Abstract
Merleau-Ponty’s account of our inherence in nature, inspired by Husserl’s Ideen II, breaks with naturalism by taking seriously the problem of thinking nature from within. Whereas the naturalistic definition of nature fails to encompass we who are reflecting on it, Merleau-Ponty’s “lifeworldly naturalism” treats philosophical reflection as emergent from the nature on which it reflects, as an intensification or redoubling, an iterative fold, of nature’s own sense-making. In The Structure of Behavior, this iterative fold of nature is presented as the “structure of structures,” an all-encompassing gestalt by which human subjectivity escapes the interest-bound environments of other organisms. In Phenomenology of Perception, nature’s intensification takes the form of a “reflection on the unreflective,” a radical or second-order reflection that takes into account its relation, as reflection, with the situation that precedes and conditions it. And in his final working notes, Merleau-Ponty characterizes philosophy as a “chiasm of chiasms,” a doubled reversal by which the self-interrogation of Being, as the encroachment of the sensible and the intelligible, becomes explicit as a question. At stake in this series of recursive figures is the effort to think philosophy immanently. Yet insofar as philosophy is incapable of thematizing its own emergence, since it remains conditioned by a nature that escapes its reflective recuperation, its recursive twisting forms around a remainder that it cannot elucidate. This remainder, the immemorial silence of nature, is both the condition for philosophical reflection and the resistance that marks its limits.
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Notes
- 1.
For a detailed summary of Merleau-Ponty’s reading of Husserl throughout his career, see my “Merleau-Ponty’s Reading of Husserl: A Chronological Overview,” Merleau-Ponty’s Reading of Husserl, ed. Ted Toadvine and Lester Embree (Dordrecht: Kluwer, 2002), 227–86.
- 2.
Merleau-Ponty, “La philosophie et la politique sont solidaires,” Parcours deux 1951–1961 (Lagrasse: Verdier, 2000), 303 (my translation).
- 3.
Ideen I is cited in Merleau-Ponty’s 1935 review of Scheler’s Ressentiment (“Christianisme et ressentiment,” Parcours 1935–1951 [Lagrasse: Verdier, 1997], 18, 19; “Christianity and Ressentiment (1935),” trans. Gerald Wening, Texts and Dialogues, eds. Hugh Silverman and James Barry Jr. [Atlantic Highlands, NJ: Humanities Press, 1992], 90, 91), and themes from Ideen I are also discussed in Merleau-Ponty’s 1936 review of Sartre’s Imagination (“L’Imagination,” Parcours 1935–1951, 51–54; “On Sartre’s Imagination (1936),” trans. Michael B. Smith, Texts and Dialogues, 112–13).
- 4.
Merleau-Ponty, “La Nature de la perception,” Vers une nouvelle philosophie transcendentale, ed. Theodore Geraets (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1971), 190–91; “The Nature of Perception: Two Proposals (1933),” trans. Forrest Williams, Texts and Dialogues, 77.
- 5.
“La Nature de la perception,” 191; “The Nature of Perception,” 77, 78.
- 6.
For references to Ideen I, see La Structure du comportement (Paris: PUF, 1942), 155, 175, 186, 201, & 235; The Structure of Behavior, trans. Alden Fisher (Pittsburgh: Duquesne University Press, 1963), 143, 162, 172, 186, & 218. Other texts by Husserl cited here include Méditations cartésiennes, Formale und transzendentale Logik, and Vorlesungen zur Phänomenologie des inneren Zeitbewusztseins.
- 7.
See La Structure du comportement, 236; The Structure of Behavior, 220, 249n56.
- 8.
For a detailed account of Merleau-Ponty’s visit and the texts consulted, see H. L. Van Breda, “Maurice Merleau-Ponty et les Archives-Husserl à Louvain,” Revue de métaphysique et de morale 67/4 (1962): 410–30; “Merleau-Ponty and the Husserl Archives at Louvain,” trans. Stephen Michelman, Texts and Dialogues, 150–61. Merleau-Ponty mentions Ideen II as the primary reason for his visit in his first letter to the Archive, and emphasizes again his plans to concentrate on this text in his reply to Van Breda’s invitation (412, 413 [French]; 151, 152 [English]). During his visit, he consulted Ludwig Landgrebe’s 1925 typed transcription, which would later become the basis for the 1952 Husserliana volume.
- 9.
Merleau-Ponty’s remark is reported in the “Translators’ Introduction” to Husserl, Ideas II, trans. Richard Rojcewicz and André Schuwer (Dordrecht: Kluwer, 1989), xvi.
- 10.
For the explicit references to Ideen II, see Phénoménologie de la perception (Paris: Gallimard, 1945), 108, 465; Phenomenology of Perception, trans. Colin Smith (London: Routledge Classics, 2002),105, 472.
- 11.
Phénoménologie de la perception, 281n, 317n, 419n, 490; Phenomenology of Perception, 283n1, 320n46, 425n8, 498.
- 12.
Les Sciences de l’homme et la phénoménologie (Paris: Centre de Documentation Universitaire, 1975), 45; “Phenomenology and the Sciences of Man,” trans. John Wild, in The Primacy of Perception (Evanston: Northwestern, 1964), 73. Paul Ricoeur’s French translation of Ideas I appeared in 1950 and is cited in this course.
- 13.
La Nature, notes, cours du Collège de France (Paris: Seuil, 1995), 102–113; Nature: Course Notes from the Collège de France, trans. Robert Vallier (Evanston: Northwestern, 2003), 70–79. See also “Husserl et la notion de nature,” Parcours deux 1951–1961, 215–234; Xavier Tilliette, “Husserl’s Concept of Nature (Merleau-Ponty’s 1957–58 Lectures),”trans. Drew Leder, Texts and Dialogues, 162–168.
- 14.
“Le Philosophe et son ombre,” Signes (Paris: Gallimard, 1960), 210–11; “The Philosopher and his Shadow,” Signs, trans. Richard McCleary (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1964), 166–67.
- 15.
“Le Philosophe et son ombre,” 227; “The Philosopher and his Shadow,” 180.
- 16.
“Possibilité de la philosophie,” Résumés de cours, Collège de France 1952–1960 (Paris: Gallimard, 1968), 151–52; “Philosophy as Interrogation,” trans. John O’Neill, In Praise of Philosophy and Other Essays (Evanston: Northwestern, 1988), 175–76. Merleau-Ponty’s detailed notes from these lectures are published as “La Philosophie aujourd’hui, Cours de 1958–1959,” Notes de cours 1959–1961 (Paris: Gallimard, 1996).
- 17.
Edmund Husserl, Ideen II, Husserliana IV (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1952), 207; Ideas II, trans. R. Rojcewicz and Andre Schuwer (Dordrecht: Kluwer, 1989), 218.
- 18.
Lester Embree, “Naturalism,” The Encyclopedia of Phenomenology, eds. Lester Embree et al. (Dordrecht: Kluwer, 1997), 480.
- 19.
Husserl, “Philosophy as Rigorous Science,” Phenomenology and the Crisis of Philosophy, trans. Quentin Lauer (New York: Harper & Row, 1965), 79.
- 20.
Husserl, Ideen I, Husserliana III.1 (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1976), §55; Ideas I, trans. F. Kersten (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1982), §55; “Philosophy as a Rigorous Science,” 80–81.
- 21.
See Dermot Moran’s concise summary of Husserl’s criticisms of naturalism in Introduction to Phenomenology (London: Routledge, 2000), 142–46.
- 22.
“Philosophy as a Rigorous Science,” 79.
- 23.
See, for example, Ideen II/Ideas II, §62.
- 24.
Merleau-Ponty, Signes (Paris: Gallimard, 1960), 166; Signs, trans. Richard McCleary (Evanston: Northwestern, 1964), 210. Hereafter, cited textually as S, with French preceding English pagination.
- 25.
David Wood, “What is Eco-Phenomenology?” Eco-Phenomenology: Back to the Earth Itself, eds. Charles Brown and Ted Toadvine (Albany: SUNY Press, 2003), 231, 224.
- 26.
Merleau-Ponty, La structure du comportement (Paris: PUF, 1942), 3, 4, 224; The Structure of Behavior, trans. Alden Fisher (Pittsburgh: Duquesne, 1983), 1, 2, 241. Hereafter cited textually as SB with French preceding English pagination.
- 27.
Merleau-Ponty, Le visible et l’invisible (Paris: Gallimard, 1964), 239; The Visible and the Invisible, trans. Alphonso Lingis (Evanston: Northwestern, 1968), 185. Hereafter cited textually as VI with French preceding English pagination. As I hope the foregoing makes clear, I do not see Merleau-Ponty’s response to naturalism as fitting neatly into either the mundane or the transcendental approaches sketched by Embree, op. cit., 484.
- 28.
As when he writes that “what we call nature is already consciousness of nature, what we call life is already consciousness of life and what we call mental is still an object vis-à-vis consciousness” (SB 199/184).
- 29.
Renaud Barbaras, “Merleau-Ponty and Nature,” Research in Phenomenology 31 (2001): 37.
- 30.
I expand on Merleau-Ponty’s musical ontology of nature in “Musica Universalis and the Memory of Nature,” forthcoming in MonoKL.
- 31.
Merleau-Ponty, Phénoménologie de la perception (Paris: Gallimard, 1945), 75; Phenomenology of Perception, trans. Colin Smith (London: Routledge Classics, 2002), 72. Hereafter cited textually as PP with French preceding English pagination.
- 32.
I expand on the following description of Merleau-Ponty’s use of “chiasm” in “The Chiasm,” in Routledge Companion to Phenomenology, ed. Sebastian Luft and Søren Overgaard, 336–47 (London: Routledge, 2011).
- 33.
Renaud Barbaras, The Being of the Phenomenon, trans. Ted Toadvine and Leonard Lawlor (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2004), 307.
- 34.
Emmanuel de Saint Aubert cites several variants of this formulation from Merleau-Ponty’s unpublished notes in Le scénario cartésien (Paris: Vrin, 2005), 164.
- 35.
Jacob Rogozinski, “The Chiasm and the Remainder (How does Touching Touch Itself?),” Rethinking Facticity, eds. François Raffoul and Eric Sean Nelson (Albany: SUNY Press, 2008).
- 36.
I have developed this line of thinking more fully in “The Fundamental Paradox of a Phenomenology of Nature,” in Ontology of Nature: Continental Readings of Nature, ed. Gerard Kuperus and Marjolein Oele (Berlin: Springer, forthcoming). See also my “Ecophenomenology and the Resistance of Nature,” Advancing Phenomenology: Essays in Honor of Lester Embree, eds. Philip Blosser and Thomas Nenon, 343–55 (Dordrecht: Springer, 2010).
- 37.
This essential estrangement is not, however, without its own ethical implications, even though I do not attempt to unpack them here.
- 38.
As Merleau-Ponty suggests in some late writings, such as his remarks in the lectures on nature concerning reflection as the Selbstung of Being. See La Nature (Paris: Seuil, 1995), 335, 340; Nature, trans. Robert Vallier (Evanston: Northwestern, 2003), 268, 273.
- 39.
Cited in Merleau-Ponty, “Le doute de Cézanne,” Signes, 23; “Cézanne’s Doubt,” in The Merleau-Ponty Reader, ed. Ted Toadvine and Leonard Lawlor (Evanston: Northwestern, 2007), 77.
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Toadvine, T. (2013). Maurice Merleau-Ponty and Lifeworldly Naturalism. In: Embree, L., Nenon, T. (eds) Husserl’s Ideen. Contributions to Phenomenology, vol 66. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-5213-9_22
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