Three Worlds of Merleau-Ponty

International Phenomenological Society

The Three Worlds of Merleau-PontyAuthor(s): H. L. Dreyfus and S. J. TodesSource: Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, Vol. 22, No. 4 (Jun., 1962), pp. 559-565Published by: International Phenomenological SocietyStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2105261 .

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DISCUSSION

THE THREE WORLDS OF MERLEAU-PONTY

According to John Wild in a recent article, the phenomenologist, epito- mized by the later Husserl and exemplified by Maurice Merleau-Ponty, seeks "an accurate description of the concrete phenomena of the Lebenswelt as they are experienced and expressed in ordinary language ..." 1 Merleau- Ponty is doing this kind of phenomenology when he points out in Ph6nome- nologie de la perception 2 that I experience objects not in the homogeneous space described by the physical scientist but in a space which is oriented around me as subject, and in which I distinguish objects above and below each other from those merely side by side.3 This is an example of what Prof. Wild calls a "world fact" and the fundamental phenomenological point he wants to stress in his article is that "there is an order of world fact which is bound up with ordinary language, and which is quite distinct from the different ranges and levels of scientific fact." 4

From this point of view two other interpreters of Merleau-Ponty, Michael Kullman and Charles Taylor, have utterly misunderstood the purpose of Merleau-Ponty and of phenomenology when they oppose phenomenological description to description of the everyday world and claim: "The Phenomenology of Perception is for Merleau-Ponty the dis- covery and exploration of the world not such as everyday and scientific discourse describe it but of the 'pre-objective world' which it presup- poses." 5 Taylor and Kullman justify their assimilation of the Lebenswelt to the pre-objective world, and their subsequent opposition of the world described by phenomenology to the world of everyday, as follows:

Husserl characterized phenomenology as "a return to the things themselves." This watchword must not be misinterpreted. It does not mean a return to things in the

1 "Is there a World of Ordinary Language ?," The Philosophical Review, Oct. 1958, p. 460.

2 Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Phen'omnologie de la perception, Paris: 1945, hereafter cited as PP.

3 Op. cit., p. 470. 4 Ibid., p. 465. 5 "The pre-objective world of Maurice Merleau-Ponty," The Philo8ophical Review,

Oct. 1958, p. 108.

559



560 PHILOSOPHY AND PHENOMENOLOGICAL RESEARCH

objective world (i.e., such as they are described in everyday and scientific discourse): if it did, phenomenology would be superfluous. It means rather, a return to things such as they are, or appear to be in our "original" experience of them, be- fore they have acquired the determinacy that everyday and scientific discourse presuppose them to have.6

How can Wild's observation that Merleau-Ponty is describing the world of ordinary experience in ordinary language be reconciled with this theoretical denial of the value of such a description and the claim that Merleau-Ponty's monde ve'cu is not identical with but rather opposed to the world of everyday experience?

A careful study of Phenomnnologie de la perception reveals various distinguishable but inseparable levels of analysis starting from a fundierende 7 analysis of the structure of appearing, progressing through an analysis of the way in which things and persons appear in the world we live in, and terminating with an analysis of the way in which objective thought posits an ideal reconciliation of the contradictions or ambiguities of appearance.

Merleau-Ponty carries out his analysis in terms of a distinction between "figure" and "ground." At the first level, that of fundierende experience, consciousness follows out the solicitations of a given figure into its ground and uncovers a new figure there, only at the price of the old figure passing back into the ground from which the new figure is uncovered. Therefore there are at this level no unified perspectives, there is no recollection, no recognition, no organization of stable schemata or categories as unities in respect to which diversity and change occur; there is no distinction between veridical and illusory appearances.8 Reference and anticipation are in a definite direction from the actual figure given, but lack a definite image or virtual figure of that to which they refers; it is reference to one knows not what from what one knows; one is led on by each step to the next step but one lacks any over-all sense of the route he is travelling.

If one were to seem to see a completely strange object - so strange indeed as not even to be recognizable as an object - as he investigated such a phenomenon, he would find himself in this situation. Each aspect would lead to another completely unknown aspect and would in turn be lost to sight and to mind. One approaches this experience when one is in a state of disorientation in the everyday world, e.g., as one tries to find one's way alone in a strange city. Dreams, too, often have this primordial quality.

6 Ibid., p. 110. 7 Merleau-Ponty speaks of fungierende Intentionalitta, "1'intentionalite operante."

This "operative intentionality," introduced by Husserl to refer to the basic structure of perceptual experience, is also referred to by Husserl as "founding" or "fundierennde" intentionality. We will use the latter terminology to emphasize the primordial character of this experience.

8 pp, pp. 18-19.



THE THREE WORLDS OF MERLEAU-PONTY 561

MP draws upon various pathological experiences as illustrations. In the experience of certain brain injured patients there is

a dissociation of the sensory field which does not remain fixed as the subject perceives, which itself moves following the subject's movements of exploration and retreats as one investigates it. There is vague location. This contradictory phenomenon reveals a pre-objective space which certainly has extension, sinc- several points of the body when touched simultaneously are not confused by the subject, but in which there is no unique location because no fixed spatial framee work subsists from one perception to another (PP, 37).

This level of analysis is obviously inadequate to interpret the world of things and persons in which we live, the Lebenswelt. At the same time, it is a study of structures which are necessary if not sufficient to characterize the Lebenswelt. The relevance of the primordial figure-ground structure to the Lebenswelt can be shown only if this structure is supplemented by that of the virtual figure. MP distinguishes an actual or effective figure, the only kind of figure appearing in original experience, from a virtual figure, which is an image of a figure purported to be still uncovered in the ground of an effective figure. The virtual figure guides the references of the actual figure to its ground and consists of a definite expectation of the figure that may actually be uncovered from that ground. The expectation embodied in this virtual figure may or may not be verified by the actual figure which is revealed in the indicated place. For example, what looks like a house seen from the front may turn out to be a facade. Thus, a distinction remains between anticipation and reference on the one hand and realization and actuality on the other. But the most important result of the appearance of the virtual figures is the stabilization of experience. Past figures which are no longer effective, having sunk into the ground upon the appearance of new effective figures, are now preserved in the form of virtual figures. In this way, the formation of perspectives, based upon recognition and recollection becomes possible, and expectation becomes definite instead of indefinite.

With the virtual figure comes the possibility of belief, but not yet of certainty. Certainty is possible only with the appearance of a permanent figure. A permanent figure is to be distinguished from a temporary figure and appears at the moment of "maximum prise." At some point in per- spectivally organized experience we gain an optimal view, revealing figures which will presumably never thereafter be proven illusory although they may of course cease to be effective and become merely virtual. At this point we presumptively unify perspectival experience in terms of these permanent figures so as to "engage the whole perceptual future" (PP, 415). The presumption that these permanent figures will never prove to be illusory is based merely upon a perceptual faith - we would be astonished upon disillusionment - but our experience is organized as if we




had a perceptual guarantee to support this faith. At this point we are said to know particular natural objects (PP, pp. 343, 348, 367). Thus, once we have walked around and inside of a house, it appears definitely to be a house; we see all aspects of it as aspects of a house; and it would then seem incredible if on turning a corner for a second time we discovered it was merely a facade after all.

The use of the expression "I am certain" as analyzed by John Austin in his article "Other Minds" 9 reflects this perceptual ambiguity. After sufficient relevant investigation we are justified in saying we are certain, and in saying this we "guarantee" our claim although it remains true that we may still turn out to be mistaken.

As one advances from fundierende appearance to appearance in the Lebenswelt a similar development takes place in the form of the subject. The subject of fundierende appearance is a pre-personal subject: universal, neutral, and without an ego. With or after the appearance of the virtual image and the attendant development of perspective in perception, there appears intersubjectivity, an "etre a deux," expressed primarily by dialogue. In dialogue, I and another are in perfect reciprocity, as peaceful collaborators, and our perspectives glide into each other's without break and without opposing polarization (PP, 407). With internal monologue, however, private individual subjectivity develops; each person is isolated from and opposed to the other (PP, 407, 414). Each individual, like an object of which we have maximum grasp in terms of permanent figures, is at once shut in on himself in opposition to others by having his own individual principle of unification (e.g., the Cartesian cogito), and is at the same time opened out toward an indefinite future focused upon an ideal of objective thought in which these oppositions are resolved (PP, 409, 221).

We are thus brought to the threshold of MP's third world, the objective, scientific world. Since this is not a perceptual world, MP's account of the figure-ground-subject structure of its appearance is not explicit, but the following account seems to be in the spirit of his views. On this level it seems that there is no ground at all; there is merely figure. Furthermore there is no distinction between actual and virtual figure, and therefore no distinction between reference or anticipation and actualization or realization. To anticipate and to refer is not merely to do so in a definite direction as in fundierende experience, nor is it to refer by means of some definite virtual content which may fail to be verified. Rather, it is so fully to imply that which is "referred to" that it actualizes its own anticipated object in the very act of anticipation or reference.

Thus, for example, a theoretical consequence, once revealed as following from theoretical assumptions, is "given" in the same sense as the as-

9 John Austin, "Other Minds," Logic and Language (second series), Oxfordi 1955.




sumptions themselves. This contrasts with the case of perceptual implication in the Lebenswelt where an effective figure reveals another figure as merely virtual; and where we must follow out the reference of the effective figure in order to reveal another effective figure, instead of the second effective figure itself following from the given one. The virtual figure which follows from the perceptually given figure may be misleading. E.g., following from the facade of a house, illusorily taken to be a house, is the virtual figure of the back of that house. But the theoretical consequence which follows from the theoretically given figure (the given assumption) is identical with that to which the given figure refers, so that there is no such thing as a misleading or virtual theoretical consequence. From a theoretical given, whatever follows, follows validly.

In pre-objective experience the transition from figure to figure is not made by figure alone but requires mediation by an act of consciousness which is not legislated by the figures but is free to follow or not to follow their demand, thus showing that the figures do not legislate one another but are contingently given to one another as the circumstance, occasion, or evocative context of each other's appearance. This primordial condition that figures do not legislate one another into existence but are merely given to one another through the mediation of consciousness, the appearance of one figure being merely the circumstance of the appearance of another, is the persistence of the fundierende mode of appearance in the Lebenswelt. On the other hand, -the appearance of the virtual figure as supplementary to the actual figure, forming thereby a "perceptual implication" 10 by which the actual figure refers determinately to its ground, is the foreshadowing or intimation of the scientific world in the lived world. For the virtual figure, in mediating between $he actual figure and the figure concealed in the ground, partially takes the place of the act of consciousness. In the scientific world this tendency is merely brought to final fulfillment, and consciousness with its free assent does not mediate between figure and figure at all. Consciousness, the thinking subject, merely hypothesizes or posits the premises of an ideal condition and is then the enthralled spectator of, not the participant in, the unfolding of the implications of the posited figures. This explicitation is accomplished by the figures themselves, as if each actual figure implied another not by means of a virtual figure but rather by directly implying that figure itself. In so far as this is true, scientific figures are purely self-revealing. They have no ground and are not in any way concealed. They have overcome the ambiguity of appearing as the revealing of what is concealed.

We may also note how the appearance of permanent figures of the Lebenswelt is intermediate between the appearance of temporary figures of

10 A phrase used by Aron Gurwitsch in Theuorie du champ de la conscience.




the Lebenswelt and the appearance of fully revealed figures of the scientific world. Permanent figures are like temporary ones of the Lebenswelt in that they retain the distinction between virtual and actual, and are therefore according to the manner of their appearance falsifiable and grounded in concealment. But they are like scientific figures in that any given permanent figure pertaining to a given object appears as if it were not falsifiable, by appearing as if it wholly determined any other permanent figure pertaining to the same object and as if it could be found wholly to de- termine its entire object. In the permanent figure there is thus an element of the Lebenswelt which appears to escape the ambiguity of the temporary image and appears as if what is revealed is entirely revealed. It makes a claim to escape the ambiguity of the temporary virtual image but this claim can be supported only by a perceptual faith in the appearance, and cannot be guaranteed by the manner of the appearance itself. However, it is by virtue of this faith that the ideal world of objective thought is projected, and there figures appear in such a manner that faith in them is guaranteed.

Thus, in summary, in the fundierende, pre-personal world it is totally true that what is revealed (figure) is concealed (ground). Figure and-ground are inseparable and simply different phases of a single figure-ground field of consciousness and it is the entire figure-ground field of consciousness which is revealed as concealed. Every figure is given at once as having arisen out of ground or concealment in having been made figure; as passing in its actual content into the concealment of ground to which it refers; and as about to pass into the concealment of ground in the attempt to reveal its content presently concealed. In the scientific, objective world on the other hand, what is revealed is entirely revealed and not concealed. There is no ground; all figure is completely self-revealing figure. The Lebenswelt is in an intermediate position. Insofar as there is any distinction between virtual and actual figure, one figure does not appear to produce or legislate another. Insofar as there is any virtual image at all, one figure does appear to produce or legislate another and there is perceptual implication; the actual figure, by mediation of the virtual figure, indicates not merely that there is another figure concealed in the ground, but indicates also what the nature of this figure is likely to be. Insofar as the permanent figure may be virtual, it is falsifiable; yet insofar as it is supported by perceptual faith it is presumed not falsifiable. Fundierende appearance has a figure-ground- perceiving-subject (prepersonal) form. Objective appearance has a figure- figure-thinking-subject form. Lebenswelt appearance is a synthesis in antithesis of both these forms in such a way that the individual subject is the synthesis in antithesis of the perceiving with the thinking subject, and the virtual and permanent figures are in different ways syntheses in antithesis of the figure-ground with the figure-figure structure.




This ambiguous character of the Lebenswelt, partaking as it does of features of the original world and of the scientific world, explains why both Taylor and Kullman, and Wild can find support in Merleau-Ponty for their different views of the boundary between phenomenological and non- phenomenological levels of experience.Taylor and Kullman in opposing the pre-objective world to the world of science and common sense, assimi- late the world of everyday experience to the objective world of science with which it shares the features of determinacy and certainty. Wild, on the other hand, focuses on the distinction between the totally objective non perspectival character of the world of science and the ambiguous anthro- pocentric character of the Lebenswelt, and overlooks the distinction between the Lebenswelt and the world of original experience. Kullman and Taylor cannot account for the fact that phenomenologists, among them Merleau- Ponty, have written elaborate descriptions of our everyday world, and Wild must ignore the equally substantial studies that phenomenologists have devoted to genetic phenomenology or fundamental ontology.

It is now clear that no dichtomy is adequate, for Merleau-Ponty refers to three worlds. The Lebenswelt has, for him, characteristics of both the worlds it adjoins - not, however, by having a mixture of structures from each, but by exhibiting functions unique to itself and mediating between those of the adjoining worlds. Thus, these three worlds are not simply described and distinguished. Merleau-Ponty's achievement is rather to have traced the phenomenological genesis of the Lebenswelt and, more sketchily, of the scientific world from the primordial fundierende world.11

H. L. DREYFUS. S. J. TODES.

MASSACHUSETTS INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY.

11 The trichotomy can be viewed as a dichotomy in order to emphasize certain common features. Distinguish three worlds: the original world, the Lebenswelt, and the world of science (perhaps better described as a universe, since it is totally determinate and has no horizon). We can then summarize the above remarks and clarify MP's terminology, as follows: "Pre-objective world" is generally used to refer to the first two worlds the worlds prior to idealization - and to emphasize their incompleteness and ambiguity. "Prepersonal world" is used to refer to the original world - the world prior to stabilization - and to oppose this world of the pure field of consciousness to the other two worlds of which it is the foundation. MP does occasionally use "pre-objective" to call attention to experience prior to stabilization, and it is this secondary usage which leads Kullman and Taylor to oppose the pre-objective world to the world of everyday experience.



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Three Worlds of Merleau-Ponty