Merleau-Ponty and Ethics - Douglas Low ONTOLOGY, AND ETHICS Douglas Low RalphPerry offered animportantand influen-tial answer to the question “what is the source of ethicalvalue?”Heargued

MERLEAU-PONTY, ONTOLOGY, AND ETHICSDouglas Low

Ralph Perry offered an important and influen-tial answer to the question “what is the source ofethical value?” He argued that it cannot be physi-cal nature alone, since physical nature, by itself,is impassive, and that value must subsequentlyhave its original source in life, in living thingsthat have interests and seek to maintain them-selves over time. Yet even though life is thesource of ethical value, he continues, “the moraldrama opens only when interest meets interest....Every interest is compelled to recognize other in-terests, on the one hand as parts of its environ-ment, and on the other as partners in the generalenterprise of life.”1 This is a good starting point.Value begins with life and the interest that life en-tails, since it is difficult to see how we could at-tach value predicates to an impassive, unfeeling,non-sentient, non-living nature in itself, and it iseasier to see how interest arises as living thingsseek to maintain themselves over time, how, sub-sequently, value becomes associated with life. Inaddition, Perry seems to be right to argue thatmorality must begin with the recognition of thevalue of others, since morality, properly speak-ing, involves behavioral relationships betweenhuman beings and a genuine recognition of thevalue of each by all the others. Yet, especially ifwe begin to think about an environmental ethics,we should perhaps qualify Perry’s first point withthe claim that we must recognize that certain nat-ural, physical conditions support life while oth-ers do not, thus at least indirectly attaching valuepredicates to nature in itself. Moreover, if wewish to establish a morality with regard to natureand other living things, as well as a human moral-ity, we must establish how the recognition of thevalue of others (nature, plants, and animals, aswell as human others) is possible, i.e., how it ispossible ontologically. The works of MauriceMerleau-Ponty, especially his ontological

studies, are uniquely suited to help us with thistask. It is thus to his work that this essay will turn.

Before we turn to his works a few additionalcomments should be offered. David Hume re-minds us that traditionally there have been twoprimary sources of value: reason and pleasure,and he proceeds to add a third, the association ofapproval or disapproval, which is based on sym-pathy for the other, with certain observed behav-iors toward the other.2 More recently, we findmany postmodernists arguing that human moralvalues are “rooted” only in the more or less arbi-trary agreements among interlocutors.3 Yet, re-gardless of position, all seem to agree that ethicsrequires the genuine recognition of the other asother. We should add here, though, since there isless agreement regarding this point, that the ethi-cal recognition of the other requires the recogni-tion of the other as both the same (similar notidentical) and as different.4 We must recognizethe other as the same, so that the other’s life hasintrinsic value, like the intrinsic value of one’sown life, and we must recognize the other as dif-ferent, so that the other’s life is not just an exten-sion of one’s own—that it has value in its ownright, that it has its own intrinsic value. Now, therecognition of the value of the other (as the sameand as different) usually focuses on other humanbeings, rather than animals or the environment,and it is perhaps easier to establish with regard tohumans, yet the recognition of the value of theother has recently been extended to both animalsand the environment, and we should thusconsider how the recognition of the other ispossible in each of these cases as well.

Merleau-Ponty makes use of all of the pointsin the above paragraph and even integrates themin what we might call his ethics (or, more prop-erly speaking, his political theory).5 He makesuse of self-feeling or sentience, sympathy for andrecognition of others, and dialog and reasoning

PHILOSOPHY TODAY SPRING 2012

59© DePaul University 2012

with others. At least implied in his theory, then, isthe belief that value begins with life and sen-tience, with the capacity to feel pleasure andpain, and with the interest to survive, while mo-rality begins with the capacity to sympathize andempathize with other humans (and even othernon-human species), and with the ability to dia-logue with other human beings in order to estab-lish what is fair for all. Ethical values, then, arerooted in life and sentience, which are rooted in,are a part of, and which emerge from nature. We,perhaps, cannot make moral judgments about na-ture in-itself, although we can make moral judg-ments about which conditions in nature supportlife. The goal of the present essay will be to dem-onstrate that Merleau-Ponty’s philosophy, or,more specifically, his theory of nature and humannature, of levels of natural being, and of overlap-ping ontologies provide the basis not only for ahuman ethics but for an animal and environmen-tal ethics as well. That is to say, it is Merleau-Ponty’s overlapping ontology that allows us tomake moral and ethical claims, with respect tonature, plants and animals, and humanity. Let usnow turn to this ontology.

It should be immediately stated that Merleau-Ponty does not accept, and works feverishly toovercome, the mind/body dualism that has beenin place in Western culture and philosophy sinceDescartes. This dualism, particularly in the handsof industrialization, has encouraged the place-ment of the human mind outside of and evenabove nature and its species. This ontological ar-rogance and its condescending exclusion of na-ture has obviously led to a sense of moral superi-ority with regard to all other living things and tothe sense that humans could do anything to na-ture without reprisal and even without repercus-sion or harm to ourselves. Nature and all livingthings within it were considered to be under thecontrol of humanity, or, more starkly, “under thedominion of man.” We controlled nature, and in-sofar as natural conditions harmed humanity, itpresented itself as all the more subject to our con-trol, domination, and even destruction. Merleau-Ponty’s ontology of levels, of overlapping re-gions, and, more specifically, of a consciousnessthat is intertwined with a body that is intertwined

with the world quite obviously shifts us awayfrom this sort of exclusory dualism and towards ahuman life and mind that is intimately bound upwith the world. Moreover, if this is correct, ifmatter, life, and human consciousness are allbound together, then we can no longer ignore theethical consequences of the now obvious claimthat what we do to nature we do to ourselves andall living things.

Let us now turn to the details of Merleau-Ponty’s position. The first thing that a philosophymust establish, he argues, is the proper character-ization of human perception, the proper charac-terization of our aware, embodied openness uponthe world, since this openness upon the world isthe basis for all human knowledge. Perceptioncannot be understood as tabula rasa empiricism,since perceptual meaning cannot be understoodas the passive reception of isolated units in exter-nal relations but must be grasped as the humanbody’s active and meaningful encounter with thepatterns of the world. The lines drawn on thepiece of paper before me, the light that firststrikes them and then my eyes, are certainly re-quired for perception to occur, yet these neces-sary conditions do not fully account for the factthat I can perceive these lines as a meaningfulgestalt figure, as either a duck or a rabbit. Theparts of the visual field are related meaningfullyand not just as discrete units in external relations.Yet this meaning is concrete and perceptual andthus should not be confused with or equated tothe internal relationships of conceptual meaning.Thus, even though the perceptual event wouldnot occur without the physical, physiological andneurological events, and even though the mean-ing of the gestalt figure clings to these events, thismeaning does not appear to be fully reducible tothem, since it appears as meaning, and not merelyas units in external relations. Yet, since the mean-ing does cling to the particularity of the events, tothe body’s specific perceptual and sensual en-counters with its surroundings, the meaning can-not be treated as a mere construct of either lan-guage or thought. Merleau-Ponty’s discussion ofthe Fundierung relationship is helpful here.6 Na-ture provides the basis for the perceptual formand meaning, yet the orientation of an aware em-

PHILOSOPHY TODAY


bodied act of perception is needed not only tomore fully bring the form to light but also to helparticulate it more precisely and thus more mean-ingfully. A variety of different articulations al-ways remain possible, and there is no definitivelycorrect articulation, yet some are better, moreclarifying, than others, and this is because there issomething already there to help articulate. More-over, even though the meaning of the perceptualforms requires the presence of the embodiedperceiver, this does not mean that we perceiveonly phenomena, since objects present them-selves as existing independently of the act of per-ception. Nature necessarily presents itself to usthrough the avenues of the aware and orientedhuman body, but it also presents itself as existingindependently of us. Again, then, when we per-ceive the world, we are aware of really existingpatterned structures that we take up as orientedembodied beings and help articulate as meaning-ful perceptual forms.

Forms are most generally defined byMerleau-Ponty, and by the Gestalt psychologiststhat he generally follows here, “as total processeswhose properties are not the sum of those whichthe isolated parts would possess.” Moreover, heproceeds, “we will say that there is form when-ever the properties of a system are modified byevery change brought about in a single one of itsparts and, on the contrary, are conserved whenthey all change while maintaining the same rela-tionship among themselves.”7 Yet, along withthis more general characterization of form,Merleau-Ponty is able to identify three qualita-tively different types of more specific yet stillgeneral structures: physical, vital, and human.Structure in physics is identified “as an ensembleof forces in a state of equilibrium,” (SB 137) but,as we have just witnessed above, even though thebasis for this form is the physical structure in it-self, form must be defined not as an in-itself butas a meaningful perceptual whole, to which boththe embodied perceiver and the world contribute,with the world doing so more primarily (see SB143). Proceeding to the next level, we observethat vital structures must be recognized as quali-tatively different because living beings “presentthe particularity of having behavior, which is to

say that their actions are not comprehensible asfunctions of the physical milieu and that, on thecontrary, the parts of the world to which they re-act are delimited for them by an internal norm,” anorm that “is simply an observation of a pre-ferred attitude, statistically more frequent, whichgives a new kind of unity to behavior.” Living be-havioral acts, then, must be understood as havinga meaning: “they are not defined, even in science,as a sum of processes external to each other” (SB159). “In recognizing that behavior has a mean-ing and depends upon the vital significance of sit-uations, biological science is prohibited fromconceiving of it as a thing in-itself (en soi) whichwould exist, partes extra partes, in the nervoussystem or in the body; rather it sees in behavior anembodied dialectic which radiates over a milieuimmanent to it” (SB 161). Moreover, it is the bio-logical structure of the species that influencesand even determines the behavioral and percep-tual norms of the species, as, for example, thespecies nature of the spider determines that it re-sponds to movement in its web rather than visualcues. In addition, when we perceive variousforms of species behavior, we are able to distin-guish between behavior that is lost in its structureand behavior that is gradually gaining awarenessof itself. The following three types of behavioralstructure or form thus reveal themselves: syncret-ic, amovable, and symbolic. Syncretic form isrecognizable as a structure of behavior that iscompletely pre-programmed by the biologicalmake-up of the species. For example, as justmentioned, the spider is programmed to respondto vibration it its web. Amovable form is identifi-able as a species behavior that begins to moveaway from pre-programmed responses to the en-vironment but that still remains closely tied to apractical engagement with its field. For example,a chimpanzee will use a box as a ladder to reachfood just out of reach, yet seems unable to do so ifanother chimpanzee is using the box as a seat.The varying of perspectives here remains tightlybound to practical need and remains difficult, es-pecially if the animal is already immersed in oneperspective. And finally, symbolic form is readilyobservable in human behavior and in the humanability to take up multiple perspectives, to be able

MERLEAU-PONTY, ONTOLOGY, AND ETHICS


to more or less freely vary these perspectives,and, subsequently, to treat signs not simply assignals for a specific response but as bearers ofgeneral meaning. This leads Merleau-Ponty tothe recognition of a third general structure, to ahuman structure. Human structure is differentfrom the other structures of life, for the reasonsjust mentioned, and, obviously, from physicalstructure as well.

We have just seen that Merleau-Ponty hasidentified three general forms or structures in na-ture (roughly physical, biological, and human),yet we must now ask about their relationship toone another. They definitely should not be enter-tained as three totally distinct types of structures,since the properties of each structure are not to-tally exclusive to just that structure, even thoughthey may be that structure’s dominant character-istic. The properties that are characteristic ofeach structure can be found in the others as well,even if in a lesser degree. Here is how Merleau-Ponty expresses it:

Quantity, order and value or signification, whichpass respectively for the properties of matter, life,and mind, would no longer be but the dominantcharacteristics in the order considered and wouldbecome universally applicable categories. Quan-tity is not a negation of quality, as if the equationfor a circle negated circular form, of which on thecontrary it attempts to be a rigorous expression.Often, the quantitative relations with which phys-ics is concerned are only the formulae for certaindistributive processes: in a soap bubble as in an or-ganism, what happens at each point is determinedby what happens at all the others. . . . In the internalunity of these [physical] systems, it is acceptable tosay that each local effect depends on the functionwhich it fulfills in the whole, upon its value and itssignificance with respect to the structure which thesystem is tending to realize. (SB 131)

On the one hand, then, it is acceptable to say thatphysical systems display order and meaningfulorder, since local effects follow the functioningof whole systems, and since physical systemsdisplay an internal unity. In fact, from biology wehave learned about organic wholes, wholeswhose parts mutually and internally influence

each other but do so in a way that is not reducibleto the internal relations of conceptual meaning,and it is this insight that allows us to catch aglimpse of unity in physical structures, even if toa lesser degree. Moreover, from psychology andthe analysis of human knowledge we havelearned that “taken as a being in nature, existingin space, the form would always be dispersed inseveral places and distributed in local events,even if these events mutually determine eachother; to say that it does not suffer this divisionamounts to saying that it is not spread out inspace, that it does not exist in the same manner asa thing, that it is an idea under which what hap-pens in several places is brought together and re-sumed. This unity is the unity of the perceivedobjects” (SB 143–4). Physical forms, then, andas we have already witnessed above, cannot beunderstood simply as forms in themselves. Theymust be understood as perceptual forms, and theymust be understood as displaying order andmeaningful order. This order is suggested by thephysical structures but it is brought more pre-cisely to light and more fully articulated in theembodied act of aware human perception.

Yet, on the other hand, if the structural rela-tions (i.e., orderly, qualitative forms) found inphysics can be quantified, i.e., meaningfully ex-pressed in various types of mathematical abstrac-tions,8 then the structural relations found in biol-ogy and psychology can be quantified as well,since biological functions and psychological liferest upon the physical and are never completelyfreed from physical structures, even as theyemerge from them with new properties. “The ad-vent of higher orders, to the extent that they areaccomplished, eliminate the autonomy of thelower orders and give a new signification to thesteps which constitute them” (SB 180), eliminatethe autonomy of the lower orders but do not elim-inate them, do not completely eliminate their in-fluence. New properties emerge, but as theyemerge they do not simply or completely leavethe old structures behind. As the new propertiesemerge, the preceding conditions are sublimatedby and integrated into the new structure. There isthus a reciprocal influence up and down thehierarchal scale, with lower and higher structuresinfluencing each other simultaneously, with the

PHILOSOPHY TODAY


physical originally giving rise to new structures,yet with these new structures folding back upontheir predecessors and integrating them in newways. The structural properties of the biologicaland psychological are thus amenable to quantita-tive abstraction and analysis, since they continueto be influenced by the physical, and, as we havejust seen, since the structural qualities of physicsare not expressed as units in external relations butas parts of a system that mutually influence oneanother, terms that are borrowed from biologyand psychology, we must recognize that thestructures of biology and psychology areapplicable to physical structures.

It is the above ontological levels, as Merleau-Ponty has revealed them, and especially theiroverlapping boundaries and mutual influence,which will allow us to understand the ethicalclaims that can be made within the context of hisphilosophy, or, more generally, it is the above on-tological levels that help provide the basis for ahuman ethics as well as an ethics that can be ap-plied to nature and all living things. Before weturn to this relationship between ontology andethics, let us briefly consider Merleau-Ponty’streatment of time in his great middle work, Phe-nomenology of Perception,9 and the ontologicalinvestigations of his later work, The Visible andthe Invisible.10 It should also be mentioned herethat these ontological levels are not explicitlynamed in his later lecture notes that come to bepublished under the title of Nature,11 but also thatwhat we do find revealed there is consistent withthem, with the “emergent materialism” that isoutlined in The Structure of Behavior, as well aswith the general ontological themes revealed inThe Visible and the Invisible. Nature, then, can bethought of as a connecting link or bridge betweenMerleau-Ponty’s early and late work.12

What is central to human experience, to statethis in the first person, as Merleau-Ponty does inPhenomenology of Perception, is that I am givento myself.13 This means that I am given, that I amaware of my experience as always involved in apre-existing setting, from which I cannot escape.Or if I do, it is only by entering another. I amtherefore given to myself as always already in-volved in the world. Yet this also means that I am

given to myself, that I am aware of the situation inwhich I am immersed. I have the power to pauseand reflect, to break the rigid chain of cause andeffect relations, to take up and interpret the situa-tions in which I am engaged, but this power is notabsolute, since I always remain in some situation,and some interpretations make more sense thanothers—even though nature is inexhaustible andfurther interpretation always remains possible.Moreover, since I am given to myself, and since Iam aware of myself as part of a situation, I amalso aware of opening upon a situation that othersperceive and participate within. Thus, neither na-ture nor the social world upon which my experi-ence opens can be understood as an object (as adiscrete thing) but must be seen “as a permanentfield or dimension of existence” (PhP 362). Or,just as the world is better understood as a perma-nent field that I am aware of and that I am awareof as existing within rather than as a mere object,so also the social world is better understood as apermanent field that I am aware of and that I amaware of as existing within rather than as a mereobject, since both are first lived-through beforethey are known or expressed as things. In addi-tion, we must be especially careful not to reify thesocial, to treat it as a thing, since human beingsand human relationships are not just things andare poorly understood as such. Moreover, theclarification here of the social mode of existencehelps us clarify the mode of existence of otherareas as well.

The problem of the existential modality of the so-cial is here at one with all problems of transcen-dence. Whether we are concerned with my body,the natural world, the past, birth or death, the ques-tion is always how I can be open to phenomenawhich transcend me, and which nevertheless existonly to the extent that I take them up and live them;how the presence to myself (Urprasenz) which es-tablishes my own limits and conditions every alienpresence is at the same time depresentation . . . andthrows me outside myself. (PhP 363)

Here, in Phenomenology of Perception,Merleau-Ponty compares the structure of humansubjectivity to the structure of time, and he an-swers the above question (about how presence to



oneself can also be a depresentation) by turningto his understanding of the nature of time. Time,he argues, must be understood as the primarymodel for ek-stasis, as a leaping out of itself thatremains in contact with itself. Time is not a col-lection of discrete moments with each taking itssole turn at existence. The present moment of ex-perience gradually slips into the past and towardthe future. The present moment of experience is agestalt, for the present foreground opens to a ho-rizon that includes it and extends infinitely inboth directions. The past cannot be fully presentto me, for if it were, it would lose its status as past.The present moment of experience thus opens toa past that runs beyond it yet with which it re-mains in contact. While it is true that the remotepast (one’s birth, for example) remains out ofreach, it is nevertheless true that one’s presentopens to a past that also has a past that it opensupon, and so on. “If anything of the past is to existfor us, it can be only in an ambiguous presence,anterior to any express evocation, like a fieldupon which we have an opening. It must exist forus even though we may not be thinking of it, andall our recollections must have their substance inand be drawn from this opaque mass” (PhP 364).Thus, even when I reflect on a past moment of myown experience, which is fundamentally tempo-ral in its structure, I am in touch with somethingthat temporally slips away from me. To repeat,the pre-reflective and the reflective do not coin-cide, since they are necessarily separated by theflow or spread of time, yet the reflective remainsin touch with the pre-reflective as it graduallyslips away in time. Moreover, this is also the waythat I experience others, the world, and even myown body. The other remains on the horizon ofmy experience, yet I remain in contact with theother. The world’s horizon remains out of reach,even while I remain in contact with it through mypresent perspectives. And I am obviously in con-tact with my body, just as its pre-reflective open-ness upon the world remains out of reach of acomplete reflective representation, for it existsprior in time and any attempt to capture it alwaysand necessarily occurs after it. Thus, I am in con-tact with the past, the world, others and myselfbut without fully possessing them. There is over-lapping but also separation. I am in lived contactwith them, but I do not fully coincide with them

in reflective thought. Moreover, as we have al-ready seen, this same lived-through contact thatputs me in contact with an abundance of being,because it opens out upon a field, also opens meto this field by way of a perspective, which meansthat presence (the perspective) and absence (thefield) always occurs together (PhP 364f.). Thisidea of pre-reflective and reflective experiencesfolding into one another but also remainingspread apart (or, more generally, of fields withoverlapping boundaries) is confirmed and deep-ened by the ontological studies of Nature and re-fined in Merleau-Ponty’s discussion of the two-dimensional structure of the human body in TheVisible and the Invisible.

Yet, it is clearly the early study of the ontolog-ical levels of being, especially their overlappingboundaries (in The Structure of Behavior), andthe early and later study of nature and the emer-gent nature of biological structures (in The Struc-ture of Behavior and Nature), that pave the wayfor Merleau-Ponty’s late understanding of thespecial two-dimensional nature of the humanbody (in The Visible and the Invisible).14 It is thebody’s reflexivity, its unique reflective relation-ship to itself, the fact that it is awareness of itselfas a perceiving being, that it can see itself seeingand touch itself touching, the fact that it is awareof itself as being a part of the world upon which itopens, that defines it as a linking bond withthings. As my left hand touches the surface of anexterior object, I am able to touch this left hand asan embodied exterior object with my right hand.Yet my right hand is also able to capture aglimpse of my left hand’s touching, since theyoccur in the same body, even as this touchingslips away from it, since the body as experiencingand the body as experienced overlap and crossinto one another but never completely coincidebecause they are always separated by the spreadof time. I am thus aware of myself as a thing thatis capable of touching, as a touching thing, as abeing that is embodied like other embodied be-ings, but that also opens upon them. The aware,embodied human subject is bound up with theworld, is made of the same stuff as the other em-bodied objects of the world, only knows them be-cause it is like them, because it is an embodied

PHILOSOPHY TODAY


being turning back upon other embodied beings,but is also different from them because it is thebeing that is aware of being, its own and theworld’s. “There is vision, touch, when a certainvisible, a certain tangible, turns back upon thewhole of the visible/tangible of which it is a part,or when between it and them, and through theircommerce, is formed a visibility, a tangible in it-self. . . . It is this Visibility, this generality of theSensible in itself, this anonymity innate to My-self that we have previously called flesh” (VI139). As Merleau-Ponty has already said in theearlier Phenomenology of Perception, and as herepeats here in the posthumous work, it is thelived-through body that provides, or is, our over-lapping bond with the world. I experience mybody as mine but also as that upon which my per-sonal life rests, as an anonymous set of functionsthat carry me into the world whether I will it ornot (PhP 215f., 440). My personal perceptionsthus open upon a world that includes me andthese perceptions; my specific perceptions openout to and are included in a general space of pos-sible perspectives, upon a world to which I ambound and of which I feel a part. My bodily per-ceptions form a system with a world that alsoruns beyond me and includes me. The experienc-ing human body and the world thus cross orchiasm or flow into one another (ineinander).They ontologically overlap, are in one another,are a part of one another, since worldly stuff com-poses the human body and the aware human bodycontributes to (but does not constitute or con-struct or create) what is experienced as worldly.

To reiterate, I’m in contact with the world butthe world (as other) outruns me, and it is the onto-logical structure of the body, its two-dimension-ality, the fact that it is both sensible and sentient,and the fact that the sensible and sentient crossinto one another without becoming one, that al-lows this to occur. Moreover, Merleau-Ponty ex-plicitly mentions that the human body’sdehiscence, its splitting open and subsequenttwo-dimensionality, “is a prototype of Being, ofwhich our body, the sensible sentient, is a very re-markable variant, but whose constitutive paradoxalready lies in every visible. For already the cubeassembles within itself incompossible visibilia,

as my body is at once phenomenal body and ob-jective body” (VI 136). Thus, even thoughMerleau-Ponty argues that we must recognizethe role of the aware, perceiving subject in all ex-perience, he is not just substituting an embodiedsubject (or an embodied subjectivism) for a dis-embodied one, for the disembodied subjectivismof Cartesian Modernism. Even though he doesmake this substitution, and even though this sub-stantially changes how we are to understand hu-man experience (by way of a sensing, aestheti-cally attuned body rather than detached,conceptually dominant mind), he is even moresubstantially arguing that human experience isnot just the projection of an embodied subject.We must take the aware, embodied perceivingsubject into account, but we must also recognizethat this awareness recognizes itself as comingsecond, as being a part of a greater world, and asbeing structured by it. The embodied perceiverand the world cross into and influence oneanother yet remain distinct, with the world actingas the more primary term.

It is helpful to say here, when speaking ofMerleau-Ponty’s philosophy, particularly of hisuse of chiasm or the crossing into one another ofexperiences or ontological regions, that weshould use the terms “divergence (écart) and en-croachment, rather than identity and differ-ence.”15 We must recall that Merleau-Ponty, hereas elsewhere, is attempting to overcome the di-chotomies of Western culture and philosophy, in-cluding the complete separation of inner andouter, subjective and objective, etc. When speak-ing of his philosophy, then, and in this particularcase, when we are speaking of the transcendenceof the world and others, we must speak of a tran-scendence that occurs within the context of im-manence. Human experience cannot be denied ordoubted away, nor can it be constructed from theoutside by using discrete units in external rela-tions or from the inside by using abstract con-cepts and internal relations of meaning, but mustbe approached from the point of view of the expe-riencing perceiver. We cannot deny and musteven begin with human perceptual experience asit is lived, but this embodied experience immedi-ately opens us upon a world that is always already



there, upon a world that always already runs be-yond us both temporally and spatially. Thusrather than exclusive experiences or regions, wehave the overlapping of experiences and regions.Rather than an internal projection vs. an externalimposition, we have an overlapping of internaland external; we have the overlapping and simul-taneous mixture of projection and imposition.Merleau-Ponty’s use of the Funderiung relation-ship once again helps here: we have the percep-tual openness upon and the perceptual taking-upof the more primary patterns of the world, thepatterns that motivate (not cause or logically re-quire) certain perceptual holds or orientations,orientations that nevertheless fold back uponthese patterns to help frame, articulate, and ex-press them more precisely. The other (as world,as animal, as other human beings) encroachesupon me, but I am able to take-up the other ac-tively and interpretively. We are bound togetherand mutually influence one another, with theworld, especially, remaining as the more primaryterm.

We are now in the position to see howMerleau-Ponty’s theory of nature, with its onto-logical levels of overlapping being, and his the-ory of the human body, with i ts two-dimensionality, provide the basis for an environ-mental ethics, for an ethics with regard to ourtreatment of animals, and for a human ethics. Wehave seen that human beings are not outside orabove the world. Our “spirit” is not a separate en-tity that is placed above the world, as it is in thetradition of Cartesian dualism. Human natureand the human awareness that comes along withit have evolved and emerged from nature and re-main bound up with it. We have seen that we canrecognize the world as other because of the two-dimensionality of the human body, because of itsdehiscence, because the body as a sensible massis also sentient, because the body as a sensiblemass opens out in a way that puts it in contactwith a world (because the world is likewise andsimilarly embodied) but that also puts it in con-tact with a world that runs beyond it (because theworld is embodied but differently embodied).The human body opens out (ek-stasis) to a worldthat is experienced as running beyond and as dif-

ferent from the embodied perceiver but also, asembodied, as that with which the embodiedperceiver remains in contact. Since the humanbody and the world are both embodied beingsthere is a sort of sympathy between them, or atleast the human being is aware that its embodi-ment is similar to the embodiment of the worldand that it is intimately bound up with it. In addi-tion, if we recall the general structures ofMerleau-Ponty’s emergent materialism, we re-call that the structures of matter, life, and humanlife overlap, even while life and human lifeemerge from matter with new properties. Thismeans, again, that human life and embodimentare intimately bound up with the embodiment ofthe world, and this means that what we do to theworld we also do to ourselves, and, even more,since we are connected to all living thingsthrough this world, what we do to the world, wedo to all living things. Moreover, since what wedo to the world can potentially harm all livingthings, including human life, what we do to theworld has an ethical component.

Ethically, then, since human beings are able torecognize the earth as other, are able to recognizethe earth as an ethical other, we can have sympa-thy for the earth, as being similar to us, as beingembodied, even though differently embodied,and, as embodied, as being open to degradationand thus ethical mistreatment. We can especiallyrecognize the earth as the homeland for all livingthings, since all living things emerge from it, stillreside in it, and unquestionably rely on it for theircontinued sustenance and existence. Moreover,and subsequently, we can thus recognize that cer-tain earthly conditions are more conducive to thesupport of life than others, and that human be-havior takes on an ethical component as it eitherencourages or discourages these conditions.

In addition, since human beings are able torecognize plant life as other, as similar to us (aspossessing life) but also as different (as possess-ing little or no sentience or power of reflectiveself awareness), since we are able to recognizeplants as living beings that can grow robustly orwither and die, and since life has intrinsic value,the human treatment of plants as living things hasan ethical component. Ethically, we can recog-

PHILOSOPHY TODAY


nize plant life as other, can recognize plant life asan ethical other, can have sympathy for plants (asbeing similar to us—as being embodied, possess-ing life and as thus open to derogation and death,if not sentient pain), then via the observation ofthe norms of healthy life in a species and of theconditions that support or disrupt these norms,we can at least state some guidelines for theethical treatment of these living things.

In addition, since human beings are able torecognize animals as other, since we are able toconnect with them, to see them as similar to us (asliving, sentient, feeling, suffering beings) butalso as different (as possessing different powersof integration and perhaps little power of reflec-tive awareness), since our experience is able tocouple upon and overlap with their behavior andexperience but is also able to differentiate fromthem, and since we are able to see this bothexperientially and via the study of overlappingontological regions, we can and should be able torecognize a moral relationship to animals. Ani-mals are beings that we are able to recognize asliving, sensing, suffering beings, and since all lifehas intrinsic value, and since the presence ofpleasure and the lack of pain generally possessintrinsic value, the human treatment of animals,insofar as it is supportive of life and pleasure anddiscourages death and pain, has an ethical com-ponent. Ethically, we can recognize the other asanimal, can recognize the animal as an ethicalother, can have sympathy for the animal (as beingsimilar to us, as sentient embodied, living, feel-ing, suffering creature), then via the observationof the norms of healthy behavior in a species andof the conditions that support or disrupt thesenorms, we can and should state some at leastgeneral guidelines for the ethical treatment ofthese animals.

And finally, since human beings do recognizehumans as other, as being similar to oneself (asliving, sensing, feeling, suffering, more or lessself aware and integrated beings) and yet as alsodifferent from oneself (as being individuated in adifferent body with different though still similarexperiences), since our experience is able to cou-ple upon and overlap with their behavior and ex-perience but is also able to differentiate from

them, since we are able to sympathize and evenempathize with the joys and pains of others, andsince all human life is of equal intrinsic value, wecan and should be able to recognize a moral re-sponsibility toward all human beings. Ethically,we recognize the other as human, can recognizeother humans as an ethical other, can have sym-pathy for the other (as being similar but also dif-ferent), then via dialogue with the other we canattempt to move toward principles fair for all,even while recognizing differences.

Merleau-Ponty’s ontology of overlapping lev-els of being and his theory of the two-dimen-sional ontology of human nature allow us to rec-ognize the other as other, as similar and different,and thus subsequently allow us to recognize theother ethically. His ontology of overlapping lev-els of being also allows us to recognize the valueof all living things but, additionaly, that not allliving things are equal in value. We should con-sider this claim more closely, and we should doso by briefly considering two alternative views,one that tends towards an objective grounding ofvalues and one that tends towards a subjectivegrounding of them. Tending toward the objec-tive, Aldo Leopold has stated that evolution hasmoved toward diverse environments, with theirmany parts holding each other in balance.16 If thisbalance is not present, if one or a few species arenot held in check, they will tend to dominate theenvironment. Leopold’s ethical implication hereis that diverse environments are better or health-ier because they support a greater variety of lifeforms. Again, by implication, since life is of in-trinsic value, and since evolution has moved to-ward environments with diverse life forms, thevariety of different life forms is of value as well.Thus life is of value and the variety of life is ofvalue. Moreover, this latter judgment appears tobe an “objective” judgment, since it is based onan assessment of natural history and the naturaldirection of evolution. Leopold proceeds to offeran explicit ethical claim with regard to the envi-ronment. “A thing is right when it tends to pre-serve the integrity, stability, and beauty of the bi-otic community. It is wrong when it tendsotherwise” (Leopold 263). Tending toward thesubjective grounding of values, Arne Naess has



stated that “the right of all forms to live is a uni-versal right which cannot be quantified. No sin-gle species of living being has more of this partic-ular right to live and unfold than any otherspecies.”17 “Many,” he proceeds to say, “contendthat living beings can be ranked according totheir relative intrinsic value,” and he recognizesthat one of the claims for “rankable value” isbased on the ability to be conscious of oneselfand one’s actions. Yet in Naess’s opinion thisclaim has not been “substantially justified”(Naess 167). Rather than using “rank” as ajustification to “kill other living beings” in orderto eat and consume them, Naess posits anotherargument:

it is against my intuition of unity to say ‘I will killyou because I am more valuable’ but not againstthe intuition to say ‘I will kill you because I amhungry’. In the latter case, there would be an im-plicit regret: “Sorry, I am now going to kill you be-cause I am hungry.” In short I find obviously right,but often difficult to justify, different sorts of be-havior with different sorts of living beings. But thisdoes not imply that we can classify some as intrin-sically more valuable than others. (Naess 168)

Two points of response should be mentionedhere with regard to what we have seen Merleau-Ponty develop above. First, his ontology of over-lapping regions helps us overcome the divide be-tween the objectivism of facts and the subjectiv-ism of values in a way that traditional Westerndualism does not. Merleau-Ponty’s use of theFundierung relationship is once again helpfulhere: just as “bare facts” suggest expressed artic-ulations of them that fold back upon them in away that expresses them more clearly, meaningthat nature (as the more primary term) suggestscertain expressions or interpretations that arenevertheless required to bring them more fully tolight, meaning that object and subject (includinghuman values) must be taken together, with theobject as still more primary, so also human bio-logical instincts (generally, to seek pleasure andavoid pain) suggest certain moral expressionsthat fold back upon them in a way that attempts toexpress them more clearly and precisely. Scien-tific and ethical judgments (which are really in-

separable from one another) are thus “grounded”in nature but are not “caused” by it.18 Human in-terpretation and judgment, as they relate to thesenatural patterns and instincts, are needed to morefully form, express, and clarify them. Humanjudgment doesn’t just create or construct the pat-terns but more fully forms, articulates, andclarifies them. Moreover, we have already seenthat a number of judgments are always possible,that there is no definitively correct expression,but also that some remain more clarifying andcompelling than others. These moral judgments,then, are neither completely caused by nature norcompletely arbitrary linguistic agreements. Theyare suggested by nature but require ongoing eval-uation and articulation by members of a sharedlinguistic community. Thus we have the comingtogether of the natural (“objective”) patterns andhuman (“subjective”) interpretation. Nature sug-gests certain natural and instinctual patterns thatare more primary but that must be brought tomore precise clarification by the natural interpre-tive powers of the human species in ongoing lin-guistic dialogue, debate and the crosschecking ofexpressions against shared experiences. Thusvalues are neither objective nor subjective but re-sult from the coming together of the natural andthe naturally subjective. Meaning, includingethical meaning, is formed as the human bodymeets the world and as human beings, asembodied beings, are able to “identify” and em-pathize with nature, other living bodies, andother humans—as we have seen above.

Secondly, Merleau-Ponty’s theory of overlap-ping ontological regions allows us to see thevalue of all living things, but without acceptingthe claim that all living things are of equal value.While we must accept the value of all life forms,it seems counter-intuitive (and more than just an-thropomorphism) to claim that the life of a hu-man being, the life of a pig or a snail, and the lifeof a dandelion are of equal value. Or, to restatethis in the form of a famous illustration, if a hu-man, a pig, a snail, and a dandelion are all in aburning building, and we have time to save onlyone, it seems counter-intuitive to choose eitherthe pig, or the snail, or the dandelion, and not thehuman. Moreover, it is Merleau-Ponty’s theory

PHILOSOPHY TODAY


of overlapping ontologies that allows us toground this intuition. Merleau-Ponty acceptshere the still widely accepted biological notionthat all things have evolved from earlier and sim-pler life forms, that, for example, eukaryotes (ba-sically cells with organelles), from which fungi,plants and animals have developed, evolved fromsimple forms of bacterial life. As living organ-isms evolved they continued to become morecomplex. As species continued to evolve and be-come more complex they continued to developdifferent properties and qualities.19 True, weshould respect all life, but, since the variety of liv-ing things display vastly different properties andcapacities, it would be irresponsible for us tomake moral decisions that do not take these dif-ferences into account. True, we should respectthe earth because it supports life. We should re-spect life because it has intrinsic value. Weshould respect animals because they feel plea-sure and pain. And we should respect humans be-cause humans feel not only bodily pleasure andpain but also psychological joy and discomfort.True, we should value all life . . . but in differentways and not equally. We owe more respect tothose more complex living beings that feel plea-sure and pain (animals rather than plants, for ex-ample), to those that have a greater variety and amore acute awareness of these pleasures andpains (humans and other mammals more thancrustaceans or insects, for example), and to thosethat have a more integrated reflective awarenessof them (humans). Moreover, it is the human spe-cies that has the capacity to fully grasp and reflectupon these natural patterns, that can grasp and re-flect upon the consequences of their behavior, forthe present and future, and that can subsequentlygrasp and reflect upon the ethical consequencesof their behavior and the behavior of other spe-cies. It is humans that have the greatest awarenessand thus the greatest chance of recognizing andmanaging the integrity and stability of bioticcommunities, that have the greatest chance ofmanaging these communities with some ethicalprinciples and consequences in mind. Thus if or-ganizing the environment ethically is a primaryconcern, if it is of value, then we owe greater re-spect to the species that is able to enact this orga-

nization. With the different qualities and capaci-ties of different species, then, comes a differencein value and a difference with respect to ourmoral responsibility toward various species, and,again, it is only the human species that is able torecognize this. What is therefore troubling aboutNaess’s philosophy is that it does not recognizethe ethical implications of these ontological dif-ferences, and, in fact, argues against them, anddoes so primarily by appealing to conflicting, un-resolved, and ungrounded intuitions. Moreover,the intuition that it is alright to kill because we arehungry seems to imply, in principle (if not intu-itively), that it is alright to kill other humans (andnot just plants and animals) if we are hungry.Contrarily, what has been offered above as anethics based on Merleau-Ponty’s philosophydoes attempt to ground these relative moral intu-itions in an ontological framework. It seems,then, that these relative moral intuitions can bebased on something more than just intuition.They can be and seem to be based on real onto-logical and species distinctions that humans arecapable of making, using the best of ourcontemporary science and philosophicalreflection. Grounding the right to kill andconsume in an ontological framework such as theone that Merleau-Ponty has been able to providethus seems both more intuitively consistent andmore intellectually and ethically responsible.

Before we proceed to an attempt to refineMerleau-Ponty’s claims we should briefly con-sider one more objection to his work. Some haveargued, Jacques Derrida among them, thatMerleau-Ponty cannot develop a genuine ethicsbecause he does not have a genuine concept ofthe other, that he reduces the other to the same.20

Yet it seems clear from the above, and from thecommentary of both M. C. Dillon21 and JackReynolds,22 that this is a poor understanding ofMerleau-Ponty’s thought. We have seen thatwithin the context of his philosophy there is dif-ference as well as identity, that, even if by way ofimmanence, a transcendence does appear, thatthere is divergence (an egression or moving orspreading out) as well as encroachment (aningression or moving or overlapping inward). Wehave briefly seen that there is no complete coinci-



dence of self with self, of self with other, or of selfwith the world, because of the “spread” of thenatural dimension of time. Moreover, whenMerleau-Ponty speaks of the relationship toother human beings, he speaks of both projectionand encroachment, of the fact that we “create oth-ers from our own thoughts” and “borrow our-selves from others,” and he does so at the level oflived-through perceptual experience rather thanthe Modernist level of abstract representationalthought.23 If, as we have seen argued above, eth-ics requires the recognition of the other, and ifthis recognition requires both identity and differ-ence (i.e., divergence and encroachment), then itis Merleau-Ponty’s philosophy that has providedthe possibility of this far more than either Des-cartes’s Modernism or Derrida’s Postmodern-ism, since Merleau-Ponty’s philosophy insiststhat we need both, while Modernism focuses onidentity and Postmodernism focuses on differ-ence. Or, it is more accurate to say, since bothDescartes and Derrida reduce the other to an ab-solute other, both must rely on projection in orderto speak of the recognition of the other. Yet theproblem remains the same for both: projection ofthis sort does not provide a genuine recognitionof the other. Let us address this briefly.

Derrida, who focuses on the creative power oflanguage, argues that language is a trace of atrace, a trace that erases it origins, is a faint copyof a perception that itself erases its own origins,since each perception always refers beyond itselfboth spatially and temporally. This, for Derrida,means that language is never fully present to it-self, that each word or sentence always refers be-yond itself to other words and sentences in a par-ticular language or culture.24 Derrida here, aswell as with the recognition of the other, focuseson difference: the other remains other, and, sincethis is the case, the relationship to the other mustbe based upon projection. As Jack Reynoldsinforms us, what thus troubles Derrida aboutMerleau-Ponty’s philosophy, since it apparentlydenies that the recognition of the other is basedon projection, is that it “runs the risk of reconsti-tuting an intuitionism of immediate access to theother . . . runs the risk of reappropriating thealterity of the other.”25 First, this seems like an

odd point for Derrida’s Postmodernist philoso-phy to be making, since it appears to bepartnering with Descartes’s Modernism, at leastregarding the important role of projection whenattempting to account for the recognition of theother. Now certainly there is little of Descartes’sphilosophy that Derrida would accept, and mostcertainly not the isolated rational ego in full pos-session of itself, the basis of Cartesian projection.Nevertheless, Derrida does agree with Des-cartes’s recognition of the other by way of anal-ogy and projection. However, if this is the case,we might ask of Derrida’s philosophy, with a per-sonal, philosophical, authorial subject that is sodiminished, that is reduced to almost nothing,that is a product or expression of the (mostlywritten) language of a particular culture, who is itthat does the projection? Since Derrida developsa transcendental philosophy that equates writingand time, that equates words and moments thatare constantly referring and deferring to otherwords and moments that remain, somehow, out-side of the personal intentions of the author, andeven outside the contingencies of real history andtime, we may ask of his philosophy, who is it thatdoes the projection? Just as with language, weshould argue that it is not a matter of presenceversus absence but that they must occur together,that the word or moment referred to cannot com-pletely erase its connection to its referring wordor moment, as Derrida claims, since no spacingcould then occur between them, as Derrida re-quires, so also with the recognition of the other,we should argue that presence and absence mustoccur together, since for one person to projectsome sort of personal life into another, the firstperson must remain present long enough to do so.Yet for Derrida, there appears to be no personalsubject left to recognize another personal sub-ject. Again, what Modernists focus on is pres-ence, identity, sameness, and stability, whilePostmodernists focus on absence, difference,otherness, and instability. Merleau-Ponty fo-cuses on a balance of both, on presence within thecontext of absence (like the foreground of a ges-talt figure against an inarticulate background), ondivergence and encroachment together, on same-ness and otherness together, and on stability

PHILOSOPHY TODAY


within the context of flux and change. The theorywith the greatest explanatory power is the one weshould accept. Generally, this theory must ex-plain all that needs to be explained, and, in thisparticular case, it must explain both identity anddifference, not just one or the other, and, sincethey appear together in experience, must explainhow they are woven together. It is Merleau-Ponty’s theory that at least begins to move ustoward this greater, more integrated comprehen-sion.

Secondly, Derrida seems to miss the historicalcontext of Merleau-Ponty’s philosophy and thusthe main thrust of many of his arguments.Merleau-Ponty is trying to escape the Cartesiantradition, the idea that I have a complete aware-ness of myself, a full presence to myself, and thatno one else has access to my interior. He is tryingto overcome the individualism and subjectivismof Western philosophy and culture, and he is try-ing to overcome the representational theory ofconsciousness that forms a relationship with theother only by way of the abstract argument byanalogy,26 by way of the projection of an isolatedinterior into a similar looking exterior. Merleau-Ponty doesn’t accept this version of projectionand analogy because it does not offer a genuinerecognition of the other, since it is merely the pro-jection of one’s own interior (or this interior con-structed by language) into the other as an externalshell, with no real experience of the other’s expe-rience. There is no real overlapping of my lived-through perceptual experience with the percep-tual experiences lived-through by others. Now,Merleau-Ponty does argue that, since there is in-dividuation, I will never have complete access tothe mind of another, but he just as explicitly ar-gues that I can perceive, at least in part, what an-other perceives, since our bodies open upon andaim at the same world, like two search lights illu-minating the same field, and since our bodiesopen upon the same world in similar ways. Sincethe libidinal body desires a coupling with theworld and other bodies for its completion (Na218), and since the perceptual and motor func-tions of a single body form an integrated systemas they relate to the world together (PhP 9), theyare able to overlap and form a system with other

human bodies as they also relate to the world.Thus, when I perceive another’s actions, I amable to couple onto them.27 Or, to state this differ-ently, the perceptual and motor functions are sointegrated in the human species that perceptionitself must be considered a type of activity. Per-ceptions are already actions, already an activetaking up of the patterns of the world, already re-veal an operative intentionality, and already re-veal an operative, meaningful orientation towardthe world. Intentions, then, are not merely buriedin the depths of a private consciousness, but,rather, are primarily the aware body’s active andmeaningful orientation toward the world. Assuch, rather than as an isolated interior, it is easierfor me, by way of my aware, oriented body, torecognize the aware orientations of other bodies.This is what “The Child’s Relations with Others”refers to as “postural impregnation,” or what wemight call a postural coupling (PrP 145), andwhat Phenomenology of Perception mentions asa sort of re-enactment of an “alien existence”(PhP 352). In both texts we see that children areable to live or couple onto the behavior of an-other. If one child cries, for example, othersnearby will tend to cry as well (PrP 124). Or, if anadult playfully bites a baby’s fingers, the babywill tend to mimic the biting motions with itsmouth (PhP 352). Or, if I stand with another adultbefore a landscape, “then, through the concor-dant operation of his body with my own, what Isee passes into him, this individual green of themeadow under my eyes invades his vision with-out quitting my own, I recognize in my green hisgreen” (VI 142). Merleau-Ponty’s point here isthat there is a genuine pre-reflective, pre-concep-tual, non-representational recognition of theother’s bodily orientation, perceptions, and evenperceptual consciousness, since one lived-through body is able to couple onto another, andsince both perceptually open upon a commonworld in similar ways. Since there is a genuinerecognition of and partial overlapping with theperceptions lived-through by others, individualsdo not live in a world that is just of their own mak-ing, or that is just a projection of their own ratio-nal interior, or that is just a projection of an ab-stract language. These perceptions are



recognized as being genuinely experienced bythe other, since they occur in another body, in abody that is experienced as independent of me,but also as being similar to my perceptions, sinceour perceptions point to and open upon a com-mon world in similar ways. This sharing andoverlapping of perceptual experiences that alsorespects and maintains differences is whatMerleau-Ponty refers to as a “lateral universal”(Signs 120). While it is correct that he does claimthat “there is no problem of the alter ego becauseit is not I who sees, not he who sees, because ananonymous visibility inhabits both of us, a visionin general” (VI 142), in saying this, he does notdeny that there is individuation and difference.When, for example, I experience the spacearound me, I do so in a way that opens out to aworld that includes me but also to a world that re-fers back to me, that relates back to the perspec-tive that opens upon it. The experience of space,then, is both general and situated, is both publicand personal, and is so in a way that has themcrossing into one another and as appearing to-gether. And, more generally, even though ourperceptual experience of the world opens out to apublic space, to a public (or even anonymous)world and a space that is populated by other peo-ple, it is experienced as a natural and social spacethat reflects back to the particular perspectivethat opens upon it (PrP 7). The public world is ex-perienced as transcending me but as also remain-ing in contact with me and as encroaching backupon my experience. Also, with respect to lan-guage, the public and the personal must again beseen as occurring together. Our personal percep-tual experiences suggest certain linguistic ex-pressions just as these expressions cross backinto our perceptual experiences to help articulatethem more clearly and precisely. While a multi-tude of linguistic expressions is always possible,and while there is no definitively correct expres-sion, as we have seen above, some remain moreclarifying than others, since there is a really exist-ing perceptual field already there for them to helparticulate and clarify. Thus, just as a particularperceptual perspective opens upon a general fieldof space that crosses back into and even helps de-fine it, so also a particular perceptual perspective

suggests and opens out to a general field of lin-guistic meanings that cross back into and helpdefine it, yet with perception here remaining theprimary term. Moreover, since self and world andself and other humans cross into one another, be-cause of the collaboration of the perceptual andmotor functions in the human body, and since Iam able see other embodied creatures and seemyself, “the schema of the body proper . . . can beshared by all other bodies.” Moreover, this meansthat we must recognize that “the body schema is alexicon of corporeality in general, a system ofequivalences between the inside and the outsidewhich prescribes from one to the other its fulfill-ment in the other.”28 For Merleau-Ponty, then,embodied perceptual experience is the way to-ward universal, shared meaning, but it is also theway toward the recognition of difference and in-dividuation. Human embodied perceptual con-sciousness is ek-stasis, an opening out upon apublic world that transcends the perceiver yetthat never completely leaves the specific, situ-ated, embodied perceiver behind. As we haveseen above, he insists on both divergence and en-croachment, on both projection and imposition,on both similarity and difference, and on theiroverlapping that is never a complete coincidence.He is thus able to account for a genuine recogni-tion of the other, with both overlapping contactand separating difference, and he is able to do soin a way that can’t be grasped by either CartesianModernism or Derridian Postmodernism.Merleau-Ponty’s philosophy, then, allows him tospeak of an inter-corporeality and, subsequently,of an inter-subjectivity, of a world of shared, em-bodied perceptual experience that comes to be ar-ticulated, expressed, and shared more preciselyin language, but that also accounts for and allowsfor difference and individuation. It is this theorythat thus provides the best outline for an ethics,since an ethics requires the recognition of bothsimilarity and difference, not just one or theother.

In his 1952 application for the philosophicalchair at the Collège de France, Merleau-Pontybriefly lays out, in a highly condensed form, thearc and direction of his philosophical research.29

He concludes this brief prospectus of his work

PHILOSOPHY TODAY


with the claim that what his works have estab-lished “would be metaphysics itself and would atthe same time give us the principle of an ethics”(PrP 11). With this in mind let us conclude with abrief summary of what is presented in the pro-spectus—which will also allow us to summarizewhat has been presented above.

The Structure of Behavior (1942) and Phe-nomenology of Perception (1945), he says, markout perception as an original source of meaning,i.e., that perceptual meaning (as we have alreadyseen) cannot be constructed from the outside us-ing units of sense data in external relationships,as empiricism claims, for perspectives are relatedmeaningfully. Nor (as we have already seen) canit be constructed from the inside using the inter-nal relations of conceptual meaning, as rational-ists claim, for perceptual meaning possesses con-tingent aspects. The perceptual process itself, asa lived-through interaction between the embod-ied subject and the world, must be studied as theplace for the emergence of perceptual meaning.In the years following the Second World War andthe publication of Phenomenology of Perceptionin 1945, Merleau-Ponty turns to a considerationof the human knowledge that carries us beyondperception, not by leaving it behind but by subli-mating it, by taking it to a higher level of abstrac-tion and integration. This, he hopes, will lead to atheory of truth and a related theory ofintersubjectivity, or, more accurately, a theory oflived-through inter-corporeality. Here in the1952 prospectus he remarks that “knowledgeand the communication with others that it pre-supposes not only are original formulations withrespect to the perceptual life but also they pre-serve and continue our perceptual life even whiletransforming it. Knowledge and communicationsublimate rather than suppress our incarnation.”Abstract thought “recaptures our corporeal exis-tence and uses it to symbolize” (PrP 7). Thismeans, then, that the study of language shouldhelp us more completely understand inter-corpo-reality, inter-subjectivity, and human relations ingeneral. In fact, this study of language shouldhelp us better understand the general character ofsymbolic relations, social institutions, and evenhuman history. We learn, for instance, that social

institutions and human history, interpreted morebroadly in terms of symbolism, must not be un-derstood as external to us. Social institutions, assymbolic systems, cross into our individual livesand help us articulate and form our common ex-perience, even our common humanity and his-tory. We have witnessed above how this is possi-ble but may summarily restate the following: Mylived-through, embodied perceptual experienceopens upon a public world that is experienced asshared and common. A rational system can beformed when my perceptual profiles agree witheach other and agree with those lived-through byothers—and, again, they do so because they openupon a common world. This means, in addition,that our lived-through perceptual experiencesmust be articulated and expressed in a languagethat sublimates our perceptual life in a way thatmakes sense of it even while folding back upon itand transforming it. As we have seen, differentsymbolic systems always remain possible, butsome will tend to make more sense than othersbecause they are more clarifying, and they aremore clarifying because they are more accurate,and they are more accurate because they moreclosely approximate the stable structures of theworld that is always already there. Again, as wehave already seen, already in the experience ofspace, with a specific perspective opening out toothers that include it, conditioned as it is by thetwo-dimensional structure of the human body, bya perceiving that is perceived, we see the emer-gence of a space that is both general and yet stilltied to a particular perspective, that “looks” backat me as I open out upon it. In the same way, lan-guage is a more general and integrated horizonthat sublimates my perception while remainingattached to it. A new meaning emerges that su-pervenes that from which it has arisen, while,nevertheless, remaining connected to it, and thisnew meaning is always brought to expressionwithin and with the assistance of already existingand always already available linguistic systems.

All of this leads Merleau-Ponty to what hecalls a “methodological rationalism” (PrP 10).We can call it a methodological rationalism be-cause it is a method that helps us arrive at what wehave seen labeled a “lateral universal.” This lat-



eral universal, again, is rooted in similarly em-bodied, situated and perceiving subjects, whoseperceptual experience is sublimated by a lan-guage that helps bring it to a more clarified ex-pression. This lateral universal is rooted in thestability of perceptual experience, which presup-poses both a stable world and a stable humanbody, but becomes more fully formed and articu-lated by way of language in an ongoing dialogue.The universal (as an abstract rational concept)does not already exist, as some sort of metaphysi-cal essence. It is an outcome, it is arrived atthrough a process or method, through a contin-ued cross checking of perceptions, and a contin-ued refinement of what is experienced by way ofan ongoing dialogue with others. What we find inthe world are patterned structures, structures thatare stable but also open and ambiguous, struc-tures that provide the basis for shared linguisticexpressions, but that are open to a variety of inter-pretations, structures that will support a varietyof interpretations, but not infinitely so, sincethere is some stability already there to interpret.Here, says Merleau-Ponty, his works rejoin clas-sical metaphysics, not by starting with Nature in-itself or Reason for-itself, but by starting with a“constantly experienced moment, the momentwhen an existence becomes aware of itself,grasps itself, and expresses its own meaning”(PrP 10–11). Embodied human awareness opensupon a patterned public world that impacts uponit. As this active embodied awareness takes upthis world and folds back upon it, as the aware hu-man body and the world cross into one another,meaning is formed. As perceptual meaning is ar-ticulated and refined by a continued cross check-ing of experiences and by way of a continued dia-logue with others about them, our view of realitybecomes expressed and articulated. It is a view ofreality (a metaphysics in the broad sense) that isthus linked to the articulations of perceptual andlinguistic processes, but that also has its bases inthe shifting but also stable patterns of the world.As Merleau-Ponty expresses it, “the study of per-ception could only teach us a ‘bad ambiguity,’ amixture of finitude and universality, of interiorityand exteriority. But there is a ‘good ambiguity’ inthe phenomenon of expression,” for the expres-

sions of language help me pull together myexperiences, help me pull together my past expe-riences with those of my present, help me pull to-gether my experiences with the experienceslived-through by others, both past and present,and, acting together, help us pull together and ar-ticulate our experience of the world that runs be-yond us. Understanding how this happens (themove from my perception to shared perceptions,from our shared perceptions to the shared expres-sions of language) gives us a metaphysics, a the-ory of what exists, including an ontology, butalso the basic principles of an ethics, since wemust attempt to recognize each human other ashe or she attempts to voice and articulate his orher needs in relation to the world and others.And, even more, we must attempt to recognize allliving things, and even the earth, as an ethicalother, not by listening to their voices per se, butby attempting to calculate the norms for thehealth of living things and by attempting toassess the conditions within nature that mostsupport these norms.

This, then, is the best way for us to attempt tounderstand human societies and, more specifi-cally, ethical human societies: engaged, perceiv-ing, embodied individuals open upon and crossinto both the natural world and a social world thatis a sublimation of it; the embodied, engaged,perceiving individuals take up the natural and so-cial patterns of the past and present, attempt togain recognition within them, and attempt tomove them in new directions as well, includingnew ethical directions. This, then, is also how weshould attempt to understand history, how his-tory moves: human individuals seek recognition(including ethical recognition) for the full rangeof their human needs and do so within the contextof already existing material conditions and socialinstitutions, including the institution of lan-guage. Moreover, in the context of this philoso-phy, the just or moral situation for humans is thesituation within which each recognizes the fullhumanity of all the others and, finally, is the con-dition considered humane by all.30 Expandingthis ethical recognition, as we can within the con-text of Merleau-Ponty’s philosophy and the onto-logical framework that it provides, the just or

PHILOSOPHY TODAY


moral situation for all living things is the situa-tion that recognizes the value of all living thingsand, subsequently, the value of the natural condi-tions that support life in all of its variety. Yet, thejust or moral or rational situation is not alreadyestablished but remains to be established. It willbe established only by listening to all voices, in-

cluding the “voices” (or value) of all livingthings, only by moving toward general condi-tions that are acceptable to all, and only by ac-cepting the general conditions that also allow usto live with differences.31

NOTES


75

1. Ralph Barton Perry, “Ethical Naturalism,” in Per-spectives in Philosophy, 3rd edition, ed. Robert Beck(New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1975),145–48, see especially 145–46. This excerpt is takenfrom Perry’s The Moral Economy (New York:Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1909), 9–16, 20, 22–24.

2. David Hume, An Inquiry Concerning the Principlesof Morals (La Salle, IL: Open Court, 1938), 2–6,127–30, in Great Traditions in Ethics, 12th edition,ed. Theodore Denise, Nicholas White, and SheldonPeterfreund (Belmont, CA: Wadsworth Publishing,2007), Chapter 11, “David Hume: Morality and Sen-timent.”

3. See Pauline Marie Rosenau, Post-Modernism andthe Social Sciences: Insight, Inroads, and Intrusions(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1992),114–16. See also Richard Rorty, “Objectivity andSolidarity,” in Objectivity, Relativism, and Truth:Philosophical Papers (Cambridge: Cambridge Uni-versity Press, 1991), 32.

4. M. C. Dillon makes this point in a different context.See M. C. Dillon, “Écart: Reply to Lefort’s ‘Fleshand Otherness,’” in Ontology and Alterity inMerleau-Ponty, ed. Galen A. Johnson and MichaelB. Smith (Evanston: Northwestern University Press,1990), 16.

5. Merleau-Ponty does not develop an ethics per se, buthis two political treatises deal extensively with ethi-cal themes. See Humanism and Terror: An Essay onthe Communist Problem, trans. John O’Neill(Boston: Beacon Press, 1969), and Adventures of theDialectic, trans. Joseph Bien (Evanston: Northwest-ern University Press, 1973).

6. Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Phenomenology of Percep-tion, sixth printing, trans. Colin Smith with correc-tions by Forrest Williams (London: Routledge andKegan Paul, 1962), 127, 394. Hereafter cited as PhP.

7. Maurice Merleau-Ponty, The Structure of Behavior,trans. Alden L. Fischer (Boston: Beacon Press,1963), 47. Hereafter cited as SB.

8. Mathematical and instrumental formulas and algo-rithms, within the context of Merleau-Ponty’s phi-losophy, must be regarded as abstractions. As he putsit in Phenomenology of Perception, perception andnature are always richer than thought (viii–xi), and ashe expresses it in his remarkable essay “Eye andMind,” in his The Primacy of Perception (Evanston:Northwestern University Press, 1964), instrumentalformulas can be extremely useful as long as we re-member to place them back within the context of ourlived-through perceptual contact with the world, aslong as we do not substitute them for this contact(160). The Primacy of Perception is hereafter re-ferred to inline as PrP. See also Douglas Low,“Mereau-Ponty on Nature, Animal Bilogy, and theEmergence of the Human Body,” ht tp: / /www.uwf.edu/dlow/mp_on_nature.pdf.

9. Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Phenomenology of Percep-tion. See Part 3, Chapter 2 “Temporality,” 410–31,briefly summarized here.

10. Maurice Merleau-Ponty, The Visible and the Invisi-ble, Followed by the Working Notes, ed. ClaudeLefort, trans. Alfonso Lingis (Evanston: Northwest-ern University Press, 1968), see especially 131–40,263–64. Hereafter cited as VI.

11. Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Nature: Course Notes fromthe Collège de France, compiler Dominique Seglard,trans. Robert Vallier (Evanston: Northwestern Uni-versity Press, 2003), 214–15. Hereafter cited as NA.

12. Douglas Low, “The Body of Merleau-Ponty’s Workas a Developing Whole,” International Philosophi-cal Quarterly 49, No. 2, (2009): 207–27. See alsoLow, “Merleau-Ponty on Nature, Animal Biology,and the Emergence of the Human Body.”

13. I here summarize and present some of the mainpoints of Phenomenology of Perception, Part 2,Chapter 4, “Other Selves and the Human World,”346–65.

14. See also Nature, 214–15.

© DePaul University 2012

PHILOSOPHY TODAY

76

15. April Flakne, “Contact/Improv: A Synaesthetic Re-joinder to Derrida’s Reading of Merleau-Ponty,”Philosophy Today 51 (2007): 42–49, see 45.

16. Aldo Leopold, A Sand County Almanac (New York:Ballantine Books, 1970), 253. Hereafter cited asLeopold.

17. Arne Naess, “Ecology,” trans. David Rothenberg, inCommunity and Lifestyle: Outline of an Ecosophy(Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1989),166. Hereafter cited as Naess.

18. Douglas Low, “Merleau-Ponty and Scientific Revo-lutions,” Philosophy Today 46 (2002): 373–83.

19. Even though it is generally accepted that there issome degree of hierarchical development in biology,from bacterial life to eukaryotes and so on, it is just asgenerally accepted with respect to specific lines ofspecies evolution that it is impossible to claim anysort of hierarchical “tree” with a precisely definedtrunk, branches, twigs, etc. Rather, it is now knownthat there are regressions, dead ends, and the devel-opment of a great variety of species that do not followa precise linear upward scale. Merleau-Ponty is infull agreement with these claims, and it goes withoutsaying that he does not adhere to the antiquated theo-logical world view that God created, once and for all,a rigid hierarchy of species that fit eternally into un-changing classes, with humans placed outside of andabove all other species. It is certainly difficult, then,to make any claims for a precise hierarchy of valuesbased on either the non-hierarchical evolutionaryschema provided by science, or on the now largelydiscredited hierarchy of species based on religiousideology. Yet the claim that is being made here on be-half of Merleau-Ponty’s philosophy is that it is stillpossible to assign relative value to different proper-ties and qualities of different species. Even thoughthe evolutionary changes that give rise to the humanspecies are not neatly hierarchical, as if they oc-curred in a series of upward steps, they neverthelesshave produced what must be regarded as qualita-tively different properties and capacities, some ofwhich may be accorded greater value. As is wellknown, J. S. Mill draws a distinction between higherand lower values/pleasures, between the apprecia-tion of art and music, for example, and the mere en-joyment of physical pleasure. As he puts it, we mustaccept “that some kinds of pleasure are more desir-able and more valuable than others,” and, he goes onto argue, “few human creatures would consent to bechanged into any of the lower animals, for the prom-

ise of the fullest allowance of the beast’s pleasure.”Moreover, most would agree with his well knownclaim that “it is better to be a human dissatisfied thana pig satisfied.” John Stuart Mill, Utilitarianism(London: Longmans, Green, 1897), 10–14, in GreatTraditions in Ethics, Chapter 13, “John Stuart Mill:The Greatest Happiness Principle.” To emphasizethis point for the present essay: certain properties, ca-pacities, or abilities possessed by the human species(because of the evolutionary development of the spe-cies) seem to accord greater value to various humanexperiences. After all, most would agree that it isbetter to have the following than not to have them:the ability to reflect, to create, to understand and actaccording to principles, to act with a degree of free-dom, etc. Moreover, as we have seen above, it isMerleau-Ponty’s ontological studies that help us un-derstand how this is possible in the human speciesand not in others. See also his discussion of evolu-tionary theory in Nature, “First Sketch” through“Sixth Sketch,” 209–66, see especially 212, 214,246–48, 252, 257–58, 263–64. See also MarjorieGrene “Merleau-Ponty and the Renewal of Ontol-ogy,” The Review of Metaphysics 29 (1976): 605–25,especially 608ff.

20. Jacques Derrida, On Touching: Jean-Luc Nancy,trans. C. Irizarry (Stanford: Stanford UniversityPress, 2005). Jack Reynolds draws our attention tothis in his excellent essay “Touched by Time: SomeCritical Reflections on Derrida’s Engagement withMerleau-Ponty in Le Toucher,” Sophia 47 (2008):311–25, see 320–21. My analysis here of the rela-tionship between Merleau-Ponty and Derrida hasbenefited from his essay.

21. Dillon, “Écart,” 21ff.22. Reynolds, “Touched by Time,” 321–22, 324–25.23. The point is made by Reynolds, “Touched by Time,”

321, who quotes Merleau-Ponty’s Signs (Evanston:Northwestern University Press, 1964), 159. Hereaf-ter cited as Signs.

24. Jacques Derrida, “Différance,” and “Ousia andGramme: Note from Being and Time,” in Margins ofPhilosophy, trans. Alan Bass (Chicago: ChicagoUniversity Press, 1982), 13, 15, 24, 66. See alsoDouglas Low, “Merleau-Ponty’s Criticism ofDerrida,” Phenomenological Inquiry 30 (2006):78–91.

25. Derrida, On Touching, 191, quoted by Jack Reynoldsin “Touched by Time,” 320.

26. Reynolds “Touched by Time,” 321.


Pace Library, University of West Florida, Pensacola, FL 32514–5750


77

27. Reynolds draws attention to these arguments (ibid.,322). See also Maurice Merleau-Ponty, “The Child’sRelations with Others” in The Primacy of Percep-

tion, 9.28. Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Themes from the Lectures

at the Collège de France, 1952–1960, ed. J. Wild,trans. J. O’Neill (Evanston: Northwestern UniversityPress, 1970), 129. See also Merleau-Ponty, Nature,219.

29. Maurice Merleau-Ponty, “An Unpublished text by

Maurice Merleau-Ponty: A Prospectus of His

Work,” in The Primacy of Perception, 3–11.30. Humanism and Terror, 111.31. See Douglas Low, “Merleau-Ponty and the Founda-

tions of Multiculturalism,” Journal of Philosophical

Research 21 (1996): 377–90.


Documents

Merleau-Ponty and Ethics - Douglas Low ONTOLOGY, AND ETHICS Douglas Low RalphPerry offered animportantand influen-tial answer to the question “what is the source of ethicalvalue?”Heargued