“Our inquiries should lead us finally to a reflection on this transcendental man, or this “natural light” common to all, which appears through the movement of history- to a reflection on this Logos which gives us the task of vocalizing a hitherto mute world.”[1]
Offered as a kind of reflection upon the status of his project, Merleau-Ponty’s words can function as a kind of gesturing toward a horizon, perhaps pointing out a possible trajectory, perhaps a ‘style’ in which we might come to view existence. The short examination that follows is offered as a reflection upon my path toward the thought ‘world’ of Merleau-Ponty as a process of coming to “grips” with the project he passionately outlines and vividly expresses. The body is my mode of encountering, and is the wherein of any possible coming to “grips” with anything at all. As such, the body seems to be the ideal point at which an attempt at a beginning can be made. The following attempt will examine the importance of corporeality as it pertains to thought and speech as a kind of movement of presence, which takes place in a ‘world’ which it both illuminates and creates as a process of shared experience.
The body is a unique unity in that it is both “intentional,” that is toward things, and “sense-giving,” or constitutive of those things. The relationship between “constitution” and “acquisition,” and ‘being’ and ‘having’ seem to be of paramount importance in Merleau-Ponty’s illumination of corporeal existence. This movement, seems to be at the core of what ‘I’ mean to say when ‘I’ say ‘I.’ In order to properly ‘grip’ the dialectic, if indeed the synthesis is what we ought to be seeking, it seems important to examine the movement as it has been given in the work of Husserl.[2] In his work The Phenomenology of Internal Time-Consciousness, Husserl treats “perception as the ‘self-giving’ of an actual present, which has its correlate in the given of what is past,” however, the ‘now’ only appears in ‘recollection’ in a manner wholly other than the ‘now’ of perception.[3] The second now is ‘not perceived,’ as ‘self-given’ but ‘presentified.’ Husserl examines the movement between ‘perception’ and ‘reproduction,’ which is precisely our movement, the movement which we both ‘are’ and ‘have’ as corporeal entities. This movement, as discussed by Husserl, allows us to subject the opening statements, of Merleau-Ponty’s chapter “The Body as expression and Speech,” to a more refined vision. In perception a certain something, wholly other than myself, is ‘constituted’ in a particular ‘fleeting moment.” Our access, or perhaps consciousness of this ‘constituted’ something is as a ‘recollection’ as a ‘re-presentation,’ of what we have ‘acquired’ from the constituted ‘now’ of perception. This ‘reproduction’ ‘re-presents’ the ‘now’ as having been but is not that particular ‘now’ as such, but rather an image. There is then a sense, which Merleau-Ponty discusses, that there is a time within which we seem to pass and ‘borrow’ from and a temporality that we are as embodied beings bringing our ‘constituted’ ‘acquisitions’ forward. There seems to be a kind of duality, therefore, between something like a natural time and a time that I am in existence.
We have examined the essential relation between ‘being and ‘having’ and ‘constitution’ and ‘acquisition’ which make up the unity which is the body; we shall now turn to the important relation between ‘thought’ and ‘speech’ as they exist carnally. If the body is indeed a unity it seems pointless to try to treat ‘speech’ and ‘thought’ as singular processes or entities, rather they too form a corporeal unity in experience. How is it that we have “acquired the illusion of the inner life?”[4] For Merleau-Ponty, the “inner life,” which we illusorily think we have, is nothing more than “nothing” itself. It is a kind of silence which “is alive with words” but which is manifest as “a momentary desire,” or a “void” of consciousness. The nothing, expressed in the Phenomenology of Perception, is similarly expressed by Heidegger in What is Metaphysics? as that which “science wants to know nothing of.[5]” Is there then a question of ‘thought’ coming before, or being prior to ‘speech,’ or rather is there here a kind of simultaneity? There is before, or prior to ‘speech,’ a “momentary desire,” or perhaps an intention to mean which in itself is not yet a thought. Language brings this thought into wordy existence, as the speech is the worldly body of thought.[6] “Expression,” therefore, brings our intention into being through the use of an “acquired” language. Just as we saw in our examination of the body, here too we see the relation between “constitution” and “acquisition” and ‘being’ and ‘having.’ There is a sense in which we are this “silent desire” for ‘expression’ and we ‘have’ a language, or a tool belt of prior meanings, which we can ‘recollect’ and manipulate in order to achieve ‘thought’ in an act of ‘speech.’ It would seem, therefore, that what we commonsensically call thought, what perpetuates the “illusion of an inner world,” is “recollected” meaning as it has been embodied in prior acts of ‘speech.’
Returning to our exploration of ‘being’ and ‘having’ we are once again faced with a similar movement in language as we demonstrated in perception. Merleau-Ponty makes a distinction between originating, or authentic, speech and secondary speech. Originating speech is an expression, both for ourselves and for others, which brings into existence a novel thought. Secondary speech is a mere repetition, or perhaps a re-presentation of a thought already ‘acquired.’[7] If we are attentive to this movement we notice the striking similarities between perceptual and linguistic existence in Merleau-Ponty’s account. It would seem that just as there is a phenomenal field, there is also a linguistic field in both cases there is something from which we ‘borrow’ in order to combine an ‘intentional’ ‘desire’ with a speech act in the constitution of an object for others; thereby accomplishing thought by conveying a certain ‘style’ into a community of speakers. Language, therefore, cannot be made to behave like any particular object; rather it becomes meaningful only when a speaking subject is engaged in it with others.
We have examined the distinctions which are, somehow, part of a lived unity yet are not unified themselves, but rather, function as distinctions within my corporeal unity. Perhaps this notion is best expressed when Merleau-Ponty states that:
“Categorical behavior and the possession of meaningful language express express one and the same fundamental form of behavior . Neither can be the cause nor the effect of the other.”[8]
It now seems necessary to turn to the concept of fundierung which Merleau-Ponty describes as: “The relation of reason to fact, or eternity to time, like that of reflection to the unreflective, of thought to language or of thought to perception.” [9] The possibility of speech is based upon the possibility of perceiving a ‘world,’ which as embodied we can express. What Merleau-Ponty calls the tacit cogito, my motor access to the world, and its relation to the spoken cogito, or my expressivity, is this primary or founding relation called fundierung. It seems to be the case that what Merleau-Ponty has articulated in the chapter on the cogito is the essential duality, or relation, between being-in-the world and being-with-others. The possibility of speech, or the expressivity of the spoken cogito, is grounded in the silence of the tacit cogito, which ‘presentifies’ the world, and itself about it as “ a field not constituted by itself.”[10] The tacit cogito, my motor presence in the world, finds itself only in expressivity as an act of speaking itself into the ‘world.’ When we, ourselves, and others encounter the expressed we bring a certain “style” to our “gaze” which imparts with a kind of meaning which we, in turn, gather up into our own silence and express it anew.
Perhaps it is now possible to see toward ‘what’ Merleau-Ponty’s reflection points. This “transcendental man,” which is no single man but everyone all at once, is that movement which, as “natural light,” “transforms the contingent into necessity.”[11] Not only does this “natural light” “appear through the movement of history,” but it is, furthermore, the movement of an historical idea. The “light,” which “presentifies” the mute world, combines with the “Logos” which allows it to sing itself into being. The body is paramount as the wherein of this unification as the meeting place between the “silent desire” for expression, and the capacity to speak and constitute a meaningful intention. The preceding was an attempt to find our way toward a path toward which Merleau-Ponty gestured in a kind of retrospective reflection. There is a sense that through this attempt we have come to ‘acquire’ a certain something, which we have attempted to make our own through speech, however, it necessarily transcends our capacity to express it as such. Perhaps this inability to close off, or to finally state, exactly what it is we have “acquired” is why this might properly be called an attempt.
[1] Maurice Merleau-Ponty, The Primacy of Perception. Northwestern University Press: Chicago, 1964. p 10.
[2] Husserl, aside from signifying some kind of unity, is a name which can be construed as a kind of detour. The term “detour” does not properly express the intention of the movement I am making. Can we speak of a re-tracing? Can we have access to a site which could give us the origins of Merleau-Ponty? Is it possible to read Husserl and hear Merleau-Ponty, despite the fact that Husserl exists as a something prior in time?
[3] Edmund Husserl, The Phenomenology of Internal Time-Consciousness, trans. James S. Churchill. Indiana University Press: Bloomington, 1971. p 63.
[4] Maurice Merleau-Ponty. The Phenomenology of Perception. Routledge Classics: New York, 2002. p 213.
[5] Martin Heidegger. What is Metaphysics. in. Basic Writings. Harper Collins: San Francisco, 1977. p 98.
[6] Merleau-Ponty, Phenomenology of Perception, p. 211.
[7] Ibid., p. 453.
[8] Ibid., p. 223.
[9] Ibid., 458.
[10] Ibid., P 470.
[11] Ibid., p. 198.
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