Routledge Philosophy GuideBook to Merleau-Ponty and Phenomenology of Perception

Komarine Romdenh-Romluc

• Éditeur: Routledge
• Année: 2010
• ISBN:
  9781134290741
• Édition: 1
• Sujet: Philosophy
• Sous-sujet: Philosophy History & Theory

Maurice Merleau-Ponty (1908 – 1961) is hailed as one of the key philosophers of the twentieth century. Phenomenology of Perception is his most famous and influential work, and an essential text for anyone seeking to understand phenomenology. In this GuideBook Komarine Romdenh-Romluc introduces and assesses:

• Merleau-Ponty's life and the background to his philosophy
• the key themes and arguments of Phenomenology of Perception
• the continuing importance of Merleau-Ponty's work to philosophy.

Merleau-Ponty and Phenomenology of Perception is an ideal starting point for anyone coming to his great work for the first time. It is essential reading for students of Merleau-Ponty, phenomenology and related subjects in the Humanities and Social Sciences.

1
MERLEAU-PONTY’S PHENOMENOLOGY

What is phenomenology? Since Phenomenology of Perception (PhP) (Merleau-Ponty 1962) is, as the name suggests, a work of phenomenology, it is sensible to begin, as the text does, by addressing this question. But, as Merleau-Ponty notes, this is not an easy question to answer. Different phenomenologists conceive of phenomenology differently, and it is not always easy to decide who falls into this category in the first place. One might minimally characterise phenomenology as philosophy that investigates experience from a first-person point of view, that is, as it is presented to the subject. But this minimal definition is not very informative, and is also open to misunderstandings. To grasp Merleau-Ponty’s philosophical project, we need to understand his conception of phenomenology. This will be the focus of the present chapter.

Merleau-Ponty puts forward his conception of phenomenology in the preface to PhP. A figure who features prominently in the preface is Edmund Husserl. Merleau-Ponty’sinfluences are many and various. They include Henri Bergson, Simone de Beauvoir, René Descartes, the Gestalt psychologists, Martin Heidegger, Immanuel Kant, Claude Lévi-Strauss, Jean-Paul Sartre, Ferdinand de Saussure and Edith Stein, amongst many others. But his most important influence is undoubtedly Husserl. Edmund Husserl is widely thought of as the founder of phenomenology – although Husserl himself talks of having discovered an idea that is inherent, but not fully realised, in the work of previous philosophers. Merleau-Ponty considers himself to be merely bringing Husserl’s philosophical project to fruition. Whether or not Merleau-Ponty was correct about this matter is debated, and I will say more about their relation later. But it is clear that a grasp of Merleau-Ponty’s philosophical project requires an understanding of Husserl’s. Different conceptions of phenomenology can be found in Husserl’s work. The extent of the continuity between them is debated. We can identify two stages in Husserl’s work that are important for understanding Merleau-Ponty and his relation to Husserl: the first is found in Cartesian Meditations (Husserl 1988); the second is that which he offers in Crisis of the European Sciences and Transcendental Phenomenology (Husserl 1970).

HUSSERL AND CARTESIAN MEDITATIONS (CM)

In CM, Husserl is concerned with what he sees as the sorry state of human knowledge. Philosophy is no longer a unified discipline, which for Husserl shows that philosophers are no longer working together to produce ‘objectively valid results’ (1988: 4–5). The natural and human sciences are also beset by a significant problem: they are incomplete. Of course, there is an obvious sense in which science is incomplete. Scientists have not yet discovered everything there is to know about the world. Any of our current scientific hypotheses might turn out to be incorrect in the light of new evidence. Scientific investigation is not yet finished. But it is not this that bothers Husserl. He identifies a further sense in which science is incomplete, which begins from the thought that motivated Descartes: I can be certain about the content of my own experiences but I cannot be sure about the existence and nature of the external world. This is because the content of my own experiences is given to me. It is presented to me in such a way that I can know it immediately, without making any inferences or relying on any presuppositions. The external world, in contrast, is not given to me. Experience may provide me with knowledge of it, but only if I assume that the world I experience really exists. Scientific investigation begins with observation – i.e. experience. The idea that observation yields knowledge of the world thus presupposes that the world that seems to confront us in experience actually exists. The whole of science therefore rests on an assumption which has yet to be justified. Science lacks a foundation. It is this that troubles Husserl. He aims to reinvigorate philosophy by setting philosophers a new goal. Philosophy’s task will be to explicate the existence of the world, thus providing science with a foundation. The new philosophy is phenomenology.

Husserl intends phenomenology to be a science. By this he means that it will be a systematic inquiry that yields objective truths. It will not proceed in a haphazard fashion, but will follow methods that we have reason to believe will produce accurate results. Insofar as all sciences are like this, phenomenology will be continuous with the natural and human sciences. However, there is a very important sense in which phenomenology will differ from science. The natural and human sciences are naturalistic. They take the world they investigate to be one that obeys the laws of nature. These laws are discovered through scientific inquiry. The results of scientific investigations are explanations of the natural world that appeal to such laws. As we have seen, science presupposes the existence of the world. All of its results depend on this presupposition. Since Husserl’s aim is to explicate the existence of the world, thus providing a foundation for science, he cannot make use of any results that depend on this presupposition. It follows that he cannot appeal to the laws of nature and his inquiry cannot yield causal explanations of what he studies. Husserl’s investigation, in other words, cannot be naturalistic. A non-naturalistic inquiry which seeks to provide a foundation for ordinary human knowledge is classed as a transcendental inquiry.

The natural and human sciences lack a foundation because they presuppose that the world exists. To provide them with a foundation, Husserl’s inquiry should not depend on any presuppositions – or else his system will itself need a foundation – and it must yield results that are absolutely certain. Since phenomenology will produce results that are presuppositionless and indubitable, Husserl calls it a rigorous science. To be rigorous, phenomenology must appeal only to what is given – the content of one’s own experiences. Moreover, Husserl claims that it must be restricted to describing what is given, rather than explaining it. This is because explanations go beyond what is given. They involve making inferences from generalisations, appealing to hypotheses, conjecturing, and so on. Husserl takes descriptions, on the other hand, to merely capture what is given. The phenomenologist must thus proceed by describing their own experiences. One may be puzzled at this point. Phenomenology is supposed to be producing results that are objectively valid, and which are capable of providing a foundation for the natural and human sciences. But it’s not very clear how describing one’s own experiences will satisfy these aims. To see how this is supposed to work, we need to know more about how one should do phenomenology.

There are different ways to describe one’s experiences. Suppose that I get lost on the way to my friend’s house. I phone my friend for directions, and he asks me to describe what I can see. I tell him that I can see a church to my left, a pub to my right, and a fork in the road ahead. I have described my current experience, but my description is of no use to the phenomenologist. My friend and I both assume that the things I seem to see actually exist – it is only if we assume this that it makes sense for me to describe what I see as a way of locating where I am. But the phenomenologist cannot assume the existence of the world that seems to confront him or her. Before describing this experience, the phenomenologist must thus perform what Husserl calls the ‘Transcendental-Phenomenological Reduction’. The purpose of the Reduction is to ‘bracket’ what Husserl refers to as our ‘natural attitude’: the assumption that the world exists. This does not involve doubting the existence of the world. Instead, one simply suspends belief in it. One puts aside the belief that the world exists. Since all scientific theories depend on this assumption, they must also be bracketed when one performs the Transcendental-Phenomenological Reduction. Some of these scientific theories concern consciousness, for example, scientists view it as part of the causal order, dependent on the brain, and so on. Thus suspending the natural attitude also involves putting aside scientific theories about consciousness. Husserl claims that after performing the Transcendental-Phenomenological Reduction, the qualitative character of experience is left untouched. But rather than considering the things one seems to see as independently existing worldly entities, one should consider them as ways that experience is structured. Consciousness is conceived as the Transcendental Ego – subjectivity that is not part of the causal order or dependent on any aspect of the world.

After performing the Transcendental-Phenomenological Reduction, the phenomenologist is able to discover the structures of consciousness. However, at this stage, this involves merely dealing with the way that their own experiences are structured. The phenomenologist must do more to obtain the universal results that Husserl is after. Husserl holds that the phenomenologist must move beyond the particular form of their own experiences to discover the structures of experience in general. They must investigate the essential structures of consciousness. To do this, they must perform what Husserl calls the ‘Eidetic Reduction’, which brackets the particular and contingent features of an experience to reveal its essence. I might experience a dog, for example, as medium-sized, black with white paws, amber eyes and so on. But not all dog-experiences share these features. They are not part of the essence of dog-experiences. The essential structure of dog-experiences will comprise those features that a dog-experience must exhibit in order to qualify as such. The Eidetic Reduction involves engaging in a process which Husserl calls ‘Eidetic Variation’. One imagines the thing one experiences as having different features to find out whether changing a particular property destroys its identity as a thing of that type. If it does not, then that particular property is not essential to it. If it does, then that particular feature is part of the thing’s essence. Thus I imagine the dog I experience as being brown instead of black. The difference in colour does not change its identity as a dog, thus I can conclude that being black is not essential to being a dog-experience. But if I imagine it having hooves, it no longer qualifies as a dog-experience. I can therefore conclude that being presented as having paws is essential to being a dog-experience.

A very important essential structure of consciousness is intentionality. All consciousness is of or about something. A central task of Husserl’s phenomenology is to provide an account of intentionality. He attempts to do this without reference to an independently existing world. A second essential structure of consciousness is temporality: conscious events and activities are ordered in time. Husserl also aims to develop an account of temporality. Again, his goal is to do this without appealing to an external world.

The position that Husserl reaches as a result of his investigations is a form of transcendental idealism. He holds that the ordinary world that confronts us in our day-to-day lives is constituted by the Transcendental Ego – consciousness which lies outside the causal order of the natural world and is wholly different from it. In CM, he seems to view transcendental idealism as a direct result of performing the Transcendental-Phenomenological Reduction. This procedure reveals the given – what can be known for certain. For Husserl, this is the content of one’s own experiences – the mental acts of one’s Transcendental Ego. Importantly, the qualitative character of experience remains exactly the same. There is no change whatsoever to the world that seems to confront one in experience. It follows that the Transcendental Ego’s mental acts – which are all that remain after the Transcendental-Phenomenological Reduction has been performed – must be sufficient for the existence of the world. In other words, the world is constituted in experience. On its own, this is not an adequate argument for transcendental idealism. Husserl’s reasoning here is supplemented by arguments he offers in previous works. These need not concern us here.¹

The tenor of Husserl’s project so far is thoroughly Cartesian, although the position he ultimately reaches has more in common with Kant’s transcendental idealism. However, the Cartesian framework that Husserl adopts in CM is somewhat disrupted by the claims he makes in the Fifth Meditation. The aim of Husserl’s investigation is to account for the existence of the everyday world in terms of the phenomenologist’s own experiences. An important feature of this world is that it is one that each of us shares with other people. I experience things in the world as capable of being experienced by others, and my experience presents me with other consciousnesses. For Husserl’s account to be complete, he must thus explain how I can experience another consciousness. If he cannot do this, then the world that his phenomenology explicates will be solipsistic. It will be a world that belongs to only one subject: the phenomenologist. The Fifth Meditation deals with this issue.

It is clear that one cannot have direct, introspective access to another’s mental life. If another person is to feature in one’s experience, it can only be via perception of his or her body. But on the Cartesian picture, the body is an object that belongs in the external world. It is not essentially related to consciousness. The perception of a body is at the very most evidence for the existence of another; it is not possible to directly perceive that person. There are well-known difficulties with this picture, and Husserl rejects it.

He develops his alternative model by considering the experience he has of his body, noting that it is very different from his experience of other objects. He points out four important ways in which it differs. It immediately and spontaneously expresses his emotions – if he is embarrassed, it blushes; if he is happy, he spontaneously walks around smiling with a spring in his step; if he is miserable, his body walks around with its shoulders hunched, dragging its feet. His body is sensitive – he can touch things with parts of his body and feel sensations in them; his body feels pain; it feels sensations of heat and cold; its parts sometimes itch, and so on. His body immediately responds to his will – if he decides to pick up a glass of water and drink from it, his body immediately performs this action. Finally, it is the centre of his egocentric space. Perception is always perspectival – it presents the world from a particular point of view in space. The perceiver experiences themselves as located at the place from which they see. Husserl notices that this is where he experiences his body as being. Husserl thus concludes that his own body is not presented as an object, but as a living conscious being which is not separate from his mind. It is a physical manifestation of his consciousness. If the body is an external object with no essential connection to the consciousness it houses, then others will never be directly perceivable. But if the body is instead a living subject, and other minds are embodied beings, then they will be perceivable elements in the world. Husserl accounts for the experience of others in this way. The details of his account are not important here. What is significant is the conception of the body that he reaches through doing phenomenology. His description of bodily experience puts pressure on the notion of a subject who lies outside the world and can be considered in isolation from it. Husserl’s Cartesian framework is under threat.

HUSSERL AND CRISIS OF EUROPEAN SCIENCES AND TRANSCENDENTAL PHENOMENOLOGY (CES)

The conception of phenomenology that can be found in Husserl’s last writings, particularly those published posthumously as CES, is different from the one he put forward in CM. The basic form of phenomenology is the same. It can be summarised by the following three claims:

(1) Human knowledge is in decline and will be saved by philosophy.

(2) Philosophy must proceed by describing experience as it is lived, that is, what it is like from the perspective of the experiencing subject.

(3) To do this, one must perform the Transcendental-Phenomenological Reduction, which involves suspending our natural or commonsense view of the world and consciousness.

But Husserl’s understanding of these claims alters.

Husserl sees human knowledge as being in crisis. The problem is that the Galilean conception of science has been identified with the rational form of inquiry, so that anything that cannot be investigated in these terms cannot be investigated rationally. T...