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§ 1. Introduction: Ontology and Phenomenology

The study of nature advances concretely a theory of the continuity of the real against the theories of spatio-temporal atomism. The main assumption of the latter is that things are individually separated according to exclusive contours. This assumption makes it impossible to account for the fundamental continuous processes defining our experience, such as organic life, history, consciousness, and time. In the previous chapters, I showed how Merleau-Ponty develops his account of the Gestalt character of action from his first two works on behavior and perception in a series of investigations into the concept of nature. These investigations issue into a theory of modal or non-Parmenidean being, i.e. “this Being interiorly woven with negation.”¹ This move, which draws ontological value from our experiences of perception, space, movement, and nature, may appear abrupt, unjustified, or simply naïve. Merleau-Ponty addresses lucidly the justification of the ontological function of experience right at the beginning of The Visible and the Invisible. I will turn to this aspect of method in the next sections of this chapter.

Note, however, that Merleau-Ponty’s program in the 50s, i.e. during his appointment at the Collège de France, was to proceed to an explicit ontological utilization of his studies on the psychology of perception. Merleau-Ponty begins his first lecture course from 1953 by stating clearly that for him there is no difference between ontology and phenomenology.² In this first

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course, movement is said to be “revealing of being.”³ The profusion of interpretations of studies from psychology, biology, and physics was now to be accompanied by a clear development of their ontological implications. A note composed in the context of the lecture course on passivity (1954-1955) raises the “problem of a phenomenological ontology.”⁴ This is a problem because, Merleau-Ponty continues, phenomenological ontology is not well understood.⁵ As it emerges from the course, the phenomena of passivity, such as sleep, the unconscious, and memory, function as orienting phenomena that lead to this phenomenological ontology. The phenomena of passivity achieve this by introducing us to the notion of “field,”⁶ which is a notion that Merleau-Ponty situates in the context of a lexical configuration including terms such as “level,” “dimension,”

“horizon,” “ground,” “écart,” “something” (quelque chose, Etwas). The notion of field opposes the idea of a punctual “I think” empty of contents. The course running parallel to that of passivity, entitled “Institution in Personal and Public History,” clarifies even better the vast programmatic intent that this lexical configuration outlines. The course summary, in fact, begins with the following claim: “the concept of institution may help us to find a solution to certain difficulties in the philosophy of consciousness.”⁷ In light of the programmatic context that I am here presenting, we can infer that the notion of institution, together with that of passivity, is entrusted with the task of producing an ontology that would no longer be subordinated to any version of a philosophy of consciousness, including the phenomenological version of a philosophy of transcendental constitution. Finally, the lectures on nature held between 1956 and 1960 make clear that the theme of nature stands out by two main attributes: first, Merleau-Ponty writes, the concept of nature is

3 MSME 100.

4 IP 176.

5 IP 178.

6 IP 182-183.

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the privileged expression of ontology, and its evolution works as a propaedeutic towards ontology;

second, the experience of nature shall also outline another ontology.⁸ If we turn to the working notes of The Visible and the Invisible, then Merleau-Ponty pushes the ontological project back to the analyses in the Phenomenology of Perception and introduces the new project explicitly as an ontological interrogation.⁹ As a matter of fact, the whole analysis “must be entirely carried out within the perspective of ontology.”¹⁰

Merleau-Ponty is well aware of the problems raised by this perspective. If it is true that “no form of being can be posited without reference to subjectivity,” then the question imposes itself:

how can the determination of ontological truths be harmonized with a philosophy that reduces everything to transcendental immanence?¹¹ In the same series of working notes, Merleau-Ponty specifies that the ontology emerging from the particular analyses of nature, the human body, and language, must also provide the notions enabling a recasting of our conception of transcendental subjectivity.¹² Allow me to add some precision on this point.

First, for Merleau-Ponty, the exploration of the subjective theme is truly the exploration of a field (in this following Husserl’s investigations of the Bewusstseinsfeld). It is clear however from the beginning that Merleau-Ponty intends to investigate this field not by following the methodological criteria of a standard eidetic phenomenology. The centering of the latter around reflexive analysis is rather shifted towards the rehabilitation of the straightforward interest of the

8 N 265-266.

9 VI 219, 230, 237. In a working note of The Visible and the Invisible from February 1959, Merleau-Ponty famously states in reference to the Phenomenology of Perception that “what one might consider to be ‘psychology’

(Phenomenology of Perception) is in fact ontology.” (VI 230). The question, then, as Merleau-Ponty realizes in another note from the same month, remains that of bringing the results of the Phenomenology of Perception to “ontological explicitation.” (VI 237).

10 VI 222.

11 In VI 220, Merleau-Ponty writes that “nulle forme d’être ne peut être posée sans référence à la subjectivité.” He then makes the problem of philosophy as transcendental idealism explicit in a note describing the way to proceed in the first part of The Visible and the Invisible (VI 222).

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experimental method, in particular that of the psychology of perception.¹³ The situation is not so simple as Merleau-Ponty also claims from early on that Husserl’s phenomenology has provided the theory for the methodic reflections of the psychology of the form.¹⁴ In this sense, the reflexive analysis of phenomenology acquires a further and deeper meaning: Husserl designates it as a transcendental investigation. These investigations are identified by their “critical” character. The two senses of reflection (introspective reflection on the conscious egological life and methodological reflection upon the preliminarily straightforward phenomenological seeing) can only abstractly be detached in Husserl’s own analyses. This is the reason why Husserl describes his way of proceeding in terms of a proceeding by “zig-zag.”¹⁵

This first point now leads us to a second one. Then in Husserl we find a third sense of reflection that is added to the previous two. This further sense of reflection intends to take the methodological, critical, or transcendental reflection to its maximum of radicality as the critique of the critique of the transcendental sphere itself. Now this project of final self-critique is lucidly taken up by Merleau-Ponty in Phenomenology of Perception when he also calls for a definition of understanding and reflection that would be “more radical than objective thought.”¹⁶ He then continues: “To phenomenology understood as a direct description, a phenomenology of phenomenology must be added.”¹⁷ There is a higher naïveté of phenomenology that Husserl also

13 This point has especially been highlighted by Barbaras 2001, Paracchini 2008, and Colonna 2014. For more literature on the importance of experimental studies and especially of Gestalt psychology in Merleau-Ponty, see Colonna 2014, 80n30.

14 PhP 62n.

15 On the two senses of reflection and their intertwining in Husserl’s way of proceeding as “zig-zag,” see Luft 2002, 7. Husserl explicitly describes his investigations as procedding by a “zig-zag” in the Logical Investigations. Luft’s description, however, applies clearly to the writings composed after the transcendental turn. See the brief but clear description of this method in Bachelard 1968, 80, who refers to FTL: “The investigation in Formal and Transcendental Logic does indeed zigzag, as can be see in the numerous recurring advances: a cycle of investigations leads to results which enable us to advance in the understanding of logic. But, while proceeding in this way, one acquires new results, which lead, in turn, to a more profound analysis than that which was previously completed. Possessed of these new means of analysis, one is to go back over the preceding results, which were only provisional.”

16 PhP 419.

17 PhP 419.