Maurice Merleau-Ponty (1908–1961)

This is a book about the connection between humanism and political violence. I believe the author rightly argues that humanism can champion liberty and freedom of speech but it can also lead to authoritarianism and in the extreme, terrorism. The author argues against sacrificing individual liberties for collective "progress" (Amen, brother!) This long essay was written in response to the show trials that took place under Stalin in 1936-1938; specifically that of Bukharin. Also as response to show more Koestler's Darkness at Noon. I did not think that I would like or agree with anything by this author, as he is a noted French, liberal philosopher, but we do have a couple of compatible thoughts. Who knew?;) 140 pages show less

If only all philosophers had a text like this; MMP introduces himself and his thought very well in this series of lectures. I knew almost nothing about him going in, and now I feel ready to think through his harder works. Very readable!

The introduction was excellent, as well, despite the unpromising "summary of each lecture" format. Baldwin is sympathetic, but he also isn't afraid to point out MMP's failures, whether of factual understanding (his grasp of physics doesn't seem to have been show more particularly good) or reasoning (you can't analyze painting, music and literature in the same terms).

As for the thought itself, MMP seems to me to be a left-wing Heidegger variation. He is critical of 'science', which means something like analytical thought materialism, and insists that human experience can only be properly explained if we give attention to 'perceptual' life (hence the title). Perception turns out to be very broad: looking at tables, yes, but also intersubjectivity, stimmung, and so on. He's usually reasonable--making a plea to include 'perception' in our understanding of human experience, rather than insisting that *all* human experience is non-cognitive. But sometimes he seems to lean too far in that direction, suggesting that "naive" experience is opposed to intellectual experience altogether, rather than insisting, rightly, that all experience is both intellectual and bodily. In Kantian cant, he is content to admit the existence and necessity of regulative ideas; he just doesn't think we should fool ourselves into thinking that those ideas are anything other than regulative, nor that they are sufficient for understanding.

I was also pleasantly surprised to see him applying all this to a specific time period: he is writing, he says, about a particularly modern way of understanding. But here we run up against philosophy's usual issue: on the one hand, MMP wants to laud the emergence of a new way of understanding (roughly, a more holistic and less 'classical' way) in modernity. On the other hand, he can't help himself, and insists that "modern consciousness has not discovered a modern truth but rather a truth of all time which is simply more visible--supremely acute--in today's world." So... if it's a truth of all time, why was it so unacknowledged until now? If we can come to understand this consciousness differently, why can't the consciousness itself be liable to change?

He also gets a bit carried away in a very French philosophical way (classical painting kills the "trembling life" of the world; Chinese (sic) rock gardens express "a preference for death"; art is always the attempt to create a self-sufficient object), but certainly isn't the worst offender in this regard.

Anyway, I look forward to learning more about MMP; anyone who can be this clear and interesting in such a restricted format can surely be interesting in more professional texts. And I do suspect that he'll tell me what I want to hear, things like this:

"To look at human beings from the outside is what makes the mind self-critical and keeps it sane. But the aim should not be to suggest that all is absurd, as Voltaire did. It is much more a question of implying, as Kafka does, that human life is always under threat and of using humour to prepare the ground for those rare and precious moments at which human beings come to recognise, to find, one another."

Reason, he tells us, is waiting for us; we'll never inherit it, but nor will we give up on it. Has anyone compared MMP with Adorno? That would be fruitful, I think. show less

A Dialectic without Dreams, January 13, 2005

Merleau-Ponty is generally read for his work in phenomenology, not his work on dialectics. This is both a pity and a mistake. While he certainly does deserve to be remembered as the third great phenomenologist of the past century, after Husserl & Heidegger, his being forgotten as a dialectical thinker is almost inexplicable.

I say almost inexplicable because, I fear, the reason he is ignored as a dialectical thinker is because he advocated, and show more superbly demonstrated, a dialectic without myths, utopia or dreams. In the great chapter (2) on Lukacs he says, "[t]he dialectic is this continued intuition, a consistent reading of actual history, the re-establishment of the tormented relations, of the interminable exchanges, between subject and object. There is only one knowledge, which is the knowledge of our world in a state of becoming, and this becoming embraces knowledge itself." He speaks of interminable exchanges, implies the permanence of tormented relations, affirms that knowledge always becomes. This is a dialectic scraped clean of the utopianism of the Marxist classless society, contemptuous of some miraculous Kojevean 'End of History', sans any vain 'Hegelian' promise of some never-never land in which Science will precisely equal Wisdom.

So then why dialectic, or, more precisely, why use the dialectical method if it offers no goal? Immediately after the sentences quoted above M-P says, "[b]ut it is knowledge that teaches us this." The dialectic, as M-P understands it, gives us, better - can give us, an understanding of history, and our present, but as to the future it promises exactly nothing. How could it promise more? If becoming, and the unknown, press on us forever, every totalization is always in danger of being threatened by some unanticipated contingency that changes this totalization into some unpredicted, and above all, unpredictable (until it occurs) Other.

By way of contrast let me now mention that for Hegel, finally, one could say that Dialectic remained a retrospective method and not a predictive science - at least until the precise end of the dialectical process. "The Owl of Minerva takes flight only at night." But, for Hegel, I think it is correct to say that when Subject and Object become One, Forever, we will be able to say that the all-knowing owl is always flying because the Absolute (Spirit) is always dark. We now perhaps better understand the content of the Hegelian characterization of (and objection to) the early position of Schelling - as a 'night in which all cows are black' - this position wasn't wrong; it was merely premature. Thus at the extreme end of Hegelian theory, one is always in danger of seeing it toppling over into the Kojevean 'End of History' position, which M-P in the epilogue characterizes as an idealization of death.

M-P holds, in this book, that this is not the position of Marx and Lukacs. "In Marx spirit becomes a thing, while things become saturated with spirit. History's course is a becoming of meanings transformed into forces or institutions. This is why there is an inertia of history in Marx and also an appeal to human invention in order to complete the dialectic. Marx cannot therefore transfer to, and lay to the account of, matter the same rationality which Hegel ascribes to spirit." Hegel is pleased to be taken to mean that Spirit is an active helpful partner of humanity in dialectic; a materialist dialectic can make no such claims of matter. What Merleau-Ponty, btw, is here denying, for those who have ears, is that there can be an end to any genuine material dialectic. ...Matter itself is permanently, in every human sense, an irrational factor. In other words, being and reason can never be one. Whatever Rationality in things we find - we find it there because we put it there. "Marxism cannot hide the Welt-geist in matter." Dialectic in which a dialectical partner is permanently non-rational becomes a science of circumstances. Thus M-P maintains that for Lukacs (and, I think, himself) that only revolutionary creativity can `guarantee' "a coherent and homogenous system."

...But no system is permanent. "A dialectical conception demands only that, between capitalism, where it exists, and its antecedents, be one of an integrated society to a less integrated one." By more integrated M-P means a more `socialized' society, societies in which, since there is more common ground, "destinies can be compared." It is ultimately here in social interaction that, for M-P, dialectical knowledge arises. But, as indicated earlier, nothing is guaranteed. "The principle of the logic of history is not that all problems posed are solved in advance, that the solution precedes the problem, or that there would be no question if the answer did not pre-exist somewhere, as if history were built on exact ideas. One should rather formulate it negatively: there is no event which does not bring further precision to the permanent problem of knowing what man and his society are..." One is here tempted to say that M-P here answers two of the questions we asked at the beginning of the review. Why resort to the method of dialectic? - It brings (or exposes a) further precision to our knowledge of the problem of man. Why no certain Telos, no end to history, no grand finale that finds Science and Wisdom in permanent embrace? - The "problem of knowing what man and his society are" is permanent.

For M-P the problems of society reside only in human history; neither spirit nor matter will save us. "The sense of history is then threatened at every step with going astray and constantly needs to be reinterpreted." "There is less a sense of history than an elimination of non-sense." Oh, and this indeed would be the 'reason' M-P, the dialectical thought of M-P, was forgotten. A dialectic, shorn of fairy tale, certainty or reward, would attract none of our scholarly saints, or even our Leninist `realists.' Over the last two centuries there have been only three reasons, often entwined, to turn to dialectic; the pursuit of Knowledge, the pursuit of utopia/revolution, or the pursuit of some always obscure inner `intuition' or joy. ...Apparently, given the way M-P is ignored by Hegelian and Marxist dialecticians, the only pursuit that was decisive was the last.

This has only been a brief commentary on a small slice, a handful of pages, of this superb book, that, I hope, will make others interested enough to read it. The discussions of Weber, Lukacs, Trotsky and Sartre are all excellent. M-P is a political philosopher who deserves to be read along with the great and important political philosophers of the 20th century: Georg Lukacs, Antonio Gramsci, Hannah Arendt, Carl Schmitt and Leo Strauss. Ignore any of them and increase your ignorance. show less

Mid-twentieth century revolutions in thought have overturned much of the basis for any easy acceptance of Descartes and later Kant as guides to life, with Kierkegaard and Nietzche as early pioneers in unravelling the presumptions of essentialism.

Maurice Merleau-Ponty is a very significant figure in this context, not merely within modern continental philosophy but in preparing the ground for what looks likely to be seen as a much wider and consequent cultural revolution, one derived from the show more extension of the insights of the existentialist, phenomenological and hermeneutic schools, first into art and culture and increasingly into society and politics.

This slim volume represents seven radio lectures given by Merleau-Ponty in 1948. The form should warn you about the content. They are slight, an attempt to popularise complex thoughts and ideas, equivalent to the sort of 'Brains Trust'-type talks given by intellectuals like Bertrand Russell or JB Priestley in Britain (as well as the Brains Trust itself) around the same time.

They are of their place and time. Some of the ideas will seem oddly obvious to a later generation but the lectures were bringing ideas that were reasonably well understood at the leading edge of the French intelligenstia to the educated French middle classes.

Radio was an essential medium of public education at this time and Merleau-Ponty appears to be doing a reasonable job here of boilinmg down complex and radical thought to the level of a reasonably educated member of the French general public.

But the book could be slimmer. Thomas Baldwin's introductory notes add little to appreciation of material that stands on its own merits and his determination to put his own critique of Merleau-Ponty's claims is irritating when what we really want is an explication of what Merleau-Ponty was trying to get across to a mass audience - and why.

Similarly, the first four lectures are scene-setting potboilers. Complex research and thought is boiled down to short gobbets of information that are not always entirely clear.

The lectures only come alive, to become a useful summary of his ideas, in the last three: a sensitive critique of Cartesianism from what is clearly an existentialist point of view; how art must be seen as distinct from reality; and a powerful, short and, in my view, important critique of the assumptions of the Enlightenment.

To be honest, this book is for completists in French philosophy or for those interested in how philosophy was communicated to the French public in the vibrant 1940s. Merleau-Ponty's views are probably best investigated through more substantal works or through one of the very many general works on existentialism - even perhaps from Wikipedia.

Where the book is useful is in providing unusually succinct (for a working philosopher) expressions of his position. This reader is wholly persuaded by his approach. Merleau-Ponty seems to be describing not how educated people should think (as was the case in the 1940s) but how educated people actually think today, sixty years on.

This shows the extent of a revolution that marks out the wiser part of the liberal West today both from its ideological rivals overseas and from the fundamentalist version of liberal thinking that is fighting its own rear-guard action to preserve the dominance of its absolute values in a changing society.

Merleau-Ponty's legacy is the challenge being undertaken, as I write, to sustain in place some of the rigidities and essentialisms that were the consensus in 1948. These still hold sway in the elites of the West (though not necessarily in the general population) and are the basis of all the 'grand projets' that are so damaging within Western politics - from the American Empire through Israel to the European Union.

In essence, Merleau-Ponty's project is an extended critique of classical rationalism (though not, it should be said, a call for the rule of unreason).

For Merleau-Ponty, the rule of pure reason is neither possible nor truly human because we are, as human beings, embedded in our perceptions. We must be seen in the context of our history and of social reality and its history - as well as of the constant negotiation of our position with our own drives and with other persons.

This is the middle ground between matter and intellect where we actually live. As he puts it, rather than accepting the Cartesian dualism of their being, here, a mind and, there, a body, we should see ourselves and others as minds with bodies - "a being who can only get to the truth of things because its body is, as it were, embedded in those things." Let the man speak for himself:

Lecture 5

" Humanity is not an aggregate of individuals, a community of thinkers, each of whom is guaranteed from the outset to be able to reach agreement with the others because all participate in the same thinking essence. Nor, of course, is it a single Being ... humanity is precarious: each person can only believe what he recognises to be true internally, and, at the same time, nobody thinks or makes up his mind without already being caught up in certain relationships with others, which leads him to opt for a particular set of opinions. Everyone is alone and yet nobody can do without other people ... there is no 'inner' life that is not a first attempt to relate to another person, In this ambiguous position, which has been forced on us because we have a body and a history (both personally and collectively), we can never know complete rest. We are continually obliged to work on our differences, to explain things that we have said that have not been properly understood, to reveal what is hidden within us and to perceive other people."

Lecture 6

" The meaning 'table' will only interest me insofar as it arises out of all the 'details' which embody its present mode of being. If I accept the tutelage of perception, I find I am ready to understand the work of art. For it too is a totality of flesh in which meaning is not free, so to speak, but bound, a prisoner of all the signs, or details, which reveal it to me. Thus the work of art resembles the object of perception: its nature is to be seen or heard and no attempt to define or analyse it, however valuable that may be as a way of taking stock of this experience, can ever stand in place of the direct perceptual experience."

Lecture 7

" In modernity, it is not only works of art that are unfinished: the world they express is like a work which lacks a conclusion."

" ... absolutely objective historical knowledge is inconceivable, because the act of interpreting the past and placing it in perspective is conditioned by the moral and political choices which the historian has made in his own life ... Trapped in this circle, human existence can never abstract from itself in order to gain access to the naked truth: it merely has the capacity to progress towards the objective and does not possess objectivity in fully-fledged form."

" ... if ambiguity and incompletion are ... written into the very fabric of our collective existence rather than just the works of intellectuals, then to seek the restoration of reason ... would be a derisory response ... liberal regimes should not be taken at their word ... noble ideologies can sometimes be convenient excuses."

Merleau-Ponty's message in these lectures is optimistic, far from the doom-and-gloom often ascribed to those moving in existentialist circles at this time.

Contestability and ambiguity are not becessarily bad things to Merleau-Ponty because they permit self- and social creation that accords with our complex natures. He stands in opposition to rationalist and intellectual models that bend humanity into fixed shapes.

Not only God but Reason are 'dead'. This is to be embraced but not from a position of reactionary conservatism. On the contrary, while clearly highly critical of the Soviet model, he is equally critical of Liberal nostrums (as he should be). The strong implication is that we can change things for us personally and for society in a progressive way through embracing uncertainty and making humane judgements for which we must take personal responsibility.

Of course, it is hard not to see this as part of the same movement that embraced Sartre, De Beauvoir, Camus and Arendt and so it is - but Merleau-Ponty should, I believe, be considered differently. His humane phenomenological approach leads him to existentialist conclusions but it does not lock him into its 'system' (such as it is) or ideology.

His ideological approach is, in fact, anti-ideological. He is sensibly respectful of science and is determined not to be led by the nose by Sartre whose genius and ego may place him amongst the 'greats' of Western philosophy but who must always be taken with a pinch of salt as a guide to life. For Merleau-Ponty, life need not be 'absurd' if we do not wish it to be. show less