Abstract
In his last work, The Visible and the Invisible, Merleau-Ponty explored the fact that we believe that perception occurs in our heads (“in the recesses of a body”) and, hence, assert that the perceptual world is “in” us, while also believing that we are “in” the world we perceive. In this article, I examine how this intertwining of self and world justifies the faith we have in perception. I shall do so by considering a number of examples. In each case, the object “in itself” will turn out to be neither within us nor outside of us, but rather at the intersection set by the intertwining. I will then turn to what this disclosure of this object reveals about human temporality and, indeed, about human being as a place (or “clearing”) that permits disclosure.
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Notes
“Die Paradoxie der menschlichen Subjektivität: das Subjektsein für die Welt und zugleich Objektsein in der Welt” (Hua VI, p. 182).
“How can human subjectivity, which is a part of the world, constitute the whole world, i.e., constitute it as its intentional product …? The subjective part of the world swallows up, so to speak, the whole world including itself. What an absurdity!” (Hua VI, p. 183). All translations from the German are my own.
Merleau-Ponty (1968, pp. 4–5).
Ibid, p. 8.
Ibid, p. 9.
Ibid.
Ibid, p. 8.
Ibid, p. 103.
Ibid.
Merleau-Ponty (1962, p. 205).
Merleau-Ponty (1968, p. 134).
See Soffer (1999).
For the political implications of the position, see Mensch (2006, 75–82).
This, of course, assumes the equivalence of objective and universal validity. According to Kant, the first implies the second, “for when a judgment agrees with an object, all judgments concerning the same object must agree with each other.” The second implies the first, for otherwise “there would be no reason why other judgments would necessarily have to agree with mine, if it were not the unity of the object to which they all refer and with which they all agree, and for that reason must agree amongst themselves" (Kant 1955, p. 298). This means, as Eugen Fink writes, when we assume that others can experience the same objects, we implicitly define “… the objectivity of objects by the character—if one will—of intersubjectivity.” Their connection is such, he adds, “that one cannot establish between objectivity and intersubjectivity a relationship such that one or the other is prior; rather, objectivity and intersubjectivity are indeed co-original” (Fink 1966, p. 86).
Kant (1998, p. 291) and (Kritik d.r.V., B 238).
Ibid, p. 293 and Ibid, B 240.
In his words, “It belongs to perception that something appears within it, but interpretation [die Interpretation] makes up what we term appearance—be it correct or not, anticipatory or overdrawn. The house appears to me through no other way but that I interpret [interpretiere] in a certain fashion actually experienced contents of sensation. I hear a barrel organ—the sensed tones I take [deute] as barrel organ tones. Even so, I perceive via interpretation [interpretierend] what mentally appears in me, the penetrating joy, the heartfelt sorrow, etc. They are termed “appearances” or, better, appearing contents precisely for the reason that they are contents of perceptive interpretation [perzeptiver Interpretation]” (Husserl 1992, 4:762).
Ibid, 3:397.
This implies that those who have been born blind and who gain their sight in later life must go through this learning process if they are to perceive objects. The neurologist, Oliver Sacks, writes that these individuals face “great difficulties after surgery in the apprehension of space and distance—for months even years.” (Sacks1993, p. 63). Reporting on one particular individual, Virgil, he writes: “He would pick up details incessantly—an angle, an edge, a color, a movement—but would not be able to synthesize them, to form a complex perception at a glance. This was one reason the cat, visually, was so puzzling: he would see a paw, the nose, the tail, and ear, but could not see all of them together, see the cat as a whole” (ibid, p. 64). “Moving objects,” he goes onto observe, “presented a special problem, for their appearance changed constantly. Even his dog, he told me, looked so different at different times that he wondered if it was the same dog” (ibid., p. 66). Frequently unable to perform the syntheses which would give him individual objects, his sense of space would also go. In Sacks words, “surfaces or objects would seem to loom, to be on top of him, when they were still quite a distance away” (ibid., p. 63). A rewriten version of this account appears in Sacks (1996).
This account is taken from Hua XXXIII, pp. 20ff.
Merleau-Ponty (1968, p. 147).
W. V. O. Quine is a good example of this tendency. See Quine (1977).
Neither, of course, can I hear myself being overheard, smell myself being smelt, etc. Only touch is characterized by the phenomenon of double sensation.
Hua IV p. 148, n. 1.
Ibid, p. 150.
For a clinical account of this failure to recognize one’s body as one’s own, see Sacks (1996, pp. 55–65).
Describing their relation, Husserl writes: “the running off of the optical and the change of the kinesthetic [sensations] do not occur alongside each other, but rather proceed in the unity of an intentionality that goes from the optical datum to the kinesthetic and through the kinesthetic leads to the optical” (Husserl 2006, p. 229).
See Hua IV, pp. 150–151.
In Husserl’s words, “Obviously, the body is also to be seen just like any other thing, but it becomes a body (Leib) [that is mine] only by incorporating tactile sensations, pain sensations, etc.—in short, by the localization of the sensations as sensations” (ibid, p. 151–152).
Merleau-Ponty (1968, p. 139).
Ibid, p. 140. Thus, Merleau-Ponty writes: “We must not think the flesh starting from stances, from body and spirit—for then it would be the union of contradictories …” (Ibid., p. 147).
Ibid.
Ibid, p. 147.
The radical, yet scientifically verifiable nature of this claim is apparent when we apply it to the worlds of the very large and the very small. Thus, in quantum mechanics the electron “is” where it is observed to be when it is observed. Its position is not just uncertain before its measurement. It has no definite position. The most we can calculate is its probability of being detected at some position. It “exists” at a location as a probability density. Similarly, in relativity theory, we cannot speak of absolute time or spatial extent. The length and observed clock time of an object is nothing in itself. It only has a value in terms of the object’s speed relative to an observer. That the observer is intertwined with the observed points to the fact that the structure of disclosure is also that of being.
References
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Mensch, J. The temporality of Merleau-Ponty’s intertwining. Cont Philos Rev 42, 449–463 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11007-009-9128-7
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11007-009-9128-7