The Central Role of the Body in Merleau-Ponty's Phenomenology

References

• A version of this essay has been delivered as a lecture at the Frankreich-Zentrum of the Technische Universität Berlin in May 1999. This translation is based on the publication of this lecture in G. Abel (ed.), Französische Nachkriegsphilosophie, Berlin: Arno Spitz/Nomos Verlagsgesellschaft 2001. English translation by Ullrich Haase.
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• See: Nature: Course Notes from the Collège de France, Illinois: Northwestern University Press 2000, and Notes De Cours Au College De France 1958–1959, to be published by Northwestern in December 2007.
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• Cf.Bernhard Waldenfels, Phänomenologie in Frankreich, Frankfurt a. M.: Suhrkamp 1983 and Deutsch-Französische Gedankengänge, Frankfurt a. M.: Suhrkamp 1995, especially chapters 1 and 2.
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• G.W.F. Hegel, Logik, Werke 6, Frankfurt a. M.: Suhrkamp 1969, p. 55. One could, obviously, give another meaning to this idea of tenderness [Zärtlichkeit], for example, that of a gentle, delicate touch, which—in opposition to Hegel's dialectic—refrains from turning the inside outside and which tolerates that which is absent.
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• TN; as Waldenfels will thematize himself in the following text, the difficulty of speaking about the body in French and English is that these do not allow for the difference between Leib, often translated as the ‘living body’, and Körper, simply the ‘body’; here it is the Leib that cannot protect us from the Körperwissenschaft, Körpertechnik and Körperpolitik. Wherever this difference becomes problematic in the following essay I will add the term ‘living’ to the word ‘body’, whilst trying to avoid unnecessary repetition. The complications extend to leibhaftig and leiblich, which I translate as ‘incarnate’ and ‘corporeal’ respectively.
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• C.f.: Eugen Fink, “Operative Begriffe in Husserl“, in: Nähe und Distanz, Freiburg/München: Alber 1976.
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• Compare Chapter 1 of my Idiome des Denkens. Deutsch-Französische Gedankengänge, Frankfurt a. M.: Suhrkamp 2005 for an account of the “metamorphoses of the cogito” corresponding to this permanent challenge.
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• C.f.Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Le visible et l'invisible, Paris: Gallimard 1964, p. 219; trans: The Visible and the Invisible, Evanston: Northwestern University Press 1968, p. 166; from now on referred to as VI in the text.
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• Michel Foucault, Les mots et les choses, Paris: Gallimard 1966; trans: The Order of Things, London: Routledge 2001.
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• Maurice Merleau-Ponty, “L'existentialisme chez Hegel“, in: Sens et non-sens, Paris: Gallimard 1996, p. 79.
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• “De Mauss à Claude Lévi-Strauss”, in: Signes, Paris: Gallimard 1960, p. 154.
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• C.f.: Bernhard Waldenfels, Das leibliche Selbst: Vorlesungen zur Phänomenologie des Leibes, Frankfurt a. M.: Suhrkamp 2000.
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• Sigmund Freud, Gesammelte Werke, London & Frankfurt a. M.: Imago 1940ff, GW III, p. 297.
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• Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Phénoménologie de la perception, Paris: Gallimard 1945, p. 249; trans. Phenomenology of Perception, London: Routledge 1990. Referred to in the text henceforth as PP.
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• C.f.: VI 291f. This is to say that there is also a speech beneath the threshold of formal speech acts.
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• The hollow (creux) or fold (pli) are two of Merleau-Ponty's favourite motifs, which he early on contrasts to the hole (trou) in its pure negativity; c.f.: PP, p.249.
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• TN; the German here is Vorgängigkeit und Nachträglichkeit, where the latter, often translated as deferred action, refers to Freud's famous conception of an event which becomes ‘effective’ only a long time after the fact.
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• This statement belongs in the context of an analysis of the phantom limb. Compare the corresponding entry in Laplanche, Pontalis, The Language of Psychoanalysis, London: Karnac Books 1988, for the polyvalent sense of the term ‘complex’.
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• Herbert Plügge, Der Mensch und sein Leib, Tübingen: Max Niemeyer 1967, p. 41.
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• Maurice Merleau-Ponty, La Structure du Comportement, Paris: Gallimard 1949, p. 227; trans. The Structure of Behaviour, Pittsburgh: Duquesne University Press 1984).
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• C.f. the corresponding passages in: Merleau-Ponty à la Sorbonne: Résumé de cours 1949–1952, Grenoble: Cynara 1988. Compare furthermore my detailed discussion of this ‘intertwinement of the same and the other’ in: Antwortregister Frankfurt a. M.: Suhrkamp 1994, part III, chap. 8 and Antje Kapust, Berührung ohne Berührung, München: Fink 1999. For the significance of this theory of the body for the social sciences, see: Käte Meyer-Drawe, Leiblichkeit und Sozialität, München: Fink 1987, and Jürgen Seewald, Leib und Symbol, München: Fink 1999.
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• C.f.Waldenfels, Phänomenologie in Frankreich, pp. 174ff.
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• G.W.F. Hegel, Phänomenologie des Geistes, p. 574, trans. Phenomenology of Spirit, p. 478.
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• Maurice Merleau-Ponty, L'œil et l'esprit, Paris: Gallimard 1964, p. 33.
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• Compare for the general context of these reflections chapters one and two of my: Sinnesschwellen, Frankfurt a. M.: Suhrkamp 1999.
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• Maurice Merleau-Ponty, La prose du monde, Paris: Gallimard 1969, p. 186.
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