PHENOMENOLOGY OF PERCEPTION ([1945]2005, e-book series)

Maurice Merleau-Ponty

By: Alfred James Ellar

DepEd-Batangas Province

Introduction: Classical Prejudices and the Return to Phenomena

 In his investigation of the Phenomenology of Perception (1945), Maurice Merleau-Ponty defines
phenomenology as the study of essences, including the essence of perception and of
consciousness.
 He also says, however, that phenomenology is a method of describing the nature of our
perceptual contact with the world.
 Phenomenology is concerned with providing a direct description of human experience.
 Merleau-Ponty argues that both traditional Empiricism and Rationalism are inadequate to
describe the phenomenology of perception.
 Empiricism maintains that experience is the primary source of knowledge, and that
knowledge is derived from sensory perceptions.
 Rationalism maintains that reason is the primary source of knowledge, and that
knowledge does not depend on sensory perceptions.
 Perception is the background of experience which guides every conscious action.
 Thus, phenomenology is concerned both with appearance as a perceptual phenomenon, and
with reality as a perceptual phenomenon.

I. Sensation
 Perception is not purely sensation, nor is it purely interpretation.
 Consciousness is a process that includes sensing as well as reasoning.
 Experience may be reflective or unreflective.
 Unreflective experience may be known by subsequent reflection.
 Reflection may be aware of itself as an experience.
 Reflection may also be a way to understand and to structure experience.

II. Association and the Projection of Memories

 Perception may be structured by associative forces, and may be focused by attention.
 Memory is a capacity to recall or recognize the past, and may be influenced by changes in
perceptions. Perceptions may be true or false.
 An illusion may be a false perception, or a perception of something in an unreal way.
 A hallucination may be a perception for which there is no causative stimulus in the external
world.

III. Attention and Judgment

 Attention itself does not create any perceptions, but may be directed toward any aspect of a
perceptual field.
 Attention can enable conscious perceptions to be structured by reflecting upon them.
 Merleau-Ponty explains that a judgment may be defined as a perception of a relationship
between any objects of perception.
 A judgment may be a logical interpretation of the signs presented by sensory perceptions.
 But judgment is neither a purely logical activity, nor a purely sensory activity.
  Judgments may transcend both reason and experience.

IV. The Phenomenal Field

 The world is a field for perception, and human consciousness assigns meaning to the world.
 We cannot separate ourselves from our perceptions of the world.

Part 1: The Body

I. The Body as an Object and Mechanistic Physiology
 Psychological and physiological aspects of perception may overlap and influence each other.
 The spatiality of the human body, or the 'body image,' is an example of how both psychological
and physiological factors may influence perception.
 Body here is viewed similar to how physical and biological sciences view the body – with parts,
functions, and structures which are determined in a certain manner.
 Body is a part or similar with the physical world and is governed by laws of nature.
 Hence, according to Merleau-Ponty, the consciousness of our body are repressed, and reduced
to a kind of polished machine with ambiguous behavior.

II. The Experience of the Body and Classical Psychology

 The perception of the body in relation to the “self” or the characteristics constituting a “self”
provide a communication link to the world or my consciousness to the world.
 The experience of my body is the immediate content of my consciousness, the self.
 The permanent presence of my body to my consciousness constitutes my relation with the
world, more than just an object.

III. The Spatiality of the One’s Own Body and Motility

 According to Merleau-Ponty, the human body is an expressive space which contributes to the
significance of personal actions. The body is also the origin of expressive movement, and is a
medium for perception of the world.
 Bodily experience gives perception a meaning beyond that established simply by thought.
 Thus, Descartes’ cogito ("I think, therefore I am") does not account for how consciousness is
influenced by the spatiality of a person’s own body.

IV. The Synthesis of One’s Own Body

 I am my body and I have my body – I am my body as long as I am a embodied subjectivity the
action of my body is inseparable with my consciousness on my body.
 I interact with others in the world through my body.
 I have my body as long as I perceive my body just like any other objects in the world that I
perceive.

V. The Body as a Sexed Being

 Erotic perception is not a cogitation which aims for a cogitatum; through one body it aims at
another body, and takes place in the world not in consciousness.
 There is an erotic comprehension not of the order of consciousness, since consciousness
subsumes an experience, once perceived, while desire comprehends blindly by linking body to
body.
  Merleau-Ponty argues that consciousness is not merely a representative function or a power of
signification. Consciousness is a projective activity, which develops sensory data beyond their
own specific significance and uses them for the expression of spontaneous action.
 Bodily experience is an ambiguous mode of existence, because the idea of the body cannot be
separated from the experience of the body, and because mind and body cannot be separated as
subject and object.

VI. Speech and the Body as Expression

 Merleau-Ponty says that thought precedes speech, in that speech is a way of expressing
thought. Thoughts which cannot be expressed are temporarily unconscious.
 Thoughts which can be expressed can become conscious.
 Whether or not thoughts can become conscious may depend on whether or not they can be
expressed. But we can become conscious of thoughts even if they have not previously been
expressed.
 Speech can express the thoughts of the person who is speaking, and the listener can receive
thoughts from the sounds of spoken words.
 Thoughts may exist through speech, and speech may be the external existence of thought.
 But speech is not merely the expression of thought, because speech may have a power of
signification of its own.

Part 2: The Perceived World

I. Sensing
 Every sensation belongs to a sensory field.
 The concept of a sensory field implies that all senses are spatial, and that all sensory objects
must occupy space.
 Every object which is perceived belongs to a field of other objects which are not perceived.
 Every perceived sensation belongs to a field of other sensations which are not simultaneously
perceived by the subject.

II. Space
 Space may be defined as a form of external experience, rather than as a physical setting in
which external objects are arranged.
 The relationships between objects in space are revealed by the experience of the perceiving
subject. A perceptual field is a field in which perceptions are present in time and space.
 Space is modified and restructured by time.

III. The Thing and the Natural World

 The intentions of the person who is perceiving an object are reflected in the field to which the
phenomenal object belongs.
 Existence is a condition that includes the existence of conscious beings and of nonconscious
things.
 The mind and body each have their own being, and the perceptions of the body influence what
is perceived by the mind.
 Both appearance and reality are phenomena of consciousness.
 Appearances may be true or false, and may or may not be the same as reality. The false
appearance of a perceptual object may conceal its true reality.
  However, the actual appearance of a perceptual object may also manifest the object’s true
reality.

IV. Others Selves and the Human World

 The body of another, like my own, is not inhabited, but is an object standing before the
consciousness which thinks about or constitutes it.
 Other men, and myself, seen as empirical beings, are merely pieces of mechanism worked by
springs, but the true subject is irrepeatable, for that consciousness which is hidden in so much
flesh and blood is the least intelligible of occult qualities.
 My consciousness, being co-extensive with what can exist for me, and corresponding to the
whole system of experience, cannot encounter, in that system, another consciousness capable
of bringing immediately to light in the world the background, unknown to me, of its own
phenomena.
 There are two modes of being, and two only: being in itself, which is that of objects arrayed in
space, and being for itself, which is that of consciousness.
 Now, another person would seem to stand before me as an in-itself and yet to exist for himself,
thus requiring of me, in order to be perceived, a contradictory operation, since I ought both to
distinguish him from myself, and therefore place him in the world of objects, and think of him as
a consciousness, that is, the sort of being with no outside and no parts, to which I have access
merely because that being is myself, and because the thinker and the thought about are
amalgamated in him.
 There is thus no place for other people and a plurality of consciousnesses in objective thought.
In so far as I constitute the world, I cannot conceive another consciousness, for it too would
have to constitute the world and, at least as regards this other view of the world, I should not be
the constituting agent. Even if I succeeded in thinking of it as constituting the world, it would be
I who would be constituting the consciousness as such, and once more I should be the sole
constituting agent.

Part 3: Being-For-Itself and Being-In-The-World

I. The Cogito
 Merleau-Ponty also argues that existence and substance presuppose each other.
 Substance expresses existence, and existence realizes itself through substance.
 However, substance is not merely a form of signification or expression of existence, and
existence is not merely what is expressed as substance. Existence and substance explain each
other.
 The mind and body each have their own being, and the perceptions of the body influence what
is perceived by the mind.
 Perception is a system of meanings by which a phenomenal object is recognized.
 Merleau-Ponty argues that consciousness is transparent in that it is not concealed from itself.
The unconscious may be concealed from the conscious, but the conscious can be revealed to
itself.

II. Temporality
 Reflection may be focused successively on different parts of a perceptual field.
 According to Merleau-Ponty, perceptual objects have an inner horizon in consciousness and an
outer horizon in the external world.
  The object-horizon structure enables the individual to distinguish perceptual objects from each
other. All objects reflect each other in time and space.

III. Freedom
 Merleau-Ponty concludes by defining freedom as a mode of consciousness in which personal
actions and commitments can be chosen within a situation or field of possibility.
 Freedom is always within a given field of possibility.
 Freedom is always present in a situation, unless we lose our belonging to the situation.
 Freedom is a mode of being-in-the-world which enables us to transcend ourselves.