Abstract
In Phénoménologie de la perception Merleau-Ponty constructs and critiques two notions of “constitution, ” both of which he ascribes to Husserl: an “intellectualist” sense that he rejects because it perpetuates a dualistic ontology of determinate being; and a “genetic” sense that is rejected on the grounds that it assumes an ultimately pre-given ontological matrix that it cannot itself provide. Thus Merleau-Ponty gives “constitution” an exclusively “metaphysical” reading, thereby occluding Husserl’s distinctive methodological sense of the term.
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Reference
Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Ph¨¦nom¨¦nologie de la perception (Paris: Gallimard, 1945); Phenomenology of Perception, trans. Colin Smith (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1962; reprint, with translation revisions by Forrest Williams, Atlantic Highlands, NJ: Humanities Press, 1976). Since the term “constitution” is translated a number of ways in the English edition, the research project upon which the present essay is based relies solely upon the French edition. However, references to this work will provide French/English page numbers throughout. Unattributed page numbers throughout this essay refer to this work.
Cf. Thomas M. Seebohm, “Intentionalität und passive Synthesis. Gedanken zu einer nichttranszendentalen Konzeption von Intentionalität,” in Husserl in Halle. Spurensuche im Anfang der Phänomenologie, ed. Hans-Martin Gerlach and Hans Rainer Sepp (Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang, 1994), 68–9, on extra-philosophical senses of “constitution” in political and medical contexts.
Merleau-Ponty’s periodization of Husserl’s work in terms of a trajectory moving from logicism to existentialism (317 n. 1/274 n. 1; cf. 61 n. 1/49 n. 1, 63 n. 1/51 n. 1, 281 n. 1/243 n. 1)¡ªalbeit to an existentialism marred by “throwbacks” to earlier periods (419 n. 1/365 n. 1)¡ªis structured by a narrative shape that expresses Merleau-Ponty’s own philosophical concerns in Ph¨¦nom¨¦nologie de la perception, and this narrative does not always hold up in light of subsequent scholarship on Husserl’s texts; for example, in the 1945 work, Merleau-Ponty was unable to take into account that the 1928 version of the time lectures, edited by Stein and Heidegger, mingles manuscripts from different periods (cf., e.g., 178 n. 1/152 n. 1).
Peter J. Hadreas, In Place of the Flawed Diamond: An Investigation of Merleau-Ponty’s Philosophy (New York: Peter Lang, 1986), 7.
See, e.g., Zahavi’s contribution to the present volume.
Cf. ii/viii on constructing a “phenomenology for ourselves ” based on the premise that “we find in texts only what we put into them”; see also Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Signes (Paris: Gallimard, 1960), 160, 167, 201–2; Signs,trans. Richard C. McCleary (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1964), 128, 133, 159–60, and cf. Edmund Husserl, Aufsätze und Vorträge (1911–1921), Husserliana, vol. 25, ed. Thomas Nenon and Hans Rainer Sepp (Dordrecht: Martinus Nijhoff, 1987), 207–8, for similar sentiments in Husserl¡ªwho does, however, distinguish this mode of “constructive” reading, undertaken to inspire one’s own philosophical writing, from a scientifically motivated history of philosophy, which does indeed rely on philological interpretation and critique of the documents and traditions concerned: contrast Husserl, Die Krisis der europäischen Wissenschaften und die transzendentale Phänomenologie. Ergänzungsband: Texte aus dem Nachlass 1934–1937, Husserliana, vol. 29, ed. Reinhold N. Smid (Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1992), 49–51 and 243–4.
It would be particularly interesting to examine the influence of Max Scheler, “Idealismus-Realismus,” Philosophischer Anzeiger 2 (Bonn: Verlag Friedrich Cohen, 1927), 255–93; “Idealism and Realism,” in Selected Philosophical Essays, trans. David R. Lachterman (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1973), 288–356¡ªawork that Merleau-Ponty does indeed cite in Ph¨¦nom¨¦nologie de la perception¡ªin this light, not only with regard to the general notion of knowledge as an ultimate, underivable, and participatory ontological relationship exemplified first of all in an “ecstatic” (ekstatische) form of knowledge prior to any reflection or conscious knowledge, but also with regard to Scheler’s overall approach to the “idealism”-“realism” controversy (cf. section 1.d. of the present paper).
See Marianne Sawicki, Body, Text, and Science: The Literacy of Investigative Practices and the Phenomenology of Edith Stein (Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1997), 73 ff., 153 ff.; cf. 164 n. 38.
Eugen Fink, “Das Problem der Phänomenologie Edmund Husserls,” Revue internationale de philosophie 1 (1939), 256–7, and see also 236, 270; “The Problem of the Phenomenology of Edmund Husserl,” trans. Robert M. Harlan, in Apriori and World: European Contributions to Husserlian Phenomenology, ed. William McKenna et al. (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1981), 44–5, and see also 29, 54; cf., e.g., Martin Heidegger, Die Grundprobleme der Phänomenologie, ed. Friedrich-Wilhelm von Herrmann (Frankfurt am Main: Vittorio Klostermann, 1975); The Basic Problems of Phenomenology, trans. Albert Hofstadter (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1982), ¡ì5.
This development is worked out in my “`Remarkably Incompletely’: A Contribution to the Study of the Constitution-Problematic in Merleau-Ponty,” presented at the research symposium on “Merleau-Ponty’s Reading of Husserl,” Delray Beach, FL, November 1999.
Merleau-Ponty’s objections to certain “Kantian” texts of Husserl (cf. 320 n. 1/276 n. 1) can also be seen as expressions of Merleau-Ponty’s effort to distinguish his own work from the prevailing neo-Kantian scholarly climate; cf. also Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Les Sciences de l’homme et la ph¨¦nom¨¦nologie (Paris: Centre de Documentation Universitaire, 1958; reprint, 1975), 15, 71; The Primacy of Perception and Other Essays, ed. James M. Edie (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1964), 52, 92, where Merleau-Ponty links Husserl’s use of the term “phenomenology” with Hegel’s.
See, e.g., 55 n. 2/45 n. 3, 75/62, 241/208, 486–7/425–6.
See, e.g., 47/37, 75/62, 365/316, 383/332.
See, e.g., 55–6 n. 2/45 n. 3, 365/316, 509/446. Merleau-Ponty typically uses such locutions as “d¨¦ploy¨¦ devant” and “¨¦tal¨¦ devant, ” as well as the phrase “en face de.”
See, e.g., 76/63, 239/206, 275/238, 387–8/336, 418/364–5.
“To understand is ultimately always to construct, to constitute, to bring about here and now the synthesis of the object” (490/428, emphasis added). Here Merleau-Ponty is not only identifying the “intentionality of acts” (478/418, 490/429; cf. xii/xvii) with a Kantian synthesis of “sense-data” into “objects” and treating such “acts” as active centrifugal operations of Sinngebung deriving their impulse from the subject as synthesizing “agent” (cf. 498/436), but is also portraying the “acts of consciousness” concerned as “distinct Erlebnisse” (466/407), each occurring in a spatialized “present” that is always “contemporary” with the consciousness that posits it (474–5/415).
See, e.g., 68/55–6, 86/72, 140–1/121, 274/237, 401/349, 474/415.
Merleau-Ponty’s discussion here is focused on Lachi¨¨ze-Rey, a Kantian whom he takes¡ªalong with the Husserl of the Ideen¡ªas a representative of the “classical conception” of intentionality, which “treats the experience of the world as a pure act of constituting consciousness” (281/243), i.e., conceives it in terms of the intellectualist interpretation of “constitution” as Merleau-Ponty understands it.
See 69/57, 71/58, 161 n. 1/138 n. 2, 490–1/429. The latter passage¡ªwhich refers to the “operative intentionality” that is at work in the “logos of the aesthetic world” (i.e., the Husserlian “transcendental aesthetic”) as “an `art hidden in the depths of the human soul,’ one which, like any art, is known only in its results”¡ªechoes not only Kant but also Fink’s characterization of operatively functioning intentionality in terms of modes of consciousness that “operate in concealment and are veiled by their result”¡ªFink 1939/1981 (see n. 9 above), 266/51.
See, e.g., xvi/xxi, 140/120, 229/197, 254/219, 337–8/292.
The notion of the “positive indeterminacy” of the pre-objective world appears in Ph¨¦nom¨¦nologie de la perception as an antidote not only to the “freezing of being” accomplished by the objective sciences (66–7/54), but also to its more fundamental presupposition¡ªnamely, the prejudice of the objective world, i.e., of determinate being in general (see, e.g., 12/6, 19/12, 62 n. 1/51 n. 1, 109/92, 316/273), which serves as the “tacit thesis” of a primordial perceptual faith in a coherent, explorable world (66/54).
See 485/424; cf. viii/xiii, 491/429.
See, e.g., 147/127, where Merleau-Ponty characterizes the phenomenological notion of Fundierung in terms of “the relationship between matter and form.”
See, e.g., 275/238, 399/347, 411/358, 461/402, 462/404; cf. Signes (see n. 6 above), 227/180: “Originally a project to gain intellectual possession of the world, constitution becomes increasingly, as Husserl’s thought matures, the means of unveiling a back side of things that we have not constituted.”
On the need to complement constitutive analyses with a “constructive” phenomenology directed toward that which is “non-given” in principle, see Eugen Fink, VI. Cartesianische Meditation. Teil 1. Die Idee einer transzendentalen Methodenlehre,ed. Hans Ebeling, Jann Holt, and Guy van Kerckhoven (Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1988); Sixth Cartesian Meditation: The Idea ofa Transcendental Theory of Method, trans. Ronald Bruzina (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1995), ¡ì7; for Van Breda’s appraisal ofthe influence of this work on Ph¨¦nom¨¦nologie de la perception, see his letter of 17 December 1945 to Merleau-Ponty, cited in Bruzina’s “Translator’s Introduction,” lxxxiii, n. 119.
See, e.g., 404/351, 467/408, 485/424.
In addition to using the image of a primordial “pact,” Merleau-Ponty also presents the body-world relation in terms of a kind of correspondence or mirroring. This is not only apparent when Merleau-Ponty tells us that the constitution of the body as an object is a “decisive moment” in the constitution of the objective world (86/72), but also informs the passages where the sch¨¦ma corporel is characterized as an open yet unified system that itself not only opens onto, but is correlative to the world of intersensorial things (see, e.g., 165/141, 168 n. 1/143 n. 3, 237/205, 271/235, 367/317–8), culminating in the notion of the correspondence between the “open unity” of the world and the “open and indefinite unity” of the experiencer (465/406). Although in Ph¨¦nom¨¦nologie de la perception the correspondence does not reach the degree of ontological intimacy expressed in the later notion of “flesh,” it can certainly be seen as an important stage in Merleau-Ponty’s development of this theory, and cf. also the reference to the “sentient subject” as a “hollow” or “fold” in being (249/215).
Thus in the guise of seeking the “foundations of being” in the phenomenological world (xv/xx), Merleau-Ponty is in full agreement with Fink 1939/1981 (see n. 9 above), 236/29: “It is the fundamental thesis of the interpretation undertaken here that the understanding of the sense of phenomenology as a philosophy is dependent upon the extent to which the problem of being is recognized as the horizon of the thematization of consciousness.” Cf. Richard M. Zaner, The Problem of Embodiment: Some Contributions to a Phenomenology of the Body (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1964), 130, 233–4.
For one example of a Husserlian critique of Merleau-Ponty’s understanding of “constitution” in Ph¨¦nom¨¦nologie de la perception, see Zaner 1964 (seen. 28 above), 208 ff.
Cf. Elizabeth A. Behnke, “The `remarkably incompletely constituted’ body in light of a methodological understanding of constitution: An experiment in phenomenological practice,” presented at the Husserl Circle, Seattle, WA, June 2000.
See, e.g., Maurice Merleau-Ponty, La Nature: Notes,cours du Coll¨¨ge de France, ed. Dominique S¨¦glard (Paris: Éditions du Seuil, 1995), 149, and cf. Seebohm’s contribution to the present volume. Note that the notion of an “interpretive phenomenological ontology” is part of the heritage of realistic phenomenology, including, e.g., Hedwig Conrad-Martius’s 1923 Realontologie, which Merleau-Ponty cites in Ph¨¦nom¨¦nologie de la perception; cf. Harald Delius, “Descriptive Interpretation,” Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 13 (1952–53), 309 n. 6. We might well see Merleau-Ponty’s “existential phenomenology” as an interpretation of the findings of constitutive phenomenology carried out under the influence of the methods, commitments, and agendas of realistic phenomenology and hermeneutical phenomenology.
See, e.g., Eugen Fink, “Vergegenwärtigung und Bild. Beiträge zur Phänomenologie der Unwirklichkeit” (1930), in his Studien zur Phänomenologie 1930–1939 (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1966), 2; for a stronger statement, see the quotation from Fink’s unpublished “Elemente einer Husserl-Kritik” (1940) cited in Sebastian Luft, “Dialectics of the Absurd: The Systematics of the Phenomenological System in Husserl’s Last Period,” Philosophy Today 43, supplement (1999), 113 n. 2. That Husserl’s own use of ontological language leaves him open for ontological interpretations of his phenomenological analyses has been emphasized by Thomas M. Seebohm in a number of essays¡ªsee, e.g., “Apodiktizität. Recht und Grenze,” in Husserl-Symposium Mainz 27.6./4.7.1988, ed. Gerhard Funke (Stuttgart: Franz Steiner Verlag Wiesbaden, 1989), 90; cf. 71–2.
J. N. Mohanty, “Understanding Husserl’s Transcendental Phenomenology: An Introductory Essay,” in Apriori and World (see n. 9 above), 12–3.
Cf. Zaner 1964 (see n. 28 above), 204.
See the essay by Depraz in the present volume.
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Behnke, E.A. (2002). Merleau-Ponty’s Ontological Reading of Constitution in Phénoménologie de la perception . In: Toadvine, T., Embree, L. (eds) Merleau-Ponty’s Reading of Husserl. Contributions to Phenomenology, vol 45. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-015-9944-3_2
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