Abstract
It is often assumed that Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s notions of ‘intertwining’, ‘interlacing’ (l’entrelacs, entrelacement) or ‘chiasm’ (le chiasme, le chiasma), as articulated especially in his later texts, e.g. The Visible and the Invisible, the associated ‘Working Notes’, and his later lectures in the Collège de France, count among his own original contributions to articulating a phenomenology—and indeed ontology—of the ‘flesh’ (la chair) aimed at overcoming the Cartesian split between mind and body which he believed still haunted his earlier account in The Phenomenology of Perception (1945). In this chapter, I show not only that Husserl’s idea of ‘intertwining’ (Verflectung) is the original inspiration for Merleau-Ponty but also that Husserl’s radical phenomenology of the lived body (Leib) already lays the ground for the new way of conceiving conscious embodied conduct that overcomes the Cartesian separation of thought from sensibility that comes to the fore in the late Merleau-Ponty. I shall also point out that Merleau-Ponty never forgets to acknowledge his debt to Husserl in this respect.
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Notes
- 1.
E. Husserl, Logische Untersuchungen, 2 Vols. (Leipzig: Verlag von Viet, 1900–1901). The critical edition is Logische Untersuchungen. Erster Band: Prolegomena zur reinen Logik. Text der 1. und der 2. Auflage, hrsg. E. Holenstein, Husserliana vol. XVIII (Dordrecht: Nijhoff, 1975) and Logische Untersuchungen. Zweiter Band: Untersuchungen zur Phänomenologie und Theorie der Erkenntnis. In zwei Bänden, Husserliana XIX/1 and XIX/2, hrsg. Ursula Panzer (Dordrecht: Kluwer, 1984), trans. John Findlay, Logical Investigations, 2 Vols. ed. with a New Introduction by Dermot Moran and New Preface by Michael Dummett. (London & New York: Routledge, 2001). Hereafter ‘LU’ followed by the Investigation number, paragraph number, volume number (vol. 1 = I; vol. 2 = II) and page number of English translation, followed by Husserliana volume and page number. Hereafter Husserliana will be abbreviated as ‘Hua’.
- 2.
Edmund Husserl, Ideen zu einer reinen Phänomenologie und phänomenologischen Philosophie. Zweites Buch: Phänomenologische Untersuchungen zur Konstitution, hrsg. Marly Biemel, Husserliana IV (Dordrecht: Kluwer, 1954 reprinted 1991), trans. R. Rojcewicz and A. Schuwer as Ideas pertaining to a Pure Phenomenology and to a Phenomenological Philosophy, Second Book (Dordrecht: Kluwer, 1989). Hereafter ‘Ideas II’ followed by English pagination, Husserliana (‘Hua’) volume and German pagination.
- 3.
The term ‘chiasme’ (from the Greek χιασμός, ‘criss-crossing’, a cross-piece of wood, or the shape of the Greek letter chi, χ—the verb khiazein means ‘to mark with an X’) is found in Merleau-Ponty’s The Visible and the Invisible where it features in the title of Chapter Four, L’entrelacs—Le chiasme (The Interwining—The Chiasm). See M. Merleau-Ponty, Le Visible et l’invisible, texte établi par Claude Lefort (Paris: Gallimard, 1964), trans. Alfonso Lingis, The Visible and the Invisible (Evanston: Northwestern U.P., 1968). Henceforth ‘VI’ and page number of English translation, followed by the page number of the French edition. The reference here is VI, p. 130; 170). See also the working note of February 1960 (VI, p. 239; 287) where he speaks of ‘le chiasme’. The term has several meanings. The term ‘chiasmus’ normally refers to a rhetorical figure of speech where elements are inverted or repeated in a reversed pattern, e.g. Cicero’s ‘one should eat to live and not live to eat’. The term ‘chiasm’ or ‘chiasma’ also refers to a nerve in the eye which crosses over to the opposite side of the brain. In fact, Merleau-Ponty refers to it in two forms: chiasme and chiasma. He speaks of ‘chiasma’ (see VI, p. 160; 210 and in the notes of 4th June 1959, VI p. 199; 249 and 1 November 1959: ‘Le chiasma’). Merleau-Ponty uses the term generally to refer to an overlapping that produces a unified experience, e.g. the combining of the two eyes to produce a single vision (VI, p. 215; 264). He also links it directly to Husserl’s notion of ‘being-within-one-another’ (Ineinander), as found in Ideas II: ‘L’idée du chiasme et de l’Ineinander’ (VI, p. 268; 316). The term ‘chiasm’ does not appear in his 1960 essay, ‘Eye and Mind’, see M. Merleau-Ponty, L’Oeil et l’esprit (Paris: Gallimard, 1964; reprinted ed. Lambert Dousson, Paris: Folio Plus, 2006), trans. Carleton Dallery, ‘Eye and Mind’, in M. Merleau-Ponty, The Primacy of Perception and Other Essays on Phenomenological Psychology, the Philosophy of Art, History and Politics (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1964), pp. 159–190. Hereafter ‘EM’ followed by the page number of the English translation followed by the pagination of the French edition of 2006. On the other hand EM contains many other related terms including the ‘intertwining’ (entrelacs) of vision and movement (EM, p. 162; 12).
- 4.
A selection of the ‘working notes’ edited by Claude Lefort was published in the 1964 edition of Le Visible et l’invisible. A revised complete edition of these notes is planned and is necessary to illuminate Merleau-Ponty’s late thought.
- 5.
See Ludwig Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations, trans. and ed. Elizabeth Anscombe (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1978), p. 178e and p. 178, Der menschliche Körper ist das beste Bild der menschlichen Seele.
- 6.
See M. Merleau-Ponty, Parcours deux, 1951–1961, ed. Jacques Prunair (Lagrasse: Verdier, 2000), pp. 303–304.
- 7.
See M. Merleau-Ponty, La Nature, Notes, Cours du Collège de France, ed. Dominique Séglard (Paris: Seuil, 1995), p. 366.
- 8.
See, inter alia, Dan Zahavi, ‘Merleau-Ponty on Husserl. A Reappraisal’, in Ted Toadvine and Lester Embree, eds, Merleau-Ponty’s Reading of Husserl (Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 2002), pp. 3–29; and Ted Toadvine, ‘Merleau-Ponty’s Reading of Husserl—A Chronological Overview’, Appendix to Merleau-Ponty’s Reading of Husserl, op. cit. See also A. D. Smith, ‘The Flesh of Perception: Merleau-Ponty and Husserl’, in T. Baldwin, ed. Reading Merleau-Ponty on Phenomenology of Perception (London & New York: Routledge, 2007), pp. 1–22. Leonard Lawlor, while rightly emphasising the influence of Heidegger on Merleau-Ponty’s later thinking about the role of language, acknowledges ‘the pervasive influence of Husserl in Merleau-Ponty’s thought up to the very end’, see Leonard Lawlor, ‘Essence and Language: The Rupture in Merleau-Ponty’s Philosophy’, in L. Embree, ed., Essays in Celebration of the Founding of the Organization of Phenomenological Organizations, Proceedings of a conference was held in Prague, Czech Republic, November 2002 “Issues Confronting the Post-European World” and that was dedicated to Jan Patočka (1907–1977). (http://www.o-p-o.net/).
- 9.
M. Merleau-Ponty, Signes (Paris: Gallimard, 1960), trans. R. McCleary, Signs (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1964), p. 125. Hereafter ‘Signs’ followed by English translation page number and pagination of original French edition.
- 10.
See Leonard Lawlor’s Foreword, ‘Verflechtung: The Triple Significance of Husserl’s Course Notes on Husserl’s “Origin of Geometry”’, in Husserl at the Limits of Phenomenology, ed. Len Lawlor and Bettina Bergo (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 2002), esp. pp. ix–xi and pp. xvi–xxi. See also David Brubaker, ‘Merleau-Ponty’s Three Intertwinings’, The Journal of Value Inquiry 34 (2000), pp. 89–101. The original text of Merleau-Ponty’s notes can be found in Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Notes de cours sur l’origine de la géométrie de Husserl, suivi de Recherches sur la phénoménologie de Merleau-Ponty, sous la direction de R. Barbaras (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1998). In the notes, Merleau-Ponty writes: ‘language, man, world are ‘interwoven’ (‘entrechêtrés, entrelacés’), Verflochten’ (Bibliothèque Nationale 25), Notes de cours sur l’origine de la géométrie de Husserl, op. cit., p. 45.
- 11.
See Sam Todes, Body and Mind (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2001). Todes writes: ‘Merleau-Ponty is the first to discern the subject body, to see the body as ineliminable from all perceptual sense’ (p. 265).
- 12.
See, for instance, Hubert L. Dreyfus, ‘Merleau-Ponty’s Critique of Husserl’s (and Searle’s) Concept of Intentionality’, in Rereading Merleau-Ponty: Essays Beyond the Continental-Analytic Divide, ed. Lawrence Hass and Dorothea Olkowski (New York, NY: Humanity Books, 2000); and idem, ‘Intelligence without Representation—Merleau-Ponty’s Critique of Mental Representation’, Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences, Vol 1, No. 4, Special Issue: Hubert Dreyfus and the Problem of Representation, ed. Anne Jaap Jacobson (Kluwer Academic Publishers: 2002); and idem, ‘Merleau-Ponty and Recent Cognitive Science’, The Cambridge Companion to Merleau-Ponty, ed. Taylor Carman and Mark Hansen (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004).
- 13.
See Taylor Carman, ‘The Body in Husserl and Merleau-Ponty’, Philosophical Topics Vol. 27, No. 2 (Fall 1999), pp. 205–226. Carman writes: ‘Unlike Husserl, but like Heidegger, Merleau-Ponty looks beyond the subjectobject divide to try to gain insight into the concrete structures of worldly experience. But whereas Heidegger does little more than mention the problem of embodiment in passing, Merleau-Ponty bases his entire phenomenological project on an account of bodily intentionality and the challenge it poses to any adequate concept of mind. Embodiment thus has a philosophical significance for Merleau-Ponty that it could not have for Husserl’ (p. 206).
- 14.
Merleau-Ponty rarely uses the term ‘corps-sujet’ but it does appear in La Nature where he is translating Husserl’s Subjektleib, see La Nature, Notes, Cours du Collège de France, op. cit., p. 365.
- 15.
Earlier versions of this paper were read at the Embodied Subjectivity Conference, Royal Irish Academy. Dublin, 25–27 May 2010, the 42nd Annual Meeting of the Husserl Circle, Gonzaga University, Florence, Italy (27–30 April 2011), and 50th Anniversary Conference, SPEP, sponsored by Villanova University and Penn State, Philadelphia 19–22 October 2011. I would like to thank Patrick Burke, Burt Hopkins, Steve Crowell, Filip Mattens, Andrea Staiti, Richard Kearney, Sara Heinämaa, Eileen Rizo-Patron, and Rasmus Thybo Jensen, for their comments.
- 16.
E. Husserl, Ding und Raum. Vorlesungen 1907, ed. Ulrich Claesges, Husserliana XVI (The Hague: Nijhoff, 1973), trans. by R. Rojcewicz, Thing and Space: Lectures of 1907, Husserl Collected Works VII (Dordrecht: Kluwer, 1997). Hereafter ‘DR’ with English and then Husserliana (hereafter ‘Hua’) volume number and pagination of German edition.
- 17.
Husserl was aware of the ‘behaviourists’ whom he occasionally refers to using the English word. He speaks of the ‘exaggerations of the behaviorists’ (employing the term ‘Behavoristen’, the English word ‘behavior’ is crossed out, see Crisis, p. 247n.4; Hua VI 541; elsewhere he talks of the ‘behaviourists’) to establish a completely objective science of behavior that eliminated the subjective altogether. As we shall see, he sided with the German Gestalt psychologists in rejecting behaviorism as a crude atomistic sensationalism that can monitor only the ‘external sides of modes of behavior’ (Aussenseite der Verhaltungen, Crisis, p. 247n; 251n.1).
- 18.
E. Husserl, Cartesianische Meditationen und Pariser Vorträge, hrsg. Stephan Strasser, Husserliana I (The Hague: Nijhoff, 1950), trans. Dorion Cairns, Cartesian Meditations (The Hague: Nijhoff, 1960). Hereafter ‘CM’ followed by the page number of the English translation and the Husserliana volume and page number. The French edition is E. Husserl, Méditations cartésiennes: introduction à la phénoménologie, trans. G. Peiffer and E. Levinas (Paris: Almand Colin, 1931; reprinted Paris: Vrin, 2001).
- 19.
E. Husserl, Die Krisis der europäischen Wissenschaften und die transzendentale Phänomenologie. Eine Einleitung in die phänomenologische Philosophie, edited by Walter Biemel, Husserliana (hereafter ‘Hua’) Volume VI (The Hague: Nijhoff, 1954). This edition includes the published parts of the Crisis as well as a selection of associated documents. It is substantially translated by David Carr as The Crisis of European Sciences and Transcendental Phenomenology. An Introduction to Phenomenological Philosophy (Evanston, IL: Northwestern U. P., 1970), although some supplements have been left out of the Carr edition. Hereafter the Crisis of European Sciences will be cited as ‘Crisis’ followed by the page number of the Carr translation (where available) and the Husserliana volume and page number.
- 20.
See E. Husserl, Zur Phänomenologie der Intersubjektivität. Texte aus dem Nachlass. Dritter Teil. 1929–1935, hrsg. Iso Kern, Husserliana XV (The Hague: Nijhoff, 1973), pp. 587–88 : «Dann komme ich also wieder darauf zurück, dass mein urtümliches ego eine ‘Unendlichkeit’ von urtümliches auch mein ego, in dem alles das impliziert ist, wie eben dieses auch wieder in jedem impliziert ist. Alles in jedem erdenklichen Sinn Seiende liegt in mir–mit der teleologischen Harmonie, die Allheit als All-Einheit möglich macht. Aber alle Andern liegen in mir in ihrer Totalität der Unendlichkeit, und liegen in mir als alles in jedem Sinn in sich implizierend….». The manuscript of 1935 K III 12 p. 9 says: ‘…what does variation mean here? Variation of a possible subject in a compossible all-subject’ (…was besagt hier Variation? Variation eines möglichen Subjekts in einer kompossiblen Subjekt-Allheit).
- 21.
M. Merleau-Ponty, Phénoménologie de la perception (Paris: Gallimard, 1945), trans. C. Smith as Phenomenology of Perception (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1962). Henceforth ‘PP’ followed by page number of English translation; then, pagination of French edition.
- 22.
Merleau-Ponty’s account of flesh has been criticized from various points of view, see, for instance, Luce Irigaray, ‘The Invisible of the Flesh’, in An Ethics of Sexual Difference, trans. Carolyn Burke and Jillian Gill (Ithaca, NY: Cornell U. P., 1993). This critique has generated a large scholarly literature, see Elizabeth Grosz, ‘Merleau-Ponty and Irigaray in the Flesh’, Thesis Eleven, Vol. 36, No. 1 (1993), pp. 37–59; Cathryn Vasseleu, Textures of Light: Vision and Touch in Irigaray, Levinas, and Merleau-Ponty (London: Routledge, 1998); and Tina Chanter, ‘Wild Meaning: Luce Irigaray’s Reading of Merleau-Ponty’, in Fred Evans and Leonard Lawlor, eds, Chiasms. Merleau-Ponty’s Notion of Flesh (Albany, NY: SUNY Press, 2000), pp. 219–236. I do not intend to address this critique in this paper. Rather I want to point out the manner in which Husserl’s conceptions of Leib and Leiblichkeit already articulate many of the paradoxes of fleshly being later explored by Merleau-Ponty.
- 23.
E. Husserl, Méditations cartésiennes, trans. G. Peiffer and E. Levinas, op. cit., p. 73.
- 24.
Husserl writes: ‘It is the experience … still mute which we are concerned with leading to the pure expression of its own meaning’ (Husserl, CM, pp. 38–39; Hua I 77). Merleau-Ponty refers to this sentence in Phenomenology of Perception (PP, p. xv; x) as well as The Visible and the Invisible (VI, p. 129; 169). See Jacques Taminaux, ‘Experience, Expression, and Form in Merleau-Ponty’s Itinerary’, in his Dialectic and Difference. Finitude in Modern Thought (Atlantic Highlands, NJ: Humanities Press, 1985), pp. 131–54.
- 25.
Gaston Bachelard, La Psychanalyse du feu (Paris, 1938; reprinted Paris: Gallimard 1949), trans. Psychoanalysis of Fire (Boston: Beacon, 1968).
- 26.
Gaston Bachelard also emphasises the breaks and interruptions in the intertwining. For Bachelard, unlike Bergson, the fabric of duration that we weave in-and-out is full of breaks (life/death), as is the living tissue of our bodies. See his La Dialectique de la durée (1936), trans. Mary McAllister Jones as Dialectic of Duration (Manchester: Clinamen, 2007).
- 27.
Husserl speaks of ‘the phenomenology of the body’ (die Phänomenologie der Leiblichkeit) in his Phänomenologische Psychologie § 39, when he is speaking of Verflechtung, see E, Husserl, Phänomenologische Psychologie Vorlesungen Sommersemester 1925, ed. W. Biemel, Hua IX (The Hague: Nijhoff, 1968); trans. J. Scanlon, Phenomenological Psychology. Lectures, Summer Semester 1925 (The Hague: Nijhoff, 1977). Hereafter ‘Phen. Psych.’, followed by pagination of English and then Husserliana edition. The reference here is Phen. Psych., p. 153; Hua IX 199.
- 28.
See Edmund Husserl, Ideen zu einer reinen Phänomenologie und phänomenologischen Philosophie. Drittes Buch: Die Phänomenologie und die Fundamente der Wissenschaften, hrsg. Marly Biemel, Husserliana V (The Hague: Nijhoff, 1971), trans. by Ted E. Klein and W.E. Pohl as Ideas pertaining to a Pure Phenomenology and to a Phenomenological Philosophy, Third Book, Husserl Collected Works Vol. 1 (The Hague: Nijhoff, 1980). Hereafter ‘Ideas III’ followed by Husserliana volume and page number.
- 29.
The reference here is CM § 44, p. 97; Hua I 128. See also CM § 50.
- 30.
See Bernhard Waldenfels, Das leibliche Selbst. Vorlesungen zur Phänomenologie des Leibes, 3rd edition (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 2000) and Stephan Grätzel, Die philosophische Entdeckung des Leibes (Stuttgart: F. Steiner Verlag Wiesbaden, 1989).
- 31.
Max Scheler, Der Formalismus in der Ethik und die materiale Wertethik. Neuer Versuch der Grundlegung eines ethischen Personalismus, vol. 1 (1913); vol. 2 ( 1916), now in Gesammelte Werke, ed. Maria Scheler, Band 2 (Bern/München: Francke Verlag, 1954); trans. Manfred S. Frings and Roger L. Funk as Formalism in Ethics and Non-Formal Ethics of Values. A New Attempt Toward a Foundation of An Ethical Personalism (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1973). Hereafter ‘FE’ followed by pagination of the English translation.
- 32.
See E. Stein, Zum Problem der Einfühlung (Halle: Buchdruckerie des Waisenhauses, 1917; reprinted, Munich: Verlagsgesellschaft Gerhard Kaffke, 1980), trans. Waltraut Stein, On the Problem of Empathy (The Hague: Nijhoff, 1964; reprinted, Washington, DC: ICS Publications, 1989).
- 33.
In der Leibesauffassung ist dadurch bedingt die Unterscheidung der passiven Bewegungen, der bloß mechanischen Bewegungen des Leibes als physischen Dinges und der freien Leibesbewegungen, die charakterisiert sind im Modus des “ich vollziehe eine Bewegung meiner Hand”, “ich hebe den Fuß” usw. (Husserl, Ideas III, Beilage, Hua V 121).
- 34.
Husserl’s terminology is wide-ranging and fluid. He speaks inter alia not just of ‘animate body’ (Leib), but of ‘human-I’ (Ich-mensch),‘ego-body’ (Ichleib), ‘I-life’(Ichleben), ‘living body’ (Leibkörper, Körperleib, depending on the emphasis), ‘soul’ (Seele), ‘psychic life’ (Seelenleben), my ‘psychic’ or ‘soulful’ being (mein seelishes Sein, Hua I 129), the ‘sphere of ownness’ (Eigenheitssphäre), my ‘self-ownness’ (Selbsteigenheit, Hua I 125), and so on.
- 35.
E. Husserl, Méditations cartésiennes, op. cit., p. 186. See also CM § 54, Méditations cartésiennes, p. 194.
- 36.
See Katharine A. Phillips, The Broken Mirror: Understanding and Treating Body Dysmorphic Disorder. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996).
- 37.
The term inspectio sui comes from the Cartesian philosopher Arnold Geulincx (1624–1669). References to Geulincx and to inspectio sui are extremely rare in Husserl’s writings but features in Ideas II § 56 (Hua IV 212), § 57 Hua IV 247, Supplement VI Hua IV 311 and Supplement X (Hua IV 321–322), Grundprobleme der Phänomenologie, in E. Husserl, Zur Phänomenologie der Intersubjektivität. Texte aus dem Nachlass. Erster Teil. 1905–1920, hrsg. I. Kern (The Hague: Nijhoff, 1973), Hua XIII 93, trans. Ingo Farin and James G. Hart as The Basic Problems of Phenomenology. From the Lectures, Winter Semester 1910–1911. Husserl Collected Works Volume XII (Dordrecht: Springer, 2006), p. 169. and in the Kaizo-articles, see E. Husserl, Aufsätze und Vorträge 1922–1937, hrsg. Thomas Nenon and Hans Rainer Sepp (Dordrecht: Kluwer, 1989), Hua XXVII 23. It is possible that Husserl learned of Geulincx from one of the standard histories of philosophy that Husserl owned, e.g., Wilhelm Windelband’s Lehrbuch der Geschichte der Philosophie, 4th revised edition (Tübingen: Mohr, 1907), where Geulincx is discussed in a chapter on causation and occasionalism, see Windelband’s Lehrbuch vol. VIII, p. 342 [This work is listed in Leuven Husserl Archives as KUL—FHUS BQ 507 -> 0002086765]. There are, however, no underlinings or reader’s marks (Lesespuren) in Husserl’s copy of the book. According to Windelband, for Geulincx the mind can only be truly said to do what it knows how to do (Quod nescis quomodo fiat, id non faci, ‘what you do not know how to do, you do not do’). Since the mind does not know how to raise the arm, it does not in fact raise the arm. The mind, then, cannot be the cause of bodily movements. There is no direct knowledge of the body in the way in which there is direct knowledge of the mind. The only true cause is God. God puts ideas in the human mind which are far richer than anything in the outer world. We proceed through inspectio sui or ‘autology’(autologia—it is notable that Geulincx also uses the term ‘somatology’ which is found also in Husserl). I am grateful to Hanne Jacobs and Thomas Vongehr for assisting me in this research on Husserl and Geulincx. Heidegger also refers to the phrase inspectio sui in his 1925 History of the Concept of Time Prolegomena lectures, see M. Heidegger, Prolegomena zur Geschichte des Zeitbegriffs, Gesamtausgabe vol. 20 (Frankfurt: Klostermann, 1979), pp. 169–70; trans. T. Kisiel, History of the Concept of Time. Prolegomena (Bloomington: Indiana U.P., 1985), p. 122.
- 38.
In Ideas I § 64, § 65, §79 (and also in Hua XXV 36 footnote) Husserl argues against the criticism that the phenomenological method is only a kind of psychological ‘self-observation’ (Selbstbeobachtung). In Ideas I § 79, he mentions James Watt’s ‘Über die neueren Forschungen in der Gedächtnis- und Assoziationspsychologie aus dem Jahr 1905’, Archiv für die gesamte Psychologie, Bd. IX, 1907. See E. Husserl, Ideen zu einer reinen Phänomenologie und phänomenologischen Philosophie. Erstes Buch: Allgemeine Einführung in die reine Phänomenologie 1, hrsg. K. Schuhmann, Hua III/1 (The Hague: Nijhoff, 1977), trans. F. Kersten as Ideas pertaining to a Pure Phenomenology and to a Phenomenological Philosophy, First Book. (Dordrecht: Kluwer, 1983). Hereafter ‘Ideas I’ followed by the page number of the English translation and the Husserliana volume and page number.
- 39.
Stein claims that pain takes place at a distance from the ego, see Edith Stein, Zum Problem der Einfühlung (Halle, 1917; reprinted München: Gerhard Kaffke Verlag, 1980), p. 46; trans. Waltraut Stein, On the Problem of Empathy, The Collected Works of Edith Stein Sister benedicta of the Cross Discalced Carmelite 1891–1942, Volume Three, 3rd revised edition (Washington, DC: ICS Publications, 1989), p. 42.
- 40.
See Dermot Moran, ‘Husserl and Sartre on Embodiment and the “Double Sensation,”’ in Katherine J. Morris, ed. Sartre on the Body, Philosophers in Depth Series (Basingstoke: Palgrave-Macmillan, 2010), pp. 41–66.
- 41.
See E. Fink, ‘Operative Concepts in Husserl’s Phenomenology’, in W. McKenna, R. M. Harlan and L. E. Winters, eds, Apriori and World. European Contributions to Husserlian Phenomenology (The Hague: Nijhoff, 1981), pp. 56–70. This article deeply influenced Merleau-Ponty, see Stephen H. Watson, ‘Merleau-Ponty’s Phenomenological Itinerary From Body Schema to Situated Knowledge: On How We Are and How We Are Not to “Sing the World”’, Janus Head vol. 9 no 2 (2007), pp. 525–550.
- 42.
The reference here is LU I § 1, I, p. 183; Hua XIX/1 31: Verhältnis jenes Anzeichenseins verflochten ist, und dieses wiederum begründet dadurch einen weiteren Begriff, daß es eben auch ohne solche Verflechtung auftreten kann. Findlay’s English translation renders Verflectung here as ‘connection’.
- 43.
See Leonard Lawlor, ‘Verflechtung: The Triple Significance of Husserl’s Course Notes on Husserl’s ‘Origin of Geometry’, in Husserl at the Limits of Phenomenology, op. cit., p. x.
- 44.
The term entrelacement (‘intertwining’) appears only twice in Signs, once in relation to Husserl’s Ideas II in ‘The Philosopher and His Shadow’ (Signs, p. 127; 225) and once in relation to Freud in ‘Man and Adversity’ (Signs, p. 230; 235) where Merleau-Ponty talks of the intertwining of the sexual and the aggressive in Freud as a recognition of the very ambiguity of incarnation. Indeed Merleau-Ponty’s later reading of Freud—and Melanie Klein—is important for his new understanding of intertwining. The essay ‘Man and Adversity’ is interesting as it was originally delivered as a lecture in 1951.
- 45.
See Derrida’s translation of ‘Origin of Geometry’ in E. Husserl, La Crise des sciences européennes et de la phénoménologie transcendentale, traduit de l’allemand et préfacé par Gérard Granel (Paris: Gallimard, 1976), p. 409. In fact Derrida told me once in Dublin that Merleau-Ponty wrote to him to ask if he would be willing to translate the whole of the Crisis text. Derrida however had had enough of translation and declined. Merleau-Ponty died shortly afterwards and the two never met.
- 46.
J. Derrida, La Voix et le phénomène (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1967), trans. by David B. Allison, with additional essays, Speech and Phenomena and other Essays on Husserl’s Theory of Signs (Evanston: Northwestern U.P., 1973), p. 20.
- 47.
See also LU V § 24, I, p. 132; Hua XIX/1 433.
- 48.
The German reads: ‘hier kommt es nur darauf an, daß sich die Konstitution physischer Dinglichkeit in merkwürdiger Korrelation mit der Konstitution eines Ichleibes verflicht’.
- 49.
Die Einzelheit ist ja im Seelischen bloss Abstraktion. Ein Gefühl, eine Stimmung, ein auftauchender Gedanke, eine sich regende Hoffnung, usw- — all dergleichen ist nie ein isoliertes Erlebnis, es ist, was es ist, im seelischen Milieu, in seinen V erflechtungen, seinen Motivationen, Indikationen usw., und diese sind untrennbar miterlebte Momente des Zusammenhangs, der seelischen Funktion. So ist es die grosse Aufgabe, die vielseitigen Verflechtungen, die sich zur jeweiligen Einheit eines Strukturzusammenhangs einigen, systematisch zu zergliedern und in ihrer Typik zu beschreiben. (Phen. Psych, Hua IX 9).
- 50.
Durch die Phänomenologie der Leiblichkeit in ihrer Verflechtung mit der Phänomenologie der physischen Dinglichkeit, hier eingeschlossen die der biophysisch betrachteten Organismen, werden schon die Grundstücke einer Phänomenologie der Natur, das ist der phänomenologischen Aufklärung der Subjektivität als in sich Natur erfahrungsmässig, nämlich als Erfahrungssinn und Erfahrungssatz bzw. als System freier Zuganglichkeit konstituierende, geleistet, aber nur Grundstücke. (Phen. Psych. IX 199).
- 51.
… universalen Verflechtung alles Geistigen, ist in der universalen Geisteswissenschaft die universale Geistigkeit, (Phen. Psych. Hua IX 377).
- 52.
See also CM § 50, p. 109; Hua I 139; CM § 52, p. 114; Hua I 143; and CM § 54, p. 119 (here Verflechtung is translated infelicitously as ‘association’ by Cairns); Hua I 148.
- 53.
See Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Notes de cours, 1959–61 (Paris: Gallimard, 1996), p. 148.
- 54.
The concept of ‘flowing in’ (Einströmen) is found in Husserl’s Crisis of the European Sciences §§ 59–60, further discussed in Text No. 7, ‘Einströmen (Sommer 1935)’, Hua XXIX 77–83), see James Dodd, Crisis and Reflection: An Essay on Edmund Husserl’s Crisis of the European Sciences, Phaenomenologica 174 (Dordrecht: Kluwer, 2004), p. 215.
- 55.
See Dodd, Crisis and Reflection: An Essay on Edmund Husserl’s Crisis of the European Sciences, op. cit., p. 219.
- 56.
Here undoubtedly the influence of Heidegger—stressed by Leonard Lawlor—is also evident.
- 57.
In her Editor’s Introduction to Ideas II Marly Biemel goes on to talk about the ‘simultaneity’ (‘Gleichzeitlichkeit’) in the constitution of thing, lived body and soul (Hua IV xvii), in quotation marks by her but without giving a specific reference to Husserl (this term does not appear in Hua V).
- 58.
Ideas III contains further references to Verflechtung, see e.g. Hua V 2 and V 117.
- 59.
‘… ein wichtiges Ergebnis unserer Betrachtung, daß die “Natur” und der Leib, in ihrer Verflechtung mit diesem wieder die Seele, sich in Wechselbezogenheit aufeinander, in eins miteinender konstituieren’ (Hua V 24).
- 60.
Beschränken wir uns aber noch auf die bloßen Gegebenheiten der theoretischen Erfahrung, schließen wir alle Werte und alle praktischen Objektitäten aus, so ist das in wichtiges Ergebnis unserer Betrachtung, daß die “Natur” und der Leib, in ihrer Verflechtung mit diesem wieder die Seele, sich in Wechselbezogenheit aufeinander, in eins miteinender konstituieren (Hua V 124).
- 61.
Taylor Carman has helpfully identified these passages, see his Merleau-Ponty (London & New York: Routledge, 2008), pp. 125–127.
- 62.
Here Merleau-Ponty again reiterates that the metamorphosis of seeing and the visible ‘defines’ flesh.
- 63.
Gaston Bachelard draws a similar analogy in his L’Eau et les rêves. Essai sur l’imagination de la matière (Paris: Corti, 1942) pp. 31–45; trans. Edith Farrell, Water and Dreams: An Essay on the Imagination of Matter (Dallas: The Dallas Institute of Humanities and Culture, 1999), pp. 21–31. I am grateful to Eileen Rizo Patron for pointing this out.
- 64.
The term ‘dehiscence’ (déhiscence), which is a botanical term referring to the spontaneous opening of a plant at maturity in the form of a fruit, seed, etc., also appears in ‘Eye and Mind’ (EM, p. 187; 57).
- 65.
See also VI, p. 193; 243, where he writes ‘The looks that cross = eine Art der Reflexion (Les regards qui se croisent = eine Art der Reflexion)’.
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Moran, D. (2013). The Phenomenology of Embodiment: Intertwining and Reflexivity. In: Jensen, R., Moran, D. (eds) The Phenomenology of Embodied Subjectivity. Contributions to Phenomenology, vol 71. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-01616-0_15
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