Consciousness In his
Phenomenology of Perception (first published in
French in 1945), Merleau-Ponty develops the concept of the body-subject (
le corps propre) as an alternative to the
Cartesian "
cogito". This distinction is especially important in that Merleau-Ponty perceives the
essences of the world
existentially.
Consciousness, the world, and the human body as a
perceiving thing are intricately intertwined and mutually "engaged". The
phenomenal thing is not the unchanging object of the
natural sciences, but a correlate of the human body and its sensory-motor functions. Taking up and "communing with" (Merleau-Ponty's phrase) the sensible qualities it encounters, the body as incarnated
subjectivity intentionally elaborates things within an ever-present world frame, through use of its pre-conscious, pre-predicative 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 the body has a "grip" (
prise), while the grip itself is a function of human connaturality with the world's things. The world and the sense of self are emergent
phenomena in an ongoing "becoming". The essential partiality of the view of things, their being given only in a certain
perspective 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 in the world and with other things than through such "
Abschattungen" ("sketches, faint outlines, adumbrations"). The thing transcends perception, 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's 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". The 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 an integration within the environment so as to perceive objects as such can attention be turned 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 the bodily involvement with things is always provisional and indeterminate, meaningful things are encountered in a unified though ever open-ended world.
The primacy of perception From the time of writing
Structure of Behaviour and
Phenomenology of Perception, Merleau-Ponty wanted to show, in opposition to the idea that drove the tradition beginning with
John Locke, that perception was not the causal product of atomic
sensations. 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
lifeworld (the "
Lebenswelt"). This primordial openness is at the heart of his
thesis of the primacy of
perception. The slogan of Husserl's phenomenology is "all
consciousness is consciousness of something", which implies a distinction between "acts of thought" (the
noesis) and "intentional objects of thought" (the
noema). 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 noesis–noema 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
solipsism). 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 , one of the leading exponents of
rationalism in the history of
Western philosophy 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
ontology of mind and body in 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).
Spatiality The question concerning corporeity connects also with Merleau-Ponty's reflections on
space (''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). Reflections on spatiality in phenomenology are also central to the advanced philosophical deliberations in
architectural theory.
Language The highlighting of the fact that corporeity
intrinsically has a dimension of expressivity which proves to be fundamental to the constitution of the
ego is one of the conclusions of
The Structure of Behaviour (1942) 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. , considered to be the father of modern
linguistics He carefully considers
language, then, as the core of
culture, 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 music. This work deals mainly with language, beginning with the reflection on artistic expression in
The Structure of Behavior—which contains a passage on
El Greco that prefigures the remarks that he develops in "Cézanne's Doubt" (1945) and follows the discussion in
Phenomenology of Perception. The work, undertaken while serving as the Chair of Child Psychology and Pedagogy at the University of Paris, is not a departure from his philosophical and phenomenological works, but rather an important continuation in the 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
psychology, all in order to return to the study of the
acquisition of language in children, as well as to broadly take advantage of the contribution of
Ferdinand de Saussure to
linguistics, and to work on the notion of structure through a discussion of work in psychology, linguistics and
social anthropology.
Art Merleau-Ponty distinguishes between primary and secondary modes of 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 () (
The Prose of the World, p. 10). Spoken language (), or secondary expression, returns to the speaker's linguistic baggage and cultural heritage, as well as the brute mass of relationships between
signs and
significations. Speaking language (), 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 his essay "Indirect Language and the Voices of Silence" (the first chapter of
Signes, 1960). In spite of certain similarities with
André Malraux, 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
metaphysical sense (in Merleau-Ponty's opinion, a
mystical 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. (However, this account of Malraux's notion of style—a key element in his thinking—is open to serious question.) For Merleau-Ponty, it is these uses of the notion of style that lead Malraux to postulate a separation 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
historicity and
intersubjectivity. (However, Merleau-Ponty's reading of Malraux has been questioned in a recent major study of Malraux's theory of art which argues that Merleau-Ponty seriously misunderstood Malraux.) For Merleau-Ponty, style is born of the interaction between two or more fields of being. Rather than being exclusive to individual human consciousness, consciousness is born of the pre-conscious style of the world, of Nature.
Science In his essay "Cézanne's Doubt" (1945), in which he identifies
Paul Cézanne's 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, whereas art is an attempt to capture an individual's perception, science is anti-individualistic. In the preface to his
Phenomenology of Perception, Merleau-Ponty presents a phenomenological objection to
positivism: that it can reveal 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 arrived at only after abstracting from the phenomenon itself. Merleau-Ponty chastised 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. This characterizes Merleau-Ponty's attempt to ground science in phenomenological objectivity and, in essence, to institute a "return to the phenomena". ==Influence==