discussed in Chapter 5. Both seize on a putative tension in the text and emphasize a side of that tension which runs against many of Merleau-Ponty’s overt claims. Both also argue for an anti-subjectivist ontology.

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presence in some way. There is no element of the perception of the world that somehow falls outside of or gets around the field of presence. While Merleau-Ponty insists that these two points must be held together, there is a way of elaborating each that might make them seem contradictory. On the one hand, the finitude of our perspective entails a kind of openness of the world as its horizons can never be exhausted by our perspective. At its extreme this would seem to entail a lack of unity; the inexhaustibility would entail a constant slippage from the present to the absent such that no object would ever really become a meaningful totality. Merleau-Ponty’s criticisms of the intellectualist conception of synthesis, which attempts to grasp reality from the “God’s eye” view, seems to fit with this point. There is no question of grasping a totality. On the other hand, the fact that all experience is tied to the field of presence seems to imply a kind of totality, insofar as all of our experience is tied together by the structures of that field. Merleau-Ponty will thus affirm that our “perceptual experiences are linked together, motivate each other, and are involved in each other.”⁴⁰ My experiences of the world fit together because they are all mine, and I gather them into meaningful unities. Merleau-Ponty will go on to refer to this as the “ubiquity of consciousness.”⁴¹ There is thus an apparent contradiction “between the ubiquity of consciousness and its engagement in a [perspectivally finite] field of presence,” or between the world as meaningful synthetic unity and the world as indefinitely open and incompletable due to our perspectival limitations.⁴² But Merleau-Ponty questions whether this is “really a contradiction and a dilemma.”⁴³ Synthetic totality and finite limitation go together. The first step in showing that there is no contradiction is to assert that the synthesis that unifies our experience of the world is temporal. The totality of our experience is tied together because it occurs in a single temporal flow. There is no overarching intellectual synthetic activity, there is simply the flow of temporality achieving the synthesis. Thus, he says that “this ubiquity [of consciousness] is not actual, it is clearly only intentional.”⁴⁴ It is not actual insofar as explicit consciousness is decidedly not ubiquitous; immediate experience is always accompanied by a “certain degree of indeterminacy” due to its horizonality.⁴⁵ The “ubiquity” remains as “intentional” however, insofar as temporality ties experience together via intentional threads which we might grasp. For Merleau-Ponty, the intellectualist view of synthesis would not give us a totality that we experience, it would give us no experience at all. That is because what we mean by experience is our experience, which is spatiotemporal: [I]f I want to remove consciousness from every place and every temporality . . . then I cannot inhabit any time and the privileged reality that defines my current ⁴⁰ PP 317. ⁴² PP 346.

⁴¹ On this general point see PP 345–7. That specific phrase is used on p. 346. ⁴³ PP 346. ⁴⁴ PP 346. ⁴⁵ PP 346.

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present disappears, along with the reality of my previous presents or my eventual presents. If the synthesis could be actual, if my experience formed a closed system, if the thing and the world could be defined once and for all, if spatiotemporal horizons could (even ideally) be made explicit and if the world could be conceived from nowhere, then nothing would exist.⁴⁶

The point here, put in terms Merleau-Ponty does not use, is that the intellectualist view of synthesis risks attempting to positively cognize a noumenon. “Nothing would exist” on this view of synthesis because the “view from everywhere” totality cannot exist for us; it is the thought of something outside of our spatiotemporal boundaries. This is what Merleau-Ponty means when he says that if “I am always and everywhere I am never and nowhere.”⁴⁷ But the rejection of this point does not entail that synthesis is impossible: What must be understood is that for the same reason I am present here and now, and present elsewhere and always, or absent from here and now and absent from every place and from every time. This ambiguity is not an imperfection of consciousness or of existence, it is their very definition.⁴⁸

It is the nature of consciousness that presence always entails absence and this absence in turn always entails presence. Presence always entails absence insofar as our experience is horizonal and thus there is always an indication of further horizons that have not been made present. The spatiotemporal limitations on our perspective always entail a certain experience of those limitations. There is always a side that remains unseen, a distant horizon we have not yet crossed, a past that has slipped away, an anticipated future that has yet to occur, etc. Absence always entails presence in two ways that are directly connected to the opposite point. Most obviously, most of the forms of absence just noted entail the ability to be made present. I can walk around the thing I am examining to see it from the other side, keep walking until I cross the horizon in front of me, or wait for the anticipated future to occur. The past, of course, operates somewhat differently. It can be remembered, though this is the making present of a new memory rather than the exact past experience. But insofar as it is a past experience, the past directly entails not that it can be made present but that it had been present, and thus consciousness is still ubiquitous. Though this will require qualification, at this point we can say that the possibility of being present is a necessary component of absence appearing for us. If something fits into our system of spatiotemporal horizons, it must be capable of being present (and

⁴⁶ PP 347.

⁴⁷ PP 347.

⁴⁸ PP 347.

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absent). If it is not, it is not so much absent as nonsensical; it does not factor into our experience at all. It is important for the current discussion that the making present discussed in the previous paragraph does not ever overcome the absence entailed by our perspectives. When I walk around the object I do not now see the unseen side; the side I once saw now becomes unseen. Similarly, there is a sense in which I never cross the horizon; as I move forward the horizon always moves forward as well. The thought of constantly shifting horizons thus entails a somewhat different sense of absence. The thought of the horizonal nature of our experience entails the thought of a total presence that is the correlate of an absolute absence. The total presence is the thought of a kind of experience that actually does see the unseen side or cross the horizon definitively, so to speak. This is the thought of the God’s eye view that transcends the limitations of our experience. But insofar as our experience never transcends those boundaries this thought is an indication of an absolute absence, the other side of an uncrossable boundary. This is a correlate to the thing in itself in the phenomenological/horizonal view of experience. And it is thus equivalent to a negative noumenon. We do not positively cognize the God’s eye view, but we can have a coherent, if thin, idea, in the “negative” sense, of a totality of perspectival profiles. This point is shown in the metaphors that Merleau-Ponty uses to describe the object grasped as a totality free from perspective. The notion of viewing a “crystal cube” wherein one can see all sides at once, or having a “view from above” that allows for the same thing, does not really give positive content to the notion of an experience without profiles. This is displayed by the fact that, taken literally, our perceptions of a crystal cube or of an object from above would clearly be perspectival. One cannot determinately grasp the total presence that is absolute absence. But one can indicate, based on our experience of limitation, the possibility of something negatively suggested that cannot be positively conveyed by our experience. This, then, leads us to a way of understanding the notion of the past that cannot be present. The references to the absolute or originary past are similar to the references to the crystal cube or view from above. They are metaphorical, negative indications of an absolute absence. To some extent, our thought of the absolute absence of the past is the same as the thought of the crystal cube: in both cases there is the thought of a collected totality of profiles that cannot in our experience ever be gathered. There is something unique about the notion of the originary or absolute past, however. The crystal cube is the thought of an impossible totality of possible experiences, while the absolute past of nature is the thought of a past wholly prior to possible experience. Our biology, for instance, clearly has a prehistory that shaped our experience but which we could not experience. This is, strongly, a past that has never been present, because there is nothing experience was like before experience. The thought of this absolute past is, nevertheless, a negative noumenon. It is a particular way of thinking about the boundaries of

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what is present to us, and is a recognition of the fact that the structures of our perspective are built upon an historical development that outstrips that perspective. This does not contradict the idea that our experience is essentially of a field of presence. It rather fits with our ability to grasp the particularly bounded nature of that field. The notion of an absolute or originary past that has never been present is thus wholly compatible with the transcendental idealist notion of perspectival boundedness.⁴⁹ In fact, it is directly entailed by the manner in which Merleau-Ponty accepts that thesis. For Merleau-Ponty, to say that all experience of being is bounded by our perspective is to grasp (at least in part) that our experience is spatiotemporally bounded. And a part of the grasping of the specifically temporal element is to grasp that temporal presence entails the absence of the past, and the further thought of that boundary leads to the negative conception of the absolute past. There is no question, however, of building a substantive ontology on this thought of the absolute past. There is no determinate conception of an ontological structure that is anterior to subject and object. A theory that purports to develop such a conception would be, in Kantian terms, attempting to positively cognize a noumenon. That this is the case on Merleau-Ponty’s view will be seen in the next section, which will elaborate on the role that temporality plays in Merleau-Ponty’s view. This discussion of temporality will also build on the discussion of synthetic unity in his thought mentioned above, and introduce the sense in which he accepts the transcendental emphasis on self-consciousness.

4. Presence, Temporality, and Self-Consciousness The beginning of Part Three (in the chapter “The Cogito”) makes clear that Merleau-Ponty accepts the transcendental necessity of both synthetic unity and self-consciousness: We have seen, once and for all, that our relations with things cannot be external relations, nor can our consciousness of ourselves be the simple registering of

⁴⁹ M. C. Dillon argues that the past that has never been present is not present to reflective consciousness, but is “fully present to pre-reflective perceptual consciousness.” See “The Unconscious: Language and World,” in Merleau-Ponty in Contemporary Perspective, ed. Patrick Burke and Jan Van Der Veken, Dordrecht: Springer (1993), 69–83, quote on p. 72. Dillon’s point is that while the unreflected cannot be made fully present as unreflected (because being made present requires reflection), it is still available to the field of presence via reflection. I agree with Dillon’s general point that for Merleau-Ponty the unreflected must be available to reflection. But his interpretation misses the full sense of the absolute past as referring to the biological and deeply historical elements of our background.

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psychical events. We only perceive a world if, prior to being some set of observed facts, this world and this perception are thoughts of our very own.⁵⁰

We cannot perceive a world if we merely have a set of discrete objects, whether those objects are construed causal-mechanistically or as psychic entities. A world requires that the objects perceived are unified in a single stream of consciousness that is mine. As we have already seen, though, Merleau-Ponty construes this synthetic unity and self-consciousness in a manner that differs from classical intellectualist views and that takes embodiment into account. He initially establishes this, in “The Cogito,” with regard to perception. It is a necessary aspect of perception that it is tied to transcendence—“vision,” as Merleau-Ponty says, “is accomplished and fulfilled in the thing seen”⁵¹—so its synthesis cannot be accomplished by some inner “I” that is separate from the world. This does not mean, however, that there is not a subject accomplishing the synthesis. The fact that “there is no private sphere of consciousness” does not mean that consciousness is not at play, rather “consciousness is entirely transcendence.” Perceptual experience is experience of a consciousness being in the world, which is an “active transcendence,” a flow of consciousness engaging with the external world. This flow of activity accomplishes a kind of synthesis. This active conscious flow must furthermore be self-conscious. But just as we cannot conceive of synthesis as involving some separate inner self knitting experiences together, we cannot conceive of self-consciousness as involving some separate inner self which surveys our experiences. There is not some aspect of the self that takes a third-person observational stance on itself. And given that selfconsciousness does not operate this way, it cannot involve the grasping of consciousness as fully determinate: Vision must surely grasp itself—for if it did not, it would not be a vision of anything at all—but it must grasp itself in a sort of ambiguity and a sort of obscurity, since it does not possess itself and rather escapes itself into the thing that is seen. Through the Cogito, I do not discover and recognize psychological immanence, which is the inherence of all phenomena to “private states of consciousness,” or the blind contact of sensation with itself, nor even transcendental immanence, which is the belonging of all phenomena to a constituting consciousness, or the self-possession of clear thought. Rather, what I discover and recognize is the profound movement of transcendence that is my very being, the simultaneous contact with my being and with the being of the world.⁵²

⁵⁰ PP 392.

⁵¹ PP, all quotes in this paragraph are from p. 395.

⁵² PP 395–6.

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There are three key elements to draw from this passage. First, perceptual experience must, in order to be experience at all, be self-conscious. Second, this selfconscious experience is an experience of an active engagement with the world. Self-consciousness does grasp an inner representation of our engagement with the world, it is directly the experience of that engagement. Third, because it is the experience of that engagement, it has the same ambiguity and obscurity—the same indeterminacy—that that engagement has. It is the direct experience of an embodied coming-to-grips-with a world. Merleau-Ponty recognizes that a potential response to this view is that it only makes sense when one focuses on perception. Because perception is directed toward the external world, it lends itself to this anti-intellectualist construal of consciousness, but a consideration of more thoroughly “inner operations” might suggest a different view.⁵³ In response he considers affective states (such as love and joy) and purely intellectual activities in order to show that they, too, fit his construal of consciousness.⁵⁴ The overarching point is that affective and intellectual states are not purely inner and are not really discrete states. They are rather dynamic processes that we live through. Regarding affect, Merleau-Ponty argues this by focusing on love: The love that worked out its dialectic through me and that I have just discovered is not from the outset a hidden thing in my unconsciousness, nor is it for that matter an object in front of my consciousness; rather, it is the movement by which I am turned toward someone, the conversion of my thoughts and of my behaviors—I was hardly unaware of it, since it was I who lived through the hours of boredom prior to a date, and I who experienced joy when it approached; this love was lived—not known from beginning to end.⁵⁵

Love is self-consciously grasped, because it is developed through a series of events that we experience as ours. But the fact that it is lived rather than known signifies that it is a process that we go through—possibly suffer through—rather than a determinate entity that we grasp as a discrete psychic content. And this is a process that necessarily involves engaging with the world—notably with other people—in an embodied life. While there are differences between affect and intellect, Merleau-Ponty believes the same general point applies to the latter. He uses the example of geometry to show that the intellectual grasping of truths requires a process of discovery that involves bodily engagement. And he rejects the point that his process-conception of intellect “merely concerns the psychological circumstances of discovery.”⁵⁶ This

⁵³ PP 396.

⁵⁴ PP 396–415.

⁵⁵ PP 400.

⁵⁶ PP 405.

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criticism would hold that he is mistaking a contingent element of how we arrive at truths for truth itself. What really matters is the determinate grasping of something like the Pythagorean theorem, not whether we learn it from drawing a triangle and measuring it, or listening to a lecture, or reading a book. Though Merleau-Ponty does not make this connection, his response to that criticism is roughly the same as his response to the person who thinks the only true perception in the ship’s mast/tree example (see Chapter 6 §3) is the final grasping of the ship as a ship. Perception is not just the grasping of determinate objects in clear attention, it is the entire process of coming to grips with the scene. Similarly, intellection is not just the grasping of determinate truths, it is the entire process of discovery. In all three of the types of conscious experience considered—perception, affect, and intellect—this dynamic engagement with the world is primary. But the general point regarding objectivity deriving from the pre-objective holds in each of these instances. There is always a movement to grasp moments of determinacy within the process; we see discrete objects, we feel specific instances of love, and we grasp the truth that a²+b²=c². The point is not that all of these instances are the same; a more complete consideration would elaborate on their specific differences. But in the current context the main point is that they share the same general aspect of being moments of determinacy drawn out of a dynamic process of bodily engagement with the world; “there would be no thought and no truth without an act by which I overcome the temporal dispersion of the phases of thought.”⁵⁷ Objective thought loses sight of both the dynamic process which contains this temporal dispersion and the act of overcoming which arrives at determinacy, and mistakenly considers only the result of this act to amount to genuine being. Most pertinent for the current context is that the self-conscious self, construed in the manner of the Cartesian cogito or transcendental I (on Merleau-Ponty’s understanding), is the result of a similar objectivist error which Merleau-Ponty wants to overcome: As has been said, to know is certainly to know that one knows, not that this second-order knowledge grounds knowledge itself, but rather the reverse . . . In the proposition “I think, I am,” the two affirmations are certainly equivalent, otherwise there would be no Cogito. But again, we must attempt to understand the sense of this equivalence: it is not the “I think” that eminently contains the “I am,” nor is it my existence that is reduced to the consciousness that I have of it; rather, it is the “I think” that is reintegrated into the movement of transcendence of the “I am,” and consciousness reintegrated into existence.⁵⁸

⁵⁷ PP 404.

⁵⁸ PP 402–3.

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The “second-order knowledge” referenced is the determinate grasping of selfconsciousness. But this kind of conception of self-consciousness, which is exemplified in Descartes’ famous phrase, is grounded rather than grounding. It is, to borrow from the other quoted passage, the result of an intellectual act which overcomes a temporal dispersion. And that temporal dispersion is the dispersion of a more fundamental form of self-consciousness that is not determinate, and that is integrated in existence. Merleau-Ponty notes that the main issue is to explain what kind of selfconsciousness could accomplish synthetic unity in this lived, non-intellectualistic manner: The problem is to understand how I can be the one constituting my thought in general, without which it would not be thought by anyone, would pass by unnoticed, and would thus not be a thought—without ever being the one constituting any particular one of my thoughts, since I never see them born in plain view, and since I only know myself through them. We must attempt to understand how subjectivity can be simultaneously dependent and indeclinable.⁵⁹

This “indeclinable subjectivity” is what Merleau-Ponty calls the tacit cogito, which he describes as an “experience of myself by myself,” the “presence of self to self,” and a “pure self-affection” that “cannot be thought and must rather be revealed.”⁶⁰ All experience is self-conscious insofar as all experience is attended by this selfaffection. But this is not a thematized grasping of the I—it is a feeling of the self, which is why it must be revealed rather than thought.⁶¹ To think it is to grasp it as cogito in Descartes’ sense, which Merleau-Ponty calls a “spoken Cogito,” or a cogito determinately conceptualized in language.⁶² This is also why he says that “the tacit Cogito is only a Cogito when it has expressed itself.”⁶³ Merleau-Ponty’s provocative claim, in “Sensing,” that “if I wanted to express perceptual experience with precision, I would have to say that one perceives in me, and not that I perceive,” must be understood in relation to this view.⁶⁴ “I” refers there to the thematized, determinate cogito, which is, as has been noted, a

⁵⁹ PP 422. ⁶⁰ PP 426. ⁶¹ As Dan Zahavi establishes at length, this notion of self-consciousness as non-thematized selfaffection is commonly held by phenomenological thinkers. See his Subjectivity and Selfhood: Investigating the First-Person Perspective, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press (2005). Specifically see pp. 70–1 where he aligns the self-affection view with Husserl, Heidegger, and Michel Henry along with Merleau-Ponty. ⁶² PP 422. On this point see Peter Antich, Motivation and the Primacy of Perception: MerleauPonty’s Phenomenology of Knowledge, Athens, OH: Ohio University Press (2021), 177–82, though I think Antich overstates the extent to which explicating the tacit cogito transforms it. ⁶³ PP 426. ⁶⁴ PP 223.

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“second-hand” objectivization. “One” refers to the subjectivity of the tacit cogito that underpins the very possibility of making an I explicit. Merleau-Ponty’s point is not that perception originally occurs in an ontological level that precedes any differentiation of subject and object. The tacit cogito is, after all, an indeclinable subjectivity; it is an ever-present aspect of our experience which marks that experience, pre-objectively, as ours. Subjectivity and consciousness as preobjective experience are original or “primordial”: We do not want to claim that the primordial I is unaware of itself. If it were unaware of itself, it would indeed be a thing, and nothing could subsequently make it become conscious. The only thing we have refused subjectivity is objective thought, or the thetic consciousness of the world and of itself . . . My vision, for example, is surely the “thought that I am seeing,” if we mean by this that it is not simply a function like digestion or respiration, a bundle of isolated processes in an ensemble that is found to have a sense, but rather that it is itself this ensemble and this sense . . . But vision is not the “thought that I am seeing,” so long as we understand by this that vision itself establishes the connection to its object, or that it perceives itself in an absolute transparence and as the author of its own presence in the visible world. The key is to grasp clearly the project of the world that we are.⁶⁵

The notion that subjectivity is a “project” fits with the language of dynamism, process, and flow that I have used throughout this section. Subjectivity and (self ) consciousness are not static things or sets of things; they are more events or actions—though crucially not ones that are enacted by some other static thing.⁶⁶ Recall the reference above to the grasping of truth as requiring the overcoming of temporal dispersion. One might, mistakenly, think this implies that consciousness is a series of ideas or objects that is dispersed. The main point for Merleau-Ponty, however, is that subjectivity is temporality: I am not a series of psychical acts, nor for that matter a central I who gathers them together in a synthetic unity, but rather a single experience that is inseparable from itself, a single “cohesion of life,” a single temporality that unfolds itself from its birth and confirms this birth in each present.⁶⁷

⁶⁵ PP 427. ⁶⁶ Merleau-Ponty is not the first thinker in the tradition of transcendental idealism to assert this. A similar point is, for example, a key element of Fichte’s philosophy. For a brief description see Breazeale, “Johann Gottlieb Fichte,” especially §4.1. As Breazeale puts the point, “immediate selfidentity, however, cannot be understood as a psychological ‘fact,’ no matter how privileged, nor as an ‘action’ or ‘accident’ of some previously existing substance or being. To be sure, it is an ‘action’ of the I, but one that is identical with the very existence of the same.” ⁶⁷ PP 430.

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There is thus a sense in which temporality plays the primary transcendental role in Merleau-Ponty’s philosophy, though the discussion in the Part Three chapter “Temporality” can be somewhat cryptic, especially if one focuses on its more oracular pronouncements such as “time must be understood as a subject, and the subject must be understood as time.”⁶⁸ The point here is that consciousness simply is the flow of experience. And this experience is cohesive, if indeterminate. It may be “blurry” or “shifting,” but it still comes together in one flow that we experience together.⁶⁹ Merleau-Ponty calls this “a natural or primordial unity” which he associates with Husserl’s term “passive synthesis.”⁷⁰ And insofar as this unity is experienced as unity it is self-conscious; “time is ‘self-affection of itself.’ ”⁷¹ To again repeat a crucial aspect of MerleauPonty’s view, there is no thing or being that stands apart from the temporal flow to experience it; it simply is itself experience of itself. This, again, is the basis upon which the “second-hand Cogito,” the objective I, can be determined. And it is the basis upon which the temporal dispersion can be “overcome” through the determination of perceived objects and grasped ideas. But these objectivities are not new things set apart from this primordial unity, they are rather modalities of it. Merleau-Ponty grasps that the discussion of temporality is somewhat cryptic. After aligning the idea of primordial unity with Husserl’s conception of passive synthesis, he notes that the reference to Husserl’s view “is clearly not a solution, but merely a sign for designating a problem.”⁷² If the problem is to explain the nature of the primordial temporality of consciousness, “passive synthesis” does not primarily fail as a solution because of some inadequacy in Husserl’s theory (though it may have some inadequacies). Rather, the main reason it “fails” is because there is no solution, in that sense, to the problem. The problem of primordial, self-conscious temporal unity cannot be solved if finding a solution involves giving an explanation or grounding temporality in something more fundamental. Consciousness cannot be “explained” in this way; recall the claim that the tacit cogito has to be revealed rather than thought. The nature of consciousness can only be grasped via philosophical reflection. Consciousness cannot be explained because conscious experience is the general basis upon which explanations of things are given. This is why Merleau-Ponty ends “Temporality” with the question of the “world prior to man”: ⁶⁸ PP 445. ⁶⁹ Merleau-Ponty frequently uses the adjective “bougé” which Landes translates as “indeterminate.” It comes from the verb “bouger” which means “move” but also has the sense of “shift” and is connected to the English “budge.” Bougé can specifically refer to photographic blur of the type that comes from camera shift. ⁷⁰ PP 442. ⁷¹ PP 449. Merleau-Ponty is quoting Heidegger on Kant. See Martin Heidegger, Kant and the Problem of Metaphysics, 5th edn., trans. Richard Taft, Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press (1997), 132. ⁷² PP 442.

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When we said above that there is no world without an Existence that bears its structure, one could surely have objected that, nevertheless, the world preceded man, that the earth, according to all the evidence, is the only populated planet, and that thus the philosophical views are revealed as incompatible with the most established facts. But in fact, it is only the abstract reflection of intellectualism that is incompatible with the poorly understood “facts.” For what exactly is meant by saying that the world existed prior to human consciousnesses? It might be meant that the earth emerged from a primitive nebula where the conditions for life had not been brought together. But each one of these words, just like each equation in physics, presupposes our pre-scientific experience of the world, and this reference to the lived world contributes to constituting the valid signification of the statement. Nothing will ever lead me to understand what a nebula, which could not be seen by anyone, might be.⁷³

This is Merleau-Ponty’s most fundamental statement of perspectival boundedness. “We conceive of being through time,” and time, in this sense, is the temporal flow of consciousness. That is primary, and there is no sense in considering being in a fashion that is somehow prior to or more fundamental than temporality. All thought presupposes our experience of the world. And insofar as that experience is the consciousness Merleau-Ponty describes in the discussion of the tacit cogito and temporality, it is self-consciously unified. Merleau-Ponty clearly and fully accepts the transcendental idealist thesis of transcendental perspectivism. The unique element of his view is that the transcendental subject is not the intellectualist “I,” but is the temporal flow of bodily engagement with the world as a field of experience.

5. The Permanent Truth of Embodied Subjectivity One might still argue that my interpretation presented in this chapter is hampered by the fact that I take Merleau-Ponty’s terminology at face value. Yes, MerleauPonty frequently uses “consciousness,” “subject,” and related terms, but he may be working toward a view that outstrips these concepts. This kind of argument is notably made by M. C. Dillon, who claims that “Merleau-Ponty works through the language of consciousness, infiltrates it, dismantles its infrastructure, and forces it to collapse from its own ponderous ineptitude.”⁷⁴ This results, for Dillon, in a view according to which “the flesh of the world perceives itself through our flesh which is one with it,” and the primacy of perception is thus situated in an ontological structure, “flesh,” which is anterior to the subject–object distinction.⁷⁵ But while

⁷³ PP 456.

⁷⁴ Dillon, Merleau-Ponty’s Ontology, 102.

⁷⁵ Ibid. 105.

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Dillon thinks that Merleau-Ponty’s thought is moving in this direction in Phenomenology, his views “were held back by the vocabulary of “consciousness,” “intentionality,” “perspective,” etc. that Merleau-Ponty uncritically appropriated from the phenomenological parlance of his time.”⁷⁶ This kind of interpretation gains some plausibility from the fact that MerleauPonty would later claim that Phenomenology’s insistence on the subject–object distinction hampered its ability to meet its philosophical aims, which might reasonably be taken as supporting an interpretation like Dillon’s.⁷⁷ While I will present some thoughts on these matters in §2 of the conclusion, my aim here is to interpret Phenomenology and the other Pre-Sorbonne works on their own grounds. Independent of what Merleau-Ponty would later say about Phenomenology, I think that an interpretation like Dillon’s is implausible when that text itself is fully considered. First, I think the claim that Merleau-Ponty’s use of phenomenological terminology was “uncritical” is grossly uncharitable hermeneutically. But much more importantly, I think that any interpretation that tries to read consciousness and the subject–object distinction out of Phenomenology simply misses one of the main underlying points of the text. Merleau-Ponty thinks that subjectivity, construed in terms of the individual experience of an individual embodied consciousness, is an ineliminable and fundamental aspect of reality. This can be seen, for instance, in his repeated use of the term “primordial.” He frequently uses that term to assert that some aspect of reality is fundamental. In many of these cases, the thing that he calls “primordial” is some structure or aspect of individual embodied experience. For example, in the discussion of the church-window example that introduces the idea of a metaphysically (or transcendentally) necessary perspective he says that “my own body is the primordial habit,” thus emphasizing that individual embodied experience is fundamental.⁷⁸ Shortly thereafter he refers to a “primordial field of presence” in which objects appear to our perspective.⁷⁹ Importantly, while the idea of a “field” emphasizes that perception happens through dynamic interrelations with an environment, there is still a kind of primacy of the subjective insofar as the field is “a domain over which my body has power.”⁸⁰ And while these claims come fairly early in Part One, this kind of language is maintained throughout. For example, in Part Three Merleau-Ponty refers to the “primordial I” and insists that it must be self-conscious (though nonthetically so, as was just discussed in the previous section). In fairness, there are some instances that suggest the opposing view, such as when Merleau-Ponty refers to “a primordial world that grounds the primary sense ⁷⁶ Ibid. 85. ⁷⁷ The most famous instance of this can be found at Merleau-Ponty, The Visible and the Invisible, 200. Dillon notes that it could alternately be taken as an outright rejection of Phenomenology. See Dillon, Merleau-Ponty’s Ontology, 85–6. ⁷⁸ PP 93, emphasis added. ⁷⁹ PP 94. ⁸⁰ PP 94.

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of my experience” or to something “beneath the idea of the subject and the idea of the object” that composes a “primordial layer.”⁸¹ But these references are couched in discussions that generally fit with transcendental perspectivism. The reference to the “primordial world” comes in a discussion of habit such that it can be taken to refer to the subject’s general ability to “have a world” as opposed to some presubjective ontological structure. And in the reference to the “primordial layer” Merleau-Ponty immediately says that when “it comes to consciousness, I can only form a notion of it by first referring myself back to this consciousness that I am, and . . . [I must] regain contact with the sensoriality that I live from within.”⁸² The upshot is that the primordial layer can only be accessed from within my subjective perspective (the primordial field of presence), and thus for the reasons discussed earlier in this chapter cannot be taken to evince a belief in some ontological structure or entity antecedent to the subject–object split. That individual subjectivity is central to the position taken in Phenomenology is, interestingly, most clearly stated in the chapter on intersubjectivity, “Others and the Human World.” One of the main points of that chapter, especially early on, is to undercut the very idea of a “problem of other minds.” In brief, Merleau-Ponty argues that before one could ever concoct something like an epistemological question regarding how we know that another person is conscious, we engage with them in a bodily fashion that evinces the fact that we regard them as conscious persons. But crucially, after introducing the basics of that argument he inserts a section titled “The Permanent Truth of Solipsism.”⁸³ The general point of the section is to assert that while phenomenological analysis shows that we are intimately engaged with other persons, there is still something inescapable about the fact that I engage with the world from my own individual perspective: Transcended on all sides by my own acts and immersed in generality, I am nevertheless the one through which these acts are lived; my first perception inaugurated an insatiable being who appropriates everything that it can encounter, to whom nothing can be purely and simply given because it inherited the world, and consequently carries in itself the plan of every possible being, and because the world has been, once and for all, imprinted upon his field of experience.⁸⁴

This is not an instance where Merleau-Ponty is voicing an opposing view, nor is it an expression of an element of objective thought that is later undermined by the analysis of the pre-objective. It is an expression of what, in Phenomenology at least,

⁸¹ PP, first quote on p. 131, second and third quotes on p. 228. ⁸² PP 228. ⁸³ PP 374–5. Where, exactly, the section title was meant to be placed is unclear; see Landes’s discussion of this issue at pp. xlvii–xlviii and lii n. 1. ⁸⁴ PP 374.

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is one of Merleau-Ponty’s most settled convictions and which fits his views very generally into the context of French existentialism. There is no getting around the primacy of subjective experience. Insofar as the term “solipsism” is typically taken to refer to the idea that nothing exists outside of the subject, Merleau-Ponty’s section heading might be unnecessarily provocative. What he is actually asserting is the point that I have expressed in the title to this section by amending MerleauPonty’s words. There is a permanent truth of embodied subjectivity. This permanent truth of embodied subjectivity is not undercut by the analysis of the pre-objective; it is revealed to be part of the pre-objective. Merleau-Ponty establishes this point in his consideration of the perception of depth. The proper consideration of depth perception “obliges us to reject the unquestioned belief in the world and to uncover the primordial experience from where this prejudice springs forth,” and that primordial experience “clearly belongs to perspective and not to things.”⁸⁵ Provocatively, Merleau-Ponty ties this point to “something that holds true in Berkeley’s argument.”⁸⁶ This is not an uncritical reference to concepts that Merleau-Ponty is actually trying to undermine. Rather, Merleau-Ponty is deliberately referencing the arch-subjectivist Berkeley (just as he deliberately uses the term solipsism) to drive home his acceptance of the primacy of subjectivity. He may thoroughly argue that consciousness and subjectivity are misunderstood and misconstrued by the objectivist and intellectualist aspects of the philosophical tradition. But he is far from trying to make the language of consciousness and subjectivity in general “collapse from its own ponderous ineptitude.” He is rather attempting to get around the ineptitude of certain (objectivist, and typically intellectualist) uses of that language to point out the fundamental truths that that language conveys.

⁸⁵ PP 267.

⁸⁶ PP 267.

8 Transcendental Analysis in Phenomenology of Perception 1. What Does Merleau-Ponty Mean by “Reflection”? In order to count as genuinely transcendental a work must embody the transcendental structural analysis thesis. This is to say that it must seek to uncover necessary, universal structures that shape our perspective on the world. Chapters 3 and 6 provide evidence that Merleau-Ponty did engage in this style of analysis in Structure and Phenomenology. But as we have seen, there are aspects of his views that work against this interpretation as well. He explicitly blurs the distinction between the empirical and transcendental, questions the search for conditions of possibility, and places limits on reflection. This last point is particularly crucial; Merleau-Ponty relies on philosophical reflection in Phenomenology while also being highly critical of it. This is one of the more vexing aspects of Phenomenology, as Merleau-Ponty appears to claim that aspects of our experience both are and are not open to reflection. Before we can consider the specific problem of the blurring of the empirical and transcendental, we must first understand Merleau-Ponty’s views on philosophical reflection. One problem with determining how reflection is supposed to operate in Merleau-Ponty’s view is that it can be hard to figure out what, exactly, he means by “reflection.” His terminology is not entirely clear. He refers to multiple forms, such as “philosophical reflection,” “psychological reflection,” “transcendental reflection,” “phenomenological reflection,” and “reflective analysis,” without clearly delineating the differences between them. He also indicates that there is such a thing as “authentic,” “genuine,” or “true” reflection that is opposed to at least some of the other noted forms. And genuine reflection is presumably meant to be embodied in “radical reflection,” which is the name he ultimately gives to his preferred view. Also, Merleau-Ponty frequently refers to “reflection” directly without any modifier. But he does not appear to pin a consistent meaning on the unmodified term. Some of his unmodified references to reflection are critical of it, such as when he mentions a new mode of existential analysis that “goes beyond the classical alternatives between empiricism and intellectualism, or between

Embodied Idealism: Merleau-Ponty’s Transcendental Philosophy. Joseph C. Berendzen, Oxford University Press. © Joseph C. Berendzen 2023. DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780192874764.003.0009

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explanation and reflection.”¹ On the other hand, Merleau-Ponty frequently refers to reflection as grasping experience in a way that avoids the problems of empiricism and intellectualism.² We need to tease out exactly what is wrong with some forms of reflection, what is correct in other forms, and how to conceive of the distinction between the two. It is easiest to begin with an explanation of the problematic form(s) of reflection, because we have already discussed one significant instance, “reflective analysis,” in Chapter 5 §2 above. Recall that in the Preface Merleau-Ponty describes reflective analysis as ceasing “to adhere to our experience” and substituting “a reconstruction for a description.”³ The idea is that while reflective analysis putatively begins with experience—our experience of objects—it provides a rational reconstruction of how it is that one might, theoretically, have possible objective experience rather than actually describing that experience. This is an intellectualist and objectivist method that does not properly engage with the world and construes the subject as an atemporal, transparent “I.” But this critique does not impugn all reflection, because elsewhere Merleau-Ponty suggests that reflective analysis is not even really reflection properly understood. For example, he says at the very beginning of the Part Two chapter “Space” that “reflection does not work backward along a pathway already traveled in the opposite direction by constitution.”⁴ The “backward path” referred to here is the same as the reconstructive methodology of reflective analysis, and in this instance we are told that reflection—without a modifier—does not do this. So, there is a sense in which intellectualism is aligned with reflective analysis but not genuine reflection. Merleau-Ponty similarly establishes the difference between reflective analysis and genuine reflection a bit later in “Space” in a discussion of the hallucinatory or “mythological” perceptions of schizophrenic patients. Merleau-Ponty considers the non-pathological philosopher’s or psychologist’s ability to understand the pathological experience via reflection: [I]f I reflect upon the consciousness of positions and directions in the myth, the dream, and perception, if I thematize them and fix them according to the methods of objective thought, I discover in them the relations of geometrical space. It must not be concluded from this that these relations were already there, but inversely that this is not genuine reflection. In order to know what mythical or schizophrenic space means, we have no other means than of awakening in ourselves, in our current perception, the relation between the subject and his world that reflective analysis makes disappear.⁵

¹ PP 138. ² See e.g. PP 117. ⁵ PP 304, emphasis added.

³ PP, p. lxxiii.

⁴ PP 253.

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Reflective analysis will attempt to reconstruct the aspects of the experience that the pathological subject reports and place them in a system of objective spatial relations. But this does not really grasp the meaning of the pathological experience. Reconstruction is not genuine reflection; it does not meet up with the true character of experience. Merleau-Ponty’s point in this passage is not that genuine reflection can, for the non-pathological reflector, re-create the actual pathological experience. The point is rather that in order to understand the pathological case we have to first consider it in relation to the actual structure of normal perception. This is what genuine reflection grasps. It awakens the subject’s relation to her world, while reflective analysis makes that relation disappear. While Merleau-Ponty’s use of terminology does not always make this point clear, it is present throughout the text. Early on in the Introduction chapter “ ‘Attention’ and ‘Judgement’ ” he refers to “authentic reflection” as an “act of perceiving itself grasped from the inside” which is contrasted with judgement.⁶ And in the Part Three chapter “Freedom” he says that “true reflection presents me to myself, not as an idle and inaccessible subjectivity, but as identical to my presence in the world.”⁷ “Genuine,” “authentic,” or “true” reflection involves a presentation to the self of our embodied relation to the world. We can thus make the following distinction between types of reflection that Merleau-Ponty discusses in Phenomenology. Intellectualist reflection (such as reflective analysis) involves construing experience in an objectivist fashion, typically in terms of objective idealities considered by the rational subject. Genuine reflection, on the other hand, involves a kind of direct attentiveness to the actual character of our embodied experience. Again, there is a sense in which intellectualist reflective analysis is not actually reflection, or it begins with reflection but abandons it for rational reconstruction. Similar to objective thought in general, reflective analysis replaces attention to experience with a kind of implicit theory. Genuine reflection requires an attentiveness to the actual character of experience. But this does not fully capture what genuine reflection entails; there are three points that need to be added. The first is that reflection needs to be situated in terms of the issues surrounding the natural attitude. On Merleau-Ponty’s construal, our experience in the natural attitude contains the genuine perceptual experience of our embodied link with the world but it also contains the beliefs associated with the illicit move toward objective thought (see Chapter 6 §3). Because of this latter element, genuine reflection requires something more than attentiveness; it must be able to see past the problematic aspects of the natural attitude. This is the particular task of philosophical reflection construed as

⁶ PP 35, emphasis added.

⁷ PP 478, emphasis added.

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phenomenological reflection.⁸ To a degree, phenomenological reflection simply requires a recognition of what reflection actually is; as Merleau-Ponty puts it, the “task of knowing perception will always belong to perception . . . reflection never transports itself outside of all situations.”⁹ Phenomenology grasps that it has to actually reflect on perception rather than reconstruct it. But this is not easy to grasp; Merleau-Ponty thinks, for example, that we need the help of psychological reflection to avoid the pitfalls of reflective analysis.¹⁰ It is thus more than a matter of just simply attending. The second point that needs to be added is that philosophical reflection cannot remain merely as a form of attentiveness. Much of Merleau-Ponty’s rhetoric suggests that genuine reflection is meant to bring about a particular kind of reflective experience; for example, it is said to lead to an “awakening” and a sense of “wonder.”¹¹ But insofar as it is philosophical it must lead beyond this experience to the development of some view on that experience. Thus Merleau-Ponty links philosophical reflection’s awakening to the creation of a “true theory.”¹² Genuine philosophical reflection must lead to a kind of objectification of experience. The problem, then, for Merleau-Ponty is to attain a philosophical objectification of experience that somehow remains true to experience rather than leading to the ills of objective thought. One can get a sense of what Merleau-Ponty has in mind here when he says that phenomenology “is as painstaking as the works of Balzac, Proust, Valery, or Cézanne” because it has “the same kind of attention and wonder, the same demand for awareness, the same will to grasp the sense of the world or of history in its nascent state.”¹³ He believes that the artists mentioned engage in a form of genuine reflection and also crystallize that experience into a work that in some way expresses its truth. To use language discussed in Chapter 7 §5, art involves a kind of overcoming of the temporal dispersion of experience. While phenomenology is not art, it must similarly grasp the sense of the world in a state prior to objective thought. And it must be able to produce an expression of this. This expression of the nascent state requires that reflection somehow relate to experience as it is prior to reflection. This leads to the third, and most important, point that must be added to the consideration of genuine reflection. MerleauPonty is adamant that genuine reflection must consider that it is reflection upon ⁸ See PP 38–47 for an initial discussion of the difference between intellectualist reflection and phenomenological reflection. Merleau-Ponty sometimes uses “philosophical reflection” to name a genus of which the other two are species. Sometimes, though, philosophical reflection is described as just properly being phenomenological reflection. ⁹ PP 45. ¹⁰ Merleau-Ponty’s use of “psychological reflection” is ambiguous. On the one hand, he says that it “obliges us to place the precise world back into the cradle of consciousness” (PP 33), implying that insofar as it actually attends to conscious experience, it must link with our actual experience of the world. On the other hand, he notes that psychological reflection can tend toward objectivism (see PP 60–1). ¹¹ See PP, pp. lxxvii and 34. ¹² PP 34. ¹³ PP, p. lxxxv.

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the unreflected. But his discussion of this issue is quite ambiguous, as he seems to both indicate that reflection can grasp the unreflected and that reflection modifies (and is thus possibly separated from) the unreflected. Merleau-Ponty emphasizes that reflective analysis is mistaken insofar as it misses the reflection–unreflected relation: Reflective analysis believes it moves in the reverse direction along the path of a previous constitution . . . Yet this is a naivete, or, if one prefers, an incomplete reflection that loses an awareness of its own beginning. I began to reflect, my reflection is a reflection upon an unreflected; it cannot be unaware of itself as an event; henceforth it appears as a genuine creation, as a change in the structure of consciousness.¹⁴

To an extent this passage repeats points that have already been made in this section. Reflective analysis begins by actually examining experience, but moves toward a rational reconstruction of constitution and thus loses awareness of its beginning. But the reference to the “unreflected” adds something, particularly at the end of this passage. The move from unreflected to reflection is a creative act that changes the structure of consciousness. This strongly suggests that there is a difference between the unreflected and our reflection upon it. But this difference is something that reflection apparently can grasp; the implication is that it can be aware of itself as event. In fact, we later find out that this is the main attribute of “radical reflection,” which comes to be the highest form of philosophical reflection on Merleau-Ponty’s view; “radical reflection is conscious of its own dependence on an unreflected life.”¹⁵ The Preface’s discussion of the unreflected and radical reflection throws up some major red flags for the transcendental idealist interpretation and for Merleau-Ponty’s thought in general. Transcendental structural analysis requires that we are capable of analyzing our experience from the first-person perspective and grasping its structures. The initial split between intellectualist reflection and genuine reflection still allows for this. In fact, one might argue that intellectualist reflection is not properly transcendental because it ultimately invents a theory rather than analyzing the structures of actual experience. But the notion of the unreflected problematizes this. We might initially assume that “the unreflected” refers to the bulk of our actual experience. This would fit with the general Merleau-Pontyian point that most of our embodied action is not thematized in thought or “personal” consciousness. But if this is correct, and reflection changes the structure of consciousness, then there is a question as to whether reflection can actually ascertain the structures of actual unreflected experience. From the point

¹⁴ PP, p. lxxiii, emphasis added.

¹⁵ PP, p. lxxviii.

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of view of transcendental analysis, we should not want reflection to be “a genuine creation” if this means that the structures it ascertains are invented rather than discovered. If that is what Merleau-Ponty means in the Preface passage above, then all transcendental reflection would seemingly fall into the trap of reflective analysis by replacing experience with a theoretical (re) construction. And in this regard, it is perhaps telling that Merleau-Ponty’s single use of “transcendental reflection” in Phenomenology is critical, and aligns it with intellectualism. On the other hand, we already know that Merleau-Ponty embraces transcendental philosophy at the end of Phenomenology’s Introduction. Furthermore, his claims regarding radical reflection seem to imply that he does not intend the interpretation of the “genuine creation” and “change in the structure of consciousness” claims I have just presented. Radical reflection is clearly said, in the Preface, to be capable of grasping the relation between reflection and the unreflected. If that is the case, reflection cannot be a pure creation, or a complete change in consciousness. If it were, it would have no way of grasping the difference between the reflected and the unreflected (all it would grasp would be the former, and the latter would be closed off from it). There must be some route through reflection to the actual nature of experience. To clear up this issue we need to look beyond the Preface.

2. Reflection and the Unreflected After the Preface, it becomes clear that reflection being an act of creation cannot mean that it distorts the true character of our unreflected experience. For example, in the Introduction Merleau-Ponty asserts that “if we want reflection to preserve the descriptive characteristics of the object upon which it bears and to actually understand this object . . . we must consider reflection to be a creative operation that itself participates in the facticity of the unreflected.”¹⁶ The act of creation participates in the unreflected and allows for genuine description. For this to be the case, we need to interpret the notion of creativity at play here, and the idea that the structure of consciousness is changed by reflection, in a very particular way. This proper understanding of reflection and the unreflected can only be fully understood in relation to the discussion of self-consciousness in Part Three (see Chapter 7 §5). In the chapters “The Cogito” and “Temporality,” Merleau-Ponty describes the most fundamental character of subjectivity as involving a unified, dynamic temporal flow of experience which is engaged, in an embodied fashion, with the world. There is no “I” that stands apart from this flow and surveys its contents; the temporal flow is itself our experience and thus is identical to the I,

¹⁶ PP 62.

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properly construed. This is the “tacit Cogito.” It is a cogito because the temporal flow is, itself, self-affective subjectivity. It is tacit, however, insofar as it is primarily pre-objective. This is why I say that it is identical to the I properly construed; it is not the I thought of in objectivistic, intellectualistic terms, but it is the selfconscious self. It is this “tacit” self-conscious experience that Merleau-Ponty is referring to when he refers to the “unreflected.” Thus, the unreflected must be self-aware. In the terms of “The Cogito,” if the primordial, unreflected I were unaware of itself, it would be a thing, not a consciousness.¹⁷ The passage from unreflected to reflection cannot be a passage from lack of consciousness to self-consciousness, nor can it be modeled on the third-person observation a consciousness has of a thing. It is rather tacit self-awareness made explicit. Merleau-Ponty does not refer to “tacit reflection,” though he does refer to the “pre-reflective cogito” in a manner that suggests something similar.¹⁸ The pre-reflective cogito is to reflection as the tacit cogito is to the “second-hand” cogito or the thematized I. This point is explicitly supported by the way Merleau-Ponty includes the unreflected and reflection in the discussion of the “two-way” Fundierung relation. The unreflected is a “founding term” insofar as the reflected is a determination of it which cannot be wholly made explicit. But “it is only through the founded [reflection] that the founding [the unreflected] appears,” and thus the unreflected does not compose a separable layer from reflection.¹⁹ Rather it is motivated to determine itself in reflection, and only shows up insofar as genuine reflection is accomplished. Just as objectivity in general has its law, so too does reflection specifically. The pre-reflective self-awareness of the tacit cogito will necessarily lead to reflection; it is up to the phenomenologist to guide this natural movement toward reflection away from objective thought to true reflection. It is only through reflection that the unreflected appears. Merleau-Ponty’s philosophy is not a romanticism; there is no place in his early thought for a direct, unmediated experience of reality as it is apart from our objectivizing acts. He does, however, want to expand our conception of how we can make the unreflected explicit beyond the traditional intellectual tools of philosophy and science.²⁰ It is in this spirit that the reference to “Balzac, Proust, Valery, or Cézanne” noted in the previous section is made. Art can also play this role in a different way. But art remains a form of determination and making explicit. This is seen in Merleau-Ponty’s explanation of Cézanne’s rejection of geometrical perspective, through which he has “striven to recapture the feel of perceptual experience itself.”²¹ Via a form of reflection expressed in painting, Cézanne reveals an error

¹⁷ PP 427. ¹⁸ See PP 311. ¹⁹ PP 414. ²⁰ This is one of the main general themes of the 1948 radio broadcast lectures collected in MerleauPonty, The World of Perception, trans. Oliver Davis, London: Routledge (2004). ²¹ Ibid. 53–4.

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of objective thought, i.e. the notion that lived space is arranged like classical geometric perspective. Merleau-Ponty’s interest in Cézanne is not based on the idea that the painter provides some special opportunity for a direct aesthetic intuition of the real. Rather, Cézanne’s painting grasps that the actual experience of space is not like classical perspective, and thus in its own way makes explicit and determinate an aspect of our pre-objective experience. This consideration of painting draws out a crucial aspect of Merleau-Ponty’s view that explains how reflection can be creative without distorting the unreflected. Reflection involves a form of expression. Landes’s description of expression as involving “a trajectory of metastable equilibriums” is again helpful here.²² On this view expression draws on a field that is “metastable” in the sense that it is a reservoir of multiple potentials that do not necessarily fit together in constant, stable relations. The unreflected is like this; it contains multiple potentials for making connections between elements, drawing them out, and making them explicit. True reflection seizes on a subset of these potentials and crystallizes them (via any one of multiple means, including the tools of philosophy, science, and art) in a determinate expression.²³ In this way reflection is creative. It creates the crystallization of potentials. It thus seizes upon some elements of the unreflective over others and brings them to light in a particular way. But those elements are genuinely present in the unreflective amidst the “metastable” potentials. Thus, the creative act is not a distortion; genuine reflective expression “participates in the facticity of the unreflected” by drawing out and making explicit some of its elements. Insofar as explication is a movement of expression this brings something new, a particular way of grasping reality that does not exist in that form prior to its expression, into being. Given that only a subset of the “metastable” potentials is made determinate, reflection does not fully absorb the unreflected. And it cannot; Merleau-Ponty believes that expression will always involve leaving some element unexpressed. This is a correlate to the horizonal nature of experience; when we seize upon some subset of our experiential profiles, there is always some horizon which is absent, some set of possible connections that are left unexpressed. This is not to say that they are inexpressible, however; “the experience of phenomena is not . . . the experience of an unknown reality to which there is no methodical passage. Rather, it is the making explicit or the bringing to light of the pre-scientific life of consciousness.”²⁴ But that there is such a “methodical passage”—the possibility for genuine reflection—is compatible with the notion that the phenomenal field “resists in principle being directly and completely made explicit.”²⁵

²² Landes, Merleau-Ponty and the Paradoxes of Expression, 13. ²³ See PP 309 for a good example of a passage that describes expression in this way. ²⁴ PP 59. ²⁵ PP 61.

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Merleau-Ponty is insistent that a genuine philosophy must be aware of the partial nature of reflection and, insofar as this is the case, it would be aware of the reflecting consciousness’s being in the world. He appears to contrast this with transcendental reflection, insofar as his one specific reference to transcendental reflection aligns it with an objectivist conception of “the non-temporal thinker of the object.”²⁶ But in contrast to that passage, Merleau-Ponty earlier aligns the recognition of the partial nature of reflection with genuine transcendental philosophy: A philosophy becomes transcendental, that is, radical, not by taking up a position within absolute consciousness while failing to mention the steps that carried it there, but rather by considering itself as a problem; not by assuming the total making-explicit of knowledge, but rather by recognizing this presumption of reason as the fundamental philosophical problem.²⁷

In “considering itself as a problem,” transcendental philosophy recognizes that its idealized generalizations come from a reflection upon the unreflected, and are thus creations which determine the nature of experience yet also leave some aspect undetermined. The “presumption of reason” referred to is the presumption that our experience of the world can be made fully explicit; the fundamental philosophical problem is that philosophy engages this presumption while recognizing its limits. Experience can be made explicit but the explication cannot be made total. “Radical” philosophy in the sense Merleau-Ponty intends here recognizes that every expression leaves something unexpressed, and thus seeks to situate its theoretical views in relation to the unreflected background. Merleau-Ponty equates radical philosophy with transcendental philosophy in that passage because the pre-objective, indeterminate basis of our existence is the condition of possibility for us achieving different forms of objectivity. We are able to grasp the world in particular ways because we are presented with the multiplicity of potentials with which we can come to grips. There is no crystallization without something to crystallize, no expression without the multiplicity taken up in expression. The temporal, tacitly self-affective flow of bodily engagement with the world is the condition of possibility for our having a world. Radical reflection is thus a reflection which tries to always keep in mind the condition for its existence, and in this sense is genuine transcendental reflection. Radical reflection is described as being “conscious of its own dependence on an unreflected life that is its initial, constant, and final situation.”²⁸ Put in terms of the issues discussed above, this means that radical reflection is conscious of the fact that it is a partial expression or determination of an indeterminate background that would allow for multiple determinations. And this entails that it is aware of something akin to fallibilism regarding its expressions, because there is always the ²⁶ PP 248.

²⁷ PP 64.

²⁸ PP, p. lxxviii.

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possibility that a new expression would cast things in a new light.²⁹ And this possibility entails that the task of radical reflection is in principle infinite: Since philosophy is itself within history, it too draws upon the world and upon constituted reason. Thus, it will be necessary that philosophy direct toward itself the very same interrogation that it directs toward all forms of knowledge. It will thus be indefinitely doubled; it will be, as Husserl says, an infinite dialogue or meditation, and, to the very extent that it remains loyal to its intention, it will never know just where it is going.³⁰

Although their logic works somewhat differently, Merleau-Ponty’s conception of reflection shares with empirical inductive methodologies the notion that future investigations may reveal new information that will alter our views. This is always in principle the case; radical reflection sees the need to constantly interrogate its grounds, and thus its questioning is infinite. A major upshot of the considerations of this section is that there is a qualified sense in which all genuine reflection is an empirical investigation and all empirical investigations are reflection. Reflection does not involve turning from the world toward an I or cogito that stands apart from the world. There is no such I; subjectivity is simply the conscious, temporal flow of our embodied engagement with the world. Reflection is thus directed at the world, and is in that sense broadly empirical. On the flip-side, for all empirical observation, the character of the observer determines the character of the observation. Thus, any description of the observed world will, at least implicitly, express something of how that observation was made. If empirical observation seeks to grasp an aspect of the world and make its connections explicit, it must take account of this observational character. This is reflective; any attempt to make explicit connections between objects in the world is an attempt to make how we experience the world explicit (whether it recognizes itself that way or not).

3. Why Merleau-Ponty Might Not Be a Transcendental Philosopher The last paragraph links transcendental reflection and empirical investigation, but this presents a challenge for transcendental idealist interpretation of Phenomenology. ²⁹ I say “something akin to fallibilism” because the issue is not the standard epistemic matter that our beliefs might turn out to be false. The point is rather that our take on the world might, because it is partial, be construed in a new way. This position leads to a more straightforward version of epistemic fallibilism on Merleau-Ponty’s view, however. See Berendzen, “Disjunctivism and Perceptual Knowledge in Merleau-Ponty and McDowell,” Res Philosophica 91:3 (2014), 261–86. ³⁰ PP, p. lxxxv.

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To make this challenge explicit, I will draw on the reasons for rejecting a transcendental interpretation given by Andrew Inkpin. On Inkpin’s view, Merleau-Ponty fails to meet what he calls the “transcendentalist challenge” of identifying a distinct form of transcendental validity.³¹ In my view, Inkpin correctly notes issues that are problematic for the transcendental interpretation, but he is wrong to take these as proof that Merleau-Ponty does not engage in transcendental philosophy. Straightforwardly enough, Inkpin asserts that “transcendental claims are distinguished by a specific modality—traditionally . . . necessity and apriority.”³² Then he emphasizes the fact that Merleau-Ponty questions the notions of apriority and necessity that underpin views like Kant’s. The upshot of his argument is that in attempting to reconsider these core aspects of transcendental philosophy, Merleau-Ponty actually does away with them. There are three main ways in which this happens. First, Merleau-Ponty obscures the difference between the a priori and a posteriori such that neither can really mean what they do for transcendental philosophy. Second, Merleau-Ponty revises the contingency/ necessity distinction in such a way that he effectively does away with the idea of necessary knowledge claims. Third—and Inkpin notes that this is a sort of specification of the second point—Merleau-Ponty criticizes the notion of searching for conditions of possibility in favor of describing actuality. When the second and third point are put together, we arrive at the fact that Merleau-Ponty’s “aim is to uncover how things are rather than how they might be or must be, or that his focus is on actuality rather than possibility or necessity.”³³ All in all, Inkpin takes these points to show that “Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenology stands opposed as deeply and pervasively anti-transcendental.”³⁴ Obviously, I believe that Inkpin’s interpretation is ultimately quite mistaken. It is important to see, though, that there is some truth to all of his claims. First, it is correct that genuinely transcendental claims require necessity and apriority— though I believe that necessity is the more important aspect. Second, all three of his points regarding Merleau-Ponty’s views pick out important issues that must be considered when arguing that his philosophy is transcendental. I believe, though, that Inkpin has misconstrued each of these points. Showing how this is the case will help make clear that Phenomenology is in fact a work of transcendental philosophy. Merleau-Ponty’s use of the terms a priori and a posteriori is not always clear, and does not always fit their traditional meanings. Traditionally, of course, a priori refers to a claim the knowledge of which or justification for is independent of

³¹ Andrew Inkpin, “Was Merleau-Ponty a ‘Transcendental’ Phenomenologist?” ³² Ibid. 41. ³³ Inkpin, “Was Merleau-Ponty a ‘Transcendental’ Phenomenologist?” The three points are presented on pp. 42–3 and the quote is on p. 43. ³⁴ Ibid. 44.

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experience. A posteriori, on the other hand, refers to claims that are dependent upon experience. Some very thorny issues lie beneath the surface of these definitions, especially insofar as the relevant meanings of “experience” and “dependent”/“independent” are up for debate.³⁵ But on its face it seems like Inkpin is correct to say that Merleau-Ponty’s philosophy does not accept this distinction. Consider, for instance, Merleau-Ponty’s claim (taken from the main passage in Phenomenology where he discusses the issue) that “the a priori is the fact as understood, made explicit” and “the a posteriori is the isolated and implicit fact.”³⁶ Whatever one thinks of this distinction between implicit and explicit facts, it is not the same as the distinction between experience-independent and experience-dependent knowledge. One cannot rely too much on this passage, however. Beyond this passage the term a priori plays a significant role in Phenomenology, and one must further consider why and how Merleau-Ponty uses it. Consider, for instance, the discussion of the species a priori. On the one hand, this seems like a misuse of the term. After all, in Structure Merleau-Ponty develops this notion out of empirical studies of animal behavior. He did not arrive at knowledge of the species a priori independent of experience (quite the opposite). Nor is its existence justified independently of experience, insofar as it is verified by empirical studies. Why, then, does MerleauPonty use the term a priori? First, there is a clear sense in which it is prior to the relevant animal’s experience. The point, for example, is that the chimpanzee’s experience of the world is in some way determined by its bodily abilities, as when it balances on precarious boxes to reach food. The same point is being made when Merleau-Ponty says that the first color perception in a child creates “a change in the structure of consciousness” and is “the deployment of an a priori.”³⁷ The point here is not to make an epistemological claim regarding pre-experiential, or nonempirical, knowledge and justification. The point is rather that once color perception is acquired, it definitively structures all future perception. Color perception is thus prior to any given future visual experience; it is an ability that the child takes on which conditions how visual experience occurs from that point on. Merleau-Ponty does not typically use the term a priori in the traditional epistemological sense. Nor is it clear that the distinction between a priori and a posteriori knowledge is really that important to Merleau-Ponty’s philosophy. While “a priori” shows up frequently in Phenomenology, “a posteriori” only appears twice, both times in the discussion of the isolated fact versus the explicit fact.³⁸ The majority of the references to the former fit the type of use ³⁵ For a good overview of these issues see Jason S. Baehr, “A Priori and A Posteriori,” The Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy, ISSN 216–0002, https://iep.utm.edu/apriori/, June 23, 2021. ³⁶ PP 230. This is taken from the section “The a priori and the empirical,” 229–30. ³⁷ PP 32. ³⁸ The two instances of “a posteriori” in the body of the text are on PP 229. My electronic search shows 27 instances of “a priori” in the main body of the text.

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just discussed; along with the “species a priori” there is the “historical a priori,” the “human a priori,” the “a priori of the threatened prince” etc. While Merleau-Ponty does not use “a priori,” then, in the standard epistemological sense, he does use it in a sense that is relevant to transcendental philosophy. This is seen in the language I used above to explain his point regarding color vision. An a priori is, for Merleau-Ponty, a structure of conscious experience that conditions how that experience operates or unfolds. Per my definition of transcendental idealism in Chapter 1, what Merleau-Ponty calls an “a priori” is a transcendental structure. Transcendental philosophy does not require that these structures are made known to us, or justified, completely independently of experience (especially if “independence” here entails some kind of fully non-empirical rational “insight”).³⁹ Inkpin is still correct, however, that claims regarding transcendental structures must have a special kind of validity, and here the notion of “necessity” becomes more important than “apriority” (in its traditional sense). Inkpin argues that because Merleau-Ponty derives his views regarding these a priori structures from descriptions of empirical facts, his statements cannot claim any necessity and “he offers no justification for claiming that things must be this way.”⁴⁰ Inkpin does not recognize, however, the extent to which this criticism undermines the whole of Phenomenology. Merleau-Ponty makes multiple necessity claims that are at the heart of his philosophical enterprise. To list just a few (all of which have been discussed in previous chapters), he claims that our general bodily perspective is a metaphysical necessity that enables specific “factual” perspectives, he claims that consciousness of an object necessarily must be (tacitly) self-conscious, and he claims that the expressive movement of taking up the world is the necessary basis for our having “ideas” or intellectual thought.⁴¹ These claims clearly come up in statements of Merleau-Ponty’s considered views, and he clearly thinks that things must be this way. We cannot look out of a window (a factual perspective) without a body, there cannot be ideas without expression, etc. Again, Phenomenology is filled with claims of this type, typically regarding how embodiment is the necessary basis for various aspects of our experience. If Inkpin is correct, the thrust of his argument is akin to Foucault’s claim that MerleauPonty’s thought is viciously circular (see Chapter 4 §4). Thankfully for the transcendental idealist interpretation, however, Inkpin is far too quick to dismiss the legitimacy of Merleau-Ponty’s claim that we must “resist

³⁹ This point fits with the ambiguity in Merleau-Ponty’s interpretation of Kant. On the one hand, Merleau-Ponty takes Kant’s view to embody this sort of rationalism, especially in the Transcendental Deduction. On the other hand, Merleau-Ponty claims that “Kant already showed that the a priori is not knowable prior to experience” (PP 229) and imputes to the Transcendental Aesthetic a kind of phenomenological view. See Matherne, “Art in Perception,” 97–103. ⁴⁰ Inkpin, “Was Merleau-Ponty a ‘Transcendental’ Phenomenologist?,” 42. ⁴¹ These claims are found, in order, at PP 93, 216, and 410.

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our usual notion of necessity and contingency.”⁴² While Inkpin takes MerleauPonty’s supposed revision of this distinction to result in a muddle that ends up killing any conception of necessity, there is in fact a clear meaning to MerleauPonty’s claim that preserves the sense of necessity required for transcendental philosophy. To see this, though, we need to dive a bit deeper into Merleau-Ponty’s claims regarding the a priori, necessity, the analysis of essences, and empirical research. These considerations, which will follow in the next section, will be bolstered by the addition of references to the Sorbonne lectures that elucidate Phenomenology’s claims.

4. Eidetic Analysis and Induction I ended §2 above with the claim that there is a sense in which, for Merleau-Ponty, reflection is empirical analysis and empirical analysis is reflection. This point can already be seen in Husserl’s phenomenology. While Kant derives a priori knowledge from rational reflection rather than the observation of consciousness, Husserl derives the a priori from experience. And for at least much of his analyses, this does not involve, for Husserl, reflection upon a worldless pure ego. Rather, he analyzes concrete, conscious experience of objects (“transcendence,” which for Husserl refers to objects in the world rather than Kant’s non-empirical objects such as God or souls). It is a crucial aspect of his method that essential, necessary claims regarding consciousness can be drawn out of concrete experience when it is analyzed in the correct way.⁴³ This fact is made most clear in his method of eidetic analysis. Husserl maintained that it was possible to achieve a “Wesensschau,” an intuition of essences. But as Dan Zahavi explains, this is not an act of a mere “passive gaze” that delivers insight. It is rather the result of a conceptual strategy that begins with concrete experience: According to Husserl, an insight into [essences] can be acquired through a socalled eidetic variation . . . This variation must be understood as a kind of conceptual analysis where we attempt to imagine the object as being different from how it currently is. Sooner or later this imaginative variation will lead us to certain properties that cannot be varied, that is, changed and transgressed, without making the object cease to be the kind of object it is . . . According to Husserl, I can obtain an essential insight, a Wesensschau, if through an eidetic

⁴² PP 174. ⁴³ On this difference between Kant and Husserl see Thomas J. Nenon, “Some Differences between Kant’s and Husserl’s Conceptions of Transcendental Philosophy.” Continental Philosophy Review 41:4 (2008), 427–39.

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variation, I succeed in establishing the horizon within which the object can change without losing its identity as a thing of that type. In that case, I will have succeeded in disclosing the invariant structures that make up its essence.⁴⁴

For the moment we can set aside questions of the validity of Husserl’s method of eidetic variation and simply note that he has a method for gaining insight into essential structures via an analysis that begins with how the object “currently is.” Yes, it is a form of conceptual analysis that requires departing from the mere consideration of empirical properties (prominently via imagination) and in this regard Husserl’s method is like Kant’s. But it is quite different from Kant’s in that it begins with concrete givenness—empirical experience in the broad sense—and must constantly refer to it insofar as one must always consider if the imagined variation departs from the identity of the actual thing. The analysis of our concrete experience of the empirical world and the analysis of that experience’s essential structures are not as far apart for Husserl as they are for Kant. Eidetic analysis is not narrowly empirical insofar as it does not merely consider the aspects and properties of the thing as perceived. But in a broader sense it is a form of reflection that is rooted in the empirical, insofar as it begins from and remains close to the experience of transcendent (in Husserl’s sense) objects. Given this, the natural first place to look for a way to bring the empirical and transcendental together in Merleau-Ponty’s thought is his discussion of Husserl’s eidetic analysis in the Preface to Phenomenology.⁴⁵ The overriding emphasis of the passage is on the notion that phenomenology must be rooted to the world, and transcendental idealism—construed here as an intellectualism—is criticized for reducing the world to idealized thought. A key way that Merleau-Ponty discusses an overly-intellectualized conception of essential analysis is to warn against “separated essences,” which are “the essences of language.”⁴⁶ The point is that language allows us to make generalized claims about the world which can then, because of their expression in propositional language, be reified and thought of as things apart from the world. Merleau-Ponty rejects Jean Wahl’s claim that “Husserl separates essences from existence” and insists that “Husserl’s essences must bring with them all of the living relations of experience.”⁴⁷ Merleau-Ponty is strongly emphasizing the broadly “empirical” aspect of eidetic analysis mentioned above, and contrasting it with the intellectualist method of rational reconstruction. This association of eidetic analysis with worldly experience and its contrast, in the passage, with transcendental idealism, appears at points to strongly support Inkpin’s arguments. Most significantly, Merleau-Ponty says that “the eidetic ⁴⁴ Zahavi, Husserl’s Phenomenology, 38–9. ⁴⁵ PP, the passage on essences and eidetic analysis runs from p. lxxviii to p. lxxxi. ⁴⁶ PP, p. lxxix. ⁴⁷ PP, p. lxxix.

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reduction is the commitment to make the world appear such as it is . . . it is the attempt to match reflection to the unreflective life of consciousness.”⁴⁸ And he then goes on to contrast this form of reflection with an idealist method that would “be seeking what makes this world possible rather than seeking what this world actually is.”⁴⁹ These passages seem to be saying what Inkpin concludes, viz. that Merleau-Ponty eschews the modality of transcendental claims in favor of a more “modally modest” description of “how things are.”⁵⁰ But put in context these passages look somewhat different. For instance, it is crucial to note that early on in the discussion of eidetic analysis, Merleau-Ponty describes essences as a tool for understanding existence. To draw on a passage I have mentioned previously (in Chapter 7 §4), he claims that “our existence needs the field of ideality to conquer facticity.”⁵¹ This point must be understood in tandem with the discussion of reflection in §§1–2 above. Insofar as the eidetic reduction helps reflection match our unreflective life, it must involve an attentiveness to the actual character of experience. In this sense, it describes how things are. But insofar as reflection is a creative expression, it does not merely take things as they are; it crystallizes, out of the multitude of “what is,” a particular way of grasping that experience. Eidetic reflection grasps facticity, “what is,” through the expression of an ideality. What exactly this “ideality” is like, for Merleau-Ponty, is not clear at this point in the text, but he refers to “passing over from the fact of our existence to the nature of our existence, that is, from Dasein [existence] to Wesen [essence].” Merleau-Ponty clearly believes that there is a way to grasp something fundamental about the nature of existence through reflection on that existence. As we will see, these expressions of “Wesen” will carry a kind of necessity claim. Though per the discussion of radical reflection in §2, this will have to be squared with Merleau-Ponty’s version of fallibilism. Eidetic analysis is rarely mentioned in Phenomenology after the Preface, and not further explained. One can look to Merleau-Ponty’s Sorbonne lecture published as “Human Sciences and Phenomenology,” however, for a bit more discussion of that topic.⁵² While the lecture is, strictly speaking, from the period after the one I am considering in this book, the discussion of Husserl’s method there clearly fits with and expands on the discussion in Phenomenology. There are also no dramatic changes in Merleau-Ponty’s views. In the lecture he announces that the solution to the problem of discovering “a mode of understanding which does not detach itself from experience, yet remains philosophical,” is sought, for Husserl, in the

⁴⁸ PP, p. lxxx. ⁴⁹ PP, p. lxxx. ⁵⁰ Inkpin, “Was Merleau-Ponty a ‘Transcendental’ Phenomenologist?,” 43. ⁵¹ PP, p. lxxviii. ⁵² Maurice Merleau-Ponty, “Human Sciences and Phenomenology,” in Child Psychology and Pedagogy: The Sorbonne Lectures 1949–1952, trans. Talia Welsh, Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press (2010), 316–72.

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intuition of essences.⁵³ “Intuition,” in this case, does not refer to a type of mystical vision or supersensible faculty: On the contrary, we see essences constantly, even while we are engaged in a natural activity of life. Through concrete experience, I grasp an intellectual structure which imposes itself on my ego. It exceeds my singularity and the contingency of the everyday by conferring a sense on the series of events, although this sense is not immediately given.⁵⁴

This passage reasserts the point that eidetic analysis is tied to concrete experience. It adds an important point, however. Essences, on this view, are not individuals. Rather, grasping an essence involves grasping a sense within an intellectual structure. Here we can take sense to mean something close to what signification means in Structure. The sense of the series of events (and the contrast between “sense” and “series” marks an important contrast with induction) is the way the events fit together within a broader holistic set of relations (a form). Eidetic intuition goes beyond facticity by grasping the role that elements of concrete experience play in the meaning of the whole. This is why Merleau-Ponty later says (using emotion as an example) that “eidetic reflection interrogates the meaning of emotion . . . as an act within the totality of consciousness.”⁵⁵ Reflecting on the essence of emotion does not involve contemplating some individual eidos *emotion,* but rather involves grasping how emotion operates, in general, within human experience. In this regard it is also noteworthy that Merleau-Ponty aligns Husserl’s methodology with Hegel’s. He emphasizes that Hegel’s phenomenology “involves a logic of contents.”⁵⁶ There is not a split between logic and being that maps onto a split between form and content. Rather, the rational structure of things is revealed through “a content that spontaneously realizes a logical organization.”⁵⁷ The clear assertion, then, is that there is some logical organization present in human experience for us to grasp; there is, as Merleau-Ponty says in Phenomenology, a “logic of the world.”⁵⁸ Merleau-Ponty clearly thinks that we can reflectively grasp aspects of the concrete in a kind of generality that stands apart from their specific facticity. For example, referring to attending a concert he says that the performance “is not understood in an instant . . . it is still a cultural object which is not reducible to any one given execution. If I succeed in thematizing what I have heard, then I perceive the essence of the work.”⁵⁹ “Thematizing,” in this instance, refers to grasping the piece of music as a cultural object that stands apart from its specific performance.

⁵³ Ibid. 320–1. ⁵⁴ Ibid. 321. ⁵⁵ Ibid. 324. ⁵⁶ Ibid. 320. ⁵⁷ Ibid. ⁵⁸ This phrase occurs twice, at PP 341 and 427. In both cases it generally refers to the idea that the world fits together such that we can deal meaningfully with it/in it. ⁵⁹ Merleau-Ponty, “Human Sciences and Phenomenology,” 321.

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It thus has a kind of general meaning apart from specific instances. This appears to be the same general point that is referenced above regarding emotion; while empirical psychology investigates specific instantiations of emotional behavior, the overall aim must be to grasp the general meaning that emotions have within human life. To return to the language of Phenomenology’s Preface, this general meaning is the ideality that conquers facticity, by helping us to understand the role of emotion in our lives. The crucial question is: how do we grasp this logic of contents and understand the generalities it presents? What is the more specific methodology? Although Merleau-Ponty does not describe Husserl’s method of imaginative variation in detail in “Human Sciences and Phenomenology” or Phenomenology, imagination plays an important role in his method. Thus, while it would be incorrect to say that Merleau-Ponty strictly follows Husserl’s method, there is a link, and both think that we can derive essences by imaginatively considering possible changes or variations in experience. And both think that this can lead to an understanding of general, necessary aspects of experience. This use of imagination is also what sets Merleau-Ponty’s method apart from the empiricist methodology of induction. The comparison with empirical psychology in the discussion of emotion, combined with the rejection of a “Platonic” direct intuition view of essences, raises the question of the difference between Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenological methodology and induction. After all, the empirical sciences do not (as MerleauPonty recognizes) merely catalogue facts. They also seek to derive general knowledge out of facticity, and we might think of them doing so by comparing and contrasting specific instances or making statistical generalizations. But in Phenomenology and “Human Sciences and Phenomenology,” Merleau-Ponty is mostly highly critical of induction, though he does refer to a “genuine inductive method.”⁶⁰ The most extensive discussion of induction in Phenomenology comes in the Part One chapter “The Spatiality of One’s Own Body and Motricity” and is primarily a criticism of empiricism.⁶¹ Merleau-Ponty references Mill’s methods of induction and argues that they cannot properly be used to understand psychological phenomena. As he puts it, “faced by the ambiguity of the facts, one can only renounce the simple statistical recording of coincidences and seek to ‘understand’ the relation manifested by them.”⁶² In “Human Sciences and Phenomenology” he references Mill’s process of examining a “plurality of facts” to find relations “of succession or of constant simultaneity,” laments the “registration of facts” and refers to Mill’s methodology as “a sort of triage of facts.”⁶³ The critique here is aimed at a view that takes facts to be atomic individuals which can be sorted, arranged, and quantified statistically. Along with the complaint that Mill’s ⁶⁰ PP 110. ⁶¹ See PP 115–22. ⁶² PP 116. ⁶³ Merleau-Ponty, “Human Sciences and Phenomenology,” quotes on pp. 327, 341, and 339 respectively.

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inductive method is overly objectivist, however, Merleau-Ponty argues that induction cannot work in this way because one must have a conception of how the facts are to be arranged that cannot be derived from the arrangement of the facts. Per this point he cites, in a different Sorbonne lecture, Brunschvicg’s critique of Mill, which notes that “the problem is not noting the correlations between facts; rather the problem is defining the variables that establish causal connections.”⁶⁴ There must be a prior “intellectual task” of forming hypotheses that serve to arrange the facts considered. In light of this critique of induction, we can examine Merleau-Ponty’s claims regarding Galileo, also drawn from Brunschvicg: Did Galileo develop the idea of the law of falling bodies by experimenting on different falling bodies? The law which Galileo discovered is in fact an ideal conception of a pure case of the free fall of bodies, without any example from experience in which falling bodies are always affected by friction. Thus, the facts become comprehensible by way of the pure concept of falling in conjunction with other freely constructed concepts. The physicist proceeds by realizing some “idealizing fictions” that are freely formed by the mind.⁶⁵

The notion of frictionless falling could not ever have been drawn directly out of a collection of concrete examples, as they all involve friction. Thus, Galileo must have engaged in some intellectual activity that disengaged somehow from the direct facts. But per Merleau-Ponty’s insistence that eidetic intuition is still tied to the world, this intellectual activity could not have been the rational intuition of a pure I. Here we find the role of imaginative variation; in reflecting on the concrete experience of an actual falling body, Galileo imaginatively considered the possibility of frictionless falling. While Merleau-Ponty does not directly draw this connection, the claim about Galileo fits very well with the idea that intellectual activity arises from the capacity for the virtual. This is a capacity for generality; just as it enables habits to relate to general aspects of the world (such that the organist can play multiple organs, for instance) it enables the intellect to do so as well.⁶⁶ This imagination of generality is not the only aspect of eidetic analysis, however. The “pure concepts” of the intellect, such as the idea of free-falling bodies, make facts comprehensible, which is to say that they have to be applied to the ⁶⁴ Merleau-Ponty, “Consciousness and Language Acquisition,” in Child Psychology and Pedagogy, 5. The reference, without page citation is to Brunschvicg, L’Expérience humaine et la causalité physique. ⁶⁵ Merleau-Ponty, “Human Sciences and Phenomenology,” 327. Again, the reference, without page citation, is to Brunschvicg, L’Expérience humaine. ⁶⁶ For further discussion of the Galileo example see Antich, Motivation and the Primacy of Perception, 117–19. The whole chapter in which this discussion is situated (pp. 88–122) defends the idea of a priori knowledge in Merleau-Ponty’s thought in a way that connects with, but also differs from, my discussion here.

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further consideration of facts. Thus Merleau-Ponty notes that while induction and Husserl’s methodology differ, Husserl’s “notion of tested essences suggests something like a conversion of these two modes.”⁶⁷ The virtual generalities that we express, via reflection, must be continually tested against further experiences, and are open to refinement. This is the “genuine inductive method” referred to in Phenomenology.

5. A Priority, Necessity, and Levels of Generality Merleau-Ponty believes that imaginative variation allows reflection to uncouple, to some degree, from the specifics of the world in order to grasp its general aspects. This description of Merleau-Ponty’s method has not yet answered Inkpin’s concerns regarding Merleau-Ponty’s transcendental aims, however. The grasping of general aspects of the world could be depicted merely as an idealized way of grasping how the world is. It is not clear that the essences described in the previous section tell us something of how the world must be. The discussion of essences in the previous section does lead to the relevant level of generality and necessity claims, but more needs to be said to establish this. There is a crucial clue hidden in the discussion, however. Consider MerleauPonty’s two examples of essences found through imaginative variation mentioned above: grasping the sense of a musical performance and Galileo’s thought of freely falling bodies. On the face of it, these might seem like totally different things. They do share something important, though. To give the examples specificity (not taken from Merleau-Ponty) consider hearing a piano solo performance of Liszt’s Hungarian Rhapsody #2 or seeing a fly ball fall into the outfield in a baseball game. In each case, they begin with a concrete experience: hearing the performance or seeing the fly ball. The next step they share is the reflective grasping that they are instances of something repeatable in different circumstances. You can grasp that Hungarian Rhapsody #2 can be performed at different times, in different places, by other musicians, on other instruments. Similar points can be made regarding the pop fly. Depending on your past experiences, you will be more or less capable of imagining these variations; the actual and virtual are reciprocally engaged and the more things we have actual experience with, the more we can imagine. Perhaps you can imagine the performance in a larger or smaller space, played in a different key, or the orchestrated version of the piece played rather than the piano solo. Perhaps you can imagine the ball being hit under windy or rainy conditions, or being a softball rather than a baseball. It is this basic kind of imaginative thought that Merleau-Ponty is describing, though more rigorously in

⁶⁷ Merleau-Ponty, “Human Sciences and Phenomenology,” 328.

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a fashion that terminates in the realization of some general truth (though one open to further testing). Merleau-Ponty notes regarding the musical performance that one grasps the “universal meaning” in a “cultural object.” Perhaps in eidetically reflecting on Hungarian Rhapsody #2 you gain insight into the cultural significance it has held since the mid nineteenth century. But you do not seem to be grasping an eternal essence; after all the piece did not exist prior to 1847. And as a cultural object its meaning is subject to cultural shifts; it is now a part of the pantheon of “classical music” while once its essence was tied to its place as a piece of popular music associated with “Lisztomania.”⁶⁸ You might further abstract from the specific piece to consider the role of music in general aspects of human culture. But the generality attained is still bound by human history. The consideration of falling bodies, though, seems to reach a much broader level of generality. It purports, at least, to tell us something about the general way that physical objects act under certain very general conditions. The difference is not, however, that the former is a historically-conditioned insight while the latter is not. Merleau-Ponty insists that “there is not a single truth of reason that does not contain a coefficient of facticity,” and he uses the development of non-Euclidean geometry and relativity theory to show that even mathematical and physical truths are tied to theories developed in a history that can shift.⁶⁹ However—though he does not put the point in exactly this way—Merleau-Ponty clearly thinks that different truths can be attached to greater or lesser historical periods and thus attain greater or lesser generality. All truths contain a coefficient of facticity, and thus are all in some sense contingent. But in some cases that facticity allows a great degree of generality, such that some contingencies can become “fundamental contingencies” which allow for a degree of necessity.⁷⁰ To unpack the point I am making, we can first examine the difference between the species a priori and the “a priori of the threatened prince.” Merleau-Ponty refers to both of these things as a priori because they describe a set of historically conditioned facts that have been taken on or sedimented in animal behavior such that they are antecedent to, and condition, that behavior. Bat flight behavior while hunting for insects is conditioned by the prior structure of their echolocation abilities. Nicolas II made decisions typical of “an established power confronted

⁶⁸ The writer Heinrich Heine coined the term “Lisztomania” to refer to the rapturous reaction of the audiences at Liszt’s performances. On this aspect of Liszt’s work see the chapter “Anatomy of ‘Lisztomania’: The Berlin Episode” in Dana Gooley, The Virtuoso Liszt, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press (2004). ⁶⁹ PP, quote on 414. For the relevant discussion of non-Euclidean geometry, see PP 411–17. For the example of relativity in physics see Merleau-Ponty, The World of Perception, 43–5. ⁷⁰ The phrase “fundamental contingency” is found at PP 229. It plays an important role in Samantha Matherne’s response to Inkpin’s arguments in “Toward a New Transcendental Aesthetic.”

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with a new power” because of the conditioning of certain historical antecedents.⁷¹ While Merleau-Ponty compared the species a priori to the a priori of the threatened prince, he did not necessarily take them to have equal validity. MerleauPonty admits that “the historical a priori is only consistent for a given phase and provided that the equilibrium of forces allows the same forms to remain.”⁷² The different time spans allow for differing necessity claims; while both may have some truth, the claim that Nicolas II had to behave the way he did clearly has different validity from the claim that the bat had to behave the way it did to catch its prey. One is relative to the condition of European aristocracy in the late modern period while the other is relative to thousands of years of biological development. These differing levels of validity presumably lie on a continuum. Perhaps the analysis of Hungarian Rhapsody #2 draws on a narrower history than the analysis of Nicolas II’s behavior, which draws on a narrower history than the consideration of even less culturally specific forms of human behavior, etc. While Merleau-Ponty does not flesh out where the crucial distinctions between levels of validity lie on such a continuum, or how to pick them out, it is clear that he thinks that certain claims attain such a broad level of generality that they structure human experience in a fundamental way. Furthermore, they thus genuinely attain necessity. This is the point, for instance, of his rejection of Pascal’s claim that he could conceive of a man without hands.⁷³ There is an obvious sense in which the organization of our body is contingent. Evolution could have worked out differently. But it is a “fundamental contingency”; as with the species a priori its contingency is tied to the evolutionary time of the development of the human form. A human being without hands is not literally inconceivable, but a human being without a human body is inconceivable. The very basis of human existence is structured by the general organization of the human body. And Merleau-Ponty directly takes up an aspect of criticisms like Foucault’s. One might claim that he is taking contingent aspects of the human being tied together via natural caprice and bogusly raising them to the level of the a priori and necessity. But he asserts that he is rather observing an existential connection which gives bodily experience sense. One cannot imaginatively vary away the body; by imaginatively considering the role the body plays in our total experience, one arrives at the realization that experience is in fact tied together and made a coherent whole by the presence of the body. This is genuine necessity; we recognize that experience could not occur in the way that it does without the body. Of course, we could easily imaginatively vary away the hands or feet (if not the head); Merleau-Ponty’s rhetoric is tied to the fact that he is specifically

⁷¹ PP 90.

⁷² PP 90.

⁷³ PP 173–4. The reference is to Pascal, Pensées, 31.

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responding to Pascal. On this basis we should set aside the fact that his literal claim about hands is wrong, and focus on his general point. It should be noted, though, that the literal thought of a human without hands raises an important red flag. Per the feminist criticism of this element of MerleauPonty’s view, one must be very careful regarding what aspects of the human body, or human experience, we take to be necessary.⁷⁴ There is a constant possibility that one engaging in this type of analysis might falsely take as general aspects of bodily existence that are in fact tied to male, white, European experience, or to some other very narrow aspect of human experience. To put the point in the terminology I have used above, one must be very careful regarding the time span of the history that conditions the aspects considered, as there is always the possibility (especially for those in a position of privilege) that the narrow time of one’s own experience be mistaken for the broad time of human biology, evolution, etc. While some of Merleau-Ponty’s analyses might run afoul of this problem, recognition of something like this problem is actually incorporated in his view. For one thing, he holds to the version of fallibilism discussed above, and thus would believe in general that all of our putative expressions of truth can be tested. But more specifically he recognizes, when it comes to human being, that the potentially essential aspects are difficult to extract from the more narrowly historically or culturally conditioned. Right after the passage discussing Pascal he notes that while “everything is necessary in man,” “man is an historical idea, not a natural species . . . there is no unconditioned possession in human existence, and yet neither is there any fortuitous attribute.”⁷⁵ This claim is somewhat ambiguous, though. On the one hand, one might stress the reference to necessity and the rejection of “fortuitous attributes” to say that Merleau-Ponty in fact runs strongly afoul of the noted problem by claiming that all culturally and historically conditioned attributes rise to the level of necessity. On the other hand, one could emphasize the notion that the human is an historical idea and that there is no “unconditioned possession” in humanity to argue the polar opposite point. Perhaps the human is so thoroughly historically and culturally conditioned that there is no essential element. Placed in context, though, his intention must be to hold the two points together and to argue that the more general aspects mix with the less general. I think that the best way to understand this is, again, to think of these aspects as lying on a continuum, and to remain aware of the fact that placing things on that continuum and marking out divisions on it is a difficult task. To be human is to have a human body, and thus human experience has to be structured by embodiment. What specifically that body is like can admit of a

⁷⁴ As was noted in Chapter 4 §4, an excellent example of this type of critique can be found in Judith Butler, “Sexual Ideology and Phenomenological Description: A Feminist Critique of Merleau-Ponty’s Phenomenology of Perception.” ⁷⁵ PP 174.

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lot of variation, and the attempt to determine which aspects are more or less “fundamentally contingent” is open for a lot of debate. Despite this, we can tease out elements that are more or less fundamental; having a particular hair color moves toward the non-fundamental while having a head that sits at the top of the body moves toward the fundamental. But the claim that “human experience has to be structured by embodiment” carries even more validity than the claim “human experience has to be structured by the fact that the head sits at the top of the body.” Though it would be a significant departure from the standard bodily structure, we can imagine (and empirically investigate⁷⁶) the experience of a human that is not primarily upright. But we cannot imagine disembodied experience; to have experience is to be embodied and one cannot get around this.⁷⁷ The claim that all human experience must be shaped by embodiment is thus a priori in the more traditional sense. Along similar lines we can further consider the distinction Merleau-Ponty makes between “physical” or “factual necessity” and “metaphysical necessity” in the consideration of perspective. Merleau-Ponty says that the fact that I see an object from a particular perspective, such as seeing a church steeple through a window, is “the result of a physical necessity, a necessity I can use.”⁷⁸ It is necessary at that moment that I see the object in that way. On its face that seems much more like contingency than necessity. I can move to a different position—on the other side of the window, for instance—and see the object in a different way. In this way I can “use” the “necessity” because I can deal with it in different ways through my actions. Of course, then I will have moved to a new position and thus a new “physical necessity”; I will have to see the object from the point of view of the new position I have taken up. With that thought, we begin to see the sense of using the term “necessity” here. While the specifics of the physical locations and thus the specifics of the perspective they afford will differ, they will always impose a perspective from which the object must be perceived. And thus, we come to grasp that my body’s “near presence and invariable perspective are not a factual necessity,” and “my body must first impose on me a perspective on the world, and the former necessity can only be a purely physical one because the latter necessity is metaphysical.”⁷⁹ We recognize a deeper form of necessity that is rooted in a more traditionally a priori bit of knowledge. Reflection can show us that while we can imagine all sorts of different physical perspectives, we cannot ⁷⁶ See, for example, L. J. Shapiro et al., “Human Quadrupeds, Primate Quadrupedalism, and Uner Tan Syndrome,” PLoS ONE 9:7 (2014), e101758. ⁷⁷ Of course, many philosophers of mind have attempted to imagine this, prominently through “brain-in-a-vat” arguments. Merleau-Ponty does not directly consider these arguments, though he would clearly reject them. For an analysis that makes arguments that generally fit with Merleau-Ponty’s views see Diego Cosmelli and Evan Thompson, “Embodiment or Envatment? Reflections on the Bodily Basis of Consciousness,” in Enaction: Toward a New Paradigm for Cognitive Science, ed. John Stewart, Olivier Gapenne, and Ezequiel Di Paolo, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press (2010) 361–86. ⁷⁸ PP 93. ⁷⁹ PP 93.

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imagine a non-perspectival perception. Bodily perspective in general is a metaphysical necessity. While this discussion comes relatively early in Phenomenology in Part One, it is not a view that Merleau-Ponty retracts or greatly revises later on in the book. It is a point that is deepened, for example in the discussion of temporality, but not done away with. If anything, the notion of metaphysical necessity is strengthened later in the book, as it becomes clear that Merleau-Ponty regards our self-affective temporal flow of embodied experience to be the most fundamental necessity of all. Inkpin’s claim that Merleau-Ponty’s views are deeply and pervasively antitranscendental is clearly wrong. It is evident throughout Phenomenology that Merleau-Ponty thinks reflection can, while remaining attentive to situatedness, express genuinely transcendental claims. We can crystallize elements of our lived experience in a manner that displays sufficient generality and necessity such that we can determine a priori structures of experience. Some such claims might be “a priori” only in a limited sense relative to a particular framework, as in the case of the “a priori of the threatened prince” or with the a priori “laid down” in the child’s first color perception. And of course, the generality of the relevant frameworks in cases like this can differ. In all cases, though, we can see the point of the claim that the a priori is the fact made explicit. They involve an analysis of facts (historical, psychological, etc.) that are expressed as a fundamental generality, and thus explicitly connected in various ways to the structure of our existence. Beyond this kind of explication of generality in experience, however, there are some— perhaps quite basic and limited—instances where imaginative variation delivers strong a priori necessity, as in the case of embodied perspective. Finally, it is worth noting that Inkpin distorts the significance of MerleauPonty’s criticism of finding conditions of possibility rather than conditions of actuality or reality. Merleau-Ponty does (as Inkpin notes) use the phrase “condition of possibility” positively and in his own voice.⁸⁰ Furthermore, his criticisms of the analysis of conditions of possibility have to be couched in his critique of intellectualism, which is not the same as a criticism of transcendental philosophy. Consider, for instance, the claim in the Part Three chapter “Freedom” that reflective analysis “seeks conditions of possibility without worrying about conditions of reality.”⁸¹ Grammatically the implication here is that one could, with the proper methodology, seek conditions of possibility while also worrying about conditions of reality. I believe the arguments of Phenomenology overall show that this is Merleau-Ponty’s intention. Yes, Merleau-Ponty says that the intellectualist attempt to seek conditions of possibility obscures the “operation that makes it [perception] actual.”⁸² But he clearly does not forsake the notion of considering possibility in favor of a mere description of actuality. Actuality enables an ⁸⁰ Inkpin, “Was Merleau-Ponty a ‘Transcendental’ Phenomenologist?,” n. 68. ⁸¹ PP 464. ⁸² PP 40.

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engagement with the possible. Following this point, it is important to note that Merleau-Ponty chides intellectualism for not “unveiling the operation that makes it [perception] actual or by which it is constituted.”⁸³ Perception is constituted— arranged such that it can possibly operate in certain ways—by aspects that can only be ascertained in an analysis of the actual. Merleau-Ponty’s point here is not to criticize transcendental philosophy; it is to criticize philosophers who engage in the wrong kind of transcendental analysis.

6. Merleau-Ponty’s Transcendental Method, Phenomenology, and Science Per the previous sections, Merleau-Ponty blurs the lines between empirical and transcendental analysis, and in doing so reconsiders the distinction between necessity and contingency. But despite these moves he retains a genuine sense of transcendental analysis. His methodology, broadly construed, can be summarized in the following way. First, his methodology is empirical—in a very general sense—in the same way that Husserl’s is. Phenomenological reflection involves paying close attention to the actual structure of conscious experience, and insofar as that experience is of the world, reflective attention is focused on the world. But reflection is not mere attention, it is also expression. Thus, the second element to note regarding Merleau-Ponty’s method is that philosophical reflection draws on the “metastable” field of the unreflected and crystallizes, or makes explicit, some of its connections. Because these connections are always partial, and (radical) reflection is aware that other connections are always available to be made, reflection is an infinite task. The specifically transcendental element of Merleau-Ponty’s method relies on reflection’s ability to imaginatively abstract from specific aspects of given experience, in order to express idealities that capture general aspects of experience. As radical reflection grasps that experience is bound to historical, social, cultural, and natural contexts, we must keep in mind that the generalities we express are also bound to certain levels of specificity (many general aspects of the European male are not general aspects of the human, for instance). This recognition of the relation between generality and specificity in our idealities is a specification of the general point regarding reflection being partial. Because of this partial nature, we must always question whether our expressed generalities are actually general, and not mistake the particular for the universal. Awareness of this problem should be contained in the “radicality” of radical reflection.

⁸³ PP 40.

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Nevertheless, we can also grasp that some contexts are much broader than others and allow for a much more general degree of universality. For example, while the boundaries may not be entirely clear, we can separate aspects of the biological, bound to evolutionary history, from the cultural, bound to human history. This shows that necessity and contingency are on a kind of continuum; as the context of reflection becomes broader, claims take on greater universality and we are able to say with greater strength that for a particular region something must be the case. We thus reach the level of fundamental contingencies. In a final step that cements the status of “transcendental” for Merleau-Ponty’s philosophy, reflection upon fundamental contingencies can terminate in our ability to grasp certain general structures of experience that cannot be imagined otherwise. Human experience must be temporal, it must be embodied, it must be from a particular perspective, etc. This highest level of transcendental claim is very general (much is left open to say about the nature of the body, for instance) but it delivers something more than vacuous truisms. For example, these transcendental claims can be used in arguments against the views of those who, like Pascal, hold that human experience could be fundamentally disembodied. Although MerleauPonty does not rigorously arrange his methodology in this way, we might also think of the most general transcendental statements as providing a kind of framework for research. Under their heading, one could investigate ways that these structures become more specific within various regions of human experience. These more specific investigations must always maintain the watchful eye of radical reflection, however, and be open to a constant interrogation of their validity. This task of specifying the general transcendental structures would be the infinite task of philosophical reflection. As noted, Merleau-Ponty does not rigorously arrange the results of Phenomenology in this way. One could imagine a reconstruction of his transcendental idealism that would do so, however. This summary of Merleau-Ponty’s methodology has so far skirted over a very large interpretive issue. The emphasis above is placed on phenomenological reflection, i.e. the attentive consideration of first-person experience. MerleauPonty clearly engages in that kind of analysis, as he does, for example, when he moves from the consideration of seeing the steeple through the window to the recognition of the transcendental role of our embodied perspective. But he also draws heavily on psychological studies, and it is not clear how the information drawn from those studies, and the arguments based on them, fit into the methodology summarized above. How, for Merleau-Ponty, do phenomenology and science fit together? This question has led to a great variety of interpretations, ranging from claims that Merleau-Ponty’s philosophy is fundamentally antiscience to claims that his philosophy embodies a form of naturalism.⁸⁴ I believe ⁸⁴ For a good overview of these debates in the recent literature, see Jack Reynolds, Phenomenology, Naturalism, and Science: A Hybrid and Heretical Proposal, London: Routledge (2018), 85–7.

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Merleau-Ponty holds a position in between those extremes. Within certain boundaries, he regards natural science as important and useful. Those boundaries are narrower than standard “naturalisms” would allow, however. Merleau-Ponty’s uses of the term “science” in Phenomenology are a bit like his uses of “reflection” and “induction.” Often the term is connected to something negative, but a deeper investigation shows that Merleau-Ponty allows it some positive sense as well. The most straightforward thing one can ascertain about his views on natural science is that he sees it as tending toward objective thought. This is discussed in the Introduction chapter “The Phenomenal Field,” in which the section “The phenomenal field and science” provides the single most sustained discussion of natural science in the book. “At first,” Merleau-Ponty notes, “science had been nothing but the continuation or the amplification of the movement that is constitutive of perceived things.”⁸⁵ That movement is the movement toward objectivity, the grasping of determinate things, and we must remember that he does not regard this movement in general to be illicit. But this movement tends to go too far, and science follows this path toward illicit objective thought. It thus loses sight of its roots in lived experience, becomes “unaware that its work was based upon a presupposition,” and falls into “merely uncritically following the ideal of knowledge established by the perceived thing [i.e. by the movement toward “thinghood” or objectivity].”⁸⁶ The big question for the interpretation of Merleau-Ponty’s views on natural science is how tightly he takes it to be tied to objective thought. It cannot be the case that Merleau-Ponty thinks all of science’s insights are inextricably locked within an illegitimate objectivist metaphysics, because scientific insights, primarily in the form of psychological research, play a crucial role in the development of his view. In particular, he says that one must work through psychology on the road to a genuine transcendental philosophy in order to avoid intellectualism. The consideration of psychological research can keep the investigations grounded and help reflection maintain connection with the (broadly) empirical reality of which its philosophical pronouncements are an expression. This use of psychological research, however, does not necessarily prove that Merleau-Ponty accords any real value to natural science in itself. Sebastian Gardner, for instance, interprets this use of psychology as being a mere tool, as it were, which can be jettisoned when the genuine transcendental standpoint is acquired. As Gardner puts the point, this use of science “involves no positive estimate of psychological science as an independent source of knowledge . . . engagement with scientific psychology sharpens and refines our appreciation of psychological considerations, which in turn helps us to reach a position from which phenomenological truth can be grasped on the basis of an apodictic relation

⁸⁵ PP 54.

⁸⁶ PP, quotes on pp. 55 and 57 respectively.

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to the pre-objective, rendering transcendental reflection strictly independent of any application of the scientific method.”⁸⁷ On Gardner’s interpretation, what Merleau-Ponty finds useful in psychology is not its genuinely scientific aspects, as these are tied too strongly to objectivism. Rather, its useful insights need to be liberated from science by phenomenology. In fact, it is perhaps wrong to refer to science as containing useful insights—science can rather be useful for delivering insights. On Gardner’s interpretation, Merleau-Ponty thinks that the consideration of psychological studies can motivate one to attain a kind of non-discursive philosophical intuition.⁸⁸ This intuition is not itself a part of science, and while science may be useful for attaining it, it is not necessary. While there is something correct in the vicinity of Gardner’s interpretation, the strongly anti-science view he imputes to Merleau-Ponty is an implausible interpretation on its face. Aside from considering the texts, I think Jack Reynolds is on to something when he notes it is unlikely that “a philosopher who applied for a grant to study Gestalt psychology as early as 1933, who was chair of child psychology at the Sorbonne from 1949 to 1952 and who spent hundreds of pages in his magnum opus discussing psychology, pathology and so on” would reject the notion that psychology can make a substantive contribution of its own to our understanding of human experience.⁸⁹ And I think we should take Merleau-Ponty at his word when, after opening the lectures in The World of Perception with a critique of science’s objectivism, he says the following: I did not, of course, mean to imply that they [art and philosophy] deny the value of science, either as a means of technological advancement, or insofar as it offers an object lesson in precision and truth. If we wish to learn how to prove something, to conduct a thorough investigation or to be critical of ourselves and our preconceptions, it remains appropriate, now as then, that we turn to science.⁹⁰

Here he clearly states that natural science has value qua natural science. And it is particularly noteworthy that he suggests that the methods of science can help us be critical of ourselves. He also clearly thinks that science is capable of being critical of itself, and does not necessarily require phenomenological philosophy’s help to work toward removing the trappings of objective thought. In both “The phenomenal field and science” and The World of Perception, for instance, he emphasizes that the physics of his day “itself recognized the limits of its determinations” and ⁸⁷ Gardner, “Merleau-Ponty’s Transcendental Theory of Perception,” 319. Gardner does not use the “mere tool” terminology I use, but it aptly captures his view. ⁸⁸ Ibid. 319–20. See especially n. 40, where Gardner aligns—mistakenly, in my view—MerleauPonty’s thought with German romanticism. ⁸⁹ Reynolds, Phenomenology, Naturalism, and Science, 100. ⁹⁰ Merleau-Ponty, The World of Perception, 42.

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“the physics of relativity confirms that absolute and final objectivity is a mere dream.”⁹¹ Merleau-Ponty appears, particularly in The World of Perception, to think that contemporary physicists had jettisoned much of their scientific realist attitudes in favor of a kind of instrumentalism.⁹² Setting aside the question of whether this was a correct description of scientists’ attitudes, the important point in the present context is that Merleau-Ponty clearly thought that science could, through its own developments, lead to the questioning of objective thought.⁹³ Thus Merleau-Ponty does not hold that natural science is inextricably locked in illicit objective thought, and Gardner is wrong to argue that scientific methods on their own hold no value in Merleau-Ponty’s views. I believe that Joseph Rouse presents the correct general view of Merleau-Ponty’s relation to science in his essay “Merleau-Ponty’s Existential Conception of Science.”⁹⁴ Science is, as Rouse notes, a form of reflective expression and thus fits into the relationship between reflection and the unreflected that Merleau-Ponty describes as Fundierung (see §2 of this chapter).⁹⁵ Insofar as science is founded, per the Fundierung relation, upon our pre-reflective and pre-objective experience of the world, it cannot fully absorb that experience. Thus, science’s determinations are limited, as are the determinations of all forms of expression, and final objectivity is a mere dream. But it also has its own validity as a way in which “the founding appears”; it provides a legitimate, if partial, expression of our experience of the world.⁹⁶ And Rouse is further correct to emphasize that the truth or validity of scientific claims is not primarily based on their empirical correctness but rather on how they fit into our ability to deal with the world.⁹⁷ Gardner is also wrong to assert that Merleau-Ponty wishes to wholly assimilate science to philosophy. Merleau-Ponty believes that various forms of expression are necessary for understanding the world and our place in it, and each form of expression must to some degree stand on its own. Though perhaps his rhetoric is generally more positive regarding art than science, both are valid forms of expression (The World of Perception is slightly clearer than Phenomenology in asserting this point). Both are susceptible to the ills of objective thought; the ⁹¹ Quotes are from PP 57, and The World of Perception, 44 respectively. ⁹² Merleau-Ponty, The World of Perception, 42–5. ⁹³ Similarly, he claims elsewhere in “The Phenomenal Field” (PP 60) that when “psychological reflection is under way, it thus goes beyond itself through its own momentum.” ⁹⁴ Joseph Rouse, “Merleau-Ponty’s Existential Conception of Science,” in The Cambridge Companion to Merleau-Ponty, ed. Taylor Carman and Mark B. N. Hansen, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press (2006), 265–90. While I think that Rouse presents the best general explanation of Merleau-Ponty’s relation to natural science in the literature, his essay is not without problems from the point of view of my interpretation. As is unfortunately common in the literature, he incorrectly aligns idealism in general with intellectualism. He also overstates the fallibilism in Merleau-Ponty’s view to the extent that he thinks Merleau-Ponty’s view cannot be genuinely transcendental. ⁹⁵ Ibid. 272–3. ⁹⁶ PP 414. ⁹⁷ Rouse, “Merleau-Ponty’s Existential Conception of Science,” 276–80. I also agree with Rouse that this point does not entail, for Merleau-Ponty, that science is completely uncoupled from something like empirical adequacy.

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objectivist “realism” of classical perspective is a symptom of that tendency in art. In order to attain genuine insight into the nature of things, all forms of expression need to be tied, in some way, to a radical reflection that sees the limits of their objectifications and keeps in view their relation to the pre-reflective, pre-objective basis they express. There is, however, an element of truth in Gardner’s interpretation. In Phenomenology, at least, Merleau-Ponty does not hold that all forms of reflective expression are on the same footing, and philosophy does, in some sense, hold pride of place over science (though not to the extent Gardner thinks). In this regard, I also think it is wrong to claim, as Reynolds does, that Merleau-Ponty is a kind of naturalist. For Reynolds, Merleau-Ponty is a “weak methodological naturalist” who accepts “results continuity” between philosophy and science and takes the two to be mutually constraining.⁹⁸ Merleau-Ponty is obviously opposed, as Reynolds notes, to any form of ontological naturalism that would hold to an objectivist, scientific realist metaphysics.⁹⁹ But methodological naturalism is not necessarily an ontological view; it rather aligns philosophy and science in terms of methods and aims. And Reynolds’s “weak” version emphasizes engagement in the same enterprise with similar ends over the notion of similar methods.¹⁰⁰ For example, he notes that “while Merleau-Ponty is clearly not a strong methodological naturalist, for whom philosophy should emulate the methods of certain privileged natural sciences, a weaker version of methodological naturalism simply holds that philosophical results ought to be broadly continuous with those of the sciences, at least in the long haul.”¹⁰¹ In assessing whether this is a correct statement about Merleau-Ponty’s view, much hinges on the meaning of “broadly continuous.” Insofar as all forms of expression are attempts to understand our experience of the world and thus our ability to come to grips with the world, they are a part of the same enterprise. In that regard, their results can be continuous, though this sense of continuity would require us to say that the results of science and painting are continuous as well. Surely there is also a sense, though, in which those forms of expression can operate in potentially very different ways. This notion of Merleau-Pontyian continuity is too weak to support something that could legitimately be called methodological naturalism. More importantly, though, it is incorrect to say that philosophy and science are mutually constraining. There are two reasons one can find for this in Phenomenology. First, I think the naturalist interpretation does not take seriously enough the idea that “science is constructed upon the lived world” and is a “second-order

⁹⁸ Reynolds, Phenomenology, Naturalism, and Science, 104. ⁹⁹ See ibid. 87. Reynolds compares, aptly I think, the “naturalism” that Merleau-Ponty rejects with John McDowell’s consideration of “bald naturalism.” ¹⁰⁰ Ibid. 105. ¹⁰¹ Ibid. 87.

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expression” of that world.¹⁰² Because of this, science is always going to be beholden to a form of reflection—phenomenological reflection—that can more closely grasp reflection’s inherence in the world. Phenomenology is still open to errors that can potentially be corrected by scientific results, and, as we have seen, it can be aided in avoiding intellectualism by psychological science. I think that the balance of Phenomenology, however, displays the view (never quite directly said) that phenomenology still holds some pride of place, because it is phenomenology that is most useful in referring all of our forms of expression back to their roots in the pre-objective. Yes, Merleau-Ponty thought that both movements in physics (relativity theory) and painting (Cézanne’s works) could overthrow something of the errors of objective thought. But ultimately, we have to reflect on the meaning of those expressions and situate them in the broader whole, the total life of consciousness. This is primarily, if not wholly, the work of philosophy. Consider, in this regard, Merleau-Ponty’s claim that science “presupposes our pre-scientific experience of the world” such that “nothing will ever lead me to understand what a nebula, which could not be seen by anyone, might be.”¹⁰³ His point is not that scientific theories are only meaningful if they are limited to the discussion of directly perceptible things. Rather, his point is that science is only meaningful if it is broadly couched within our experiential perspective; those things that are not directly experienced must be tied, via analogy, metaphor, or some other means, to things we do experience. In this regard, Thomas Baldwin’s interpretation of this passage is off base.¹⁰⁴ The implication of Merleau-Ponty’s point is not, as Baldwin asserts, that much of contemporary cosmology would be meaningless because it does not refer to directly perceptible things. Rather, the point is that insofar as cosmology is meaningful, it is so because its theories are knit into a fabric of meaning that is anchored in our experiential perspective. Otherwise it could literally have no meaning for us. This may entail a form of scientific anti-realism that many cosmologists would disagree with, but it does not necessarily render all of their theories meaningless. The most important point for the present context is that the recognition of the dependence of scientific theories upon our experiential perspective is not in itself a bit of scientific discovery. It may

¹⁰² PP, p. lxxii. Oddly, Thomas Baldwin rejects Landes’s translation of “l’expression second” as “second-order expression” on the basis that its meaning is unclear. He partly bases this charge on the fact that its meaning is “presumably nothing connected with second-order logic.” See Baldwin, “Merleau-Ponty’s Phenomenological Critique of Natural Science,” n. 1. On the contrary, I find the meaning quite clear; “second-order” means that the thing is built on something else (scientific expression is built on lived experience). In this very broad sense it is connected with “second-order logic” insofar as that is a logic that is built on, or an extension of, first-order logic. The same point could be made regarding many other uses of the phrase “second-order,” such as in “second-order conditioning.” And Baldwin’s choice of the phrase “second-hand” over “second-order” is inapt because it carries the connotation of something that has been previously used or owned, which is not entirely fitting here. ¹⁰³ PP 456. ¹⁰⁴ Baldwin, “Merleau-Ponty’s Phenomenological Critique of Natural Science,” 210.

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be the case that the scientist in the midst of her work comes to that realization, but insofar as she does this the scientist is engaging in philosophy. This leads us directly to the second reason that Merleau-Ponty would have to reject the naturalist’s notion that philosophy and science are mutually constraining. While reflection is an infinite task and its expressions are open to revision, we have seen that for Merleau-Ponty philosophy can make certain claims that reach a high level of transcendental necessity. When the hypothetical scientist above determines that the pronouncements of cosmology are bound, for their meaning, to pre-scientific experience, she is hitting upon just such a claim. Merleau-Ponty would hold that no amount of scientific studies could show it to be false that science depends upon the pre-scientific for its meaning. To give another example, it is not possible, on Merleau-Ponty’s view, that the results of any scientific study of consciousness could lead us to revise the view that consciousness is necessarily embodied. When it comes to the most fundamental transcendental structures of Merleau-Ponty’s view, the constraint is one-way, not mutual. Merleau-Ponty would think that such scientific results have to be false, and could be known to be so via philosophical reflection independent of any consideration of the scientific study itself. Thus, there is, as mentioned, as sense in which Gardner’s interpretation is on the right track, though I believe it goes too far in denigrating the usefulness of natural science as a form of expression. While Merleau-Ponty does not hold philosophy to be “the queen of the sciences” in the traditional sense, it does have some pride of place. This is because ultimately the recognition that our experience is fundamentally rooted in an embodied temporal flow of preobjective, pre-reflective engagement with the world is a philosophical achievement. Certain scientific or artistic expressions may aid us in coming to that realization, but that realization is not, itself, a bit of artistic or scientific expression. It is, rather, as Merleau-Ponty says, the “fundamental philosophical act.”¹⁰⁵

¹⁰⁵ PP 57.

9 Ontology and Intersubjectivity in Phenomenology of Perception 1. Ontology in Phenomenology’s Preface Shortly after the publication of Phenomenology, Merleau-Ponty presented a summary overview to the Société française de philosophie.¹ In the discussion that followed, Jean Hyppolite questioned the broader ontological implications of the work. On his view, Merleau-Ponty showed “that perception has a meaning” and then went on to “arrive at the very being of this meaning,” but did not properly link the two discussions.² Setting aside the specifics of the discussion with Hyppolite, there is a general point connected to his criticism that is aptly raised in relation to Phenomenology as a whole. Merleau-Ponty arrives at certain philosophical conclusions that necessarily connect with ontological positions, but he does not make his ontology entirely explicit. It is correct to say, as M. C. Dillon does in Merleau-Ponty’s Ontology, that Phenomenology’s ontology is implicit.³ The first aim of this chapter is to make some of the fundamental aspects of that ontology explicit. This will hinge on taking the form-holism in perception to have ontological import and then finding that holism to support a particular version of the essential manifestness view. But the discussion of perceptual holism and essential manifestness will necessarily raise a key issue in Phenomenology that has so far been under-considered. The holistic relations between embodied subjects and their environments necessarily entail relations between embodied subjects and other embodied subjects. Discussing the fundamental transcendental role played by intersubjectivity will be the second aim of this chapter. The fact that ontology is not explicitly taken up in much of Phenomenology is suggested, to some extent, by the fact that the terms “ontology” and “ontological” are barely used in the text. The former does not appear at all, and the latter appears

¹ Merleau-Ponty’s address to the Société, and the bulk of the discussion that followed the address, is published as “The Primacy of Perception and Its Philosophical Consequences,” trans. James Edie, in The Primacy of Perception and Other Essays on Phenomenological Psychology, the Philosophy of Art, History and Politics, Evanston, IL : Northwestern University Press (1964), 12–42. ² Ibid. 39. ³ Part Two of Dillon, Merleau-Ponty’s Ontology, is titled “The Implicit Ontology of the Phenomenology of Perception.”

Embodied Idealism: Merleau-Ponty’s Transcendental Philosophy. Joseph C. Berendzen, Oxford University Press. © Joseph C. Berendzen 2023. DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780192874764.003.0010

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six times.⁴ While so few references are probably not going to do much to elucidate the ontology present in a text that is around five hundred pages long, some of the references—especially the first three, which are in the Preface—can be helpful for the present discussion. The first comes very early in the text. Merleau-Ponty notes that science will never have “the same ontological sense as the perceived world,” because it provides a second-order explanation of that world.⁵ One thing that the scientific explanation misses is that “I am the one who brings into being for myself ” the traditions and horizons I live through. The suggestion is that science misses the fact that the world of perception is meaningful because of the way I go about living in it. And in this regard, it is interesting that Merleau-Ponty links this point to the “ontological senses” of the scientific world versus the perceived world. The latter, of course, has priority for Merleau-Ponty, and its ontological sense is tied to the role I play in taking up the world and giving it meaning. This suggests, contra Hyppolite’s claim, that Merleau-Ponty is linking the meaning in perception with a consideration of the ontological status of meaning from the earliest parts of the text. Of course, it would be going too far to use this one reference to the word “ontological” as a way of responding to Hyppolite’s criticism, because the point being made at this part of the Preface is merely suggestive of an ontological claim that would need to be fleshed out. But the reference is suggesting the view elaborated previously in Structure, that forms come to gain meaning through our engagement with the world. The next instance of “ontological” comes in the midst of the discussion of intentionality. Merleau-Ponty raises the rhetorical question of what aspect of life and culture our analyses of human events should focus on; should it be politics, religion, economics, or psychology? His answer is that we “must in fact understand in all of these ways at once; everything has a sense, and we uncover the same ontological structure beneath all of these relations.”⁶ The ontological structure referenced here is tied to “operative intentionality,” the intentionality of our embodied engagement with the world. This intentionality underpins the ways in which these aspects of life develop.⁷ And this underpins their “sense,” or meaning; again, the suggestion is that the being of meaning is dependent upon the ways in which our embodied engagement with the world structures that world. Phenomenology is meant, on Merleau-Ponty’s view, to do the uncovering referenced in the previous quote. And, as has been discussed in Chapter 6 above ⁴ See PP, pp. lxxii, lxxxiii, lxxxiv, 55, 419, 431. The first three references are in the Preface, and the last two are in “The Cogito.” The fourth reference is in “The Phenomenal Field”; unlike the other five, this reference is clearly in a discussion of views other than Merleau-Ponty’s and thus is not that useful for the present discussion. ⁵ PP, p. lxxii. ⁶ PP, p. lxxxiii. ⁷ For the full discussion of operative intentionality see PP, pp. lxxxi–lxxxii.

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(especially §§3–4), the phenomenological world is the world of perception reflected upon critically. Thus, phenomenology would reveal that this “ontological structure” is a part of our pre-objective perceptual experience. And the nature of the phenomenological world must be properly understood: The phenomenological world is not pure being, but rather the sense that shines forth at the intersection of my experiences and at the intersection of my experiences with those of others through a sort of gearing into each other . . . The philosopher attempts to think the world, others, and himself, and to conceive of their relations. But the meditating Ego and the “disinterested onlooker” do not meet up with an already given rationality; rather, they “establish each other” and establish rationality through an initiative that has no ontological guarantee, and whose justification rests entirely upon the actual power that it gives us for taking up our history. The phenomenological world is not the making explicit of a prior being, but rather the founding of being . . .⁸

Along with containing the third instance of “ontological” in the text, this passage sets out—very briefly—some of the main ontological points that undergird Merleau-Ponty’s view. First, the claim that the phenomenological world is not “pure being” must be understood in connection with his rejection, a couple of sentences before, of “extreme objectivism.” Placed in the context of Phenomenology as a whole, we can determine that he is rejecting a notion of reality construed in terms of discrete, atomic individuals that are related externally. By extension we can take him to embrace a holistic conception of being in opposition to this, which is suggested by his use of the term “intersection” in this passage. Being is, in some way to be determined, comprised of elements that are related internally, according to the meaning of the whole in which they are a part, and these elements are individuated, or made determinate, via these relations. The rejection of an “ontological guarantee” for what rationality finds in the world further emphasizes that this holistic ontology would take the relations to be dynamic; the meaning of being is established as our experiences unfold. And this is furthermore why the phenomenological world is “the founding of being.” This passage also implies one of the main points I am arguing for in this book; the meaning in the world is dependent upon our engagement with the world. Sense shines forth at the intersection of my experiences, so if there are no experiences that are mine, there is no sense. And the language of the above passage further entails that this is not just a claim about the meaning of my experience, it is a claim about the meaning of being. Of course, sense does not just ⁸ PP, p. lxxxiv. A paragraph break has been removed. The two quotes in the passage are references to Fink’s Sixth Cartesian Meditation, but, as Landes notes, what specifically is being referenced is unclear. See nn. 48, 49.

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arise out of my experiences but out of the way that my experiences gear into the experiences of others, and it is “our history” through which being is founded. Following these suggestive claims, intersubjectivity plays a fundamental role in Phenomenology that connects with its implicit ontology. This issue will be taken up later in this chapter, but first the basics of the ontological position that Merleau-Ponty is developing need to be further explored.

2. Phenomenology’s Ontological Holism It is hardly a radical interpretive claim to say that the last block quote taken from Phenomenology’s Preface is implying some kind of ontological holism. MerleauPonty has, after all, already argued for form-holism in Structure. And immediately after the Preface, the Introduction goes on to introduce the basics of Structure’s analysis of form as it is drawn from Merleau-Ponty’s engagement with Gestalt psychology.⁹ Early on, he asserts that the Gestalt idea of a figure–background relation is not a contingent or idealized aspect of perceptual phenomena but is their “very definition” and “the perceptual ‘something’ is always in the middle of some other thing, it always belongs to a field.”¹⁰ Perception does not take in discrete objects via a causal link; rather it relates to a holistic field wherein objects stand out as figures in relation to a background. And it becomes clear that the figure–background relation Merleau-Ponty would most have in mind is the reversible type of relation iconically exemplified in the Rubin vase (face/vase) image. In such a case there is an ambiguity as to which element is the figure and which is the background, and that is determined only as we engage with the image. Per this point ambiguity, and the related concept of indeterminacy, become key aspects of Merleau-Ponty’s perceptual holism as described in Phenomenology’s Introduction. The visual field, for example, is indeterminate in the sense that it is not primarily composed of fully individuated elements. And this indeterminacy is a “positive phenomenon”; it is not a sign of some momentary failure in vision, it is a part of what the perceptual field is really like.¹¹ Of course, the focus in these early passages is on the nature of perceptual experience, and in general that would not necessarily entail an equivalence with the nature of reality. But it is relatively clear that Merleau-Ponty intends his perceptual holism to have ontological import. First, we know in general that he conceives of perception as involving a direct embodied relation with the world, so ⁹ In taking Merleau-Ponty’s engagement with Gestalt psychology to lead to a holistic ontology, I am broadly in agreement with Dillon; see especially the chapter in Merleau-Ponty’s Ontology titled “The Ontological Implications of Gestalt Theory,” 58–81. But his interpretation ends up being quite different from mine, insofar as he takes Merleau-Ponty’s holism to suggest a pre-subjective ontological structure. It is also notable that Dillon barely discusses the arguments of Structure. ¹⁰ PP 4. ¹¹ PP 6–7.

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the being of the world would seem to be at issue. Second, insofar as he critiques the objectivist ontological positions held by empiricism and intellectualism—he criticizes reflective analysis, for instance, for resting “entirely upon a dogmatic idea of being”¹²—the implication is that he is establishing an opposing ontological view. Third, while he is not terribly bothered, in general, to provide a complete theoretical elaboration of the ontological underpinnings of the views he describes in Phenomenology, there are points where he directly indicates that he takes his views to lead to an ontology. Along with the claim in the Preface regarding the founding of being, for instance, he states in the Introduction that his discussion of perception should be generalized into a conception of “perceptual being that is not yet determinate being.”¹³ Toward the end of the Introduction he also indicates the need to develop a “genealogy of being” and states that phenomenology is the “study of the appearance of being to consciousness.”¹⁴ Thus it is reasonable to say that Merleau-Ponty’s perceptual holism is an ontological holism. It should be helpful at this point to take a step back and better explain what such a holism entails in general terms. If “objective thought” holds that the world is made up of determinate entities that are externally related, one could say the opposite of Merleau-Ponty’s ontological holism; the world is composed of indeterminate entities that are internally related. As an example, consider a traditional basketball offense.¹⁵ On the one hand, the different player positions are individuals. The point guard, for instance, has a specific role to play in the game with particular responsibilities, such as being the primary ball handler and initiating the offense. Nevertheless, that individuality is not separable from the total structure of the offense. The point guard is not a discrete individual antecedent to the offensive structure. And she cannot be paired with another atomic individual, such as the small forward, with relations between the two (passing, setting screens, etc.) added. The point guard is individuated by the fact that she relates to the other players in a particular way within the whole of the offense; the appropriate passes are passed, cuts are made, screens are set, etc. only on the basis that the other players are placing themselves in the appropriate positions and making the appropriate moves. The point guard and small forward are thus related internally—the relations are internal to the structure of the game as a whole and serve to individuate its parts.¹⁶ There are of course a number of questions regarding the ontology of such a holistic situation that would need to be clarified. One major issue involves the ontological priority of relata versus relations. It was stressed that the relata—the player positions such as point guard and small forward—are individuated by their ¹² PP 47. ¹³ PP 48. ¹⁴ PP, quotes on pp. 55 and 62 respectively. ¹⁵ I realize that the way I present this example carries less cachet in the modern world of positionless basketball. ¹⁶ By contrast, an external relation would hold between things that are wholly and separately determinate prior to the relation.

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relations. What the point guard is, is determined by how that player moves herself and the ball in relation to the movements of the other players. But the relations would seem to also be individuated by the relata. A pass is individuated by the fact that it involves the ball being transmitted from one player to another. And a screen is defined by a player moving in the path of another player. This then seems to lead to a chicken-and-egg problem; which comes first, the relata or the relations? And if, for the strong holist, the relata have to be individuated by the relations, what, prior to the individuating, are the relations relations of?¹⁷ There are a number of ways that one could respond to this question for the basketball example or for holism in general. The present aim is not, of course, to settle these issues in general but to uncover how Merleau-Ponty deals with them in Phenomenology. In this regard, part of the proper interpretation has to involve accepting that the questions are not entirely answered in the text. Merleau-Ponty is not specifically concerned with fully developing his ontology in Phenomenology, and ontological claims only arise in a manner secondary to his aim of describing and explicating our pre-objective experience. We can, however, find some partial answers to the question of how objects are individuated in his holism. First, I should note that there are aspects of the text that do not so much respond to the question as double down on the problem. Merleau-Ponty sometimes appears to push a radically holistic ontology wherein being is a kind of continuous medium that is strongly antecedent to any possible individuation. For example, he relates the concept of indeterminacy to haziness or blurring, thus suggesting a “blurring” in being wherein there are no hard boundaries between individuals.¹⁸ And there are other metaphors suggestive of strong holism, such as the comparison of the perception of individuals to seeing knots in a net.¹⁹ But the most striking instance occurs when, in rejecting the notion of the subject as a “hole in being,” Merleau-Ponty proposes the idea of the subject as “a hollow, or a fold.”²⁰ This presents an idea of being as a continuous medium which manifests individuals (hollows or folds) only as a modification of that continuity. Notably, not only does that quote suggest a radical form of ontological holism, it also appears to subsume the subject to an ontological structure prior to the subject–object split. I have argued (especially in Chapter 7) that Merleau-Ponty does not really hold to such a view and that he takes subjectivity to be primary in ¹⁷ The considerations in the paragraph are inspired by Robert Brandom’s discussion of the conceptual problems faced by Hegel’s holism in “Holism and Idealism in Hegel’s Phenomenology,” in Brandom, Tales of the Mighty Dead, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press (2002), 187–8. ¹⁸ This is connected to the meaning of “bougé,” the term that “indeterminacy” typically translates. See PP 11 n. 28. ¹⁹ PP 12. This suggests a strong holism insofar as the knots are individuals but are entirely composed of rope folded over on itself. Of course, one might insist on the individuality of the ropes as being necessary for the existence of knots, but that is likely not Merleau-Ponty’s point. ²⁰ PP 223. Merleau-Ponty attributes the “hole in being” view to Hegel. See n. 17 (535), where Landes explains that the exact reference to Hegel is unclear, and may have been taken from Kojève’s lectures. He also notes that the idea is clearly stated by Sartre.

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some sense. I will not repeat those arguments here. But this issue does raise a point that is important to the attempt to pin down Merleau-Ponty’s possible response to the problem of the individuation of relata versus relations. I do not think that Merleau-Ponty fully intends the “subject as fold in being” view, because I take him to hold that there is a kind of “primordial”—to use one of his common terms— individuality to the embodied subject. And this primordial individuality is, in part at least, the basis upon which other entities are individuated, or made determinate. There is something to the idea of the subject as a fold in being, though, that should not be lost. The notion of the embodied subject’s primordial individuality has to be squared with the fact that the subject is inextricably linked with the world. Or, to put the point in the terms of this section, the subject is implicated in the holistic structure of being. Whenever he claims that the embodied subject is the basis for the meaning of its environment, Merleau-Ponty always also stresses our links to the world. Working out how he can hold that the embodied subject is fully implicated in the holistic network of being, yet poses the terms according to which that being becomes meaningful, is key to showing how these various claims fit together. This is a significant part of what Merleau-Ponty is referencing when he says we “must come to understand how, paradoxically, there is for-us an initself.”²¹

3. Perceptual Holism, Essential Manifestness, and Physiognomy Before examining how this problem is dealt with in Phenomenology, it might be helpful to return to the basketball example to briefly illustrate an important point. The existence of a holistic structure is, in general, compatible with the possibility that some element of that structure holds a kind of organizational primacy. The basketball game embodies a holistic structure; the movements of each of its elements, as they fit together and relate to one another, determine the signification of the game as a whole. Nevertheless, it remains the case that the organization of the basketball game is always centered on a particular element. The player with the ball determines the meaning of the situation to a greater extent than those off the ball. Insofar as the overarching goal of the game is to do something with the ball, this has to be the case. But this does not mean that the player with the ball imposes some meaning entirely from without. The possible actions of the player with the ball are determined internally to the game, and movements of the defense and the offensive players off the ball determine the situation in which the actions of the player with the ball could be meaningful. This is compatible, though, with the fact

²¹ PP 74.

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that the player with the ball ultimately sets the terms according to which the actions that follow will become meaningful. That player’s ability to handle the ball, pass, shoot, etc. holds an asymmetrical importance in how the “form” of the game unfolds. On Merleau-Ponty’s view, the perceiving subject is roughly analogous to the player in basketball that possesses the ball. We are intimately engaged, via embodied action, in a dynamic system of relations with our environment. That system of relations is organized in ways that determine what actions are possible and meaningful for us, just as any player, no matter their skills, has their possibilities constrained (or enabled) by the actions of and relations between their teammates and defenders. Yet the meaning of that organization, and the very possibility of considering it as an organization that suits the norms of the “game,” is dependent upon the potentials of the “player with the ball,” the perceiving subject. But as with any analogy there are clear points of disanalogy. One obvious instance here is that for the perceiving subject there is no potential for passing the ball. Our transcendental perspective makes it such that we are always the ones playing the key role in how the world of our experience is structured. As Merleau-Ponty puts the point in the discussion of the truth of solipsism, “my first perception inaugurated an insatiable being who appropriates everything that it can encounter.”²² Of course this does not mean that we control or dominate transcendence; it means that anything that shows up as transcendence has to show up from our perspective. But while there is strictly speaking no correlate to passing the ball, this element of the analogy does point out that other subjects—our “teammates” and “opponents”—factor into our worlds. This element of the holistic structure of the world will need to be considered later in this chapter. The structuring or organizing primacy of the embodied subject has a particular ontological import. The phenomenological world is the “founding of being” because the role of the subject brings about an aspect of reality through its actions. Yet that subject is also dependent upon aspects of its world that are not dependent upon it. Allais’s essential manifestness view provides a way of thinking about how those opposing points can be held together. To briefly review its basics, the view is born out of an interpretation of Kant, and aims to explain how the thing-in-itself can directly factor in experience as mind-independent yet do so in a way that is necessarily mind-dependent. The idea is that our experience of the world is of qualities of objects that are manifest only insofar as they are related to us. The qualities are genuinely of the objects—they only exist insofar as they are a part of an entity that is independent of us. Yet the quality is only made manifest when we perceive it, and thus it also depends on the fact that it is related to us via

²² PP 374.

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perception for its existence. Allais uses color as an example. The being of color as we experience it is necessarily relational; there is no redness without the relevant attributes of the red object, but there is also no redness without the perceiver who can have color experiences. “Manifestness” names the relational aspect; the qualities only come into being when revealed, or made manifest, through the perceptual relation. “Essential” names the necessary aspect; that it only comes about via the relation is a part of what the thing really is. In Chapter 4 §3, I argue that the essential manifestness view can be related to Merleau-Ponty’s arguments in Structure in a few ways, with a focus on the idea that the world is transcendentally structured to suit human purposes and the idea that experience is perspectival. Those two points can be found, and related to the essential manifestness view, even more robustly in Phenomenology. The rest of this section will focus on the former, and look at the ways in which our experience of human purposes entails that being is determined relationally via the interface of embodied subject and environment. This can be seen in the discussion of the transcendental primacy of “oriented space,” or the spatiality of our active bodily engagement with the world. MerleauPonty holds that objective space, construed as a system of coordinates, is secondary to space as we experience it through our actions; “homogeneous space can only express the sense of oriented space because it received this sense from oriented space.”²³ The space of the lived body is referred to as “oriented” space because the body is “orienting.” Things are arranged in space relative to our bodily actions, and Merleau-Ponty takes this to have ontological import; he claims that the body “designates the installation of the first coordinates” and is “the zone of non-being in front of which precise beings, figures, and points can appear.”²⁴ The language of “non-being” is later repeated in the discussion of the “function of projection,” or the ability we have to engage with the virtual. This function “superimposes a virtual or human space over physical space” that situates us “within the possible or within non-being.”²⁵ The implication is that “precise beings” appear to the subject insofar as that subject is able to relate to the world as supporting its possible actions, and the subject projects those possibilities into the world. There are two problematic elements of the language used in these passages, however. Merleau-Ponty will eventually back off of the language of “non-being” in relation to the subject, and the language of projection and superimposition is misleading. Regarding non-being, Merleau-Ponty uses that language because it emphasizes the element of action that deals in the possible or virtual; our action is not strictly determined by some prior “actuality.” But he will later reject this language as intellectualistic (at least when it is “absolute non-being” that is at

²³ PP 104.

²⁴ PP 103.

²⁵ PP 114.

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issue²⁶) and we have previously seen his rejection of the subject as “hole in being.” The ultimate upshot (which is fully developed in the Part Three chapter “Freedom”) is that our freedom to engage in possible or virtual action always takes place within a constraining, if not determining, context. This point fits well with the basketball example; the player with the ball has the freedom to organize the game according to her passing, dribbling, shooting, etc., but that freedom is still dependent upon her positioning on the court and vis-à-vis the actions of other players. The sense in which our actions are fully tied into our environmental context also poses problems for the language of superimposition. While the idea of “projection” helps Merleau-Ponty to make the point that there is a relative difference between actions that are determined externally versus actions that engage more freedom or “virtuality,” he does not actually hold there to be a hard split between the “actual” or “physical” world and a world of possible action. We do not layer action possibilities on top of a ready-made world. As the discussion in Structure of the ways infants engage a human world from the beginning (see Chapter 5 §5) shows, the actual and virtual are always thoroughly co-implicated in our experience. “Human productivity must appear through the thickness of being.”²⁷ This qualification of the notion of projection actually emphasizes the role of essential manifestness. The aspects of the world that enable human action are not “projected” on top of the world like an image on a screen. They are rather more thoroughly implicated in the being of the world as we experience it. This point can be seen in Merleau-Ponty’s frequent use of the term “physiognomy.” He tends to use this term to refer to an attribute of the structure or arrangement of the environment that presents action opportunities. At the end of the Introduction he refers to philosophy giving “back to the thing its concrete physiognomy,” thus emphasizing that physiognomy names something about the world apart from us.²⁸ But it is further clear from its usage throughout Phenomenology that physiognomy refers to attributes that could not exist wholly apart from the subject. Physiognomies necessarily have both some dependence on and some independence from the subject. Merleau-Ponty’s discussion of habit provides good examples. For a typist, the hands, typewriter, and words on the page all fit together into the typing activity. This raises the question of “how a certain physiognomy of ‘visual’ wholes can call forth a certain style of motor responses.”²⁹ The reference is to the physiognomy of perceptual wholes that call forth a response from the embodied subject, so it is clear that “physiognomy” names an attribute of the world, not just of the subject.³⁰ ²⁶ See PP 221, 253 for instances where “absolute non-being” is spoken of critically. ²⁷ PP 115. ²⁸ PP 57. ²⁹ PP 145. ³⁰ I assume that Merleau-Ponty puts “visual” in scare quotes because while we might talk primarily about the phenomena he is describing through reference to vision, the actual experience he is describing would be multi-and-intermodal. Thus, I refer to perceptual wholes.

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But given that this is couched in the discussion of a habituated skill, the subject must play a central role. The physiognomy described in this specific situation could not exist for a subject lacking the habituated typing skill. A bit further on in the discussion, after presenting the example of the organist, Merleau-Ponty says that the body “projects significations on the outside by giving them a place and sees to it that they begin to exist as things.”³¹ On the one hand, the language of projection in this passage has the problem noted above, but what it emphasizes is that the being of the significations in question is dependent on the subject. And note that signification here refers to action potentials, or physiognomies—the environment is meaningful to us insofar as it supports our habitual actions. But the end of this sentence insists that the body ensures that those significations “exist as things”; it is as though Merleau-Ponty recognizes the issue with the terminology of “projection” and wants to ensure that the physiognomies in question are understood to be aspects of the world. Again, I take Merleau-Ponty’s point here to suggest a version of the essential manifestness view. The fact that the typewriter suits typing, or the organ suits playing, is dependent upon aspects of their being that are independent of the subject. This is made clear by the fact that in learning to type or play the organ, the learner has to adapt her body to those “instruments.” One has to learn how to position one’s fingers, arms, feet, etc. in the right positions to allow the playing to occur. And this is further emphasized by the fact that as the organist “sizes up the [new] instrument with his body,” he has to adapt his body to the new environment. Nevertheless, the physiognomy of the typewriter or the organ has to be dependent upon the relation between the subject and the object which gives a kind of asymmetrical organizing importance to the subject. Only an embodied subject who has inculcated the organ-playing habit can make manifest, via his relation to the new organ, the aspect of the new organ that supports playing. Physiognomies are aspects of being that are dependent upon the character of the external world, but they require—essentially, as a part of their full being—that they be made manifest via a relation with a subject. It is necessary here to raise a point that has been made in different contexts earlier in this book. The transcendental structure that would be operative in habitual action would be the having of habits in general, not the having of any specific habit. It is not necessary that the human experience of the world involve typing or playing an organ. It is a necessary element of human experience, however, that we engage with the world through embodied action, and that action must be supported by habits at various levels. The examples given above might suggest that physiognomies are only made manifest in the world in instances when people engage in highly skilled actions. If this were the case, the view would

³¹ PP 147.

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not fit the overarching transcendental idealist framework being proposed in this book. Rather, it is Merleau-Ponty’s view that physiognomies are pervasive in human experience. All parts of the world are experienced as being, in potentially very different ways, a part of the context of our human actions. The specific character of the essentially manifest physiognomic structures we encounter may differ, but we all always encounter physiognomies. One other caveat needs to be made that is more specific to the essential manifestness view. Both Allais’s discussion of the essential manifestness view and the discussion of physiognomies above can suggest a kind of atomism that would not fit with Merleau-Ponty’s view. Insofar as Allais talks about perceptual qualities, such as colors, it can sound as though she is referring to discrete elements of perceived objects. And the color example might suggest a linearcausal view, wherein a discrete object has aspects that cause a perceiver to manifest the color quality. She does not really fully commit to such an underlying ontological view, however, and it does not appear to be an obligatory element of her view. Also, she does define essentially manifest qualities as “relational qualities which are partly dependent on how . . . objects are in themselves and partly dependent on subjects (and also environmental context).”³² Allais does not greatly elaborate on the role of “environmental context,” though her discussion of the relational view of perception that underpins her view suggests a kind of perceptual holism.³³ On Merleau-Ponty’s view, though, physiognomy would have to refer not to discrete aspects of the environment but to elements of a dynamic interface between our bodies and different aspects of our environment. Insofar as aspects of that dynamic situation can be made concrete in various ways through our actions, they can be referred to as individuals. Consider that I can meaningfully refer to a player in a basketball game as being “open,” as though they embody the discrete attribute of being available for receiving a pass. But this openness would only arise at a moment in the playing of the game when the defensive and offensive players happen to be in the appropriate positions relative to one another. Lived situations may be more or less dynamic (the situation of a typewriter on a table is not exactly like the situation of a basketball game), but all physiognomies would in general require a concretion of dynamic relations.

4. Perspective, Things, and Subjects In the previous section I said that the idea that the world is transcendentally structured to suit human purposes and the idea that experience is perspectival both fit into Merleau-Ponty’s version of the essential manifestness view. While the

³² Allais, Manifest Reality, 122.

³³ See e.g. ibid. 112–13.

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previous section focused on the former point, this section will focus on the latter. One of the first main points connected with the perspectival nature of perception is that it is crucial to Merleau-Ponty’s insistence that perception presents us with transcendent objects. “The ‘real,’ ” he claims, “is an insurmountable plenitude” and “it belongs to the real to contract an infinity of relations into each of its moments.”³⁴ Reality confronts us as a set of indeterminate relata and relations that we could never fully work through, and each “moment”—each instance of determinacy that we draw out—still contains within it relations that attest to the infinity of that plenitude. “Infinity” here should not be read in an intellectualistic sense as referring to some rational aspect of the totality of the real that we grasp in thought. Rather it refers more to the practical fact that we are not capable of exhausting all the possible perspectives our bodies could take on the world. The reality that is presented to us is presented as a reality that outstrips us because of the infinity of perspectives. Merleau-Ponty further rejects ontologies that posit a substratum or “subject of inherence” that underpins things within this “system of experience.”³⁵ The suggestion is that there is no separation of the infinity of relations and the being of the thing itself. There is no static or atomic being that underpins the possibility of our having multiple perspectives on it; those perspectives are fundamental to its being. This point fits with his discussion of perceptual constancy, or the fact that perceptual qualities such as color, size, and shape are taken to be constant through changes in lighting, distance, and angle. Merleau-Ponty establishes that constancy is tied to the holistic nature of the perceptual field; referring specifically to shape constancy he says “there are determinate forms . . . for us because our body, as a point of view on things, and things, as abstract elements of a single world, form a system.”³⁶ “Things,” or objects construed as wholly determinate individuated totalities, are an abstraction from the primary reality of the “single world.” Here, “single world” refers to the environment as a collection of related elements that are indeterminate insofar as they are part of multiple, shifting perspectival horizons. Again, the being of the “thing” as a determinate entity is not underwritten by some substantial substrate. Rather, its unity is underwritten by our dynamic engagement with it. Per this point, toward the conclusion of the discussion of perceptual constancy Merleau-Ponty asserts that “the constancy of color is merely an abstract moment of the constancy of things.”³⁷ The point of this is to assert that the analysis he gives of perceptual qualities such as shape and color can be generalized as an explanation of our grasping of a world in general. Things become constant “things,” or unified objects, out of our bodily engagement with the “plenitude” of the real. Thus, the being of “things,” in that sense, is relational. And in the midst of the

³⁴ PP, quotes on pp. 337 and 338 respectively.

³⁵ PP 332.

³⁶ PP 314.

³⁷ PP 326.

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discussion of the being of the thing, Merleau-Ponty references the notion of “communion” that I previously mentioned in the introduction §4 when comparing his views to Allais’s: Given that relations among things or among the appearances of things are always mediated by our body, then the setting of our own life must in fact be all of nature; nature must be our interlocutor in a sort of dialogue. And this is why we ultimately cannot conceive of a thing that could be neither perceived nor perceptible. As Berkeley said, even a desert that has never been visited has at least one spectator, and it is we ourselves when we think of it, that is, when we perform the mental experiment of perceiving it. The thing can never be separated from someone who perceives it; nor can it ever actually be in itself because its articulations are the very ones of our existence, and because it is posited at the end of a gaze or at the conclusion of a sensory exploration that invests it with humanity. To this extent, every perception is a communication or a communion.³⁸

This quote is very significant in the current context. It opens with one of the most idealist-sounding passages in the whole of Phenomenology. Relations among things—not just between ourselves and things—have to be mediated by our bodies. Insofar as his perceptual holism is also an ontological holism, this entails that the being of things is always mediated by our bodies. And Merleau-Ponty doubles down on the idealism in this passage by positively referencing Berkeley. Yet this comes in the midst of a consideration of the being of the thing which is, in part, attempting to emphasize that our perception connects with a transcendent world. And, as is mentioned in §4 of the introduction, the reference to communion is meant to draw an analogy with the Roman Catholic doctrine of “real presence” in order to assert the fact that the actual world is present in perceptual experience.³⁹ Taken in context Merleau-Ponty clearly wants to hold together the notion that the being of things is mediated by our embodied subjectivity yet is dependent upon a real presence of things in our perception. What Merleau-Ponty is asserting accords with the point made by Allais’s essential manifestness view that the being of the world is both essentially tied to our (embodied) subjectivity and essentially tied to something that transcends subjectivity. As has been discussed previously, this transcendence shows up in the field of presence. Merleau-Ponty tells us that “it is essential for the thing and for the world to be presented as ‘open’ . . . and to promise us always ‘something more to see.’ ”⁴⁰ ³⁸ PP 334. A paragraph break has been removed. ³⁹ The term “communion” is used three times in Phenomenology. Two of those instances are in the passage referenced in the introduction, which is where the connection with “real presence” is made explicit. See PP 219–21. The third instance is in the passage quoted here. ⁴⁰ PP 348.

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A core element of Merleau-Ponty’s thought is that there has to be an “I” that sees, but what I see has to entail the absence of the “something more.” And the ontological import of this view can be seen if we revisit the discussion of the supposed “contradiction between the ubiquity of consciousness and its engagement in a field of presence” that I previously discussed in Chapter 7 §3. “The ubiquity of consciousness” is tied to the idea of synthetic unity; if all experience is from my perspective, it must be united by my perspective. “Engagement in a field of presence,” on the other hand, is meant to indicate the ineliminably horizonal nature of my experience. The contradiction is supposedly that the former would entail some in-principle complete experience of the unity of horizons, while the latter indicates the impossibility of such a unity. But Merleau-Ponty rejects the idea that it is really a contradiction, mainly because the inability to have a total or complete view of reality is not a sign of a lack, or an indication that true reality slips beyond consciousness. Rather, it indicates the genuine reality of what I experience horizonally: [I]f my experience formed a closed system . . . then nothing would exist. I would survey the world from above, and far from all places and times suddenly becoming real, they would in fact cease to be real because I would not inhabit any of them and I would be nowhere engaged . . . Thus, there is no choice between the incompleteness of the world and its existence, between the engagement and the ubiquity of consciousness, or between transcendence and immanence . . . This ambiguity is not an imperfection of consciousness or of existence, it is their very definition.

It is the definition of consciousness and existence—immanence and transcendence—that they be perspectival or horizonal. On the side of consciousness, perspective is an indication that I am engaged with the world in a manner that suits my human purposes. My body, as was mentioned previously, “installs the first coordinates” and orients space. The horizonal nature of reality is related to that installation of coordinates. We come upon our “view” of the world according to how and why we engage with it. But on the side of “existence,” that horizonal engagement indicates the independent reality of the thing insofar as it always exceeds our view. The joining of immanence and transcendence in the horizonal experience of the world is an aspect of reality or being. And it is necessarily relational; it is an aspect of being that becomes manifest through the relation between embodied subjectivity and external reality. This point is further seen in Merleau-Ponty’s unwillingness to embrace Kant’s fully subjective conception of space. Consider his discussion of “Stratton’s experiment” wherein a subject was made to wear goggles that inverted their visual field.⁴¹

⁴¹ For the main discussion of Stratton’s experiment see PP 254–9.

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Merleau-Ponty’s main point regarding the experiment is that the subject wearing the goggles was eventually able to adapt and engage with the visually-inverted environment because of the subject’s “world.” The existence of their embodied system of significations enabled them, through actions which adapted to the inverted environment, to re-orient space. But this possibility of re-orientation only existed because the subject had a world, or had meaningfully engaged in an embodied fashion with an environment. After elaborating this point Merleau-Ponty claims the following: We cannot, then, understand the experience of space through the consideration of the contents, nor through that of a pure activity of connecting, and we are confronted by that third spatiality that we foreshadowed above, which is neither the spatiality of things in space, nor that of spatializing space, and which, as such, escapes the Kantian analysis and is presupposed by it. We need an absolute within the relative, a space that does not skate over appearances, that is anchored in them and depends upon them, but that, nevertheless, is not given with them in the realist manner, and that can, as Stratton’s experiment shows, survive their upheaval.⁴²

He rejects both a fully realist and fully subjectivist conception of space. Oriented space is still primary, and relies on a subjective perspective that is still “absolute”; all experience of being must be relative to the orienting acts of that perspective. Yet to have that perspective requires that we are anchored in things; our perspective must be tied to transcendence and thus oriented space relies on aspects of a world external to us. The “absolute” is only absolute in the “relative”; the embodied subject must be connected to an external environment. And this is the foundation of the being of space, as “being only has sense through its orientation.”⁴³ Oriented space is essentially manifest; it results from the necessary engagement of our subjective perspective and transcendent reality. The kind of ontology that results from this view is similar, in a way, to interpretations that find in Phenomenology a reference to an ontological structure antecedent to the subject–object split. Both are driven by the attempt to overcome traditional subject–object dualism and do justice to the intertwining of mind, body, and world. But the pre-subject/object interpretations accommodate those issues by overlooking or downplaying Merleau-Ponty’s emphasis on subjectivity. They do not take seriously enough Merleau-Ponty’s claims regarding what I call, in Chapter 7 §5, the permanent truth of embodied subjectivity. Nor do they properly construe the ways in which Part Three of Phenomenology emphasizes a

⁴² PP 258–9.

⁴³ This text is a subheading found in the chapter “Space”; see PP 262.

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particular view of conscious subjectivity (see Chapter 7 §4). To sum up his main aim there, I think this passage from the “Temporality” chapter is very helpful: [W]e are always led to a conception of the subject as ek-stase and to a relation of active transcendence between the subject and the world. The world is inseparable from the subject, but from a subject who is nothing but a project of the world; and the subject is inseparable from the world, but from a world that it itself projects. The subject is being-in-the-world and the world remains “subjective,” since its texture and its articulations are sketched out by the subject’s movement of transcendence.⁴⁴

The world is inseparable from the subject and the subject is inseparable from the world. The point of this passage is to assert a kind of unity. But it is an asymmetrical unity weighted toward the subject, in the manner akin to the basketball game which is an asymmetrical holism weighted toward the player with the ball. The world to which the subject is connected is the world that the subject projects, and it thus remains “subjective.” This is a new way of construing subjectivity—it is not locked in itself, it is an “ek-stase,” a going out toward the world.⁴⁵ And along these lines Merleau-Ponty puts “subjective” in quotes and attaches a reference to Heidegger’s Being and Time which asserts that the subject must be understood as “temporally transcendent,” which is to say that it is a temporal flow of experience in the world.⁴⁶ This may be a different way of thinking about the subject from traditional views, but it is still a conscious subject with an ineliminable perspective that gives the world its texture and sketches out the world’s articulations. And this texture and articulation has essentially manifest being. Perspective is a key concept for Merleau-Ponty, but an important issue related to it has so far only been alluded to. I have mentioned the permanent truth of embodied subjectivity, which is my adaptation of Merleau-Ponty’s reference to the permanent truth of solipsism (see Chapter 7 §5). The reference to solipsism there highlights the fact that there is something ineliminable to my perspective even in relation to other persons’ perspectives. Yet Merleau-Ponty also wants to highlight that there is an important sense in which solipsism is clearly wrong, and we are always engaged with other persons. To this point he concludes the “Temporality” chapter by saying that in identifying consciousness with engagement in the world, we can “better understand how we can find another person at the virtual origin of ⁴⁴ PP 454. ⁴⁵ Merleau-Ponty is taking the term “ek-stase” from Heidegger. “Ekstase” is the German translation of “ecstasy.” Following Heidegger, Merleau-Ponty is playing off of its roots in the ancient Greek term “ecstasis” (ἔκστασις), which means to be outside of oneself. ⁴⁶ See PP 454 n. 48. The reference is to Heidegger, Being and Time, trans. John Macquarrie and Edward Robinson, New York: Harper & Row (1962), 418.

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their visible behaviors.”⁴⁷ This is a crucial idea that connects with the fundamental transcendental role played by intersubjectivity in Merleau-Ponty’s thought.

5. The World of Intersubjectivity The being of things in the world is not just tied to our perspective, but to the perspectives of others as well. Merleau-Ponty considers this point at the beginning of the Part Two chapter “Others and the Human World.” The chapter just before it, “The Thing and the Natural World,” primarily considers “things,” or objects of perception, in terms of attributes such as color, shape, etc. But objects also have attributes tied to distinctly human cultural activities. “Not only,” Merleau-Ponty notes, “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.” And the latter group of objects is perceived as playing a particular role in the human world; “each of these objects bears as an imprint the mark of the human action it serves.”⁴⁸ He immediately relates this point to the Hegelian notion of “Objective Spirit,” which suggests that there is a system of relations amongst objects insofar as they suit our collective human needs. But Merleau-Ponty does not actually countenance a hard split between natural and human things. While the above quoted passage is intended to make the point that there are some attributes of objects that can be in principle thought of as more tied to human actions than others, he would not deny that soil or water are also experienced in terms of human purposes or that spoons and pipes are also experienced in terms of “natural” attributes. Soil is experienced in a particular way by the excavator, water is experienced in a particular way by the thirsty athlete, (stainless steel) spoons are experienced as hard and shiny, and pipes are experienced as wooden and curved, etc. While Merleau-Ponty clearly accepts that we can distinguish between more or less natural and cultural attributes of things, he rejects the notion of a hard ontological split between the two. This is seen early in Phenomenology in his critique of empiricism in the Introduction, where he says that it “is absurd to claim that this nature is the primary object of our perception, even if only intentionally: such a nature is clearly posterior to the experience of cultural objects, or rather, it itself is a cultural object.”⁴⁹ We are always already, as it were, immersed in a world that is both natural and cultural. There is something backward about beginning with the cultural significance of objects such as spoons and pipes and inferring from them the existence of a world of other people that give rise to that culture. The truth is the other way around; we have a cultural world because we have, from the beginning, a form of embodied

⁴⁷ PP 457.

⁴⁸ PP 363.

⁴⁹ PP 26.

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coexistence with other people, and along these lines Merleau-Ponty notes that “the very first cultural object . . . is the other’s body as the bearer of behavior.”⁵⁰ What follows this claim, in the early sections of “Others and the Human World,” is the most famous element of Merleau-Ponty’s analysis of intersubjectivity. In brief, he argues that the epistemological problem of other minds is undercut by the fact that we are, from the beginning, engaged with other embodied minds in our daily activities. And Merleau-Ponty takes certain results from child psychology to show we directly perceive intentions like our own in the bodily actions of other people. We do not have to reason by analogy that another person’s gestures intend the same things that my gestures would intend, that is how we directly perceive them.⁵¹ Other cultural objects bear the residue, so to speak, of this primary bodily intersubjective engagement; the road is a road and the church is a church because they are sites where particular elements of the system of relations in objective spirit become manifest. It is crucial to Merleau-Ponty’s view, however, to note that this level of primary bodily intersubjectivity does not obviate all aspects of something like the problem of other minds, and the “difficulties of perceiving others are not all the result of objective thought.”⁵² This is because, as was previously discussed in Chapter 7 §5, it is a basic element of our pre-objective experience of the world that it happens from the perspective of an “indeclinable ‘I’.”⁵³ The result of these considerations is an extension of the general issue of transcendence discussed previously. The uniqueness of our perspective ensures the truth of both our primary individuality and our primary link with transcendence. Our perspective is a unique experience of ourselves as tied to an external world. And other persons immediately factor into this external world. For one thing, Merleau-Ponty thinks that this primary intersubjectivity is the condition of the thought of solitude associated with philosophical solipsism; if we were not already connected with others it would not occur to us to consider the possibility that we are not.⁵⁴ Another way of putting that point is that intersubjectivity is the condition of possibility for our ability to consider our solitude. And by extension this thought leads to the next important point; for Merleau-Ponty intersubjectivity plays an important transcendental role, and “transcendental subjectivity is an intersubjectivity.”⁵⁵ Intersubjectivity plays an important role in determining the transcendental structures of our perspectives on the world. This has already been indirectly indicated in multiple places in this book. I have mentioned multiple times that one of the key ways we transcendentally structure our experience is by having a “world,” or by grasping the world as suiting our purposes. Our purposes, human purposes, are always culturally determined. This is why, shortly after claiming that transcendental subjectivity is intersubjectivity, Merleau-Ponty says ⁵⁰ PP 364. ⁵⁴ PP 376.

⁵¹ See PP 367–72. ⁵⁵ PP 378.

⁵² PP 373.

⁵³ PP 375.

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that “we must rediscover the social world, after the natural world, not as an object or sum of objects, but as the permanent field or dimension of existence.”⁵⁶ The phenomenological field is a social field and thus the transcendental structures of our pre-objective experience depend, at least in part, on our culture and history. The last quote refers to the social being “after” the natural. Again, though, it must be emphasized that the two are not wholly separable and do not compose distinct layers; the human being does not contain “a primary layer of behaviors that could be called ‘natural’ and a constructed cultural or spiritual world . . . everything is constructed and everything is natural.”⁵⁷ The entirety of our existence takes place within objective spirit. To encounter any aspect of the world is to encounter an environment the significance of which is tied up with cultural connotations (though perhaps to greater and lesser degrees depending on the specifics of that environment). Insofar as we have to, from our human perspectives, live a human life, we have to connect with human meanings, which are inherently social. There are two quite different issues with the preceding discussion of intersubjectivity that need to be addressed. First, one might question whether Merleau-Ponty adequately deals with our relations to other persons, insofar as the focus on our engagement with a world of culture could seem to reduce the unique otherness of the other person to my own experience. In this case, one might find a kind of ethical lack in Merleau-Ponty’s analysis. Second, one might think that the role that culture and history play in shaping our experience with the world would shift MerleauPonty’s theory away from transcendental idealism to a different form of idealism. One could put this point in terms of my discussion of forms of “mind” associated with idealism in Chapter 1 §1; perhaps Merleau-Ponty’s view shifts from an emphasis on the second, individual sense of mind to the third, collective sense of the mental. The rest of this section will briefly consider the first of these issues, while the next section will consider the second, and wrap up the chapter overall. This chapter opened by referencing Jean Hyppolite’s criticism of MerleauPonty’s summary of Phenomenology that was presented to the Société française de philosophie. At that same event a different criticism was leveled by Émile Brehier which is pertinent to the present issue: When you speak of the perception of the other, this other does not even exist, according to you, except in relation to us and in his relations with us. This is not the other as I perceive him immediately; it certainly is not an ethical other; it is not this person who suffices to himself. It is someone I posit outside myself at the same time I posit objects. Now this is very serious; the other is posited by us in the world just like other things.⁵⁸ ⁵⁶ PP 379. ⁵⁷ PP 194. ⁵⁸ Merleau-Ponty, “The Primacy of Perception and Its Philosophical Consequences,” 28.

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Brehier’s complaint is not unreasonable. Insofar as Merleau-Ponty is considering intersubjectivity as embedded in our embodied relations with the world, and our embodied subjectivity structures those relations, it does seem as though the other exists only in relation to us. And while Merleau-Ponty emphasizes the ineliminable individual subjectivity that is attached to our perspective at the same time as he emphasizes our embodied relations with others, he does not deeply consider the extent to which the other person bears that same level of ineliminable subjectivity. This would, presumably, be Brehier’s “person who suffices to himself.” And in relation to this point one can wonder, with Emmanuel Levinas, whether MerleauPonty misses that the “ethical relation” is “imposed across a radical separation” between embodied persons.⁵⁹ The ethical relation might reasonably be taken to require the recognition of something special in the other person that does not exist only in relation to us. While this complaint seems fitting in certain ways, one can reasonably respond on Merleau-Ponty’s behalf that ethics simply is not the topic of Phenomenology, and the ethical implications of his view simply have not been explicated there. Second, his theory clearly does not eliminate the notion of a “radical separation” between embodied subjects. Rather, such a separation is quite clearly entailed by his view. A part of what we recognize when we elaborate on the pre-objectively social aspects of our worlds is that there are other perspectives like our own. And this entails a kind of symmetry; there are other embodied subjects who organize their own worlds as do I. Given that Merleau-Ponty is considering the issue from the first-personal perspective rather than the second-personal, so to speak, he does not spend much time on this point. But he clearly recognizes it, as when he notes that “consciousnesses present the absurdity of a solipsism-shared-by-many, and such is the situation that must be understood.”⁶⁰ Although he rejects solipsism in the strictest sense because of our pre-objective, embodied engagement with others, we know that he accepts some “permanent truth” to the idea as well. Thus the “absurdity” mentioned in this quote is not supposed to indicate simply that the idea is wrong. If that were the case, he would not say that the situation needs to be understood. The absurdity mentioned here is rather something like a paradox; we are always engaged in a primary intersubjectivity that presents the reality of other subjects to us, yet there is something inherent to each of those subjects that imposes a “solipsistic” radical separation. Both of these elements have to be held together when fully considering intersubjectivity. The full subject of a Merleau-Pontyian ethics, which has a robust literature surrounding it, is beyond the topic of the present study. I will conclude, though, by

⁵⁹ Emanuel Levinas, “On Intersubjectivity: Notes on Merleau-Ponty,” trans. Michael B. Smith, in Ontology and Alterity in Merleau-Ponty, ed. Galen A. Johnson and Michael B. Smith, Evanston IL: Northwestern University Press (1990), 59. ⁶⁰ PP 376.

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mentioning part of Merleau-Ponty’s response to Brehier that fits well with the foregoing points. He insists—in keeping with his emphasis on transcendental perspectivism—that it is impossible to “posit the other without a self,” yet he ties this with a positive reference to Brunschvicg’s belief that subjectivity entails a form of reciprocity between subjects that is the basis for creating an ethics.⁶¹ While more would need to be said to fully elaborate the point, the emphasis on reciprocity makes sense insofar as it fits with the symmetry of the “solipsismshared-by-many” idea mentioned above. Insofar as I recognize that my perspectival engagement with a cultural world entails an engagement with the activities of other perspectival engagements with that world, a kind of reciprocity would follow. Brehier responds, though, that reciprocity is underpinned by a universal norm and asks Merleau-Ponty “where is your norm?”⁶² Merleau-Ponty responds, somewhat obliquely and combatively, “I would ask, where is yours?”⁶³ While not fully fleshed out, there is a substantive point beyond the combative response. In referencing a “universal norm,” Brehier is clearly drawing on Merleau-Ponty’s reference to Brunschvicg, and thus we can gather that the kind of norm Brehier is referencing is one grasped by reason. This is clearly not how Merleau-Ponty would think of the normative underpinnings of our ethical reciprocity, however. Though the view would obviously require quite a bit more development, one can imagine that Merleau-Ponty is thinking, behind his response, that Brehier’s, or Brunschvicg’s, norm is in a mythical rational “universe” (and thus is nowhere), while his is to be found in our embodied engagement in the world.

6. Transcendental Intersubjectivity and Objective Spirit Those familiar with the history of Kantian and Post-Kantian German philosophy might find that the reference to Hegel’s concept of objective spirit that comes early in “Others and the Human World” suggests a significant substantive issue that I have not addressed. Hegel’s use of the term “spirit” is, in part, meant to mark a distinction from Kant’s transcendental idealism that hinges on a rejection of Kant’s dualism between our experience and things in themselves. Insofar as Merleau-Ponty is stressing the extent to which our ability, as an embodied subject, to structure our worlds is dependent upon intersubjectivity, he may be shifting from a Kantian view to a more Hegelian view. One might, following a fairly standard use of the terminology, wonder if Merleau-Ponty is not an absolute idealist rather than a transcendental idealist.

⁶¹ Merleau-Ponty, “The Primacy of Perception and Its Philosophical Consequences,” 30–1; quote on p. 31. ⁶² Ibid. 31. ⁶³ Ibid.

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Casting the issue this way assumes quite a bit regarding the proper interpretation of Kant, Hegel, and the relation between their views. Fully treating of those issues would take us far beyond the scope of the present work. There is a fairly standard way in which the matter has typically been cast in the literature, however, that can be helpful in explicating the point I am trying to make about MerleauPonty. Hegel famously criticizes Kant for holding a subjective idealism, which he pins, in part, on Kant’s distinction between our thought of the world and the world in itself. As Hegel puts the point in the Encyclopedia Logic: [E]ven the Kantian objectivity of thinking itself is in turn only subjective insofar as thoughts, despite being universal and necessary determinations, are, according to Kant, merely our thoughts and distinguished from what the thing is in itself by an insurmountable gulf. By contrast, the true objectivity of thinking consists in this: that thoughts are not merely our thoughts but at the same time the in itself of things and of the object-world in general.⁶⁴

Paul Guyer presents Hegel’s point as entailing the alternative view that “human thought reflects the nature of reality itself ” because Hegel “thinks that the dualisms Kant identified are themselves manifestations of the real nature of being.”⁶⁵ As a specific instance of this view, Hegel rejects the idea of a split between the forms of thought—transcendental structures—and the objects of thought. As Guyer, again, puts Hegel’s point, “Kant’s mistake is to fail to see that the forms of thought must also be the nature of real being.”⁶⁶ We can state the point in a very general way as entailing that what Kant takes to be universal structures of transcendental subjectivity are in fact aspects of the world. And while that point would require quite a bit more fleshing out than can be provided here, we can note one important thing this entails. Insofar as they are in some sense in the world, the transcendental structures—or their Hegelian equivalent—would not be ahistorical universals. Rather, Hegel famously takes the forms of thought to go through a dynamic developmental process, and Spirit has a history. Setting aside the question of the full interpretive accuracy of either side of the debate, we can now cast the Kant/Hegel debate as opposing a subjectivist, ahistorical conception of the forms of thought to a view of those forms as aspects of the world that develop and change historically.

⁶⁴ G. W. F. Hegel, Encyclopedia of the Philosophical Sciences in Basic Outline, Part 1, Science of Logic, ed. and trans. Klaus Brinkmann and Daniel O. Dahlstrom, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press (2010), 266 (§41). ⁶⁵ Paul Guyer, “Absolute Idealism and the Rejection of Kantian Dualism,” in The Cambridge Companion to German Idealism, ed. Karl Ameriks, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press (2007), 37. ⁶⁶ PP 38.

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Construed in this way, it would make a lot of sense to place Merleau-Ponty on the Hegelian side of the debate. We know that, in general, he holds to a dynamic conception of being. More to the point, we know that he takes historical developments to change the ways in which we engage with the world, as is seen, for instance, in his discussion of the “a priori of the threatened prince” (see Chapter 6 §5 and Chapter 8 §5). And the discussion of intersubjectivity would seem to push even further in that direction. I noted in the previous section that there is no hard split between the natural world and cultural world for Merleau-Ponty, such that all aspects of the world of our experience are structured by cultural forms. “Culture” here names an aspect of things as they are engaged with by multiple perspectives; the smoking pipe has the meaning it has for me because of the ways in which a multitude of people have engaged with pipes throughout history. To drive this point home, the use of “pipe” as an example of a cultural object would have had a very different significance to Merleau-Ponty when he wrote it than it would to most contemporary readers. Insofar as culture thus shapes the way I engage with the world, the structures of that engagement would thus seem to be in the world itself. “Objective spirit” would thus be a very apt term, and Merleau-Ponty’s thought on intersubjectivity might, in fact, show that he is an absolute idealist. There is of course far from enough space here to consider the connections between Merleau-Ponty and Hegel, especially considering that we would have to first consider how to properly contextualize and interpret the claims made about Hegel’s disagreement with Kant. My aim here is much narrower; setting aside the question of how we should properly understand Hegel’s absolute idealism, I want to show that Merleau-Ponty still, despite his views on intersubjectivity, holds to the kind of transcendental idealist view I have been arguing for in this book. The emphasis on culture and history does not do away with his adherence to the theses of transcendental perspectivism and transcendental structural analysis. To a large extent, I have already made the arguments that are necessary to support my point in Chapters 7 and 8. Per Chapter 7, I believe that there is no getting around the fact that, in Phenomenology, Merleau-Ponty emphasizes the importance and centrality of our embodied conscious perspective to a degree that does not allow for the move to absolute idealism, at least as it is construed above. The transcendental structures of our experience of the world have to be seen as structures of our particular subjective perspectives. Furthermore, Merleau-Ponty’s emphasis on the field of presence necessarily entails a form of absence that outstrips us. In this sense, there is a very specific kind of “insurmountable gulf ” (to use the language of the Hegel quote above) between my experience and the world. I will never grasp all possible perspectives or synthesize all possible horizons. Furthermore, Merleau-Ponty indicates that such a synthesis is not even possible in principle, and we should not expect history to result in a single coherent rational totality. And along those lines he would criticize Hegel, for example in essays in Sense and Non-Sense, for holding to a kind of totalizing

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rationalism.⁶⁷ But my reference to the very specific kind of insurmountable gulf is meant to indicate that the Merleau-Pontyian correlate to Kantian dualism does not face the problems of the traditional dualisms that Merleau-Ponty argues against.⁶⁸ To put the point another way, Merleau-Ponty’s particular way of embracing the primacy of (embodied) subjectivity still allows for a theory that does justice to our intertwining with the world. And, setting aside the question of whether it is the correct interpretation of Kant’s views, Allais’s essential manifestness view allows for a conception of transcendental idealism that does not really fall prey to Hegel’s criticism in the quote that opens this section. While there is genuinely an element of the thing in itself that is outside our perspectives, our thoughts are still able to connect with genuine objectivity, in the sense that the world factors directly in our experience. There is still a problem, though, with the discussion of intersubjectivity insofar as it appears to place transcendental structures in culture and history, outside of subjectivity. Here I think the arguments I make in Chapter 8, especially §5, are relevant. Merleau-Ponty’s particular way of combining empirical and transcendental analysis depends upon the idea that there is a continuum of generalities related to the structure of our experience. Some aspects of the transcendental structure of our experience are quite specific; for example, the “a priori of the threatened prince” would be specific to a very particular type of person at a particular time in history. But more generally, our possibilities for action are shaped by our historical and cultural antecedents in general. This continuum exists in relation to transcendental intersubjectivity. The specific ways in which our history and culture shape our engagement with the world would attach to varying time frames and would have more or less grip on us—more or less “necessity”—depending on those frames. This is, I would contend, a particular strength of the transcendental idealist view. It is able to grasp the way in which our experience is beholden to our engagement with other people, and our immersion in a culture and history, without requiring that we raise any specific element of that history or culture to the status of a false universal. And this is a criticism that has been raised against Hegel; his conception of history can be seen as raising particular aspects of European experiences to the status of necessary structures of human experience.⁶⁹ ⁶⁷ See Merleau-Ponty, “Hegel’s Existentialism” and “Concerning Marxism,” both in Sense and NonSense, 63–70 and 99–124 respectively. ⁶⁸ Somers-Hall, “Merleau-Ponty’s Reading of Kant’s Transcendental Idealism,” criticizes me for having claimed in an earlier essay that Merleau-Ponty stands in the Hegelian tradition of criticizing Kantian dualisms. He does so on the basis that Merleau-Ponty is more Kierkegaardian than Hegelian; see p. 120, n. 21. I have come to believe that Somers-Hall was right to criticize my earlier claim, but he has the wrong reason. The real reason I was wrong is that Merleau-Ponty does embrace some version of the Kantian dualism between our transcendental perspectives and the thing in itself—especially if we interpret Kant in Allais’s terms. ⁶⁹ An example of this kind of critique can be found in Olufemi Taiwo, “Exorcising Hegel’s Ghost: Africa’s Challenge to Philosophy,” African Studies Quarterly 1:4 (1998), 3–16.

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Of course the transcendental view proposed in this book does not guarantee that one will not, in their specific analyses, mistake a specific aspect of one’s experience for a more general structure. But at least there is no particular conception of culture or history that is tied to the theory at its roots. Some ways in which culture shapes our perspective may be pervasive in human history, while some may be pervasive only in vary narrow communities. What is genuinely necessary, and genuinely transcendental, is that our embodied engagement with the world has to be structured, in general, by our engagement with other subjects.

Conclusion 1. Embodied Transcendental Idealism: A Summary Chapter 1 defines idealism as any view that holds that reality is mind-dependent. Furthermore, this must be an ontological dependence; being must, to some degree, depend upon the mind. Transcendental idealism is then defined as a version of this kind of view which holds to two theses; the transcendental perspectivism thesis and the transcendental structural analysis thesis. The former holds that we can only experience being from our perspectives and the latter holds that we can analyze the structures of that perspective that determine our experience. Furthermore, transcendental idealism holds that being is partially determined by that perspective. While there is some mind-independent reality that factors into our experience, we only experience that reality through aspects of being that only exist insofar as they are made manifest to our perspective. This book has argued that Merleau-Ponty’s philosophy, as developed in the Pre-Sorbonne works, is a version of transcendental idealism as just described. He believes that we only encounter being through our individual, subjective perspectives. Crucially, though, this perspective is that of an embodied consciousness. It is a consciousness, construed as a non-thetic temporal flow of engagement with the world. And this engagement is embodied. Thus, our perspective is structured according to the nature of this embodied engagement. And Merleau-Ponty thinks that we are able, via a unique combination of third-person empirical and firstperson phenomenological analysis, to determine the structures of that embodied perspective. This analysis can uncover structures of varying levels of generality and necessity, but some, such as the fact that experience must take place from an embodied perspective, are fully transcendentally necessary. This view is an embodied idealism. That it is “embodied” is fairly obvious. But it is also genuinely an idealism. Merleau-Ponty’s emphasis on embodiment leads to a revision of standard philosophical theories of consciousness, but it is a theory of consciousness all the same. And reality is dependent, for us, upon that consciousness insofar as we only ever encounter reality from that embodied conscious perspective. But there is an ontological import to this dependence as well. For Merleau-Ponty, the boundaries of our embodied conscious perspective are not merely analogous to peering at a neighbor’s yard through a hole in a fence. In that case, while our perspective is bound by the hole, the being of the neighbor’s yard is wholly independent of the nature of the hole or our view through it. For Merleau-

Embodied Idealism: Merleau-Ponty’s Transcendental Philosophy. Joseph C. Berendzen, Oxford University Press. © Joseph C. Berendzen 2023. DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780192874764.003.0011

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Ponty, while we come in contact with genuine transcendence, in the sense of an external world that is independent of us, the nature of that transcendence is also partly dependent upon our embodied engagement with it. Physiognomies, or other aspects of the world as it meshes with our embodied actions, are elements of reality whose being is dependent on a relation between transcendent reality and our embodied subjectivity. Their being is essentially tied to their being made manifest through my perspective. Or so this book has argued. The question of whether this is the correct interpretation of Merleau-Ponty’s Pre-Sorbonne philosophy depends on how one assesses the arguments of the previous chapters. Of course, Merleau-Ponty wrote works and gave lectures after that period that might provide a different view of his total oeuvre. I believe, however, that the interpretation of the Pre-Sorbonne period should stick to the texts of that period. But this ignores—perhaps too conveniently—an element of Merleau-Ponty’s thought that some would find fatal for my view. Later in his career, particularly during the Collège de France Period, he would come to be highly critical of his early works. And this critique was focused in particular on the subjectivism that he took to be inherent in works like Phenomenology. One might reasonably wonder, if Merleau-Ponty thought something was wrong with his early works, should not I?

2. Merleau-Ponty’s Later Critique of the Pre-Sorbonne Works The bare fact that Merleau-Ponty found the early works to be wrong does not necessarily pose a problem for my interpretation. It is in principle possible that Merleau-Ponty could entirely agree with my interpretation, but simply think that the view I have correctly attributed to him is mistaken. If we accept this, one might wonder why I would put in the effort to write a book providing a detailed elaboration of a mistake. My first response to this would be to point to the reasons given in §3 of the introduction for focusing on the Pre-Sorbonne Period. To summarize a part of that, Merleau-Ponty’s early works have become significant enough in the history of philosophy that their study is merited. Of course, my second response is that I do not actually agree that this book has entailed elaborating a mistake. While the main aim of this book is exegetical rather than justificatory, I do take this study to lay the groundwork for a further justification and expansion of embodied transcendental idealism. I obviously disagree with Merleau-Ponty, then. To some extent this disagreement would simply be a matter for a different study; given that Merleau-Ponty’s self-criticism does not occur within the Pre-Sorbonne Period, it does not need to be taken up in a scholarly review of that period. But there is a deeper problem. When one looks more closely at Merleau-Ponty’s later self-criticism, it might indicate that the hypothetical scenario I propose in the previous paragraph—that

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he could agree with my interpretation but think that the presented view is mistaken—is implausible. He might, rather, think that the early works are internally contradictory, or are cast in terms of a conceptual framework that is inadequate to expressing their actual aims. In this case, Merleau-Ponty would not agree with my interpretation; insofar as I take the Pre-Sorbonne works to implicitly embody a coherent idealist view, I am not properly describing that contradiction or inadequacy. Some readers would likely assert that point, and say that my interpretation has missed the significance of the problems that Merleau-Ponty himself indicated. In an oft-cited working note from July 1959 he wrote that “the problems posed in Ph.P. [Phenomenology] are insoluble because I start there from the ‘consciousness’– ‘object’ distinction.”¹ He goes on to argue that from the point of view of the consciousness–object split, “objective” disturbances of mental life (as, for example, those associated with brain injury) are inexplicable. The point seems to be that they would have to be taken to be purely on the side of the object, but this could not grasp the mental aspect. His solution is to propose a structure that encompasses consciousness and object, “brute or wild being, which, ontologically, is primary.”² I have to admit to being slightly mystified by an element of this self-criticism. It rather seems to me that the conceptual apparatus deployed in Phenomenology does a particularly good job of explaining the kinds of “mental disturbances” he is referencing in the working note. This is because the transcendental view allows for legitimately objective and mental elements and sees them as necessarily related. In the current context, though, it is probably the reference to “brute being” that is more problematic for my interpretation. The move to argue for the ontological primacy of brute being over consciousness is a hallmark of Merleau-Ponty’s late philosophy, and appears to entail Merleau-Ponty embracing the kind of pre-subject–object ontology that other interpreters want to find in his early works. In any event, the later works appear to break with the kind of emphasis on the subject that is a necessary component of the thesis of transcendental perspectivism. Consider another working note, from April 1960, that criticizes Husserl: The whole Husserlian analysis is blocked by the framework of acts which imposes upon it the philosophy of consciousness. It is necessary to take up again and develop the fungierende [operative] or latent intentionality which is the intentionality within being. That is not compatible with “phenomenology,” that is, with an ontology that obliges whatever is not nothing to present itself to the consciousness across Abschattungen [profiles] and as deriving from an originating donation which is an act, i.e. one Erlebnis [experience] among others.³ ¹ Merleau-Ponty, The Visible and the Invisible, 200. ² Ibid. ³ Ibid. 244. English translations of German terms added.

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Embodied transcendental idealism does require “whatever is not nothing to present itself to consciousness.” There is no way of grasping being other than as it is presented to our conscious perspective, and the reference to Abschattungen references the idea of perspectival horizons, which is a fundamental aspect of the view I have ascribed to Merleau-Ponty in this book. The only access to being we have is to being as we experience it. Merleau-Ponty goes on to say that “it is necessary to take as primary . . . the spatializing-temporalizing vortex (which is flesh and not consciousness facing a noema).”⁴ “Flesh” here refers not to the body but to the ontological principle of reversibility that Merleau-Ponty develops in his late philosophy, and thus refers to something, like brute being, that encompasses subject and object. The implication here is that what would be, for transcendental idealism, fundamental structural aspects of our conscious perspective become, for Merleau-Ponty’s late philosophy, aspects of being more broadly construed. It has to be noted that if the late ontology speaks against transcendental idealism’s conception of the primacy of consciousness, it perhaps does not do so decisively. It clearly still embraces some role for subjectivity, and does not do away with the analysis of consciousness whole cloth. The Visible and Invisible and its working notes do, for instance, contain hints and suggestions on how to conceive of consciousness if it is not primary.⁵ And Merleau-Ponty may also maintain some elements of his early view of subject primacy. Here I would point to the analyses of William Hamrick and Jan Van der Veken, who, in the midst of an interpretation of Merleau-Ponty that differs strongly from my own, note that his late work is ambiguous regarding the role of subjectivity. They point out that even in the late philosophy Merleau-Ponty makes various claims that suggest “there is no world, Being, or Nature for us to speak of except what we can experience.”⁶ Nevertheless, the later works mostly depart from the kind of consideration of conscious experience that comes to prominence in Structure and Phenomenology. One issue that hangs over this discussion, and which is indicated by Hamrick and Van der Veken’s claim that there is ambiguity in the later works’ views, is the fact that Merleau-Ponty’s later thought is notoriously difficult to interpret. This is primarily due to the fact that he tragically passed away, at the age of 53, in the midst of completing this work. Scholars thus have to elaborate a conception of his later views based on lecture notes, incomplete texts that were not ready for publication (The Visible and Invisible) and working notes which can be fairly obscure. This has led to some fairly robust debates in the literature over the continuity between the early and later works. ⁴ Ibid. ⁵ See e.g. ibid. 198, where Merleau-Ponty writes in an undated working note “the dilemma: how to rely on the consciousness? how to challenge the consciousness? to be surmounted by the idea of consciousness as Offenheit [openness] ———.” ⁶ Hamrick and Van der Veken, Nature and Logos, 64. They argue that ultimately Merleau-Ponty’s late work holds that there is meaning in nature apart from human beings. See pp. 116–18.

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I will abstain here from taking a stand on the question of the continuity of his work. One thing I can say with confidence, though, is that I strongly disagree with his claim, in the working notes, that the problems posed in Phenomenology are insoluble on its own terms. The best defense I can give for saying that MerleauPonty is, in that specific statement, wrong is found in Chapters 5–9 of this book. And insofar as he would take his criticism to apply to the Pre-Sorbonne Period as a whole, the whole of this book is my response. Insofar as the specific question concerns whether or not the Pre-Sorbonne works present a theory that can adequately deal with their own problems, the answer should be found within those works. I do not think one should read Merleau-Ponty’s later claims back into his early works; at best this would be unnecessary, as those early works say what they say independently of any later claims, and at worst it could lead to a distortion of the early works. There is one aspect of what those early works say that I will highlight, one last time, as a bit of extra defense against those who think that Merleau-Ponty’s earlier focus on consciousness was obviated by his later rejection of the philosophy of consciousness. A primary reason that I think the embodied transcendental idealist interpretation should be applied to the Pre-Sorbonne works is that it rests on a basis of truth that Merleau-Ponty himself notes in Phenomenology. This is what I call, in Chapter 7 §5, the permanent truth of embodied subjectivity. I believe that the thesis of transcendental perspectivism is rooted in a fundamental, ineliminable element of our experience. In this regard, I agree with Fichte’s claim that the basis of idealism is “something discovered” and that “to this extent, idealism establishes within immediate consciousness what it asserts.”⁷ I also agree with Fichte that this point is not likely to be convincing to the opponent of idealism, because philosophical views are partly rooted in a deep-seated standpoint that “is animated by the very soul of the person who adopts it.”⁸ I believe that there is a permanent truth of embodied subjectivity that leads to transcendental idealism; this is a statement of the standpoint I occupy.

3. Future Paths for Embodied Idealism To conclude this book, I would like to say a bit about the paths that the research begun in this book could take in the future. The most obvious path, perhaps, is the one suggested by the previous section. One could extend the kind of exegetical analysis applied to Merleau-Ponty’s Pre-Sorbonne Period in this book to the Sorbonne Period and the Collège de France Period. This would entail answering ⁷ The quotes are taken from the 1797–98 “[First] Introduction” to the “nova methodo” version of the Wissenschaftslehre. See Fichte, Introductions to the Wissenschaftslehre, 31. ⁸ Ibid. The discussion of standpoints is on p. 17, the quote is taken from p. 20.

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the questions raised in the previous section regarding the later work’s views on consciousness and subjectivity and on the continuity between the earlier and later periods. From the point of view of the analysis of idealism, one could raise the question of Merleau-Ponty’s relation to Schelling and Hegel in the Collège de France works (most obviously, the Nature lectures).⁹ It is possible that MerleauPonty’s thought moves through a progression that mirrors in certain ways the movement of German Idealism through the works of Kant, Fichte, Schelling, and Hegel.¹⁰ But the research begun in this book could take a very different direction as well, by applying the embodied transcendental idealism developed in the Pre-Sorbonne works to philosophical issues in a fashion that is uncoupled from direct scholarly engagement with Merleau-Ponty’s works. There are two most obvious ways in which this could be done. First, one could attempt to deepen and extend the analyses of Structure and Phenomenology by reconstructing Merleau-Ponty’s arguments in a different fashion. Second, one could apply the embodied transcendental idealist philosophy to pressing philosophical questions that are not directly or fully taken up in Structure and Phenomenology. There are two ways of taking on the first type of project just mentioned that I think would be profitable. First, one could extend the discussion of Chapter 8 by developing Merleau-Ponty’s views into a fully worked out methodology. This would necessarily entail a few things. Such a study would have to more fully explain how empirical/scientific research should mesh with transcendental/phenomenological reflection. It would also have to clarify the notion of eidetic analysis by elaborating on the role of imagination and how this fits with empirical generalization (and in connection with this one could take on the scholarly/ exegetical task of comparing and contrasting Husserl’s and Merleau-Ponty’s views on this matter). This study of the methodology of embodied transcendental idealism would also stand as a propaedeutic to the further analyses I am mentioning here. The second way that the analyses of Merleau-Ponty’s Pre-Sorbonne works could be elaborated on and extended would be to re-do, in a sense, the transcendental structural analysis found in Parts One and Two of Phenomenology. As I note in Chapter 6, while those parts of Phenomenology can be reasonably read as analyzing the structures of our embodied perspectives, they do not take on that task in a systematic fashion. One could take Merleau-Ponty’s analyses of concepts such as “world,” “body schema,” “intentional arc,” and “sedimentation” and develop them—alongside other possible structures—more systematically. ⁹ There is an extensive discussion dedicated to Schelling in Merleau-Ponty, Nature, 36–53. Hegel is also discussed at various points in the lectures. ¹⁰ Something like this point is suggested by Sebastian Gardner in “Merleau-Ponty’s Phenomenology in the Light of Kant’s Third Critique and Schelling’s Real-Idealismus,” Continental Philosophy Review 50:1 (2016), 5–25.

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This research could benefit from drawing on and incorporating the wealth of empirical studies in psychology and cognitive science that have been done since the writing of Phenomenology. To some extent, this kind of work has been done by the various researchers who have taken up Merleau-Ponty’s thought and applied it to topics in cognitive science. These studies have not been done systematically as a part of a study aimed at transcendental structural analysis, however.¹¹ Such a study will also be Merleau-Pontyian in spirit, given the kind of fallibilism in his views that I discuss in Chapter 8. I am sure that he would be happy to have his analyses of the structures of embodied experience extended, and perhaps challenged, on the basis of new empirical research and new phenomenological reflections. Finally, one could, as mentioned above, seek to apply embodied transcendental idealism to philosophical questions that are beyond the scope of the issues taken up in Structure and Phenomenology. Many such paths are possible here, but I will point out two clear possibilities. The first is perhaps the most obvious, given the links I am drawing in this text between Merleau-Ponty’s thought, Kantianism, and Post-Kantian German idealism. For Kantian and Post-Kantian idealism there is a clear connection drawn between theoretical and practical philosophy. This was the case for Merleau-Ponty as well, and he took up ethical and political concerns in many of his works not discussed in this book. The discussions of embodied action and intersubjective relations discussed in Structure and Phenomenology suggest certain paths for elaborating ethical or social/political theories. I would emphasize the direction suggested at the end of Chapter 9 §5—developing an ethics on the basis of the normative potential of the form of reciprocity inherent in our embodied relations with others—as a potentially fruitful path for research.¹² A second clear avenue for further research would be to apply embodied transcendental idealism to standard questions in epistemology. This path is suggested by Merleau-Ponty’s own prospectus of his work that was written as a part of his candidacy for the Collège de France. Among other things, he describes the analyses of Phenomenology as having suggested new views on truth and knowledge that needed to be elaborated further. And Phenomenology suggests a kind of epistemological position that moves between, or perhaps beyond, the standard opposition of internalism and externalism.¹³ This should be ripe for further exploration.

¹¹ Furthermore, my guess is that many of the researchers who have applied Merleau-Ponty’s thought to the cognitive sciences would reject transcendental idealism, at least in name. ¹² I should emphasize that this is hardly a novel claim; many Merleau-Ponty scholars have discussed the possibility of an ethics of reciprocity in his works. For one good recent example of such a study (which departs significantly from my transcendental idealist interpretation), see Anya Daly, MerleauPonty and the Ethics of Intersubjectivity, London: Palgrave Macmillan (2016). ¹³ See Berendzen, “Disjunctivism and Perceptual Knowledge in Merleau-Ponty and McDowell,” Res Philosophica 91:3 (2014), 261–86.

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And there are likely many other paths not mentioned here. My belief is that there is, in the embodied idealism presented in this book, a theory that could make significant contributions to future philosophical research. While I hope that this book contributes something to our shared understanding of Merleau-Ponty’s thought, my main hope is that embodied idealism can inspire such future research.

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Index For the benefit of digital users, indexed terms that span two pages (e.g., 52–53) may, on occasion, appear on only one of those pages. Allais, Lucy 7–9, 12, 25–7, 36, 93, 106, 108, 165, 170–1, 242–3, 246, 258–9 Al Saji, Alia 187, 241–2 anti-realism 14, 18–19, 22–3, 43, 54–6, 58–9, 90, 93, 133–4, 141–2, 233–4 anonymity foundationalist interpretations 179–80, 185 of habituated existence 177–8, 181–2 of historical background 178–80 of organic existence 167, 175–83 See also layers of perception; Phenomenology of Perception, species a priori Berkeleyan phenomenalism 7, 14–15, 24, 62–3 Brunschvicg, Léon critical idealism 6, 41, 43, 45–8, 50, 64–5, 134 critiques of 11–12, 44–5, 51–6 intellectualism 48–9, 79–80 positive references to 219–20, 255–6 spiritualism 49–50 See also anti-realism; Fichte, Johan Gottlieb cogito Cartesian 194 Descartes, René 15, 58, 195 Merleau-Ponty, Maurice 11–12, 85–6, 151, 192, 194–5, 211 pre-reflective 208 second-hand 197, 208 tacit 113, 149–52, 174, 191–2, 195, 197–8, 208 true 129 See also Phenomenology of Perception, “Cogito, The” (chapter) cultural objects 88, 218–19, 221–2, 252–3, 258. See also use objects and cultural objects Descartes, René 42, 57–9, 108, 125, 127, 195 Dillon, M. C. 191n.49, 198–9, 235, 238n.9 essential manifestness 243, 248–50, 258–9. See also Manifest Reality (Allais) Fichte, Johan Gottlieb 46, 48–9, 91n.71, 196n.66, 265

Fink, Eugen 28, 61–3, 125–6, 136–7 Foucault, Michel 114, 118, 120–1, 214, 223–4 Galileo, Galilei 220–2 Gardner, Sebastian 3, 36n.60, 80–1, 146–7, 149, 229–32, 234, 266n.10. See also Pollard, Christopher habit formation 181–4 Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich 6, 15, 33, 64, 82–4, 110–12, 110n.43, 218, 252, 256–9. See also Structure of Behavior, The (Merleau-Ponty) holism 67, 74–5, 84, 235, 238–41, 246, 248, 251 Husserl, Edmund eidetic analysis 215–21 notion of the absolute 29–30, 33–4, 36–7, 126–7, 177 perspectival horizons 107, 147–8, 215–16 phenomenology 28–9, 56–7, 60–1, 65, 125–6, 128, 137–8, 153, 158, 215–16 synthesis 140, 197 transcendental idealism 23, 28–33, 43–4, 60–3, 65, 107, 125–6, 128, 131, 136–7, 266 See also Fink, Eugen; Kant, Immanuel; use objects and cultural objects; Zahavi, Dan Hyppolite, Jean 110n.43, 111, 235–6, 254 illusions and hallucinations 29–30, 52, 107–8, 153–7. See also Phenomenology of Perception, moon illusion Inkpin, Andrew 136n.40, 159n.45, 211–17, 221, 226–7 intellectualism associations with idealism 45, 48, 50, 54–5, 63–5, 101, 125, 216, 231n.94 Brunschvicg, Léon 44–5, 48–9, 52, 54, 79–80 critiques of 52, 54–5, 93, 100, 130–1, 198, 206–7, 226–7 Kant, Immanuel 57, 59 positive aspects 60, 116–17, 169

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intellectualism (cont.) rejection of 38, 59–60, 63–4, 82, 84–5, 127, 229, 232–3 See also Husserl, Edmund; Kant, Immanuel; Phenomenology of Perception, foils of empiricism and intellectualism Kant, Immanuel and Husserl, Edmund 4, 6, 10, 21, 23, 28, 30–3, 38, 43–4, 63, 138, 161–2, 215 anthropocentric paradigm 26–7, 30–1 Critique of Pure Reason 23–5 dualism 256–9 empirical realism 57–8, 108, 113, 134–5 noumenalist interpretation 25–6, 36–7, 191 thing in itself doctrine 18–19, 25–6, 32–3, 36, 46–7, 50–1 transcendental idealism 7, 12, 19, 23–8, 36, 43–4, 57, 60, 65, 134–5, 170, 256 See also intellectualism; Manifest Reality (Allais) Landes, Donald 1–2, 74n.24, 182, 197n.69, 209, 233n.102 layers of perception anonymous 174–5, 178–9, 181, 185 biological 185 of living experience 141, 154, 254 primordial 167, 199–200 See also anonymity Merleau-Ponty, Maurice feminist critiques of 114, 114n.54, 224, 224n.74 “Human Sciences and Phenomenology” 217–20 Incarnate Subject, The 63–4 transcendental turn 10, 66, 72–3, 79–81, 96, 116, 146n.2 Morris, David 1–2, 76n.32, 100–1, 105–6, 105n.30, 111, 187n.39 perspectival boundedness 35–6, 180 Phenomenology of Perception (Merleau-Ponty) body schema 144–6, 163–6, 169, 173, 266–7 “Cogito, The” (chapter) 145, 149–50, 157, 207–8, 236n.4 crystal cube analogy 139–42, 148, 190–1 embodied consciousness 130–1, 149–50, 174, 199, 258–9, 261–2 “Experience of the Body and Classical Psychology, The” (chapter) 129–30, 148, 186 foils of empiricism and intellectualism 11–12, 42, 44–5, 144, 152–3, 202–3, 238–9 foundationalism 154, 157, 174–5, 177–8, 181, 185–6

“Freedom” (chapter) 125, 132–3, 135, 141, 145, 167, 185, 204, 226–7, 243–4 Fundierung 157–8, 174–5, 208, 231 idealism of synthesis 138–42, 151 moon illusion 153–7 motor intentions 112–13, 168n.75 objectivism 139, 144, 147–8, 154, 163–4, 171, 194, 201, 205n.10, 210, 219–20, 229–32, 237–9 objectivity 152n.24, 153, 155–7, 160, 173–5, 180, 194, 197, 208, 210, 229–31, 257–9 ontology (general discussion) 235–8 ontological holism 238–41, 248 “Others and the Human World” (chapter) 128, 200–1, 252–3, 256 passive synthesis 197 perspectival horizons 149, 151–2, 171–2, 187–90, 209, 247–9, 264 “Phenomenal Field, The” (chapter) 154, 158–62, 207, 229, 231n.93, 236n.4 pre-objectivity 144–5, 155–9, 174–5 radical reflection 106, 135–6, 140–1, 202, 206–7, 210–11, 217, 227–8, 231–2 reflection (general discussion) 202–7, 226 reflective analysis 131–8, 202–7, 226–7, 238–9 science (general discussion) 228–34 “Space” (chapter) 170, 179, 203–4 “Spatiality of One’s Own Body and Motricity, The” (chapter) 127–8, 130–1, 219–20 species a priori 167, 169, 176–7, 180, 222–3 synthesis 131, 133, 171–2, 188–9, 192, 258–9 synthetic unity 151, 179–80, 185–6, 191–2, 195–6, 248–9 “Temporality” (chapter) 134, 145, 150, 197–8, 207–8, 250–1 “Thing and the Natural World, The” (chapter) 147, 155–6, 171–2, 186–7, 252 transcendental field 159–61 transcendental reflection 144, 206–7, 210–12, 229–30 transition synthesis 140, 147–8, 171 unquestioned belief 152–3, 152n.22 Pollard, Christopher 2n.6, 14n.1, 155–6, 156n.38 psychology child 115–16, 118, 120, 217n.52, 230, 252–3 Gestalt 62, 66–8, 82–3, 101–2, 111–13, 230, 238 scientific 218–20, 229–30, 266–7 Structure of Behavior, The (Merleau-Ponty) anthropomorphism 10–11, 77–8, 81, 100–6, 101n.22, 105n.30 critical idealism 6, 10–11, 43–5, 47–8, 50, 58–61, 64–5 critique of Brunschvicg see Brunschvicg, Léon Hegel references in 84, 107–13

 indispensability claim 115–16 introspection 95–8 intuition 98, 102–3, 117–20 milieu 5–6, 69, 76, 82, 87–8, 109–10, 165–6 naïve consciousness 57–9, 107–8 organism centrality 66–7, 72–3, 76 organism-environment nexus 68–9, 74, 169 phenomenology 41–4, 56–7, 60–3, 90–1, 98–9, 108 signification 41–2, 52–3, 69n.11, 73–5, 77n.39, 83, 85–6, 91, 97–8, 100–1, 110 soap bubble metaphor 68, 76, 78–80, 83, 111 species a priori 70–3, 79–81, 85, 89, 114–15, 165–6, 213–14 spiritualism 45, 49–50 subject centrality 73, 98 syncretic behavior 77, 77n.36 three order categories (physical, vital, human) 73–6, 79–81, 89–90

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transcendental perspectivism and three order categories 80 embodied 74, 89, 139–40, 142, 164–5 Merleau-Ponty’s acceptance of 38, 56, 63–4, 91–2, 126–8, 174, 198–200, 255–6, 258 Merleau-Ponty’s divergence from 127, 129–30, 132–3, 166–7, 263 thesis 34–5, 45–6, 66–7, 94, 96, 100, 126–7, 136, 145–6, 149–50, 261, 265 See also perspectival boundedness; self-consciousness; synthetic unity transcendental structural analysis 33–4, 38, 66–7, 72–3, 89, 136–8, 145–6, 151–2, 160–1, 206–7, 258, 261, 266–7 use objects and cultural objects 62–3, 76–7, 82, 87–9, 106 Zahavi, Dan 28n.37, 29n.38, 31n.46, 32n.56, 138–9, 147–8, 158, 195n.61, 215–16