BEATA STAWARSKA ANONYMITY AND SOCIALITY The Convergence of psychological and philosophical Currents in Merleau-Ponty's ontological Theory of Intersubjectivit y "Every significant proposition of empirical psychology anticipates a phenomenological truth" . Maurice Merleau-Ponty , Phenomenology and the Sciences of Man In the prospectus for his later work pronounced in 1952, Merleau-Pont y announced that his move beyond the phenomenological to the ontologica l level of analysis is motivated by issues of sociality, notably communication with others.' I propose to interrogate this priority attributed by the author to this interpersonal bond in his reflections on corporeality in general, marking a departure from The Structure of Behavior and The Phenomenology of Perception, which privileged the starting point of consciousness and the bod y proper. My interest lies particularly in exposing the psychological sources o f Merleau-Ponty's thinking about the primacy of sociality . Referring to hi s lectures on Child Psychology and Pedagogy, which he delivered as Professor at the Sorbonne in Paris in 1949-52, 2 I will develop the contention that th e developmental psychology of child sociality significantly informed hi s understanding of relations between self and other laid out in the later texts , and henceforth informed also his conception of the flesh . Specifically, the psychological hypotheses about the anonymous and fusional form initially taken by human sociality appears to play a determining role in his conceptio n of interpersonal life formulated on the ontological plane . 3 I will then proceed to point to the internal tensions involved in the theory of sociality based on the thesis of anonymity and disclose an alternative theoretical account, whic h has the merit of preserving the advantages of the anonymity thesis whil e avoiding its drawbacks; it also facilitates continued dialogue between Merleau-Ponty's philosophy and recent developmental psychology . My point of departure is situated in Merleau-Ponty's essay on "Th e Philosopher and His Shadow."4 The principal task taken up by the autho r there is to deepen Husserl's analyses of constitution from Ideen II by means of radicalizing the principle of incarnation . If mind is not absolute but incarnate (or if the philosopher's, mind, however luminous, projects a dar k shadow), then the principal terms on which Husserl's analysis hangs : the solus ipse, the "solipsist" thing, the intersubjective thing, and other persons, need t o 295 be regarded as interdependent and the primacy of the solus ipse and its "solipsist" thing over the other person and the intersubjective thing ar e challenged. The implications of this challenge for the problematic of th e relations between self and other which occupies us in this essay are far reaching; they can be made clear by following the way in which MerleauPonty revises the solus ipse hypothesis to eradicate the subjective bia s pervasive in phenomenological analysis and the correlated primacy of the ego over the alter ego . The solus ipse hypothesis is declared an abstraction and a paradox which reveals its own impossibility . It constructs a being (ipse) in a state of total isolation or solitude (solus) . Clearly, it is in principle possible to conceive of a situation in which one is the sole survivor of a disaster which wipes off al l other living beings off the Earth and so a de facto solitary self. Still, this factual situation, its dramatically disastrous effect notwithstanding, does no t remove the de jure social dimension of this and any other self's life . A "phantom of the other person" continues to hover around the sole survivor, o r at least the conceptual possibility "of an environment in which others coul d be" is not removed . 5 Hence bracketing the social world does not suffice t o produce an asocial self, or the self remains entangled in the social web even though it can be solitary, and the experience of solitude remains intelligibl e only within the larger context of a life shared with others . The starting poin t of analysis must therefore be a social self, and isolating the subject out of thi s intersubjective network is an artificial and possibly a dangerous move .' If, despite this necessarily constructed and paradoxical nature of the solus ipse hypothesis, Husserl nonetheless employs it as a starting point for his analysi s of perception, it is, Merleau-Ponty argues, "intended more to reveal than t o break the links of the intentional web ." The solus ipse is a means of testin g "the primordial bonds" holding the social web together (PS, p . 175; 221), an ad absurdum argument designed to demonstrate the validity of an opposit e claim to the one it overtly entertains . If this is the case, it may come as a surprise that, rather than further pursue the notion of the inherently social self which the solus ipse hypothesis , disavowed in Merleau-Ponty's citation of Husserl as a pure "thought experiment,"7 reveals per contradictio and to interrogate the experiential qualities of the life shared with others, of which the sole survivor scenario i s only an unhappy limit case, Merleau-Ponty prefers to further interrogate the theme of solitude contained in the solipsist hypothesis and search for its "tru e and transcendental" meaning (PS, p . 174; 219). The theme of solitude thus retains its primacy in Merleau-Ponty's exposition, only its exact meanin g requires revision . We may wonder whether, having been rescued from th e paradox inherent in the philosophical inquiry conducted from the perspectiv e of a solitary self, we do not now risk falling into another paradoxical situatio n of interrogating social life by starting with the theme of "true and transcendental solitude ." Leaving this question open for the time being , consider how Merleau-Ponty redefines solitude to attain its veritable character . True, transcendental solitude takes place only if the other person is not eve n conceivable, and this requires that there be no self to claim solitude either . We are truly alone only on the condition that we do not know we are ; it is this ver y ignorance which is our solitude. (PS, 174; 2191220) . This passage makes clear that the solos ipse hypothesis in its traditional understanding does not capture the true meaning of solitude because i t continues to theorize other people as absent and so as possibly present . Sheer absence of others experienced by an isolated self does not amount to their radical exclusion; the latter must co-involve the exclusion of self proper o r involve an exclusion of individuated selfhood in general, both mine and another's . There is true solitude only if there is nobody to know it or only agnostic solitude, unaware of itself or not attached to a self, counts as veritable . The intelligibility of true solitude must then be located on th e impersonal level, prior or distinct from the advent of consciousness . In the essay under discussion, Merleau-Ponty qualifies this impersonal level, where "there is neither individuation nor distinction," as "anonymous life" fro m which discrete bodily selves will emerge (PS, 174 ; 220) . It is well known that this impersonal level is theorized in Merleau-Ponty's ontology under th e heading of the flesh of the world. It is the flesh and its transcendental solitude then that provides the starting point of Merleau-Ponty's ontology, i n contradistinction to the solitary transcendental ego of Husserl' s phenomenology . Merleau-Ponty admits having found direct inspiration for hi s understanding of transcendental solitude in Piaget's theory of infantil e sociality. To be sure, Merleau-Ponty was a decided critique of the intellectualist and logicist interpretative strategies pervasive in the theoretica l framework of Piaget's work, based upon the idea that evolving human experience depends on applying theoretical procedures of different orders o f complexity. Piaget's developmental psychology belongs to the "classica l academic philosophy," which subsumes all facets of human experience unde r the heading of cognition ; in contrast, Merleau-Ponty's professed objective was to return "to activity that is prior to cognition properly so called," and includes corporeal and social aspects of child's experience . 8 Never denying the central place of Piaget's developmental research in contemporary child psychology, Merleau-Ponty nonetheless critiques his thinking within th e lectures series on "The Psycho-sociology of the Child" for its decentered , non-situated, totalizing approach (CPP, 257) . Albeit admitting that the origins of intelligence suppose a shift from the shifting or "mobile equilibrium" of perspective in perception to "permanent equilibrium" in abstract thought, ' Merleau-Ponty objects, however, that Piaget speaks as if intelligence could b e fully absolved from its bond to centered perceptual experience and functio n in an autonomous and quasi-divine way (CPP, 275) . A similar critique of Piaget is reiterated in Merleau-Ponty's working notes in The Visible and the Invisible, 10 where he observes that the logicism of Piaget's psychology is 297 "incompatible with an ethnological experience," and that Piaget's absolutis t approach need to be relativized and rendered compatible with other regions o f knowledge (VI, 204; 258) . And yet it is to Piaget's notion of "egocentrism" (despite its misleading name, which falsely suggests a focus on an egologica l subject) that Merleau-Ponty returns in a note of April 1960, where he strives to restore the meaning of sensible life irreducible to acts of consciousness, it s temporality irreducible to the consciousness of the present and the past (VI, 243/244; 296-198) . In this note, Merleau-Ponty distances himself clearly fro m a phenomenology understood as an "ontology that obliges whatever is no t nothing to present itself to the consciousness across Abschattungen and as deriving from an originating donation which is an act, i . e ., one Erlebnis among others," and invokes Piaget's child psychology in his quest fo r restoring "life without Erlebnisse, without interiority" a life undistorted b y the subjective bias of Husserl's idealist philosophy. A similar, this time not personally acknowledged, debt to Piaget's chil d psychology occurs in the discussion of veritable solitude from "Th e Philosopher and His Shadow" . Having unveiled the layer of anonymous life , distinct from individuated selfhood, Merleau-Ponty uses Piaget's notion o f the child's egocentrism to explain how the indistinction between the other' s and my own body, which typifies this anonymous level, is to be understood . He cites the phenomena of infantile "transitivism" and the confusion betwee n self and other, which are typical of egocentrism, as a hallmark of the "solipsist layer" redefined along the lines of "true and transcendental solitude ."" It i s thereforein direct reference to phenomena studied and interpreted withi n developmental psychology that Merleau-Ponty pursues his project o f supplementing the "bad ontology" of subjective idealism with the "good ontology" of impersonal or anonymous flesh . Merleau-Ponty lectured extensively on Piaget's work at the Sorbonne, and the notion of the child's initial egocentrism is not only addressed at som e length within the course series on "The Structure and Conflicts of Infantil e Consciousness," but also revisited in the remaining lectures . In the series on "The Structure and Conflicts of Infantile Consciousness," following Piaget' s discussion of perception in infancy from La representation du monde che z 1'enfant, 1' Merleau-Ponty notes that child's thoughts and feelings have an egocentric quality. Merleau-Ponty hastens to prevent any misunderstanding o f "egocentrism:" egocentrism in no way suggests that the infant is a selfcentered being, nor even that the infant is self-conscious . The infant does no t withdraw from the external world into the interior sphere of subjective state s and the theory of egocentrism does not contain a subjective bias . Contrary to the egological perspective from phenomenology, psychological egocentris m proposes a theory of perception according to which the infant's perceptua l experience is characterized by "excessive realism," insofar as the infant doe s not initially identify the personal quality of its perceptions and, unable to distinguish between its own view and the world in general (or the world fo r others), equates its own percipi with the esse of world (CPP, 184) . This theory 298 of perception, Merleau-Ponty stresses, does not point to an excessively self centered consciousness in infancy but testifies rather to an initial lack o f (consciousness of) individuated self . Seen from another angle, the infantile `proto-self, ' unaware of it(self) as a self, dissipates into anonymity . Announced within the discussion of chil d perception, egocentrism thus has far reaching consequences for the problematic of sociality . If the infantile experience is not attached to a self o r if the infant is not aware of the limits of its own perspective and does no t distinguish it from an alien one, then the infant cannot make any sense of a non-self or another self either. Hence the initial lack of separation or, to us e Piaget's own term, adualism between self and other in infantile sociality . 1 3 This idea of social fusion is reiterated by other child psychologists that Merleau-Ponty lectured on, including Guillaume and Wallon . In Wallon's work it bears the name of syncretism or syncretic sociality, defined as "th e indistinction between me and the other, a confusion at the core of a situatio n that is common to us both" (CRO, 120 ; 180). A concrete example of thi s confusion is the aforementioned phenomenon of "transitivism," which i s typically exemplified by cases of "emotional contagion," such that distres s crying of one infant may spread out to all others in neonate nursery, regardles s of their emotional state prior to the event . The dominant interpretation of thi s transitivist phenomena, accepted by Merleau-Ponty, was to postulate an initia l blending of self and other, 14 a spatial syncretism such that "a presence of the same psychic being in several spatial points, a presence of me in the other an d the other in me" is possible (CRO, 149 ; 220) . The reader of earlier comments on Merleau-Ponty's analysis of "true and transcendental solitude" will have no difficulties tracing the threads of Piaget' s egocentrism (and Wallon's syncretism) theory in the former's analysis o f anonymous life and appreciating the influence of the idea of initial fusion fo r Merleau-Ponty's own thinking . Piaget provides the conceptual tools for passing from solipsism understood as a subjective or personalized view-point on the world (Husserl) to the radical solitude which is not attached to a sel f insofar as it does not (yet) center experience on individuated selfhood. Such radical solitude typifies, as will be recalled, the "solipsist layer" revised by Merleau-Ponty . Rather than following the passage, in the manner of Husserl , from a solus ipse to the other, from a "solipsist" to an intersubjective thing , Piaget provides the means of undercutting these distinctions by disclosing a stage which knows neither self nor other, neither a "solipsist" nor an intersubjective thing, and so need not pass from the subjective to the share d world, but is situated at a more primordial level which seems to capture life itself, without "without Erlebnisse, without interiority ." It will remain to be seen whether this primacy is to be understood in a temporal or structural sense . In any case, it should not come as a surprise that Merleau-Ponty openly praise s Piaget's "egocentric" theory in his Sorbonne lectures . Against the critics who mistakenly identified this theory with crude subjectivism, he retorts that th e claim of initial egocentrism is both refined and correct . 1 5 299 It remains to provide the "positive content" of this claim by demonstrating , against the intellectualist grain of Piaget's thinking, that egocentrism shoul d not be conceived of exclusively as a cognitive operation . This is accomplished by rooting egocentrism in the interrelated orders of affectivity an d imagination (CPP, 224-235) . Drawing, amongst others, on the work of hi s contemporary Sartre, Merleau-Ponty focuses on the magical quality of th e emotions elucidated by the former in The Sketch for a Theory of the Emotions . 16 The theory developed there is that emotions are teleological, an d their principal aim is to solve a problem that refuses to he dealt with in rea l terms on the imaginary level . For example, in a fit of anger one may break th e object that one fails to utilize for practical purposes, and in this manne r annihilate rather than confront the problem . The structural character of this emotional "solution" to the real problem, which leaves the factual state o f affairs unaffected but transposes the self to the imaginary realm wher e mundane problems do not exist, can be discovered also in the relations t o others, notably the potential of the human face to affect one directly , regardless of the physical distance (CPP, 228) . This "magical" quality of human relations expressed in Alai n 's motto that L'homme est un sorrier pour 1'homme, exemplifies in affective terms Piaget's idea of initial indistinctio n between self and other such that one may be affected by others directly . Furthermore, it points to the impossibility of clearly demarcating perceptio n from imagination, insofar as the perceptual experience of the face exhibits the magical potential which Sartre attributes to imaginary experience alone . 17 The impossibility to oppose perception and imagination has as a corollary a blurring between the body proper and the body of the other, for in face perception I am affected "from the inside " by what to all evidence is situated outside the borders of my own body. This double blurring is, Merleau-Ponty contends, explicable along the lines of Piaget 's initial indistinction between self and other . Having indicated how, according to Merleau-Ponty, egocentrism could b e fleshed out by means of phenomenological studies, the issue of the primac y of this egocentric or anonymous level needs to be addressed . Are we to understand that anonymous life is a developmental stage preceding as well as facilitating more advanced forms of social behavior? Framed within the orde r of psychogenesis, this question can be responded to in the affirmative . Commenting on the insurmountable difficulties encountered by th e phenomenological account which theorizes perception of others in terms o f the "problem of the alter ego," stipulating that first person access t o consciousness is original and the experience of others derived or secondary , Merleau-Ponty proposes that developmental psychology resolves or bypasses this problem . For, "the perception of others is made comprehensible if one supposes that psychogenesis begins in a state where the child is unaware o f himself and the other as different beings" (CRO, 119 ; 179) . Since experienc e is not individuated at first, it may circulate freely and lay claim to the field s which will only subsequently be circumscribed as `self' and `other .' Th e 300 proto-self can therefore live in proto-others just as well as in it(self) during th e phase of egocentrism . ' $ This living in the other, feeling at home in their bodie s as much as in one's own, which Merleau-Ponty, following Max Scheler, term s pre-communication, prefigures and enables later forms of communicatio n properly so called, wherein a clear distinction between the communicatin g parties occurs (Ibid.) . These later forms of sociality, which, unlike their predecessors, deserve to bear the name of inter-subjectivity, thus both break with the initial fusion by singling out distinct selves from the level o f anonymity and yet partially preserve the immediate sense of the other , inherited from the time when it was possible to live in more than one body at once. These remnants of living in the other, maintained throughout mor e advanced forms of sociality, dethrone the privilege of a subjective view poin t in a permanent fashion and so resolve the `problem' of knowing selves othe r than one's own, not only in childhood but also throughout the adult life . Returning to the ontological standpoint of Merleau-Ponty's thinking, a s formulated in "The Philosopher and His Shadow", a similar idea of development from impersonal to personalized life forms appears . Merleau Ponty characterizes anonymous life as "original ecstasy" of which the other' s and my body are born together (PS, 174 ; 220) . He speaks of "emergence" from solitude to intersubjective life (Ibid .), hinting at a temporal proces s which shifts from a solitary to a social level . Yet he hastens to add that "what "precedes" intersubjective life cannot be numerically distinguished from it" (Ibid.) or that the more evolved forms of sociality remain just as firmly roote d in the dynamic of the flesh. The passage from pre-subjective to intersubjective has a continuous corporeal core : it is a passage from corporealit y in general to corporeality which distinguishes between discrete bodies or to inter-corporeality. What Merleau-Ponty says of the body as physical thin g becoming animate in the experience of my right hand touching the left on e and, in "an extraordinary event," the touched hand starting to touch the righ t one back and so to say, being born to sensibility, can be said also of the impersonal life becoming inter-subjectivity : "it remains what it was (the even t does not enrich it)" (PS, 166 ; 210) . There is nothing added on from outside t o corporeality, it is an intra-corporeal development which seems to both awaken the body proper as sensible and social . The question remains, however, wha t precisely is this "event" which produces the shift from anonymous t o personalized perspective? Is sensible reversibility alone conducive to th e distinction between discrete bodies, wherein I simultaneously discover th e limits of the body proper and of other bodies? Answered in the positive, thi s implies that reversibility is inter-corporeal from the start and there i s sufficient textual evidence for interpreting the interrelation between the active and passive facets of the senses both as an intra-bodily and as an inter-bodil y event . 19 However, if that means to say that the distinction between bodies i s primary rather than gradually attained, and corporeality equals inter corporeality, then the layers of radical anonymity and its "true an d transcendental solitude" need to be excluded from the ontology of the fles h 301 and the starting point provided rather by "transcendental intersubjectivity," t o which categories of individuation and selfhood apply from the start . Such a deliberately inter-subjective angle on Merleau-Ponty's philosophy o f embodiment might provide a more productive strategy of interpreting hi s insights, which brings to fruition the convictions formulated by the author i n the later stages of his tragically interrupted project . Before elaborating on this point in more detail, we still need to address the question of what "extraordinary event" could mark the passage fro m impersonal to personalized life . Returning to Merleau-Ponty's account o f psychogenesis (CRO, 119 ; 179), the event which facilitates the distinctio n between the body proper and other's body is a visual discovery of the finite contours of the body proper by means of its specular reflection, whic h subsequently reveals that the body of the other is circumscribed or limited i n a similar way : The progress of the child's experience results in his seeing that his body is, afte r all, closed on itself. In particular, the visual image he acquires of is own bod y (especially from the mirror) reveals to him a hitherto unsuspected isolation of tw o subjects who are facing each other. The objectification of his own body discloses to the child his difference, his "insularity," and correlatively that of others . The event which disentangles the child from the initial egocentrism o r anonymity is henceforth the realization, facilitated by the instrument of th e mirror, that the body has a fixed identity similar to that of a mundane thing , that it is a figure distinct from its environment . Merleau-Ponty, according to the neurological reports prevalent at his time, worked with the idea that du e to myelinization of nerve fibers being a later development (said to occur between the 3rd and 6th month of life), the infant has no bodily equilibriu m or no postural schema in the first months of its life and hence no sense of its own body as a organized totality prior to the visual discovery of the bodil y image in the mirror reflection (situated around the 6th month) . The neurological prematurity of the infantile body making it impossible to develop a minimal sense of distinct selfhood via proprioception at age zero , the infant's notion of self is primarily visual and acquired in a developmental stage of discovery and identification with the specular representation of it s own body. The fixed body image supposedly helps to organize the infant' s initially chaotic and dispersed sensibility, by circumscribing it from th e outside by means of a fixed and static bodily form . One may wonder why the infant should not be able to correlate the visual information about fixed bodily forms and its fluid experience at an earlier date . This is explained by MerleauPonty's claim, indebted to the work of Wallon, that the body "begins by bein g interoceptive." 2° Hence, "at the beginning of life there emerges an entir e phase in which extroceptivitiy (i . e . vision, hearing, and all other perceptions relating to the external world), even it begins to operate, cannot do so i n collaboration with introceptivity ." (CRO, 121 ; 183) Based on the scientific reports available at his time, Merleau-Ponty was therefore obliged to postpone the discovery of selfhood to a developmentally later stage, during which th e coordination between the information provided by the visual senses and th e inner bodily awareness can be combined . This explains also why the relations to others or inter-subjectivity properl y so called needs to be postponed to a later stage of social development . The infant needs to discover that its body has a confined perceptual form which i s not only visually available to its own inspection in the mirror but also appears to others in the very locus in which the child feels its body proprioceptively . Eliciting a sense of the self proper, the discovery of the body image facilitate s therefore also the relations to other spectators who can see the child as i t figures in the mirror but without the need of taking the detour of a specula r reflection. Furthermore, since "the perception of one's own body is ahead o f the recognition of the other" (CRO, 121 ; 182) and can be "transferred to another" (CRO, 118; 177), it facilitates the discovery of others as discret e finite bodies, "in the image" of the infant's body proper discovered in th e mirror. Others no longer merge with the infant's own experience and can b e grasped as distinct selves. We realize then that the "event" which facilitate s the passage from the originary stage of egocentric or fused sociality to inter subjective relations consists in the double even though not simultaneou s objectification of the body : mine and another's . 2 ' No such clear passage from the stage of indistinction to that o f differentiation between selves is evident or even possible in Merleau-Ponty' s ontological system ; as previously indicated, the two layers are co-extensive o r the former cannot be numerically distinguished from the latter. This can be understood to mean that the flesh is ambiguous, non-identical with itself, an d as such contains already all the building blocks of a theory of intersubjective relations . However, if it is true, as I have argued in this essay, that th e egocentrism of Piaget significantly informed Merleau-Ponty's understandin g of anonymous life and so of the ontology of the flesh, then it is less obviou s that intersubjectivity can be fruitfully theorized by starting with purporte d anonymity. Let me show in detail what exactly the problems involved in suc h an approach (partially acknowledged by Merleau-Ponty himself) are and conclude this essay with a plea for a philosophy of transcendental intersubjectivity which builds on Merleau-Ponty's own insights while remaining critically aware of the internal tensions between impersonal and personalized life in his own thinking . Recall that the idea that initial indistinction between selves resolves th e traditional problem of knowing others by disclosing a common ground wher e proto-others are known with the same intimacy as the proto-self, and that thi s intimacy is not simply abandoned but partially preserved in more differentiated and complex forms of social relations . The knowledge of others would is based on a partial reminiscence of the time when they were not othe r at all, with the body proper remembering how it once extended into undifferentiated corporeality . The sensu stricte philosophical question arises , 303 however, how this commonality is to be understood. The principle clue for understanding it is the "excessively realist" quality of child experience, whic h purports to extend to reality at large, including the life of `others,' even thoug h the distinction between `self' and `other' is not operative . However, the purported range of the experience, even if unlimited, does not alone predict or assure that there is an opening left for the other within it, or that th e relational character of the social experience germinates already within the primary "realist" state . Phrased differently, it is not the extent (the entire world) but also the relational dynamic of the experience that needs be interrogated and accounted for in any theory that claims to accommodate th e experience of others . Theorized in terms of its experiential range alone , indistinction can be understood as a dilation of a subjective and solipsis t viewpoint, radical to the extent that it annuls and liquefies itself, just a s exteriority in Piaget's egocentrism becomes meaningless if the infant is turne d exclusively to the outside . Within this theoretical framework, the passage from the egocentric to intersubjective stage can only be thought of as a gradual trimming of the excessively realist pretensions by confining them to som e regions of being at the exclusion of others . This passage would however lead only from a dilated to a contracted self, leaving the entire problem of socia l relations unaffected or having to produce them ex nihilo . Such trimming would not introduce the category of otherness into the infant's compact world . It seems therefore that the theory of indistinction does not alone predict o r facilitate the possibility of experiencing selves whose bodies and sensibilitie s are discontinuous with one's own (however closely knit self and other migh t be), and so cannot provide a precursor of relations to others . It remains to see what the implications of these difficulties for Merleau Ponty's ontology may be . Let me first point to the difficulties the author encounters already in his lectures on child psychology to give a coherent theory of egocentrism as a social relation . Within the lectures series on "Th e Child's Relations with Others," commenting on Susan Isaacs' studies of child's social development, Merleau-Ponty argues that the child is in a relation to its parents from the age zero (CPP, 377-379) .22 These include at first the parental figure in infantile fantasies, and are progressivel y transformed into more developed forms of sociality. The relations to the parents provide an infrastructure for relations to other people in general . This analysis leads Merleau-Ponty to conclude, logically, that the relations wit h others exist from the phase of egocentrism onward, rather than being a late r development, and to critically address Piaget's understanding of egocentrism . Merleau-Ponty critiques Piaget's thesis of the late onset of social instincts , which supposedly arise around the 7th or 8th year of age, for an ex nihilo creation of relations with others, with no antecedents or prehistory in child' s earlier egocentric life . The charge is definitely a fair one, but, in light of our precedent discussion, we need to consider the case that the accuser may b e liable to it as well . Some commentators noted already that Merleau-Ponty' s presentation of psychogenesis, which resolves the problem of the alter ego via 304 the thesis of original indistinction between self and other, faces the challenge of how the relations to other could ever be derived from the initial stage o f fusion . 23 I argued, in reference to Piaget's egocentrism, that the thesis o f indistinction alone cannot serve as a forerunner of relations to others . The question is whether Merleau-Ponty's idea of anonymity withou t individuation, contained in the notion of the "true and transcendental solitude," which revises and radicalizes Husserl's thesis of the solus ipse, such that "the other person is not even conceivable" and that "there is no self t o claim the solitude either" (PS, 174 ; 2191220, quoted above), does not encounter an analogous difficulty. How to account for the factual experienc e of others if we assume the primacy of the transcendental level where the othe r is theorized as absent? Does not factual experience of others produce an effec t which is not fully predictable on this level? Why is radical solitude th e privileged path into the realm of intersubjectivity? Is this idea not ultimatel y an abstraction, a product of the thought alone, which bypasses the factua l meaning of solitude as a lived experience? Maybe we can read Merleau Ponty's thesis of the "true and transcendental solitude" as such a thought experiment, in analogy to the way in which he read Husserl's notion of th e solus ipse . True and transcendental solitude would then be a paradox whic h reveals its own impossibility, an ad absurdum argument designed to test an d demonstrate the validity of an opposite claim to the one it overtly entertains . It would then be a theoretical deviation on the road towards the theory o f transcendental intersubjectivity, which Merleau-Ponty defended in th e lectures on "The Sciences of Man and Phenomenology," reading it int o Husserl's later work. 24 Interpreted in this way, the thesis of "true and transcendental solitude" is a source of a positive insight which makes evident , per negatio, that self and the other are intertwined and co-dependent in suc h a way that the former cannot lay any claim to precedence or primacy over th e latter. This strategy preserves the merits of the anonymity thesis whil e avoiding its drawbacks : it abandons the subjectivist bias which regards self consciousness as primary and foundational and the experience of the other as secondary and derived, but does not encounter the insurmountable difficultie s of how self and other arise . It regards the separation between selves a s consistent with proximity, gained in the very interaction with the other rathe r than in a precedent fusional state . It avoids also a related difficulty, to b e examined next. As previously noted, Merleau-Ponty theorizes reversibility of the flesh a s a uniform principle, which takes the same form whether it is played out withi n the limits of the body proper or between my and other's bodies . I have argued elsewhere that despite its aspiration to govern the inter and infra-corporea l relations at once, sensible reversibility as theorized by Merleau-Ponty is derived from the dynamics of the body proper and subsequently extende d onto inter-corporeality .25 In other words, Merleau-Ponty's ontology of the flesh does not conclusively depart from the subjectivist standpoint of hi s 305 earlier phenomenology, insofar as it expands what is proper to the embodied self onto generalized corporeality. Let me revisit and further substantiate thi s argument by completing the discussion of the thesis of anonymous life . Specifically, the question is whether the thesis of anonymity does not result from a similar move that can be witnessed in Piaget's egocentrism, namely a dilation of the self to the point where its sheer magnitude appears to matc h that of the world in its entirety. One could then regard the solipsist layer revised by Merleau-Ponty along the lines of "true and transcendenta l solitude" to some extent as a product of a similar dilation of the solitary subject (or solus ipse), which is radical to the extent that it annuls the selfhood yet has its source in the subjective standpoint nevertheless . Tie theory of transcendental intersubjectivity has the merit of wiping out these possibl e remnants of the subjective bias from Merleau-Ponty's project, which can b e traced in the anonymity thesis . It needs to be added that Merleau-Ponty was unaware of this problem and raised the question whether the anonymous stag e is not de facto a subjective one . He acknowledges that "pre-personal life itsel f is still one of my views of the world . The child who asks his mother to consol e him for the pains she is suffering is turned toward himself just the same ." (PS, 174; 220) . This acknowledgment challenges the previously discussed understanding of transitivism as an experience which freely circulates between the fields o f proto-self and proto-other. Incidentally, it is also more in line with th e psychological research that succeeded Merleau-Ponty's own project, an d which provides a growing body of evidence that a minimal distinctio n between self and other exists from age zero . For example, new interpretation s of the fact that distress crying spreads amongst neonates have been mad e possible by experimental work using audio technology . Martin and Clark (1982) conducted an experiment where calm and crying babies heard a tap e recording of themselves or another baby crying . Babies who were initiall y calm cried more if they heard tape recording of another baby cry than if the y heard themselves cry, while babies who were crying initially cried less if the y heard themselves rather than another baby cry. These findings provid e evidence for discrimination between one's own and another's vocalization i n the first hours of human life (average age of babies in this experiment was o f less than 30 hours), and so challenge the previously held interpretation o f distress crying as indicative of fusion between self and other . 26 There is als o evidence from Meltzoff et al . that neonate imitation of facial gestures, whic h has been observed in neonates as young as 10 minutes of age, relies on a distinction between self and other present from birth on . Infants who imitat e tongue protrusion for example, do not produce a matching gesture in a n automatic-life fashion but via close observation of the other an d experimentation with their own body, gradually arrive at the closest possibl e copy of the gesture perceived on the face of the other and the gesture takin g shape on their own unseen face . This suggests that infants rely on proprioceptive feedback from their own face in the process of mimicry and 306 t that they distinguish between their own facial movements and those perceive d on the other's face . 27 The findings from distress crying and imitation behaviors, to name onl y these two, put into question the validity of the psychological theory o f fusional sociality . More importantly still, if it is true, as I have argue d throughout this essay, that this theory significantly informed Merleau-Ponty' s own thinking, notably his anonymity thesis, then some revision of MerleauPonty's views may be called for in light of the recent reports fro m experimental psychology. That means specifically, as I have pointed ou t already, locating the foundations of transcendental philosophy i n intersubjectivity rather than anonymity. One of the tasks involved in thi s process of revision would be to find out whether inter-corporeality should b e understood as an extension of intra-corporeal reversibility, or whether anothe r understanding is called for. It should be then clear that the plea being pu t forward in this essay is not to reject but rather to preserve the enormou s potential of Merleau-Ponty's philosophy of embodiment . This is possible, I believe, by combining philosophical reflection with insights drawn from up to-date empirical research, in the spirit of the author's own deliberate crossing of the borders between phenomenology and psychology. It seems that despite the internal tensions between fusional and intersubjective accounts o f embodied sociality discussed in this essay, Merleau-Ponty's statement that "in today's psychology we have one system with two terms (my behavior and th e other's behavior) which functions as a whole," (CRO, 118 ; 178), a system "me-and-other" (CRO, 146; 216), squares exactly with the psychology of our day, and provides an open invitation for continued dialogue across the disciplines . Beata Stawarska stawarsk@darkwing.uoregon.edu NOTES 1 "An Unpublished Text by Maurice Merleau-Ponty : A Prospectus of His Work." Th e Primacy of Perception and Other Essays on Phenomenological Psychology, th e Philosophy of Art, History and Politics, ed . James M . Edie, Evanston : Northwestern University Press, 1964, p . 3 . Hereafter PrP. Un Inedit de Maurice Merleau-Ponty, " Revue de metaphisique et de morale, no .4, 1962, 401-409, p . 401 . 2 Psychologie et pedagogie de l'enfant . Cours de Sorbonne 1949-52, Verdier, 2001 . Hereafter CPP. 3 This is in agreement with the observations by James Phillips, who finds that the priority of intersubjectivity over perception in Merleau-Ponty's ontology would "gran t a singular importance to the studies carried out in the Sorbonne lectures." Phillips ' interest lies specifically in how the psychoanalytic themes anticipate the Merleau Ponty 's later work . ("From the Unseen to the Invisible. Merleau-Ponty's Sorbonne Lectures as Preparation for His Later Thought ." Merleau-Ponty, Interiority an d Exteriority, Psychic Life and the World, ed . Dorothea Olkowski and James Morley , 307 SUNY Press, 1999, p . 79) . 4 Hereafter PS . Signs, Evanston : Northwestern University Press, 1964 . Singes , Gallimard : 1960 . 5 The specific example Merleau-Ponty borrowed from Husseri is of a mass murder i n which "the human subject which I am would be alone spared ." Having comatented on this example, Merleau-Ponty concludes that "To say that the ego "prior to " the other person is alone is already to situate it in relation to a phantom of the other person, o r at least to conceive of an environment in which others could be . " (PS, 174; 219) . 6 Merleau-Ponty notes that Husserl sometimes falls victim to this danger of cutting th e solus ipse off from others and from nature, e . g . when he "imagines that first mind, then Nature is annihilated, and wonders what the consequences are for the mind and Nature." (PS, 173174 ; 219 ) 7 Gedankenexperiment (PS, 173 ; 219) . 8 "Child's Relations with Others ." PrP, p . 99 . Les Relations avec autrui chez l ' enfant" Originally published by Centre de Documentation Universitaire, 1951-62, reprinted i n Parcours, 1935-1951, Verdier, 1997 (p . 181) . Hereafter CRO . 9 In abstract thought there is not shift of perspective unlike in perception, where th e mobile perceiver continuously readjusts her perceptual field (CPP, 258) . 10 The Visible and the Invisible, trans . Alphonse Lingis, Northwestern University Press, 1968 . Le Visible et !'invisible . Paris : Gallimard, 1964 . Hereafter VI . 11 "The corporeality to which the primordial thing belongs is more corporeality i n general ; as the child's egocentricity (1'egocentrisme de l'enfant), the "solipsist layer" is both transitivity and confusion of self and other . " (PS, 174; 220) . While in "The Philosopher and His Shadow," Piaget's 1'egocentrisme is translated as "egocentricity" (Ibid .), in The Visible and the Invisible it figures as "egocentrism" (p . 243 ; 296) . For the sake of consistency, I use "egocentrism" throughout this essay . 12 Presses Universitaires de France, 1972 . 13 Adualism is discussed in Jean Piaget and Barbel Inhelder, The Psychology of the Child , New York : Basis Books, 1969 . 14 "Indistinction of the two personalities . . . makes transitivism possible" (CRO, 149 ; 220) 15 "L'egocentrisme" enfantin tel quel 1'entend Piaget est un concept tres nuance (CPP, 183) ; 1'egocentrisme enfantin: c ' est une idee juste (CPP, 224) . 16 Sketch for a Theory of the Emotions, trans . P. Mairet . London : Methuen & Co . Ltd , 1981 . 17 Psychology of Imagination . London : Methuen & Co Ltd, 1983 . 18 "L'egocentrisme est !'attitude d'un moi qui s'ignore, qui vit aussi bien clans les autre s qu'en soi ." (CPP, 312 ) 19 For example: "I see that this man over there sees as I touch my left hand while it i s touching my right. " (PS, 170; 215) "La main d'autrui que je serre est a comprendre su r le modele de la main touchante et touchee ." (La Nature, Notes. Cours de College de France, Paris : Seuil, 1994, p . 109) . "The handshake too is reversible, I can feel mysel f touched as well and at the same time as touching . " (VI, 187; 142). 20 Les origines du caracteres chez ! 'enfant. Paris, 1949 . 21 For a more extensive discussion of the mirror stage as a propaedeutic to relations t o others see my "The Body, the Mirror and the Other in Merleau-Ponty and Sartre" in Ipseity and Alterity: Interdisciplinary Approaches to Intersubjectivity, ed. Shaun Gallagher and Stephen Watson, Presses Universitaires de Rouen, 2003 (in press) . 22 Dans la phase meme de 1'egocentrisme, i1 y a chez 1'enfant une relation avec autrui. (CPP, 378) . Merleau-Ponty refers to Susan Isaacs' Social Development of Young Children, Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1933 . 23 A critique to that effect can be found in M. C. Dillon . "Ecart: Reply to `Flesh and Othemess ."' Ontology and Alterity in Merleau-Ponty, ed . G. A. Johnson and M . B. Smith, Northwestern University Press, 1990 and Dan Zahavi . Self-awareness and Alterity . Evanston : Northwestern University Press, 1999 . 24 " As Husserl stated in his last years, the last subjectivity, philosophical, ultimate, radica l 308 subjectivity, which philosophers call transcenental, is an intersubjectivity ." PrP, 51 . Originally published by Centre de Documentation Universitaire , 1953-1963, the firs t part of this lecture is reprinted in Parcours deux, 1951-61, Verdier, 2000 (p . 62) . 25 " Reversibility and Intersubjectivity in Merleau-Ponty's Ontology ." Journal of th e British Society for Phenomenology, Vol . 33, N° 2, 155-166, 2002 . 26 This experiment is discussed by George Butterworth in "An Ecological Perspective o n the Origins of Self," The Body and the Self, ed . J . L. Bermudez, A. Marcel and N . Eilan, MIT Press, 1998, pp . 91-92 . 27 For an overview of the imitation research and its impact on Merleau-Ponty's view o f the development of self-other relations, I refer the reader to "The earliest sense of sel f and others : Merleau-Ponty and recent developmental studies," Shaun Gallagher and Andrew Meltzoff, Philosophical Psychology, vol . 9, No. 2, 1996 . Merleau-Ponty's works represented in this essay are "The Child's Relations with Others" and The Phenomenology of Perception . Anonymat et socialite . La convergence de la psychologie et de la philosophie clan s 1'ontologie merleau-pontienne de 1'intersubjectivite Ce qui motiva, de 1'aveu meme de Merleau-Ponty, le passage d'un type phenomenologique a un type ontologique d' analyse, ce fut la necessite de repenser l a question de la socialite at de la communication avec autrui . J'examine, clans cet article, cette priorite donnee a la vie interpersonnelle dans l'analyse merleau-pontienne de la corporate en general, ou de la chair . J'accorde a cet egard une attention toute particuliere aux sources psychologiques de la pence de Merleau-Ponty . Revenant sur ses cours de Psychologie de 1'enfant et de Pedagogic, professes en Sorbonne en 1949-52, je developpe 1'hypothese salo n laquelle la psychologie genetique de la socialite enfantine vint nourrir de rnanier e significative, clans les demiers textes, sa conception aussi bien de 1' intersubjectivite que d e la chair. Les theses psychologiques concernant la forme primitivement anonyme e t fusionnelle prise par la socialite humaine jouent en particulier un role essential clans l a definition, au plan ontologique, de la vie interpersonnelle . Une telle remarque s' avere evidente en ce qui concerne les efforts de Merleau-Ponty pour placer 1e depart de l'analys e phenomenologique non pas clans 1 'hypothese du solus ipse, mais dans la " vraie et transcendantale solitude ", c'est-a-dire clans l'indivision entre le moi at I'autre . Me referant a la definition chez Piaget de 1'egocentrisme enfantin, que Merleau-Ponty place au depart du developpement psychique, sous la forme d'un etre impersonnel et anonyme dont emergent les individus distincts, je pointe la tension interne qui guett e inevitablement ce projet de deriver la socialite d'un etat d' anonymat initial . Je montre alors qu'on trouve une theorie alternative de la socialite dans la definition merleau-pontienne d e 1'intersubjectivite transcendantale, qui n 'est pas simplement un anonymat ou une solitude transcendantale . Une telle definition a le merite de conserver les avantages de la these d e I'anonymat, sans ses inconvenients : elle renonce au prejuge subjectiviste, qui pose comm e premiere et fondatrice la conscience de soi, at comme seconde et derivee 1'experience d e 1'autre, mais evite les difficultes insurmontables concernant 1'emergence de soi et d'autrui ; la separation des consciences et leur proximite ne font pas alternative . Cette theorie, enfin , permet d'engager un dialogue entre Merleau-Ponty et certains developpements recents d e la psychologie genetique, comma par exemple 1'etude de " 1'imitation neonatale ", salo n laquelle un moi corporel elementaire est present des 1'age zero . 309 Anonimato e socialite. 1[1 convergere di motivi psicologici e filosofici nell ' ontologia ' merleau-pontiana dell'intersoggettivite II fatto che Merleau-Ponty abbia via via dislocato it proprio terreno d'analisi da un piait fenomenologico ad uno ontologico si spiega, nelle parole dell'autore stesso, con l 'esigenza di ripensare la socialit y a la comunicazione con gli attn . Nei mio saggio, interrogo queSta priorit y attribuita dall'autore alla vita interpersonale nelle sue riflessioni sulla corporeity } generale o sulla came. Presto una particolare attenzione alle fonti psicologiche the stann o alla base del pensiero di Merleau-Ponty circa it primato della socialite . Facendo riferimento alle conferenze sulla psicologia e pedagogia del bambino, che egli tenne alla Sorbona trail 1949 e it 1952, svolgo la tesi secondo cui la psicologia dello sviluppo della sociality ne t bambino ha influito significativamente sulla sua comprensione delle relazioni tra it se e 1'altro enunciata nei testi successivi, nonche sulla sua concezione della carne . In particolare, le ipotesi psicologiche sulla forma anonima e fusionale inizialmente assunte della sociality umana sembrano svolgere un ruolo determinante nella sua concezione della vit a interpersonale e nella sua riformulazione sul piano ontologico . Cie a particolarmente evidente negli sforzi che Merleau-Ponty compie al fine di sostituire it punto di partenz a dell'analisi fenomenologica, l'ipotesi del solus ipse, con la tesi delta "solitudine vera e trascendentale", cioe di uno stato di originaria indistinzione tra i1 se e 1'altro, che faciliti la diretta comunicazione tra se distinti. In riferimento alla tesi di Piaget circa 1'iniziale egocentrismo del bambino, che h a condizionato significativamente la concezione merelau-pontyana dello sviluppo de l bambino cosi come quella dell'essere impersonale o anonimo dal quale emergono i se distinti, sottolineo le irresolubili tensioni interne implicite nell'idea di derivare la socialit y da un iniziale stato di anonimato . Metto poi in luce, entro it progetto filosofico di MerleauPonty, un approccio teoretico altemativo al problema della socialit y, incentrato sulfa tes i dell'intersoggettivita trascendentale piuttosto che su quelle dell'anonimato o dell a solitudine trascendentale . Dimostro che it primo metodo d'approccio ha it merito d i conservare i pregi della tesi dell'anonimato e nello stesso tempo di evitarne gli svantaggi : abbandona la tendenza soggettivista che considera 1'autocoscienza come primaria e fondante e l'esperienza dell'altro come secondaria e derivata, ma non incontra difficolt a insormontabili riguardo al problema di come it se e 1'altro abbiano origine, considerand o altresi la distinzione tra i diversi se come compatibile con la loro prossimita . Un simile approccio consente inoltre di tener vivo it dialogo tra la filosofia di Merleau-Ponty e l a recente psicologia dello sviluppo, per quanto riguarda, ad esempio, gli studi sull'imitazion e neonatale, che presuppongono un se corporeo di base, presente ab origine .