Maurice Merleau-Ponty

Life and Works

Name: Maurice Jean Jacques Merleau-Ponty
Born: March 14, 1908 Rocherfortsur-Mer
Died: May 6, 1961 (aged 53) Paris, France
Studied at: École Normale Supérieure in Paris
Maurice Merleau-Ponty (1908-1961): French philosopher whose thinking was influenced
by Husserl. Merleau-Ponty objected to philosophies that underestimated the
significance of the body and argued that perception is fundamental to our knowledge of
the world. In The Phenomenology of Perception (1945), he argued that consciousness is
a dynamic form that actively structures our experience
Merleau-Ponty’s most important works of technical philosophy were La
Structure du comportement(1942; The Structure of Behavior, 1965)
and Phénoménologie de la perception (1945; Phenomenology of
Perception, 1962). Though greatly influenced by the work of Edmund Husserl,
Merleau-Ponty rejected his theory of the knowledge of other persons,
grounding his own theory in bodily behaviour and in perception. He held that it
is necessary to consider the organism as a whole to discover what will follow
from a given set of stimuli. For him, perception was the source of knowledge
and had to be studied before the conventional sciences
Philosophy
Merleau-Ponty: The Self as Embodied Subjectivity
What we mean by subjectivity, or subject?
For our purposes, we'll think of a subject as something that has being. A subject
is a real thing that can take real action and cause real effects. In short, it exists.
Keeping this in mind, Maurice Merleau-Ponty believed the physical body to be
an important part of what makes up the subjective self.
This idea flew in the face of two of the most heralded, yet opposing, ideas in all
of philosophy. They are empiricism and rationalism. In order to understand why
Merleau-Ponty's ideas made such a splash, we need to understand the two
philosophies against which he was arguing.
`
Maurice Merleau-Ponty* articulated the phenomenologist position in a simple
declaration: “I live in my body.” By the “lived body,” Merleau-Ponty means an
entity that can never be objectified or known in a completely objective sort of
way, as opposed to the “body as object” of the dualists.
According to Husserl and Merleau-Ponty, if we honestly and accurately examine
our direct and immediate experience of our selves, these mind-body “problems”
fall away. As Merleau-Ponty explains, “There is not a duality of substances but
only the dialectic of living being in its biological milieu.” In other words, our
“living body” is a natural synthesis of mind and biology, and any attempts to
divide them into separate entities are artificial and nonsensical.
Merleau-Ponty notes in his book Phenomenology of Perception, that is the
foundation for our perception of the world and our knowledge about it:

“Consciousness must be reckoned as a self-contained system of Being, as a

system of Absolute being, into which nothing can penetrate and from which
nothing can escape. On the other side, the whole spatio-temporal world, to
which man and the human ego claim to belong as subordinate singular realities,
is according to its own meaning mere intentional Being, a Being, therefore,
which has the merely secondary, relative sense of a Being of a consciousness.
For Merleau-Ponty, everything that we are aware of—and can possibly know—is
contained within our own consciousness. It’s impossible for us to get “outside”
of our consciousness because it defines the boundaries of our personal
universe. The so-called real world of objects existing in space and time initially
exists only as objects of my consciousness. Yet in a cognitive sleight-of-hand, we
act as if the space-time world is primary and our immediate consciousness is
secondary. This is an inversion of the way things actually are: It is our
consciousness that is primary and the space-time world that is secondary,
existing fundamentally as the object of our consciousness.
What exactly is “consciousness”? For Merleau-Ponty it is a dynamic
form responsible for actively structuring our conscious ideas and physical
behavior. In this sense, it is fundamentally different from Hume’s and Locke’s
concept of the mind as a repository for sensations or the behaviorists’ notion of
the mind as the sum total of the reactions to the physical stimuli that an
organism receives. Consciousness, for Merleau-Ponty, is a dimension of our lived
body, which is not an object in the world, distinct from the knowing subject (as
in Descartes), but is the subjects’ own point of view on the world: The body is
itself the original knowing subject from which all other forms of knowledge
derive.
The Phenomenology of Perception
In his investigation of the Phenomenology of Perception (1945), Maurice Merleau-Ponty defines
phenomenology as the study of essences, including the essence of perception and of consciousness.
He also says, however, that phenomenology is a method of describing the nature of our perceptual
contact with the world. Phenomenology is concerned with providing a direct description of human
experience.
Perception is the background of experience which guides every conscious action. The world is a field
for perception, and human consciousness assigns meaning to the world. We cannot separate
ourselves from our perceptions of the world.
Merleau-Ponty argues that both traditional Empiricism and Rationalism are inadequate to describe
the phenomenology of perception. Empiricism maintains that experience is the primary source of
knowledge, and that knowledge is derived from sensory perceptions. Rationalism maintains that
reason is the primary source of knowledge, and that knowledge does not depend on sensory
perceptions. Merleau-Ponty says that traditional Empiricism does not explain how the nature of
consciousness determines our perceptions, while Rationalism does not explain how the nature of our
perceptions determines consciousness.
Merleau-Ponty explains that a judgment may be defined as a perception of a relationship
between any objects of perception. A judgment may be a logical interpretation of the signs
presented by sensory perceptions. But judgment is neither a purely logical activity, nor a purely
sensory activity. Judgments may transcend both reason and experience.
Perception is not purely sensation, nor is it purely interpretation. Consciousness is a process that
includes sensing as well as reasoning.
Perception is a system of meanings by which a phenomenal object is recognized. The intentions
of the person who is perceiving an object are reflected in the field to which the phenomenal
object belongs. Merleau-Ponty argues that consciousness is not merely a representative
function or a power of signification. Consciousness is a projective activity, which develops
sensory data beyond their own specific significance and uses them for the expression of
spontaneous action.
According to Merleau-Ponty, the human body is an expressive space which contributes to the
significance of personal actions. The body is also the origin of expressive movement, and is a
medium for perception of the world. Bodily experience gives perception a meaning beyond that
established simply by thought. Thus, Descartes’ cogito ("I think, therefore I am") does not
account for how consciousness is influenced by the spatiality of a person’s own body.

Merleau-Ponty says that thought precedes speech, in that speech is a way of expressing
thought. Thoughts which cannot be expressed are temporarily unconscious. Thoughts which can
be expressed can become conscious. Whether or not thoughts can become conscious may
depend on whether or not they can be expressed. But we can become conscious of thoughts
even if they have not previously been expressed
Merleau-Ponty argues that consciousness is transparent in that it is not concealed from itself.
The unconscious may be concealed from the conscious, but the conscious can be revealed to
itself. Both appearance and reality are phenomena of consciousness. Appearances may be true
or false, and may or may not be the same as reality. The false appearance of a perceptual object
may conceal its true reality. However, the actual appearance of a perceptual object may also
manifest the object’s true reality. Thus, phenomenology is concerned both with appearance as a
perceptual phenomenon, and with reality as a perceptual phenomenon.
Merleau-Ponty concludes by defining freedom as a mode of consciousness in which personal
actions and commitments can be chosen within a situation or field of possibility. Freedom is
always within a given field of possibility. Freedom is always present in a situation, unless we lose
our belonging to the situation. Freedom is a mode of being-in-the-world which enables us to
transcend ourselves.