From Husserl to Merleau-Ponty: On the Metamorphosis of a Philosophical Example

Abstract

This essay outlines the transformation of the ostensibly mundane example of two hands touching each other in Husserl’s Ideas II into the pivotal concept in Merleau-Ponty’s ontology of flesh and notion of embodied subjectivity. By focusing on the contexts in which the example appears in the works of Husserl and of Merleau-Ponty, it seeks to explicate Merleau-Ponty’s fascination with Husserl’s example, its role in the development of his own thought and in the conceptual shift in his late works on the body. I explore the various stages in the metamorphosis of Husserl’s example of touching hands, originally used merely to differentiate the sense of touch from that of sight, into Merleau-Ponty’s radical concept of flesh that overturns “our idea of the thing and the world, and... results in an ontological rehabilitation of the sensible.”

Notes

1. On Merleau-Ponty’s reading of Husserl, see, among others, Dan Zahavi, “Merleau-Ponty on Husserl: A Reappraisal,” in Merleau-Ponty’s Reading of Husserl, ed. Ted Toadvine and Lester Embree (Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 2002), 3–30; Renaud Barbaras, “Perception and Movement: The End of the Metaphysical Approach,” in Chiasms: Merleau-Ponty’s Notion of Flesh, ed. Fred Evans and Leonard Lawlor (Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 2000), 77–88; Arthur David Smith, “The Flesh of Perception: Merleau-Ponty and Husserl,” in Reading Merleau-Ponty: On Phenomenology of Perception, ed. Thomas Baldwin (New York: Routledge, 2007), 1–22; and Ted Toadvine, “Leaving Husserl’s Cave? The Philosopher’s Shadow Revisited,” in Merleau-Ponty’s Reading of Husserl, 71–95.

2. Ted Toadvine, “Merleau-Ponty’s Reading of Husserl: A Chronological Overview,” in Merleau-Ponty’s Reading of Husserl, 270.

3. This subject is widely discussed, see, for instance, Sara Heinämaa, “From Decisions to Passions: Merleau-Ponty’s Interpretation of Husserl’s Reduction,” in Merleau-Ponty’s Reading of Husserl, 127–48; Taylor Carman, “The Body in Husserl and Merleau-Ponty,” Philosophical Topics 27 (1999): 205–26; and Scott L. Marratto, The Intercorporeal Self (New York: State University of New York Press, 2012).

4. Maurice Merleau-Ponty, “The Philosopher and His Shadow,” in Signs, trans. Richard C. McCleary (Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 1964), 167; hereafter cited a S in the text.

5. Edmund Husserl, Ideas Pertaining to a Pure Phenomenology and to a Phenomenological Philosophy: Second Book, trans. Richard Rojcewicz and André Schuwer (Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1980), 152; hereafter cited in the text.

6. Merleau-Ponty addresses this example already in Phenomenology of Perception (1945) in “The Experience of the Body and Classical Psychology,” the second section of “The Body,” the first part of the book, in which he outlines Husserl’s view of double sensation in his discussion of different views of the human body.

7. In “The Philosopher and His Shadow” (1959), in “Eye and Mind” (1961), the last work published in his lifetime, and in his unfinished book The Visible and the Invisible (1959–61). I believe this should be read in light of Merleau-Ponty’s renewed thinking about his major work Phenomenology of Perception, and his future projects.

8. Françoise Dastur, “World, Flesh, Vision,” in Chiasms: Merleau-Ponty’s Notion of Flesh, ed. Fred Evans and Leonard Lawlor (Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 2000), 23.

9. Merleau-Ponty borrows this term from Husserl’s unpublished writings; see Phenomenology of Perception, trans. Colin Smith (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1962), 159.

10. Dermot Moran, Introduction to Phenomenology (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 2000), 423.

11. Dastur, “World, Flesh, Vision,” 23.

12. Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Themes from the Lectures at the Collège de France, 1952–1960 (Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 1970), 76–77.

13. Taylor Carman, “The Body in Husserl and Merleau-Ponty,” 206.

14. Maurice Merleau-Ponty, The Prose of the World, trans. John O’Neill (Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 1973), 139.

15. Merleau-Ponty, Phenomenology of Perception, 70.

16. Martin C. Dillon, Merleau-Ponty’s Ontology (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1988), 131.

17. Maurice Merleau-Ponty, The Visible and the Invisible, trans. Alphonso Lingis (Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 1968), 200; hereafter cited as VI in the text.

18. Some scholars, however, have criticized Merleau-Ponty on this point. Renaud Barbaras, for instance, claims that although Merleau-Ponty wanted to break away from the language of realism or intellectualism, he remained a prisoner to their terminology. Renaud Barbaras, The Being of the Phenomenon: Merleau-Ponty’s Ontology, trans. Ted Toadvine and Leonard Lawlor (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 2004), 6.

19. On this shift in Merleau-Ponty’s thought, see, among others, Barbaras, “Perception and Movement: The End of the Metaphysical Approach,” 77–88 ; Dastur, “World, Flesh, Vision,” 23–49; Wayne Froman, “Alterity and the Paradox of Being,” in Ontology and Alterity in Merleau-Ponty, ed. Galen. A. Johnson and Michael. B. Smith (Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 1990), 98–110; Claude Lefort, “Body, Flesh,” in Merleau-Ponty and the Possibilities of Philosophy: Transforming the Tradition, ed. B. Flynn et al. (Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 2009), 275–92; Wayne Froman, “The Blind Spot” in Merleau-Ponty and the Possibilities of Philosophy: Transforming and Tradition, 155–65; Jacques Taminiaux, “Phenomenology in Merleau-Ponty’s Late Work,” in Jacques Taminiaux, Dialectic and Difference: Finitude in Modern Thought, ed. James T. Decker and Robert. Crease (Atlantic Highlands, NJ: Humanities Press, 1985), 115–29, esp. 126. There is, for example, a tension between different approaches: while M. C. Dillon argues that Merleau-Ponty’s late writings are adumbrated in his earlier works, Barbaras sees in them a complete rupture with the earlier works.

20. As Carman writes in “The Body in Husserl and Merleau-Ponty”: “[I]t is precisely this conceptual dualism, this idea that consciousness and reality are separated by an ‘abyss of meaning,’ that prevents Husserl from acknowledging the body as the original locus of intentional phenomena in perceptual experience. ... To put it bluntly, as Husserl does, ‘all sensings belong to my soul (Seele), everything extended to the material thing’ (Id II, 150)” (209).

21. Toadvine, “Merleau-Ponty’s Reading of Husserl: A Chronological Overview,” 270.

22. Merleau-Ponty, “Eye and Mind,” 162.

23. For Merleau-Ponty, unlike for Husserl, reflexivity in the visual realm is immediate and as important as tactile reflexivity for the constitution of the self. Although I cannot elaborate on this point here, we see that the Husserlian example touches on an essential element of humanity that can be extended, according to Merleau-Ponty, to the visual realm as well.

24. Which will lead us again, as noted, to insoluble problems: “The problems posed in Ph.P. [Phenomenology of Perception] are insoluble because I start there from the ‘consciousness’-’object’ distinction” (VI, 200).

25. This tension between the search for the origin and the essence of Being, which accompanied Merleau-Ponty’s thinking from the very start, is manifested in his writings on painting. While in “Cézanne’s’ Doubt” (1942) painting serves as a key for unveiling the nascence point, in “Eye and Mind,” for example, Merleau-Ponty is more concerned with unraveling the richness of Being through the medium of painting.

26. The notion of flesh often does not stand on its own in The Visible and the Invisible, but appears in phrases such as “flesh of being” (88), “flesh of the world” (84, 142, 255, 267, 271), “flesh of the visible” (119), “flesh of things”( 133, 193), and even “flesh of time” (111).

27. Dastur,“World, Flesh, Vision,” 33.

28. Merleau-Ponty quotes Der Satz vom Grund, where Heidegger argues that the power of the un-thought-of element in a work is in direct proportion to its greatness. Martin Heidegger, Der Satz vom Grund (Pfullingen: Verlag Gunther Neske, 1957), 123–24; English translation: The Principle of Reason, trans. Reginald Lilly (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1991), 71.