Biosemiotics (2010) 3:331345 DOI 10.

1007/s12304-010-9080-2 O R I G I N A L PA P E R

Merleau-Pontys Concept of Nature and the Ontology of Flesh

Ane Faugstad Aar

Received: 9 February 2010 / Accepted: 12 March 2010 / Published online: 23 April 2010 # Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2010

Abstract The essay attempts to delineate how Maurice Merleau-Pontys phenomenology of perception can be applied to theories of sign processes, and how it reworks the framework of the phenomenalist conception of communication. His later philosophy involved a reformulation of subjectivity and a resolution of the subject/ object dualism. My claim is that this non-reductionist theory of perception reveals a different view of nature as we experience it in an expressive and meaningful interaction. The perspective that another living being has and communicates entails a form of depth, the invisible dimension of the visible or audible. These two aspects of perception and dialogue are intertwined in a dialectic of presence and absence, so that sense arises in the perceptual field rather than in subjectivity. This, I argue, is the most fundamental result of his theory. The origination of meaning in the workings of the chiasm of visible and invisible in perception opens up an objective sense of intersubjective nature. The essay also deals with the role of the phenomenological reduction; a suspension of beliefs and existence claims in experience. The reduction enables us to take a step back and look more closely at our understanding of nature in light of the historical and cultural influence on our thinking. Keywords Phenomenology . Communication . Interpretation . Perception . Transcendence . Subject/object dualism

Introduction One of the most interesting statements that I have come across in semiotics is the claim that for Hoffmeyer, biosemiotic signs are inherently meaningful due to their direct involvement in the processes they signify (Emmeche et al. 2002). Even against the background of the Peircean triadic conception of signifying processes,
A. F. Aar (*) Department of Philosophy, University of Bergen, Sydnesplass 12/13, 5014 Bergen, Norway e-mail: Ane.aaro@fof.uib.no

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this represents a shift towards a more integrated view of expression and interpretation of nature, which can be further complimented by certain other non-reductionist theories. Within the thematic of interpretation across the boundaries of the human non-human we find that explorations of nature still bear the mark of our scientific heritage from the 17th century. How is it that a shift can come about in the conceptions of nature? Perception is very often determined by an interest or a project. When the motivation is to extract power from a lake, the perception of the water is dominated by this interest. But we all know that the power aspect is not all that is present in the perception of the lake. The phenomenology of Maurice Merleau-Ponty can provide valuable insights into perception that connect very interestingly with biosemiotics. This essay is an attempt to show how Merleau-Pontys approach to problems in perception and communication theories is relevant to semiotics. Maurice Merleau-Pontys last work The Visible and the Invisible (Merleau-Ponty 1968) was an attempt at finding ways to view perception and its relationship with the world that maintain the experienced immersion in the world of the Self. MerleauPonty felt that philosophy offered theses on subjectivity and perception that create dichotomies which are difficult to bring together. The paragraph cited below shows that he wanted to find an opening for a philosophy about our relationship to being that elaborates on the depth that exists between us and our environment. He wanted to do this without ascribing to subjectivity an infinite distance to being through negation of being, as Sartres existentialism entails. Neither was he content with objectivist theories of perception that understand the depth of perception as a determinable layer of subjective constellations open for us to analyze. Philosophy that understands perception as coinciding with being is likewise inadequate, because the depth in perception means that something is hidden and intangible; however, we are still in a profound and fundamental way in contact with it. This essay will attempt to show the new approach to perception and being that evolves in MerleauPontys late philosophy, mainly by analyzing the central concept of reversibility in perception. To begin to understand the mystery of transcendence in perception, Merleau-Ponty said, we need to re-evaluate our conceptions, even those of subjectivity, perception and transcendence. This may be thought to have normative implications, and my essay will touch on the possibilities within this philosophy towards an eco-phenomenology that enables us to describe our world as both an inner world and a natural world in which we are immersed by our perception, movements, considerations and judgments. As Merleau-Ponty wrote in The Visible and the Invisible: That the presence of the world is precisely the presence of its flesh to my flesh, that I am of the world and that I am not it, this is no sooner said than forgotten: metaphysics remains coincidence. That there is this thickness of flesh between us and the hard core of Being, this does not figure in the definition: this thickness is ascribed to me, it is the sheath of non-being that the subjectivity always carries about itself. Infinite distance or absolute proximity, negation or identification: our relationship with being is ignored in the same way in both cases. (Merleau-Ponty 1968: 127128) One of the most pressing issues of our times is to show how a different path to understanding the experience of nature is needed, and possible. The modern

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scientific theories of the physical world presuppose an idea of man as an autonomous, rational subject that explores and manipulates nature. But, as many contemporary writers have claimed, this view diminishes our contact and communication with nature, animate and inanimate. Perceiving the natural world as something more than an opening to gaining knowledge of the world, but rather as the possibility of a meaningful experience inherent of quality, is made possible through Merleau-Pontys most important and radical developments in his late philosophy, in which he reformulates his thoughts on subjectivity. The problem of the dualism of subject and object lies at the root of the destructive practices of modern human societies. And, as we will see, this dualism is also an important factor by which theories of communication and sign processes are hampered. How is the dualism of subject and object related to perspectives on sign processes? The whole tradition of philosophy of knowledge, being, and world is affected by this dualism by the crucial question How is it that we as natural beings can orient ourselves in an environment and know something of the world and communicate to each other the sense of phenomena? It is by this question that we are made aware of our fundamental embodied being in which the interaction with and interpretation of nature originates. It may not be obvious at first glance, but the primacy of perception to all thinking and all subjectivity effectively overturns the rationalist dilemma of mediation between mind and world. Furthermore, it is related to communication if we are to avoid solipsism or objectivism. Think about how difficult it is sometimes to understand another s thinking, and how the perspective of the other is hidden to us in everything except expression. Further, imagine how difficult it is to talk with someone who constantly asserts his or her autonomy and self-sufficiency by raising his/her voice, thus dominating the conversation. Think how easy it is to want to withdraw, to refuse to communicate and simply not be heard. Genuine communication presupposes attentiveness and openness as well as an ability to listen in order for sense to be revealed. Exploring nature by cutting it open in order to view and calculate its potential for usefulness involves putting us in a position whereby we cannot understand the expressions that are involved; it involves seeing a natural thing as an object to our will and projects, which is a product of our misconceptions regarding our own perception. This is where the thought that signs are inherently meaningful due to their direct involvement in the processes they signify is a useful key to reconsidering our practises, and I believe it can have very much to do with the subject/object resolution by which Merleau-Ponty was motivated in his last book. The Problem of the World1 There are many ways in which we could approach Merleau-Pontys thoughts on the challenges represented by interrogating the world of our perception. A concept that is especially promising in that respect is the very central concept of reversibility. And I will try to clarify some features of the experience of reversibility to which Merleau1 The first part of the article was presented in an earlier version at the conference Environment, Embodiment and Gender at the University of Bergen, Norway, in 2008.

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Ponty devoted so many pages of The Visible and the Invisible to convey its meaning and implications. By clarifying the idea of this central key to the experience of the world, Merleau-Ponty was hoping to open the field to further, more fruitful investigations. It is an investigation that involves our own existence in the midst of the problematic that he makes thematic, and it will sometimes mean chasing our own shadow in the flux of continuous experience. Needless to say, such a project is rather wanting of the solidity and grounding that is so much sought after in philosophy. But uncompromising as Merleau-Pontys investigations were, he found no way to mould the answers of the world to fit our philosophical projects. The pronounced project in the The Visible and the Invisible of reworking the dualism of subject and object is closely connected to the possibility of sense in experience. His final contribution to the critique of objectivist thought was the exposition of the idea of an intertwining of depth and absence with the experience of immediacy and presence of the world. A reformulation of our questions was what was needed to overcome the dichotomies of our thinking, he maintained in the The Visible and the Invisible. His suggestions might have been radical, but it cant be denied that we are facing some rather radical problems in the world that demand a rethinking of traditional concepts and attitudes, which ultimately are governed by a motivation to control, and which have epistemological consequences because they reduce the natural world into manageable properties. In Merleau-Pontys late philosophy the idea of the material of the world, flesh, is developed, in which the elements of being are intertwined in a reciprocal connection. This means that the different elements compose a unity, or whole, in which differences in expressions present in the phenomena are kept intact. It was Merleau-Pontys hope that he would be able to convey his vision of this reciprocal unified relationship as the origin of the truth, knowledge and history of the world. That was only indicated by his last writings, but never fulfilled as a finished theory before his death in 1961 while he was working on the The Visible and the Invisible. Truth was, for Merleau-Ponty, the invisible element of the brute being of our existence that he described during the last few years of his life, and was the grounding for all perceptual faith, all ideas and all logic, he wrote in the notes for The Visible and the Invisible. But the seed of this thought is present in the earlier writings, and appears as something of a lead motif when reading his work.2 M. C. Dillon argues in Merleau-Pontys Ontology (1997) that Merleau-Ponty tended to think that truth is in closer connection to the pre-reflective and pre-linguistic than the linguistic; although Dillon is cautious to say that he cant document this understanding. I find this perspective of the invisible in ones experience of the world and others as constitutive of a meaning and a truth quite pronounced in Merleau-Pontys writings, and I will try to show how in the course of this essay. In this approach to meaning and truth it is necessary to emphasize an important distinction between phenomenology and phenomenalism. An understanding of speaking as existential and bearer of a meaning, that Richard L. Lanigan (1991)
2 The writing of the two works, La Prose du Monde and LOrigine de la vrit, was abandoned in 1959 when Merleau-Ponty focused on The Visible and the Invisible, the work that most explicitly represents his philosophical foundation for theses on truth and intersubjectivity.

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among others has shown, opens up Merleau-Pontys philosophy of language to original non-linguistic meaning that is part of the lived gesture rather than of a sedimented sign system. Lanigan writes: The point to be kept in mind concerning linguistic phenomenalism is that meaning is a function of objective reality as known by a perceiving subject. By this meaning is meant a conscious construct derived from objective encounter. The dualism of subject and object is prerequisite to a coherent formulation of meaning in either sectorthe personal or the mundane. (Lanigan 1991: 29) The linguistic phenomenalism Lanigan refers to is any semiological theory that bases the function of signs on the triadic structure of objectsigninterpreting subject. In this understanding the sign is derived from the object (in reality) and recognized by a knowing subject. Anyone who hesitates facing this explanation of the communication of meaning will find the phenomenological perspective useful in their work. Lanigans Speaking and Semiology contributes an explanation as to why the phenomenalism of C. S. Peirce is of the subject/object dualism and how MerleauPontys theory can overcome it. There may be some indications that the two philosophers are not dealing with the exact same matter, for instance, where Merleau-Ponty seeks to reach an understanding of perception and the birth of meaning, Peirces focus is with the acquisition of knowledge, i.e. a learning by experience (Peirce 1958: 134). The following lines from Lanigan (1991: 53) are informative in this context: For Peirce every object appears to a subject as a representamen that is composed of the ground, the object and the interpretant. That is, a perception that operates as a sign-gestalt or signification is the result of a perceiving subject who recognizes the object within a context which indicates the usage meaning. Our primary concern (and reservation) with regard to this triadic conception of sign processes is that it is still confined to the limits of the subject/object dualism already mentioned. With this in mind we might wish to explore how sign theories could be further complemented by an elaboration of perception at a deeper level, where one will have to sort out how perception of the surroundings works for there to be instituted any sort of sense or meaning-content. The spheres of the two philosophers are thus divergent, but this divergence points to the need for a more thorough understanding of perception itself in order to account for the signification process. Even so, or perhaps for this same reason, it is the art of painting that is seen as conveying the meaning of being to the fullest in Merleau-Pontys writings. The creative act of painting is, in a way, the archetypical perception and it is perception that is expressed through the painting. I interpret this as an acknowledgement of the non-linguistic, perceptual world that is constitutive of meaning, and that which makes the painter responsible for the expression of being. Understood in this manner, the painter is accountable for the expression of the meaning inherent in being through her perspective of the world and her interweaving with the world. And it is Merleau-Pontys thesis of reversibility that makes the painter s perspective valid. At the same time, the perceptual field is now

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centred in the foreground, whereas before the subject of interpretation was standing autonomously.

A Normativity of Perception? If we go beyond the descriptive analyses of the grounding elements of MerleauPontys philosophy and want to take a few steps towards making use of his concepts as a foundation for a normative philosophy, based on the insights that the reversibility thesis represents, I think that we are in accordance with MerleauPontys fundamental project.3 Leaving aside for now the problems of the objectivist and instrumentalist attitudes to the world of perception, which have been a point of departure for both Husserl and Merleau-Ponty in their work, allow me to indicate a possible opportunity to make use of the concept of reversibility to form a basis for an ethics of being, and even demonstrate how reversibility implies this further development into a normative concept. Reversibility in the various perceptual experiences is a reciprocity that makes apparent the seeing as also seen, the toucher as also touched. The reciprocity between subjectivity and the materiality of the world is a central aspect of the philosophy of Merleau-Ponty. Sight and movement are the elements of perception that are most evidently marked by the reversibility that characterized the way he understood the field of perception: Once again, the flesh we are speaking of is not matter. It is the coiling over of the visible upon the seeing body, of the tangible upon the touching body, which is attested in particular when the body sees itself, touches itself seeing and touching the things, such that, simultaneously, as tangible it descends among them, as touching it dominates them all and draws this relationship and even this double relationship from itself, by dehiscence and fission of its own mass. (Merleau-Ponty 1968: 146) The description offered is partly an interpretation of Husserls description of the body relating reflexively to itself, to things and to nature. The double relationship that he mentions is the two aspects through which the body functions as sensingsensible in a reversible flux. The plan that is available in the working notes of the The Visible and the Invisible shows how reversibility moves beyond the visible and constitutes a fundamental relationship that is consequential to the understanding of the self, language, thought and intersubjectivity. As unexpected as it might be, this implies an identity between us and the visible, although it points to a break that separates us from mere physical entities. The layers never coincide; the perception of the self, in the meaning-laden perception of the hand touching the hand that touches, is only imminent, is in

A similar argument has been proposed by Sean Kelly (forthcoming) in his article The normative nature of perceptual experience, forthcoming. He argues that in The Phenomenology of Perception MerleauPonty describes how perception avoids unclear views of objects and that this normativity of experience belongs to experience itself and is not grounded in the subjects take on it.
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principle unattainable, nor can there be any coinciding aspects of the self in consciousness. This imminence represents the passivity in perception, also of the self. There is passivity in the experience of the invisible, as a depth and a present negativity or verticality. But my seeing body subtends this visible body, and all the visibles with it. (Merleau-Ponty 1968: 138). As Merleau-Ponty understands it, reversibility is a pre-given, pre-reflective bearer of existential meaning, which is in its central function manifested in the depths of existence as the intertwining of the invisibility of being. In my view it is in the passages where he writes about the perspective of the painter, where the painter s interaction with the world of perception constitutes a perspective that enjoins the individual to be responsible for that perspective in communication with other individuals, that Merleau-Ponty illuminates just this understanding of perception. This is the single most important area in his expositions where we are led to understand descriptive phenomenology as also entailing a normative stance as far as various perspectives of the world are concerned.4 Edward Casey (2003) writes in Eco-Phenomenology: Back to the Earth Itself that we discover imbalance or destruction in surfaces of the landscapes in the same way as we apperceive the expression of a face in Levinas ethics. And further, that we experience these disturbances as something wrong or something not right in nature. His account seems to hold the basic phenomenological claim that it is impossible to view anything indifferently, as a neutral spectator. Merleau-Ponty opened the field of experience, an element where mediation and interaction between body and world is possible. In An unpublished text, printed in the Primacy of Perception (Merleau-Ponty 1964), he promises to work further with this field in an effort to sort out the task of vocalizing the mute world: For these studies on expression and truth approach, from the epistemological side, the general problem of human interrelationswhich will be the major topic of my later studies. [] 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 historyto a reflection on this Logos which gives us the task of vocalizing a hitherto mute world. Finally, they should lead us to a study of the Logos of the perceived world which we encountered in the earliest studies in the evidence of things. (Merleau-Ponty 1964: 910) Id like to draw attention to another statement that he made in An unpublished text. He was at that point convinced that the phenomenon of expression was the right place to investigate intersubjectivity, history, nature and culture. He wrote: To establish this wonder would be metaphysics itself and would at the same time give us the principle of an ethics. (Merleau-Ponty 1964: 11)
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Contrary to Toadvines claim in Merleau-Pontys Philosophy of Nature (Toadvine 2009), where the idea of an ethics of being is ruled out as far as the ontology of the flesh is concerned, I emphasize how the origination of sense in the sensible field, which is flesh, is constitutive of all truth, meaning and expression, and therefore better or truer perspectives. Cf. the statement (Toadvine 2009: 133): A similar mistake has often been made by those who look to Merleau-Pontys descriptions of flesh as the basis for new ethical principles in our relation with nature. I base my argumentation on a different aspect of flesh, namely its founding function for sense and expression.

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Nature in the Epoch of Phenomenology5 Phenomenology aims to reduce the influence of inherited thought patterns and prejudice in understanding, by introducing the reduction or epoch; a suspension of beliefs and existence claims in experience. The reduction will enable us to take a step back and look more closely at our understanding, it suspends our natural beliefs regarding the experienced things; a state of reduced consciousness, because it is abstaining from claims regarding the state of things. This transcendental experiencing ego is therefore more aware of its own constitution of meaningful experiences, by focusing on the act of perception itself. This is done to make us aware of what and how we are experiencing, and whether there are any patterns at work in experience that are free riding in our minds and produce preconceived understandings of the world or of other subjects. This reduction, then, could help us uncover faulty thinking around what nature is, what humans are, and what our place is in this picture. The reduction is a method which enables us to question what the mechanistic view claims is the only real world of things, and to reveal what the experience itself tells us. It changes the world of Descartes, Bacon and Galileo into precisely the world we perceive, as MerleauPonty writes in the Preface to The Phenomenology of Perception (Merleau-Ponty 2008). Reflecting on the first beginnings of meaning in our world presents us with a very peculiar problem. The nature of our lifeworld seems to hold its own expressive force, and at the same time hides its deeper aspects in a shadowy half-light, that attracts our scrutinizing gaze and promises to reveal itself. When Merleau-Ponty turns to the perceptual field, the material flesh, in order to seek there our primordial relationship with the world, it is a return to the beginnings where philosophy can establish a ground from which it may see the primary movements of original sense. But the philosophical reflection is circular, and in its progress returns to its determining forces, as John Sallis has formulated it (Sallis 1973). And MerleauPonty writes in The Philosopher and his Shadow (in Merleau-Ponty 1995) that it must be our task to think again, give new interpretations, and perform again what Husserls phenomenology describes as the ultimate groundwork. The circularity in reflection means that our initial questions make an imprint on the results of the interrogation; therefore, the phenomenological reduction is never complete and must be returned to as a continuous task. When we ask the question of what experience is and what its preconditioning structures are, the challenge of confronting the directly-given experience is therefore made particularly acute.6 It is certainly an ambiguous and unfulfilled task to return to the source of experience and to try and seize the moment of institution of sense, and to catch in the act a natural, brute perception; to will to see the world as it is before philosophy and science, reflection and language shape and mark experience. This task is in itself a question of ourselves, intersubjectivity and nature. There are some powerful prejudices concerning experience that base perception either on an access
The second part of this article was presented in an earlier version at the conference The Genesis of Phenomenology: From Husserl to Merleau-Ponty at the University of Bergen, Norway, 2009. 6 See for instance Preobjective being: The solipsist world in The Visible and the Invisible (Merleau-Ponty 1968).
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from the inside of subjectivity as an immanence, or from the outside, as a given, in realism.7 Neither of these suppositions can be carried over into interrogation of the world, even if we must confront our perceptual faith after all, which is our only access to our fundamental relationship with the natural world. But nature is more than our reflection on it. We must somehow reflect on experience without positioning or determining the essence of experience in advance, for instance as originating from within the immanence of the ego, which will only duplicate experience within consciousness. All expression of the world and of our situation bears the mark of our complete involvement in the world. It is our faith in a common world that makes possible the experience of truth. In Merleau-Pontys words (1968: 11), it is [...] this unjustifiable certitude of a sensible world common to us that is the seat of truth within us. This will be my point of departure in analysing the concept of nature. For in the same question lies the question of how meaning is generated: Thought must put to itself the problem of the genesis of its own meaning, he writes (with reference to Husserl) (Merleau-Ponty 1968: 12). This endeavour is present throughout Husserls writings, and in MerleauPontys late writings. It is further worth noting that the constitution of meaning is not a central theme in this philosophy. He states that understanding and experience are not correlative to knowledge of (Fr.) language, but rather that they build on an unarticulated familiarity with the world through the body. Language in its turn has its materiality also, and an ideality that reflects perception.8 But it is remarkable that the question of quality in perception is not spoken of more often. It seems that if we should take seriously the claim that the key to perception lies in returning to direct experience, or to the things themselves, we would also be truthful to that which the experience of the world tells us. Merleau-Ponty never returned to the question after having mentioned the topic as an expected result of the analyses of the expressive capacity in perception. But the way in which he wielded his words in describing the world of our perception, basically as communication, implies that he saw meaning and quality as communicable properties in the depth of perceptions chiasm of visible/invisible, verticality and horizontality of interrelations. It is in our primordial, pre-reflected familiarity with nature that we will find the phenomena that give rise to our sense of a common world. The following sentence from his lectures on Nature offers a lead as to how we should begin: We can elaborate a valid concept of Nature only if we find something at the jointure of Being and Nothingness (Merleau-Ponty 2003: 70). This statement reveals what tradition has to offer in terms of perspectives, and what we should be aware of when starting an analysis of perception. There is something that withdraws from us in perception that represents an enigmatic force which seems alien to our intentional activity. And this force motivates our attention and interest to look again, find out more, and adjust our perspective to get a better grip on things that we see. In interrogating the natural world we need to communicate, adjust and listen well. The opposition that meets us in experiencing natural being represents a transcendence
By access from the outside I mean theories based on logical investigations that are intended to test the legitimacy of direct experience; or as in realism or empiricism; collectively called objectivism in this context. 8 See for instance Thomas Langans Merleau-Pontys critique of reason, on language and expression, where Langan describes language as world (Langan 1966: 125).
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that challenges us to interpret and to get the interpretation right; it is unsatisfactory to project some answer that we produce onto nature without seeking after the better, truer perspective, insofar as we can. This is what I believe to be the normativity of perception. We are drawn to listen, look and understand, for example, the mood of a silent forest, the rage of an ocean, the pain of an animal, or the vital drive for survival in every living creature that we co-exist with. Needless to say, it is the thesis of reversibility that carries our understanding of the natural world (and has bearings for an intersubjective communication as well). Merleau-Pontys analyses of perception and the lived bodys relationship to itself and the world of perception show the difficulties involved in our traditional ways of interpreting the self and the thing. It is as if the self and the physical world were located on opposite sides of an abyss, where the self reaches in vain after the object as though it were a Kantian Ding an sich, forever inaccessible to our understanding. It is correct that Kant saw reason in unity with perception of the world. But there is still the problem of subjectivitys status of being the precondition for a world on one hand, and the idea of subjectivity as existing in separation from experience on the otheror, as Merleau-Ponty calls this philosophy in The Phenomenology of Perception (Merleau-Ponty 2008), analytical reflection. Identification or NegationProximity or Distance? In his lectures on The Concept of Nature, Merleau-Ponty said: In terms of this preview, which we shall complete at the beginning of next year by sketching the problems of the systematic theory of descent, we may already say that the ontology of life, as well as that of physical nature, can only escape its troubles by resorting, apart from artificialism, to brute being as revealed to us in our perceptual contact with the world. It is only within the perceived world that we can understand that all corporeality is already symbolism. (Merleau-Ponty 1988: 166) The announced lectures on Symbolism and the Human Body were delayed in order to make time to work with The Visible and the Invisible. It is, therefore, in the latter that we may find the theory of corporeality as communication which is of interest in the context of a semiotics of being. He there describes perception as something between identification with and negation of the world; and in so doing addresses Sartres concept of nothingness and negation. He developed an alternative to Sartres thesis of a nothingness that produces a distance and divergence between perception and the world, which could be seen as an aspect of the traditional isolation of the perceiver, and which can be placed within dualistic thought. What was needed at the time, was a critical analysis of the dichotomies transcendence/immanencepour-soi/en-soi, inner and outer, form and matterwhich has been mentioned by many interpreters and, first and foremost, by M. C. Dillon (1997: 159) in his Merleau-Pontys Ontology. It is through his thesis of reversibility that Merleau-Ponty finally works out the relation between identity and distance, the anonymous primal perception or the prereflective experience, put en face subjectivity and reflection. As Ted Toadvine (2009) writes in Merleau-Pontys Philosophy of Nature, Schelling was the first to

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address the question of the paradoxical self-mediation of being by posing the question of how reflection can think pre-reflective nature. The Erste Natur (first nature), which he describes as the excess of being over the consciousness of being (Nature, p. 62/38) is a barbaric principle that reveals itself in our perceptual experience prior to reflection [] By retrieving the perceptual state of indivision prior to subject and object, Schelling aims to disclose our commonality with all of life in a common root of pre-objective being (Nature 64/40). (Toadvine 2009: 118).9 The perceiver as perceived marks out the core elements of the structure of reversibility. We should be cautious not to presume the pre-reflective experience of nature to be anything like the unconscious. It is far from the unconscious responses to an alreadyconstituted world. The intertwining is an ontological basis, a structural precondition for experience, on the grounds that it is necessary that the world is not an outer and the thought an inner phenomenon, but that there is reciprocal interaction of the perceived and the perceiving; the perceiving in flesh. These elements encroach on one another as elements of being, with no clear boundaries, though they are catalysts for each other within the total being (Merleau-Ponty 1968: 139). The chiasm of the perceived and the invisible, deeper aspects, is thereby the profound and unbreakable tie and passageway between ourselves and our world of perception, which, if our concern is to find a valid concept of nature (somewhere at the jointure of Being and Nothingness), at the same time reworks the problems of dualism and its (isolated) subjectivity.

The Ontological Function of Flesh What has been achieved by the concept of flesh with regard to the interpretation of natural phenomena? Can it be said to represent a fruitful philosophical explanation of the properties of natural being? Flesh is introduced in Merleau-Pontys philosophy by the discovery of the affinity of the visible and the tactile aspects of perception: between the visible and the seeing. The experience of the visible and the touchable, and the enfolding of the visible on the seer and the look of the visible all aspects point to a mutual element that can include and uphold these phenomena, but maintain their qualities within the structure. The flesh is not a denominator for the union of body and spirit, but an ontological emphasis of the embodied relationship between perception and world and as universal horizon. The materiality that the flesh represents is not matter , but should rather be understood as the material principle, giving a generality to the field that is still related to facticity. It is the condition for embodiment, between the spatiotemporal and the idea (Merleau-Ponty 1968: 139). I understand it as a principle of both function and structure, which resists the categories of both essence and ideality, such as a regulating metaphysical principle would represent. The material element of flesh allows us rather to approach the phenomenon of the visible in a way that reveals the depth inherent in perception, a depth that pertains to its never-present perspectives, which are still there upholding the phenomenon. In the context of the experience of nature the concept will serve as a grounding of the sphere where we
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References in the citation are to Merleau-Ponty 2003, French edition and English edition.

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are studying, interpreting, and making sense of the natural environment and its organisms. It is thus a theory that sustains the process of interpretation in an antireductionist manner. Furthermore, it ensures that the perceptual field itself is part of the interpretation that takes place and that yields an understanding of nature. This emphasis clearly leads us out of the objectivistic thought of nature, which has been the objective and main focus of this essay. And it is the vital bodys character of being flesh, material, that maintains this phenomenological field, by the activity that sight and movement exert on the world. As the first result of the thesis of reversibility, the phenomenal body described in The Phenomenology of Perception is later described in The Visible and the Invisible as a sensible sentient. The two aspects of the body exist side by side as a continuous movement that acquires to the body everything that is visible; as an inescapable element, like air or water. In the same instance we realize that the body is of this element. The visible (sensible) is the materiality (familiar to the bodys materiality) that provides us with the connection to and opening towards the natural world by relating to the body through the reversible interaction of the seeing and the visible (perceiver and perceived). In order to account for the non-identification with the world, there is the question of the depth that is not presentable (presenting itself, or not possible to uncover). There is a depth in the world of perception that is never present, or the Husserlian Nichturprsentierbarkeit. There are always some aspects of the natural world that are not seen or even possible to see, such as the example of the dice with its six sides (from the first meditations in Husserls Cartesian Meditations (Husserl 1991)), or as what is under a huge rock that fell down ages ago. At least it is impossible to see all perspectives at once. But there are also depths that are in principle not perceptible. These depths of perception may be as simple as the density of the inside of a thing which the surface reminds us of, which is more inaccessible to us than the back side of a thing, which you can study by moving the thing around, or moving around the thing. The transcendence of the Other is the archetype of this resistance in perception. By understanding the genesis of meaning through the workings of the chiasm of visible and invisible in perception, it is possible to account for the shared, intersubjective, sensible world of nature. The visible about us seems to rest in itself. It is as though our vision were formed in the heart of the visible, or as though there were between it and us an intimacy as close as between the sea and the strand. And yet it is not possible that we blend into it, nor that it passes into us, for then the vision would vanish at the moment of formation, by disappearance of the seer or of the visible. What there is then are not things first identical with themselves, which would then offer themselves to the seer, nor is there a seer who is first empty and who, afterward, would open himself to thembut something to which we could not be closer than by palpating it with our look, things we could not dream of seeing all naked because the gaze itself envelops them, clothes them with its own flesh. (Merleau-Ponty 1968: 13031) The metaphors in this quote from the The Visible and the Invisible underline the evasive nature of the element of flesh in description. The unity of the body and the unity of the visible wash and flood each other s boundaries. It is an original way of

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seeing the gaze as part of and co-operant in the perceptual field, a field that is neither mind nor matter, neither idea nor facticity. As was indicated earlier, the interaction or intertwining also produces a distance and negation of the perceived by a gap, ecart, arising in perception, when the perceiver (a going beyond oneself and coming back into oneself) reaches for the thing and finds that the two are separated by a friction in between them that prevents the gaze from appropriating the world completely, and likewise, that the vision should drown in what it sees. The identity between the seer and the visible is not absolute. Where is the boundary between the body and its world? The chapter The intertwiningThe chiasm seeks to explore just that. It is precisely in the chiasm of identity and difference to the perceived, in this phenomenon of structuring perception, that the break occurs creating a distance to nature, because perception is to leave oneself and to return to oneself in a continuous movement. It is in this movement that the mystery of perception lies hidden, according to Merleau-Ponty, who alludes to Hegel. This is, however, a hyperdialecticit is what it isand should not result in higher forms of selfconsciousness. The hyper-dialectic of the chiasm could hardly be thought without the influence from Hegels dialectical thought (Merleau-Ponty 1968: 264). Grasp this chiasm, this reversal. That is the mind, says Merleau-Ponty (1968: 199) in The Visible and the Invisible. The reversal must mean having an ability to leave oneself and seek opposition or resistance by entering into the world of our perception; then the gap or break occurs, producing a non-identity and a distance that brings one back to oneself. This has bearing on passivity, and the way in which transcendence and immanence works. In other words, it is here, in this chiasm of the visible and the invisible aspects of the world, that we should interrogate the experience in order to understand how thought arises within the materiality of the visible, which is the field of Sense and the Sensible. The impossible in this is comparable to the untouchable, complete negativity. It is not transcendence, which could be positivity: It is a true negative, i.e. an Unverborgenheit of the Verborgenheit, an Urprsentation of the Nichturprsentierbar, in other words, an original of the elsewhere, a Selbst that is an Other, a Hollow [] (Merleau-Ponty 1968: 254). There is a passivity in the experience of the invisible depths, which as a present negativity and verticality offers us resistance and a surplus in perception, so that the experienced nature will always exceed my grasp of it at the moment. A reflexive relationship that echoes dialectical thought, but goes beyond dialectical thought in that it encompasses the embodied world relationship through its character of being flesh. No nature can be thought of as objective, outer reality in this description. It is with this idea that Merleau-Ponty seeks to avoid the dualism of subject/object and, further, the inner-outer division. The continuous chiasmatic interaction serves as that which institutes both perception and sense in the natural world. It is, however, important to be aware of the continuity of the movement, or the dynamic. The distance to the seen is not the opposite of the identity with the seen they co-exist in a criss-cross weave of identity-and-difference. The dynamic between them is upheld by the gaze, which creates difference, and the thing that hides its depths is, therefore, alterity. Flesh makes sight possible, and the gaze can take place

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within this materiality. But the flesh also encompasses what cannot be present and demands un-covering, even while it withdraws from our positing. We understand then why we see the things themselves, in their places, where they are, according to their being which is indeed more than being-perceived and why at the same time we are separated from them by all the thickness of the look and of the body; it is that this distance is not the contrary of this proximity, it is deeply consonant with it, it is synonymous with it. It is that the thickness of flesh between the seer and the thing is constitutive for the thing of its visibility as for the seer of his corporeity; it is not an obstacle between them, it is their means of communication. (Merleau-Ponty 1968: 135) The thickness of flesh, the materiality of animate and inanimate being, is not an obstacle but their means of communication. Thus it becomes necessary to redefine the concept of perception (as something other than identity or negation) in order to reach a viable understanding of our contact with the world of nature. The gaze on the world produces a break, a distance between us and the world, which is also our opening to communicating with it. Pre-reflective perception (the natural attitude) has that primordial contact, whereas reflection and positing of this perception (or faith) transforms the experience to reflection or interrogation. This will mean that we are forever in a chiasm of pre-reflective experience and posited reflection, in a dialectical movement that is paradoxical and evasive and one which motivates our efforts, and again leaves us with the posited to be analysed. I think there are sufficient signs in the way Merleau-Ponty chose his words to indicate that what he was trying to explain was the full experience with its sense of quality. We would be reducing experience if we did not ascribe also the sense of quality to the chiasmatic character of the experience of nature. By that I mean that the intersubjective sense of quality must have its origin in the deeper, hidden aspects of perception, i.e. in the chiasm of the visible and the invisible in pre-reflective perception, rather than in any subsequent analysis and reflection. Such a perspective would fulfil the critique of the mechanistic view of nature inherited from the scientific revolution of the 17th century, and facilitate further studies of our place in nature as interpreting and communicating beings. Husserl (2002) wrote in Ideen II, under the headline The constitution of material nature: Nature is an intersubjective reality and a reality not just for me and my companions of the moment but for us and for everyone who can have dealings with us and can come to a mutual understanding with us about things and about other people. There is always the possibility that new spirits enter into this nexus; but they must do so by means of their bodies, which are represented through possible appearances in our consciousness and through corresponding ones in theirs. (Husserl 2002: 91) And what Merleau-Ponty (2008: 366369) writes later echoes this perspective, when he says that the unity and identity of the perceived qualities are founded on the unity and the identity of the body, understood as a synergic totality. The body is the centre of expression and sense through its belongingness in the natural world.

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Having outlined how the interpretation of natural being takes place in experience as the field of Sense and the Sensible, a few final words must be said about the implications for a semiotic methodology based on the theory of embodied experience here outlined. In this philosophy the sense of expressions is seen as inextricably linked to the living gesture. The semiology of Merleau-Ponty is a further development in ontology, which we have tried to show by investigating a few important concepts that changes the overall view of nature; from being on the realist side of the table an objective outside world, and on the other idealistic side being a derivation from the reflection of the ego. The important, radical insight with this ontology is that the meaning of the world arises in an intertwining dialectic of embodied interaction. The basic tenets of his overall philosophy have far-reaching implications, which Lanigan (Lanigan 1991: 83) calls reaching behind the constructions of objective and subjective phenomena to the very basis of existence, to a basic semiotic by which meaning is generated and constituted as a perceptible entity. This philosophy aims at overturning the objectivist attitudes which permeate the dominant technological worldview of our age, and to restore our fundamental contact with our natural being.

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