Abstract
Merleau-Ponty’s explication of concrete or practical movement by way of the Schneider case could be read as ending up close to automatism, neglecting its flexibility and plasticity in the face of obstacles. It can be contended that he already goes off course in his explication of Schneider’s condition. Rasmus Jensen has argued that he assimilates a normal person’s motor intentionality to the patient’s, thereby generating a vacuity problem. I argue that Schneider’s difficulties with certain movements point to a means of broadening Merleau-Ponty’s account of concrete movement, one that he broaches without exploiting. What could do more work is his recognition of a transposition capacity - and hence of a plasticity - in the healthy body’s skill schema. As well as avoiding vacuity, he could forestall the appearance of a dichotomy between practical coping and creativity.
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Notes
Merleau-Ponty (1942, pp. 97, 203n1; 1962, pp. 81–82, 174n1). I use the 1962 edition because the repaginated 2002 version adds to the shortcomings in the original translation further terminological errors and typographical mistakes. On having my body and not being identical with it, see Glendinning (2007, pp. 104–106).
I am distinguishing here between physical flexibility, or the actual suppleness of the body, and a more original plasticity that will be outlined below. As we shall see, plasticity can be lacking in certain actions without a loss of physical flexibility, though the latter will never be exploited properly without the former. Physical flexibility cannot of itself maintain the fluid or ‘melodic’ flow of actions through different situations.
I would like to thank Rasmus Jensen for his intellectual acuity and generosity in writing and in conversation. I also wish to express my gratitude to my anonymous reviewers for their most helpful comments and suggestions.
Jensen has provided a comprehensive account of the different types of visual agnosia that have been attributed to Schneider. Cf. Jensen (2009, pp. 373–374, 373n5). I follow him in focusing on the extant documentation that Merleau-Ponty makes use of.
Milner and Goodale (1995, pp. 125–133, pp. 136–144).
Goldstein (1923, pp. 143, 155–156), Benary (1922, p. 255), Hochheimer (1932, p. 49), Merleau-Ponty (1942, p. 153; 1962, pp. 131–132). The triangle experiment was reported by Benary, and the fountain pen experiment by Hochheimer. Their respective studies were published under the editorship of Gelb and Goldstein.
Goldstein (1923, pp. 158, 173), Merleau-Ponty (1942, pp. 120, 124; 1962, pp. 103, 107). Here as elsewhere, Colin Smith renders schéma corporel as ‘body image.’ Yet this literal mistranslation is not in fact misleading. Merleau-Ponty more usually employs the original phrase to refer to my proprioceptively registered bodily orientation, not to my acquired skill schema that has educated the latter. On the body image, see Tiermersma (1982, pp. 246–255). In this essay I use the term ‘body schema’ to denote my body’s skill schema, and ‘body image’ to denote my overall posture and limb position as proprioceptively experienced. This departs from Merleau-Ponty’s usage, but is I hope faithful to his philosophical intentions.
Goldstein (1923, pp. 156, 157, 158–159), Merleau-Ponty (1942, pp. 120, 122, 127–128; 1962, pp. 103, 105, 109–110). At this point one should stress the distinction between what Gelb and Goldstein made of the case and Schneider’s behaviour when he was not being observed medically. Georg Goldenberg claims that his ostensive movement problems were exacerbated significantly in the presence of the physicians, and that they made insufficient use of behaviour that did not support their hypotheses. Thus an early and colourful composition that the patient wrote about his visit to a palm garden in Frankfurt was not included in their publications. But this was a project of aesthetic enjoyment laid down in advance, and the patient did not have to do any more than describe the successive views revealed to him as he walked around. Even subsequent reports that were hostile to Gelb and Goldstein allowed that the rehabilitated Schneider was somewhat slow outside test situations, could do no more than one thing at a time, and was sometimes circumstantial and inflexible in his reasoning. Goldenberg (2003, pp. 291–293, 295, 297). For a succinct and well-referenced defence of Gelb and Goldstein’s findings as both internally coherent and plausible, see Jensen (2009, p. 374n6).
Hass (2008, pp. 42, 212n26).
Milner and Goodale (1995, pp. 132–134, 202–203). If correct, this provides a neurological story underlying Merleau-Ponty’s claim that healthy sight facilitates the apprehension in thought of simultaneous wholes, that is, of multiplicities. In the one glance, it helps to show me the various ways in which I can deal with something in fact or in mimicry. Vision widens the field of transposable motor powers and by extension the range of movements that can be undertaken without preparation. Merleau-Ponty forwards it as an irreplaceable condition of a normal projective outlook of tasks and of fantasies. Visual contents are taken up by a symbolic function transcending them. The growth of this function beyond its bodily roots is suggested by the semantic evolution of terms and phrases like ‘natural light,’ ‘insight,’ ‘overview’ and ‘taking in at one glance.’ Consciousness develops terms for specific forms of vision beyond their original significance. Yet its function remains founded on these original visual contents, even if it is irreducible to them. Merleau-Ponty (1942, pp. 147, 159; 1962, pp. 126–127, 136–137).
For Husserl’s extended explication of the sense ‘I can move’ as an immediate practical possibility, as distinct from the mere awareness that I move, see Husserl (1989, pp. 270–277). He observes that I can only decide for and between things that I already comprehend as within the scope of my power.
What I call the projected route to realisation or action solution does not primarily refer to the path to be taken through ‘objective’ space, but to the prefiguration of postural, limb and extremity deployments towards a result. This prefiguration is what marks out the spatial path. Merleau-Ponty (1942, pp. 161–162, 169; 1962, pp. 138–140, 144). In practical action, as I shall argue below, motor projection can prefigure, not just new bodily routes and correlative pathways in space, but new affordances of worldly things. It is not confined to reprising previous affordances from context familiar objects that have elicited it. The very terminology of prefiguring routes is of course pictorial, and is inevitably inadequate. As Merleau-Ponty remarks, ‘[i]t is not easy to show pure motor intentionality in its nudity: it is hidden behind the objective world that it helps to constitute.’ (Merleau-Ponty, 1942, p. 161n1; 1962, p. 138n2).
Merleau-Ponty (1942, p. 116; 1962, p. 100, translation emended). There are some lived experiences where motor intentionality is not at all present, such as reflex movements outside test situations and states of utter repose when one is not thinking about moving. In most others, it is not bound up with decisions or other conscious, purposive intentions. Once I get out of bed in the working week, it makes little sense to talk of decision in proceeding habitually to shower, dress and have a quick breakfast. It is to such routine, context familiar actions that Taylor Carman is chiefly referring when he describes motor intentionality as ‘the normal unity and integration of our bodily movement and our intuitive awareness of a given, stable environment.’ Carman (2008, p. 117). The proximity to Goldstein’s description of habitual movement will become evident below. Motor intentionality might be conceived by analogy with Kant’s transcendental unity of apperception, the ‘I think’ or ‘it thinks’ that must be able to accompany all my representations. Kant (1933, 152–153, 331). The ‘I can’ or ‘it can’ must be able to inform all those movements taken as immediately realisable by me. It will fall short when I am faced with movements that I have to learn, though it will still be operative in them. If I am learning a dance, there is a bodily anticipation of getting into the right starting posture and of starting straight off. Motor intentionality has not departed from the scene because I am learning a formula of movement under the tutelage of another. Cf. Merleau-Ponty (1942, p. 167; 1962, pp. 142–143).
Jensen (2009, pp. 385, 387).
Jensen (2009, pp. 382–383).
Jensen (2009, pp. 381, 383). As I interpret it, we get closest to what Jensen calls the shared or highest common factor view of motor intentionality with the habitual completion anticipation that is in play when Schneider is absorbed in skilled coping. Sean Kelly claims that such absorbed coping is ‘a kind of pure motor intentionality.’ Like Dreyfus, he divorces it completely from any traces of earlier act intentionality and conceptual articulation. Kelly (2004, p. 75), cited in Jensen (2009, pp. 372, 383).
Merleau-Ponty (1942, pp. 120, 122; 1962, pp. 103, 105). In the case notes, it is pointed out that Schneider initially had difficulties acquiring the requisite skills to make wallets. This is admitted by Goldenberg at the beginning of his own discussion, but downplayed when he adds that the patient soon mastered the job. Goldenberg (2003, p. 281).
Bergson (1971, p. 275).
Merleau-Ponty (1942, pp. 166, 170; 1962, pp. 142, 145). The coming account does not preclude pre-reflexive awareness of skilled coping, which can in principle be brought to thematic presence. Pre-reflexive acquaintance can contribute to future movements, for in its monitoring function - which is inseparable from kinaesthetic sensations of movement—it can provide feedback information signalling the need for corrective actions. Yet such actions presuppose motor intentionality. The latter, for example, will prefigure a different grip on an implement in response to the kinaesthetically felt resistance caused by my present and inefficient grip, resistance that has increased so much that it is being reflectively thematised. When actualised, my new grip will be registered pre-reflexively and may also be thematised, though it has followed on from a solution that was projected anonymously and immemorially.
Merleau-Ponty (1942, pp. 122, 127–128; 1962, pp. 105, 110). Later again, when discussing Schneider’s inability to construct more than simple shapes, Merleau-Ponty states that his translation of shape arrangement instructions into movement ‘is effected by the express meanings of language, whereas the normal subject penetrates into the object by perception, assimilating its structure into his substance.’ Meanings are no longer embodied, which is another way of saying that they are not motor meanings. Yet this does not preclude instructions being able to take on substitutive motor significance. Still further on, it is remarked that Schneider cannot enter into a fictitious situation without converting it into a real one. Though the remark is made in connection with his difficulty in comprehending complex conversations, Merleau-Ponty is again allowing that his behaviour in general is not blind. Merleau-Ponty (1942, pp. 154, 157; 1962, pp. 132, 135).
Merleau-Ponty (1942, p. 179; 1962, p. 153). Interpreted minimally, Merleau-Ponty’s claim is that imaginative representation is not the sufficient condition of prompt and untroubled abstract and context-strange movements. They require the operation of a capacity that is dormant in habitual and context-familiar ones. But the concluding passage in the block quotation above suggests that imaginative representation is itself structured by an operation of transposition. What one envisages would not have the shape that it does without being a particular possibility for the body. To be taken as immediately actualisable, a novel representation must already be congruent with a particular action solution in which existing skills would be combined and deployed as never before. All such motor-informed representations differ from those of Schneider, since they picture optimal and not just adequate realisations of possibilities (Schneider’s attempts at novel movements do not merely lack immediacy, but show no evidence of his having envisaged normal ways of completing them. His ideal formulae of movement may be optimal for him, but would be overwrought for the normal person, who imagines more economical movements). That a case is made for motor-informed representation is confirmed later in the book. Referring to Sartre’s example of a mountain crag that only appears insurmountable within a conscious project of climbing, Merleau-Ponty contends that the way I see things and imagine negotiating them is not a mere product of conscious representation, but of my motor awareness. It comprises an anonymous self that is implicated in every spectacle, running ahead of my express intentions and contributing to the contours of sensuous perceptions and imaginative scenarios. Sartre (1956, p. 482). Merleau-Ponty (1942, pp. 501–503; 1962, pp. 439–441). This claim also gets very brief support in The Structure of Behaviour. Merleau-Ponty (1942, pp. 127–128; 1963, p. 117). There is a separate issue of whether Schneider thinks up new action possibilities for himself. So far as we know, anything novel that he represents is on foot of an order or suggestion coming from his doctors.
Romdenh-Romluc (2007, pp. 52–53).
See Husserl (1989, pp. 278–279).
Merleau-Ponty does provide examples of incorporating objects such as hat feathers or sticks into bodily space when one is fashion conscious or blind, and of giving skills figurative meanings in activities like dancing. He also describes different ways of reaching for a telephone when sitting down. Yet he does not explicitly associate these examples with skill transpositions. Merleau-Ponty (1942, pp. 167, 171, 174; 1962, pp. 143, 146, 149). In an earlier work he discusses how animals can adapt and abridge movements, using different means to attain similar outcomes, though he is well aware that human somatic anticipation is inseparable from socio-cultural being. What defines us is not the ability to create a nature separate from our biology, since our conventions and biological make up are continuous. It is our ability to go beyond created structures in order to create others. We can build instruments for making further ones, and can see the same thing in different functions and under a plurality of aspects. Some of our ways of articulating space are illustrated to excellent effect in his example of a soccer match. On the basis of existing sectors and limits such as the penalty area and yard lines, the player establishes new vectors and lines of force that modify this phenomenal field. Merleau-Ponty (1942, pp. 106, 183, 188–190, 195–196; 1963, pp. 96, 168–169, 174–175, 180–181).
Merleau-Ponty (1942, pp. 164–165; 1962, p. 141). He draws mainly on A. A. Grünbaum’s description of patients who cannot imitate observed movements. He is also influenced by the latter’s claim that what is affected in these individuals is not a symbolising function, but ‘a much more primary function, in its nature motor, in other words, the capacity for motor differentiation within the dynamic body schema.’ Grünbaum (1930, pp. 397–398), Merleau-Ponty (1942, p. 166; 1962, p. 142, translation emended).
This is not a criticism of the references to other pathological cases, since the reportage of observed difficulties with other patients shows up further hidden aspects of normal movement. My point is that Schneider’s problems with abbreviation are particularly suited to bringing out the operation of the transposition capacity in concrete-like and abstract movement, and perhaps in adaptive concrete movement too. And it is to be reiterated that Merleau-Ponty is not concerned with the conclusive character of the Schneider (or any other) case medically, i.e. with ‘solving’ it. By way of the pathological case, his existential phenomenology seeks to uncover the normal essences or invariant features of (human) perceptual engagement. And these essences are not ends of this methodology, but rather means of bringing out in their turn our comprehensive Being-in-the-world. Cf. Merleau-Ponty (1942, pp. i, ix; 1962, pp. vii, xiv).
Dreyfus (2007, pp. 63–64).
Again in defence of Merleau-Ponty’s characterisation of concrete, context-familiar movement, it could be retorted that this is just the way in which skilled coping operates. Many of us have had the experience of using implements or of driving somewhere, but of being unable to recall extended swathes of these activities or of the journey upon arrival. But these experiences, however common, do not exhaust the range of flexible coping in concrete movement. It is hardly contentious to claim that there was nothing eventful or novel to report from within these time-spans, nothing fearful or surprising that would have concentrated our bodily informed minds wonderfully and differently. These humdrum parts of our milieu occupy an even larger slice of Schneider’s life, at least when he is not under the eyes of Gelb and Goldstein and other physicians.
Heidegger maintains that a finite, closed taxonomy of the uses to which a ready-to-hand piece of equipment may be put reduces it to the kind of physical, present-at-hand substance that is the object of natural scientific investigation. Heidegger (1962, pp. 121–122). As Stephen Mulhall has pointed out, anyone (uninjured) who understands its nature as a tool will appreciate, not merely its design tasks (putting in nails and extracting them), but some of the indefinite number of other uses to which it can be put, such as propping open windows, repelling intruders and playing ‘toss-the-hammer.’ Mulhall (1996, pp. 55–56). It can be noted that Goldstein reports inflexible movement in tool use on the part of another patient (‘Case S’ rather than ‘Case Schn.’). S is quite unable to hammer in a nail sticking out of a wall unless he is also holding the nail. And he cannot mimic hitting the nail into the wall at his table unless he first returns to that wall. His sense of potential touch is deficient, and though Merleau-Ponty refers to his condition, he does not ask whether inflexibility in using implements might also be manifested in its own way by Schneider. Goldstein (1923, pp. 150, 153), Merleau-Ponty (1942, p. 136; 1962, p. 117). I am grateful to Tanja Staehler for bringing this passage to light.
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Mooney, T. Plasticity, motor intentionality and concrete movement in Merleau-Ponty. Cont Philos Rev 44, 359–381 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11007-011-9195-4
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11007-011-9195-4