Maurice Merleau-Ponty was a
FrenchFrance , officially the French Republic , is a country located in Western Europe, with several overseas islands and territories located on other continents. Metropolitan France extends from the Mediterranean Sea to the English Channel and the North Sea, and from the Rhine to the Atlantic Ocean...
phenomenological philosopher, strongly influenced by
Edmund HusserlEdmund Gustav Albrecht Husserl was a philosopher who is deemed the founder of phenomenology...
and
Martin HeideggerMartin Heidegger was an influential German philosopher. His best known book, Being and Time, is considered to be one of the most important philosophical works of the 20th century...
in addition to being closely associated with
Jean-Paul SartreJean-Paul Charles Aymard Sartre was a French existentialist philosopher, playwright, novelist, screenwriter, political activist, biographer, and literary critic. He was one of the leading figures in 20th century French philosophy and Existentialism, and his work continues to influence further...
and
Simone de BeauvoirSimone de Beauvoir was a French writer, existentialist philosopher, feminist, and social theorist. She wrote novels, monographs on philosophy, politics, and social issues, essays, biographies, and an autobiography in several volumes...
. At the core of Merleau-Ponty's philosophy is a sustained argument for the foundational role that perception plays in understanding the world as well as engaging with the world. Like the other major phenomenologists Merleau-Ponty expressed his philosophical insights in writings on art, literature, and politics; however Merleau-Ponty was the only major phenomenologist of the first half of the Twentieth Century to engage extensively with the sciences, and especially with descriptive psychology. Because of this engagement, his writings have become influential with the recent project of naturalizing phenomenology in which phenomenologists utilize the results of psychology and cognitive science.
Life
Merleau-Ponty was born in Rochefort-sur-Mer, Charente-Maritime. His father died in 1913 when Merleau-Ponty was 3. After secondary schooling at the
lycée Louis-le-GrandThe Lycée Louis-le-Grand is a public secondary school located in Paris, widely regarded as one of the most demanding in France...
in
ParisParis is the capital of France and the country's most populous city. It is situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...
, Maurice Merleau-Ponty became a student at the
École Normale SupérieureThe École Normale Supérieure is a French grande école...
, where he studied alongside
SartreJean-Paul Charles Aymard Sartre was a French existentialist philosopher, playwright, novelist, screenwriter, political activist, biographer, and literary critic. He was one of the leading figures in 20th century French philosophy and Existentialism, and his work continues to influence further...
,
Simone de BeauvoirSimone de Beauvoir was a French writer, existentialist philosopher, feminist, and social theorist. She wrote novels, monographs on philosophy, politics, and social issues, essays, biographies, and an autobiography in several volumes...
and
Simone WeilSimone Weil , was a French philosopher, Christian mystic, and social activist.-Biography:...
. He passed the agrégation in philosophy in 1930.
Merleau-Ponty first taught at
ChartresChartres is a town and commune and capital of the Eure-et-Loir department in north-central France It is located southwest of Paris in central France.-Geography:...
, then became a tutor at the École Normale Supérieure, where he was awarded his doctorate on the basis of two important books:
La structure du comportement (1942) and
Phénoménologie de la Perception (1945).
After teaching at the University of
Lyon||-||}Lyon , often Anglicized as Lyons, is a city in east-central France in the region Rhône-Alpes, situated between Paris and Marseille. Its name is pronounced in French and Arpitan, and or in English...
from 1945 to 1948, Merleau-Ponty lectured on child psychology and education at the
SorbonneThe historic University of Paris was founded in the mid 12th century, likely between 1160 and 1170 , In 1970 it was reorganized as 13 autonomous universities...
from 1949 to 1952.
He was awarded the Chair of Philosophy at the
Collège de FranceThe Collège de France is a higher education and research establishment located in Paris, France, in the 5th arrondissement, or Latin Quarter, across the street from the historical campus of La Sorbonne at the intersection of Rue Saint-Jacques and Rue des Ecoles...
from 1952 until his death in 1961, making him the youngest person to have been elected to a Chair.
Besides his teaching, Merleau-Ponty was also political editor for
Les Temps ModernesLes Temps modernes is a political, literary and philosophical French magazine founded in 1945 by Jean-Paul Sartre, Simone de Beauvoir and Maurice Merleau-Ponty. It is published by the Editions Gallimard.Sartre was at first the chief editor...
from the founding of the journal in October 1945 until December 1952. Aged 53, he died suddenly of a
strokeA stroke is the rapidly developing loss of brain function due to disturbance in the blood supply to the brain. This can be due to ischemia caused by thrombosis or embolism or due to a hemorrhage...
in 1961, apparently while preparing for a class on
DescartesRené Descartes , , also known as Renatus Cartesius , was a French philosopher, mathematician, physicist, and writer who spent most of his adult life in the Dutch Republic...
. He was buried in Le Père Lachaise Cemetery in Paris.
Work
In his
Phenomenology of Perception (first published in
FrenchFrench is a Romance language globally spoken by about 65 million people as a first language , by 50 million as a second language, and by about another 200 million people as an acquired foreign language, with significant speakers in 57 countries. Most native speakers of the language live in France,...
in 1945), Merleau-Ponty developed the concept of the body-subject as an alternative to the
CartesianRené Descartes , , also known as Renatus Cartesius , was a French philosopher, mathematician, physicist, and writer who spent most of his adult life in the Dutch Republic...
"cogito." This distinction is especially important in that Merleau-Ponty perceives the essences of the world existentially.
ConsciousnessConsciousness is subjective experience or awareness or wakefulness or the executive control system of the mind. It is an umbrella term that may refer to a variety of mental phenomena...
, the world, and the human body as a
perceivingIn philosophy, psychology, and the cognitive sciences, perception is the process of attaining awareness or understanding of sensory information. It is a task far more complex than was imagined in the 1950s and 1960s, when it was predicted that building perceiving machines would take about a decade,...
thing are intricately intertwined and mutually "engaged." The
phenomenalA phenomenon is any observable occurrence. In popular usage, a phenomenon often refers to an extraordinary event. In scientific usage, a phenomenon is any event that is observable, however commonplace it might be, even if it requires the use of instrumentation to observe it...
thing is not the unchanging object of the natural sciences, but a correlate of our body and its sensorimotor functions. Taking up and "communing with" (Merleau-Ponty's phrase) the sensible qualities it encounters, the body as incarnated
subjectivitySubjectivity refers to a person's perspective or opinion, particular feelings, beliefs, and desires. It is often used casually to refer to unsubstantiated personal opinions, in contrast to knowledge and fact-based beliefs. In philosophy, the term is often contrasted with...
intentionally elaborates things within an ever-present world frame, through use of its preconscious, prepredicative understanding of the world's makeup. The elaboration, however, is "inexhaustible" (the hallmark of any perception according to Merleau-Ponty). Things are that upon which our body has a "grip" (
prise), while the grip itself is a function of our connaturality with the world's things. The world and the sense of self are emergent phenomena in an ongoing "becoming."
The essential partiality of our view of things, their being given only in a certain
perspectivePerspective may mean:Literally, in visual topics:* Perspective , the way in which objects appear to the eye.* Perspective , representing the effects of visual perspective in drawingsMetaphorically, in relation to cognitive topics:...
and at a certain moment in time does not diminish their reality, but on the contrary establishes it, as there is no other way for things to be copresent with us and with other things than through such "Abschattungen" (profiles, adumbrations). The thing transcends our view, but is manifest precisely by presenting itself to a range of possible views. The object of perception is immanently tied to its background—to the nexus of meaningful relations among objects within the world. Because the object is inextricably within the world of meaningful relations, each object reflects the other (much in the style of
Leibniz'sGottfried Wilhelm Leibniz was a German philosopher, polymath and mathematician who wrote primarily in Latin and French....
monads). Through involvement in the world – being-in-the-world – the perceiver tacitly experiences all the perspectives upon that object coming from all the surrounding things of its environment, as well as the potential perspectives that that object has upon the beings around it. Each object is a "mirror of all others." Our perception of the object through all perspectives is not that of a propositional, or clearly delineated, perception. Rather, it is an ambiguous perception founded upon the body's primordial involvement and understanding of the world and of the meanings that constitute the landscape's perceptual gestalt. Only after we have been integrated within the environment so as to perceive objects as such can we turn our attention toward particular objects within the landscape so as to define them more clearly. (This attention, however, does not operate by clarifying what is already seen, but by constructing a new Gestalt oriented toward a particular object.) Because our bodily involvement with things is always provisional and indeterminate, we encounter meaningful things in a unified though ever open-ended world.
Some critics have remarked that while Merleau-Ponty makes a great effort to break away from Cartesian
dualismDualism denotes a state of two parts. The word's origin is the Latin duo, "two" . The term 'dualism' was originally coined to denote co-eternal binary opposition, a meaning that is preserved in metaphysical and philosophical duality discourse but has been diluted in general or common usages.-Moral...
, in the end
Phenomenology of Perception still starts out from the opposition of
consciousnessConsciousness is subjective experience or awareness or wakefulness or the executive control system of the mind. It is an umbrella term that may refer to a variety of mental phenomena...
and its objects. Merleau-Ponty himself also acknowledged this and in his later work attempted to proceed from a standpoint of our existential unity with what he called the "flesh" (
chair) of the world.
The primacy of perception
From the time of writing
Structure of Behavior and
Phenomenology of Perception, Merleau-Ponty wanted to show, in opposition to the idea that drove the tradition beginning with
John LockeJohn Locke was an English physician and philosopher regarded as one of the most influential of Enlightenment thinkers. Considered the first of the British empiricists, he is equally important to social contract theory. His work had a great impact upon the development of epistemology and political...
, that perception was not the causal product of atomic
sensationsIn psychology, sensation and perception are stages of processing of the senses in human and animal systems, such as vision, audition and pain senses. These topics are considered part of psychology, and not anatomy or physiology, because processes in the brain so greatly affect the perception of a...
. This atomist-causal conception was being perpetuated in certain psychological currents of the time, particularly in behaviourism. According to Merleau-Ponty, perception has an active dimension, in that it is a primordial openness to the life world (to the 'Lebenswelt')
This primordial openness is at the heart of his thesis of the primacy of perception. The slogan of the phenomenology of
Edmund HusserlEdmund Gustav Albrecht Husserl was a philosopher who is deemed the founder of phenomenology...
is "all consciousness is consciousness of something", which implies a distinction between "acts of thought" (the
noesisNoesis is a word meaning "understanding as the ability to sense, or know something, immediately".-Etymology:...
) and "intentional objects of thought" (the
noemaNoema derives from the Greek word meaning thought or what is thought about. Edmund Husserl used noema as a technical term in Phenomenology to stand for the object or content of a thought, judgment or perception, but its precise meaning in his work has remained a matter of controversy.-Husserl's...
). Thus, the correlation between noesis and noema becomes the first step in the constitution of analyses of consciousness.
However, in studying the posthumous manuscripts of Husserl, who remained one of his major influences, Merleau-Ponty remarked that, in their evolution, Husserl's work brings to light phenomena which are not assimilable to noetic-noematic correlation. This is particularly the case when one attends to the phenomena of the body (which is at once body-subject and body-object), subjective time (the consciousness of time is neither an act of consciousness nor an object of thought) and the other (the first considerations of the other in Husserl led to
solipsismSolipsism is the philosophical idea that one's own mind is all that exists. Solipsism is an epistemological or ontological position that knowledge of anything outside the mind is unjustified. The external world and other minds cannot be known and might not exist...
).
The distinction between "acts of thought" (noesis) and "intentional objects of thought" (noema) does not seem, therefore, to constitute an irreducible ground. It appears rather at a higher level of analysis. Thus, Merleau-Ponty does not postulate that "all consciousness is consciousness of something", which supposes at the outset a noetic-noematic ground. Instead, he develops the thesis according to which "all consciousness is perceptual consciousness". In doing so, he establishes a significant turn in the development of phenomenology, indicating that its conceptualisations should be re-examined in the light of the primacy of perception, in weighing up the philosophical consequences of this thesis.
Corporeity
Taking the study of perception as his point of departure, Merleau-Ponty was led to recognize that one's own body (
le corps propre) is not only a thing, a potential object of study for science, but is also a permanent condition of experience, a constituent of the perceptual openness to the world. He therefore underlines the fact that there is an inherence of consciousness and of the body of which the analysis of perception should take account. The primacy of perception signifies a primacy of experience, so to speak, insofar as perception becomes an active and constitutive dimension.
Merleau-Ponty demonstrates a corporeity of consciousness as much as an intentionality of the body, and so stands in contrast with the dualist
ontologyOntology is the philosophical study of the nature of being, existence or reality in general, as well as of the basic categories of being and their relations...
of mind and body in René Descartes, a philosopher to whom Merleau-Ponty continually returned, despite the important differences that separate them. In the
Phenomenology of Perception Merleau-Ponty wrote: “Insofar as I have hands, feet; a body, I sustain around me intentions which are not dependent on my decisions and which affect my surroundings in a way that I do not choose” (1962, p. 440).
The question concerning corporeity connects also with Merleau-Ponty's reflections on
spaceSpace is the boundless, three-dimensional extent in which objects and events occur and have relative position and direction. Physical space is often conceived in three linear dimensions, although modern physicists usually consider it, with time, to be part of the boundless four-dimensional...
(
l'espace) and the primacy of the dimension of depth (
la profondeur) as implied in the notion of
being in the world (
être au monde; to echo Heidegger's
In-der-Welt-sein) and of one's own body (
le corps propre).
Language
The highlighting of the fact that corporeity intrinsically has a dimension of expressivity which proves to be fundamental to the constitution of the
egoego are the initials of an abstract poet named ernesto garcia orduna ...Ego is a Latin word meaning "I", cognate with the Greek "Εγώ " meaning "I" and may refer to:...
is one of the conclusions of
The Structure of Behavior that is constantly reiterated in Merleau-Ponty's later works. Following this theme of expressivity, he goes on to examine how an incarnate subject is in a position to undertake actions that transcend the organic level of the body, such as in intellectual operations and the products of one's cultural life.
He carefully considers
languageA language is a system for encoding and decoding information. In its most common use, the term refers to so-called "natural languages" — the forms of communication considered peculiar to humankind. In linguistics the term is extended to refer to the human cognitive facility of creating and using...
, then, as the core of
cultureCulture is a term that has different meanings. For example, in 1952, Alfred Kroeber and Clyde Kluckhohn compiled a list of 164 definitions of "culture" in Culture: A Critical Review of Concepts and Definitions...
, by examining in particular the connections between the unfolding of thought and sense - enriching his perspective not only by an analysis of the acquisition of language and the expressivity of the body, but also by taking into account pathologies of language, painting, cinema, literature, poetry and song.
One can see a certain preoccupation with language, beginning with the reflection on artistic expression in
The Structure of Behavior - which contains a passage on
El GrecoEl Greco was a painter, sculptor, and architect of the Spanish Renaissance. "El Greco" was a nickname, a reference to his Greek origin, and the artist normally signed his paintings with his full birth name in Greek letters, Δομήνικος Θεοτοκόπουλος .El Greco was born in Crete, which was at that...
(p. 203ff) that prefigures the remarks that he develops in "Cézanne's Doubt" (1945), which itself follows the discussion in
Phenomenology of Perception. To this extent, the work undertaken while he occupied the Chair of Child Psychology and Pedagogy at the University of the Sorbonne is not an interlude in his philosophical and phenomenological preoccupations, representing, rather, a not insignificant moment in the overall development of his thought.
As the course outlines of his Sorbonne lectures indicate, during this period he continues a dialogue between phenomenology and the diverse work carried out in
psychologyPsychology is an academic and applied discipline involving the systematic, and sometimes scientific, study of human or animal mental functions and behavior...
, all in order to return to the study of the
acquisition of languageLanguage acquisition is the study of the processes through which humans acquire language. By itself, language acquisition refers to first language acquisition, which studies infants' acquisition of their native language, whereas second language acquisition deals with acquisition of additional...
in children, as well as to broadly take advantage of the contribution of
Ferdinand de SaussureFerdinand de Saussure was a Swiss linguist whose ideas laid a foundation for many significant developments in linguistics in the 20th century...
to
linguisticsLinguistics is the scientific study of natural language. Linguistics encompasses a number of sub-fields. An important topical division is between the study of language structure and the study of meaning...
, and to work on the notion of structure through a discussion of work in psychology, linguistics and
social anthropologySocial anthropology is the branch of anthropology that studies how currently living human beings behave in social groups. Practitioners of social anthropology investigate, often through long-term, intensive field studies , the social organization of a particular people: customs, economic and...
.
Art
It is important to clarify, and indeed emphasize, that the attention Merleau-Ponty pays to diverse forms of
artArt is the process or product of deliberately arranging elements in a way that appeals to the senses or emotions. It encompasses a diverse range of human activities, creations, and modes of expression, including music, literature, film, sculpture, and paintings...
(visual, plastic, literary, poetic, etc) should not be attributed to a concern with beauty
per se. Nor is his work an attempt to elaborate normative criteria for "art." Thus, one does not find in his work a theoretical attempt to discern what constitutes a major work or a work of art, or even handicraft.
Still, it is useful to note that, while he does not establish any normative criteria for art as such, there is nonetheless in his work a prevalent distinction between primary and secondary modes of
expressionExpression may refer to:* A statement or sentence * Idiom* Facial expression* Artificial discharge of breast milk; see breastfeeding* Expression...
. This distinction appears in
Phenomenology of Perception (p 207, 2nd note {Fr. ed.}) and is sometimes repeated in terms of spoken and speaking language (le langage parlé et le langage parlant) (
The Prose of the World, p. 10). Spoken language (le langage parlé), or secondary expression, returns to our linguistic baggage, to the cultural heritage that we have acquired, as well as the brute mass of relationships between
signsIn semiotics, a sign is "something that stands for something, to someone in some capacity" It may be understood as a discrete unit of meaning, and includes words, images, gestures, scents, tastes, textures, sounds – essentially all of the ways in which information can be communicated as...
and
significationsIn semiotics, the meaning of a sign is its place in a sign relation, in other words, the set of roles that it occupies within a given sign relation. This statement holds whether sign is taken to mean a sign type or a sign token...
. Speaking language (le langage parlant), or primary expression, such as it is, is language in the production of a sense, language at the advent of a thought, at the moment where it makes itself an advent of sense.
It is speaking language, that is to say, primary expression, that interests Merleau-Ponty and which keeps his attention through his treatment of the nature of production and the reception of expressions, a subject which also overlaps with an analysis of action, of intentionality, of perception, as well as the links between freedom and external conditions.
The notion of style occupies an important place in "Indirect Language and the Voices of Silence". In spite of certain similarities with
André MalrauxAndré Malraux DSO was a French author, adventurer and statesman.-Biography:Malraux was born in Paris during 1901, the son of Fernand-Georges Malraux , and Berthe Lamy . His parents separated during 1905 and eventually divorced. He was raised by his mother and maternal grandmother, Berthe and...
, Merleau-Ponty distinguishes himself from Malraux in respect to three conceptions of style, the last of which is employed in Malraux's
The Voices of Silence. Merleau-Ponty remarks that in this work "style" is sometimes used by Malraux in a highly subjective sense, understood as a projection of the artist's individuality. Sometimes it is used, on the contrary, in a very
metaphysicalMetaphysics investigates principles of reality transcending those of any particular science. Cosmology and ontology are traditional branches of metaphysics. It is concerned with explaining the fundamental nature of being and the world...
sense (in Merleau-Ponty's opinion, a
mysticalMysticism is the pursuit of communion with, identity with, or conscious awareness of an ultimate reality, divinity, spiritual truth, or God through direct experience, intuition, instinct or insight. Mysticism usually centers on a practice or practices intended to nurture those experiences or...
sense), in which style is connected with a conception of an "über-artist" expressing "the Spirit of Painting". Finally, it sometimes is reduced to simply designating a categorization of an artistic school or movement.
For Merleau-Ponty, it is these uses of the notion of style that lead Malraux to postulate a cleavage between the objectivity of Italian Renaissance painting and the subjectivity of painting in his own time, a conclusion that Merleau-Ponty disputes. According to Merleau-Ponty, it is important to consider the heart of this problematic, by recognizing that style is first of all a demand owed to the primacy of perception, which also implies taking into consideration the dimensions of
historicityHistoricity may mean:*the quality of being part of recorded history, as opposed to prehistory*the quality of being part of history as opposed to being ahistorical myth or legend** Historicity of the Iliad**Historicity *** Historicity of Jesus...
and
intersubjectivityIntersubjectivity is something which is shared by two or more subjects.-Definition:Intersubjectivity is "The sharing of subjective states by two or more individuals." The term is used in three ways:...
.
Science
In his essay "Cézanne's Doubt", in which he identifies
Cézanne'sPaul Cézanne was a French artist and Post-Impressionist painter whose work laid the foundations of the transition from the 19th century conception of artistic endeavour to a new and radically different world of art in the 20th century...
impressionistic theory of painting as analogous to his own concept of radical reflection, the attempt to return to, and reflect on, prereflective consciousness, Merleau-Ponty identifies science as the opposite of art. In Merleau-Ponty's account, while art is an attempt to capture an individual's perception, science is anti-individualistic. In the preface to his
Phenomenology of PerceptionThe Phenomenology of Perception was the magnum opus of French phenomenological philosopher Maurice Merleau-Ponty.Following explicitly from the work of Edmund Husserl, Merleau-Ponty's project is to reveal the phenomenological structure of perception...
, Merleau-Ponty presents a phenomenological objection to
positivismPositivism is a philosophy that holds that the only authentic knowledge is that which is based on actual sense experience. Metaphysical speculation is avoided...
: that it can tell us nothing about human subjectivity. All that a scientific text can explain is the particular individual experience of that scientist, which cannot be transcended. For Merleau-Ponty, science neglects the depth and profundity of the phenomena that it endeavors to explain.
Merleau-Ponty understood science to be an
ex post facto abstraction. Causal and physiological accounts of perception, for example, explain perception in terms that are only arrived at after abstracting from the phenomenon itself. Merleau-Ponty chastized science for taking itself to be the area in which a complete account of nature may be given. The subjective depth of phenomena cannot be given in science as it is. Thus characterizes Merleau-Ponty's attempt to ground science in phenomenological objectivity and, in essence, institute a "return to the phenomena".
Anticognitivist cognitive science
Despite Merleau-Ponty's own critical position with respect to science - he describes scientific points of view as "always both naive and at the same time dishonest" in his Preface to the
Phenomenology - his work has become a touchstone for the "anti-cognitivist" strands of cognitive science, largely through the influence of
Hubert DreyfusHubert Lederer Dreyfus , is a professor of philosophy at the University of California, Berkeley. His main interests include phenomenology, existentialism and the philosophy of both psychology and literature, as well as the philosophical implications of artificial intelligence. His younger brother, Dr...
.
Dreyfus's seminal critique of cognitivism (or the computational account of the mind),
What Computers Can't Do, consciously replays Merleau-Ponty's critique of intellectualist psychology to argue for the irreducibility of corporeal know-how to discrete, syntactic processes. Through the influence of Dreyfus's critique, and neurophysiological alternative, Merleau-Ponty became associated with neurophysiological, connectionist accounts of cognition.
With the publication in 1991 of
The Embodied Mind by
Francisco VarelaFrancisco Javier Varela García , was a Chilean biologist, philosopher and neuroscientist who, together with his teacher Humberto Maturana, is best known for introducing the concept of autopoiesis to biology.-Biography:...
, Evan Thompson, and
Eleanor RoschEleanor Rosch is a professor of psychology at the University of California, Berkeley, specializing in cognitive psychology and primarily known for her work on categorization, in particular her prototype theory, which has profoundly influenced the field of cognitive psychology...
, this association was extended, if only partially, to another strand of "anti-cognitivist" or post-representationalist cognitive science: embodied or enactive cognitive science, and later in the decade, to
neurophenomenologyNeurophenomenology refers to a scientific research program aimed to address the hard problem of consciousness in a pragmatic way. It combines neuroscience with phenomenology in order to study experience, mind, and consciousness with an emphasis on the embodied condition of the human mind.The label...
.
It was through this relationship with Merleau-Ponty's work that cognitive science's affair with phenomenology was born, which is represented by a growing number of works, including
Andy ClarkAndy Clark is a Professor of Philosophy and Chair in Logic and Metaphysics at the University of Edinburgh in Scotland. Before this he was director of the Cognitive Science Program at Indiana University in Bloomington. Previously, he taught at Washington University at St. Louis and the University...
's
Being There (1997), the collection
Naturalizing Phenomenology edited by Petitot et al. (1999), Alva Noë's
Action in Perception (2004),
Shaun GallagherShaun Gallagher is an American philosopher. He is the Professor of Philosophy and Cognitive Sciences, and Senior Research Faculty at the Institute of Simulation and Training at the University of Central Florida, and Research Professor of Philosophy and Cognitive Science at the University of...
's
How the Body Shapes the Mind (2005), and the journal
Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences.
Feminist philosophy
Merleau-Ponty has also been picked up by Australian and Nordic philosophers inspired by the French feminist tradition, including Rosalyn Diprose and Sara Heinämaa.
Rosalyn Diprose's recent work takes advantage of Merleau-Ponty conception of an intercorporeity, or indistinction of perspectives, to critique individualistic identity politics from a feminist perspective and to ground the irreducibility of generosity as a virtue, where generosity has a dual sense of giving and being given.
Sara Heinämaa has argued for a rereading of Merleau-Ponty's influence on
Simone de BeauvoirSimone de Beauvoir was a French writer, existentialist philosopher, feminist, and social theorist. She wrote novels, monographs on philosophy, politics, and social issues, essays, biographies, and an autobiography in several volumes...
. (She has also challenged Hubert Dreyfus's reading of Merleau-Ponty as behaviorist, and as neglecting the importance of the phenomenological reduction to Merleau-Ponty's thought.)
Merleau-Ponty's phenomenology of the body has also been taken up by Iris Young in her renowned essay "Throwing Like a Girl," and its follow-up, "'Throwing Like a Girl': Twenty Years Later." Young analyzes the particular modalities of feminine bodily comportment as they differ from that of men. Young observes that while a man who throws a ball puts his whole body into the motion, a woman throwing a ball generally restricts her own movements as she makes them, and that, generally, in sports, women move in a more tentative, reactive way. Merleau-Ponty argues that we experience the world in terms of the "I can" – that is, oriented towards certain projects based on our capacity and habituality. Young's thesis is that in women, this intentionality is inhibited and ambivalent, rather than confident, experienced as an "I cannot."
Ecophenomenology
EcophenomenologyEcophenomenology or ecological phenomenology calls for originative thinking and an openness to the "laying bare [of] ... essential elements of human experience with the world". It calls "to enter, ever more deeply, into the sensorial present", and to "recover the moral sense of our humanity" by...
can be described as the pursuit of the relationalities of worldly engagement, both human and those of other creatures (Brown & Toadvine 2003).
This engagement is situated in a kind of middle ground of relationality, a space that is neither purely objective, since it is reciprocally constituted by a diversity of lived experiences motivating the movements of countless organisms, nor purely subjective, since it is nonetheless a field of material relationships between bodies. It is governed exclusively neither by causality, nor by intentionality. In this space of in-betweenness phenomenology can overcome its inaugural opposition to naturalism.
David AbramDavid Abram is an American philosopher, cultural ecologist, and performance artist, best known for his work bridging the philosophical tradition of phenomenology with environmental and ecological issues...
explains Merleau-Ponty's concept of "flesh" (
chair) as "the mysterious tissue or matrix that underlies and gives rise to both the perceiver and the perceived as interdependent aspects of its spontaneous activity," and he identifies this elemental matrix with the interdependent web of earthly life. This concept unites subject and object dialectically as determinations within a more primordial reality, which Merleau-Ponty calls "the flesh," and which Abram refers to variously as "the animate earth," "the breathing biosphere," or "the more-than-human natural world." Yet this is not nature or the biosphere conceived as a complex set of objects and objective processes, but rather "the biosphere as it is experienced and
lived from within by the intelligent body — by the attentive human animal who is entirely a part of the world that he, or she, experiences. Merleau-Ponty himself refers to "that primordial being which is not yet the subject-being nor the object-being and which in every respect baffles reflection. From this primordial being to us, there is no derivation, nor any break..." Among the many working notes found on his desk at the time of his death, and published with the half-complete manuscript of
The Visible and the Invisible, several make evident that Merleau-Ponty himself recognized a deep affinity between his notion of a primordial "flesh" and a radically transformed understanding of "nature." Hence in November 1960 he writes: "Do a psychoanalysis of Nature: it is the flesh, the mother." And in the last published working note, written in March 1961, he writes: "Nature as the other side of humanity (as flesh, nowise as 'matter')."
External links
- English Translations of Merleau-Ponty's Work: "http://think.hyperjeff.net/Merleau-Ponty/english.html".
- Maurice Merleau-Ponty at 18: "http://www.culture.gouv.fr/culture/actualites/celebrations2005/images/109.jpg" from French
France , officially the French Republic , is a country located in Western Europe, with several overseas islands and territories located on other continents. Metropolitan France extends from the Mediterranean Sea to the English Channel and the North Sea, and from the Rhine to the Atlantic Ocean...
Gov't.
- Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy
The Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy is a free online encyclopedia on philosophical topics and philosophers founded by James Fieser in 1995. The current general editors are James Fieser and Bradley Dowden. The staff also includes numerous area editors as well as volunteers...
: "Maurice Merleau-Ponty" by Jack Reynolds.
- Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy is a freely-accessible online encyclopedia of philosophy maintained by Stanford University. Each entry is written and maintained by an expert in the field, including professors from over 65 academic institutions worldwide...
: "Maurice Merleau-Ponty" by Bernard Flynn.
- The Merleau-Ponty Circle- Association of scholars interested in the works of Merleau-Ponty.
- 100 Years Merleau-Ponty. European home page.
- Maurice Merleau-Ponty page at Mythos & Logos.
- Chiasmi International- Trilingual Studies Concerning the Thought of Maurice Merleau-Ponty
- O’Loughlin, Marjorie, 1995, "Intelligent Bodies and Ecological Subjectivities: Merleau-Ponty’s Corrective to Postmodernism’s “Subjects” of Education."
- Popen, Shari, 1995, "Merleau-Ponty Confronts Postmodernism: A Reply to O’Loughlin."
- A bibliography of Eco-Phenomenology.
- Merleau-Ponty: Reckoning with the Possibility of an 'Other.'
- The Journal of French Philosophy - the online home of the Bulletin de la Société Américaine de Philosophie de Langue Française