The Visible and the Invisible (Studies in Phenomenology and Existental Philosophy) [Englisch] [Taschenbuch]

This is one of the most important books of philosophy written in the twentieth-century. That is a truly astounding accomplishment considering that the book remained unfinished at the time of Merleau-Ponty's sudden and unexpected death at the age of 53. The book as it exists today is really only the introduction to the work Merleau-Ponty had planned along with some rather cryptic working notes. Nevertheless, the ontology that Merleau-Ponty begins to work out in this work is utterly revolutionary.

Ontology has been dominated since Descartes by the subject-object dichotomy (res cogitans and res extensa) and despite many valiant attempts has been completely incapable of twisting free of this schema. This gives rise to a whole host of philosophical problems (Does the external world exist beyond our consciousness of it? Even if it does exist can we ever know the world outside our own consciousness? Is the objective, physical world ontologically primary (realism)? Or, is the mental, psychic world ontologically primary (idealism)?).

Rather then attempting to align himself with one side or the other in these perennial philosophical debates Merleau-Ponty attempts, in this work, to finally twist free of the ontological schema that is responsible for producing these irresolvable aporias in the first place. Merleau-Ponty attempts to radically rethink the being of the world and provide a new ontology which is no longer dominated by a self-present (and interior) subject on the one side, and a purely exterior object-world on the other side.

Merleau-Ponty writes, "What interests us is not the reasons one can have to consider the existence of the world `uncertain' - as if one already knew what to exist is and as if the whole question were to apply this concept appropriately. For us the essential is to know precisely what the being of the world means" (pg6). Descartes, in his method of radical doubt, assumed that he already knew what `existence' meant, and what it meant to say that the world exists; his question was simply: does the world exist in the way that I conceive existence (in the form of extension which is the mark of mind-independence for Descartes).

Merleau-Ponty does not believe that this notion of existence (extension) is adequate for describing the being of the world; nor does he believe that the being of the world can be adequately described in terms of `facts of consciousness'. Merleau-Ponty writes, "If the `world' upon which it [perception] opens, the ambiguous field of horizons and distances, is not a region of the objective world, it resists as much being ranked on the side of `facts of consciousness' or `spiritual acts': psychological or transcendental immanence cannot account for what a horizon or a `remoteness' is any better than can `objective' thought" (pg23). A horizon is not an object, nor can it be described as a fact of consciousness. The world as horizon simply does not fit into the ontological schema of subject and object that has been bequeathed to us by tradition. There is no ontological category that could be adequately applied to the world as horizon. This is what Merleau-Ponty means when he says we must not simply ask whether the world exists, but what precisely does existence mean when applied to the world.

Merleau-Ponty's radical questioning of the being of the world also leads him to reexamine the notions of subject and object. Merleau-Ponty spends a great deal of time critiquing Sartre's dialectic of Being and Nothingness in which the seer is a pure negativity and is, therefore, able to reach the world in the form of pure plenitude. Merleau-Ponty does not believe the world is adequately described in terms of plenitude, and he believes that by making the subject pure negativity, or nothingness, we wind up reifying nothingness into a kind of essence (we wind up making nothingness something positive). Merleau-Ponty writes, "The negations, the perspective deformations, the possibilities, which I have learned to consider as extrinsic denominations, I must now reintegrate into Being - which therefore is staggered out in depth, conceals itself at the same time that it discloses itself, is abyss and not plenitude...Vision is not the immediate relationship of the For Itself with the In Itself, and we are invited to redefine the seer as well as the world seen" (pg77). We must reintegrate perspective deformations, and possiblities, back into being which means we must stop definining being as pure plenitude (or extension) and reconceive the world as abyss.

Merleau-Ponty also reinterprets the subject as flesh (rather than as pure cogito). Merleau-Ponty was very taken with the experience of touching our own hands. If you reach out with your right hand and touch your left you can feel your right hand as subject and your left hand as object. But you can also reverse the relationship through a kind of Gestalt switch and perceive your left hand as subject and your right hand as object. The ordinary split between subject and object turns them into positive realities that have no essential relation to each other (mind and matter) and the relationship between them cannot be reversed. In the traditional subject-object schema it would not make sense for the same entity (the mind for example) to be subject at one time and object at another (the mind is always subject). Similarly it would not make much sense for the object to suddenly transform into the subject. The reversibility of the flesh allows Merleau-Ponty to radically reconceive the nature of the subject and object. If reversibility is possible they cannot be entirely distinct ontological types or categories (ways of being). This also means that the world can no longer be conceived as a pure object but is rather the ground of both subject and object and is prior to both. The subject-object split is not then a split between two radically different modes of being but is simply a split that opens up (a dehiscence to use Merleau-Ponty's terminology) between the sensing and the sensible within the flesh itself. It is the same hand (the same flesh) that is both touching and touched (though they can never coincide and be both touching and touched at the same time, hence, the term dehiscence).

Merleau-Ponty ultimately winds up seeing a kind of intertwining between the subject and the world when he writes, "once a body-world relationship is recognized, there is a ramification of my body and a ramification of the world and a correspondence between its inside and my outside, between my inside and its outside" (pg136). There is no longer a single objective world of which my body would be an interior part, nor is the world merely an object inside a transcendental subject; rather, there is a kind of intertwining between the two perspectives (neither of which can be reduced to the other). Merleau-Ponty, thus, attempts to hold onto both sides at once without turning them into theses "The 'natural' man," according to Merleau-Ponty, "holds on to both ends of the chain, thinks at the same time that his perception enters into the things themselves and that it is formed this side of his body" (pg8). This is the fact that Merleau-Ponty attempts to elucidate with his ontology, namely, that perception reaches the things themselves (perception is not mediated through mental representation) and yet remains an individual perspective on the world formed 'this side of the body'.

In one of his later, cryptic working notes Merleau-Ponty also begins to conceive the world in terms of negative infinity. He writes, "Infinity: it is to be sure a conquest to have conceived the universe as infinity - or at least on the ground of infinity (the Cartesians) - But have the Cartesians really done so? - Have they really seen the depth of being, which is recognized only with the notion of infinity [an inexhaustible reserve of being which is not only this and that but could have been other (Leibniz) or is effectively more than we know (Spinoza, the unknown attributes)]? Their notion of infinity is positive...The veritable infinity cannot be that: it must be what exceeds us: infinity of Lebenswelt and not infinity of idealization - Negative infinity" (pg169). This allows Merleau-Ponty to provide an ontological ground for the creative dimensions of Being (a worthy task indeed).

In summary, this book is really one of the most revolutionary philosophy books ever written. It attempts to radically reconceive ontology (our notions of being and what it means to exist). There is a great deal more in this work then I have been able to summarize. Merleau-Ponty also attempts to work out the problem of alterity in radically new ways, he offers brilliant critiques of Sartre, and he attempts to provide a phenomenology of phenomenology itself. Due to limitations of space and, perhaps more importantly, limitations in my own understanding of this brilliant book my summary will have to remain woefully inadequate. One can only imagine what this work would have turned into if Merleau-Ponty had lived to finish it. That he died before completing it is definitely a great loss but we must attempt to make do with what he left us (and it is great indeed).

-Brian

The Visible and the Invisible is the last work of Maurice Merleau-Ponty, left unfinished by his untimely death. (Does anyone really have a timely death?)

In this volume from Northwestern University Press, the unfinished text is appended by the working notes for the volume in an excellent translation by Alphonso Lingis with deft editing and a sterling introduction by Claude Lefort.

Merleau-Ponty, arguably the greatest philosopher of the Twentieth Century (he does not carry the baggage Heidegger does), was moving in this volume to a new determination of the relationship between phenomenology and ontology. Reading the volume and the working notes leads the reader to wonder how successful it would have been had Merleau-Ponty lived to publish it. As it is, it adds up to another of the intangibles taht make Western intellectual history such an enticing puzzle. Recommended for anyone interested in Twentieth Century philosophy.

The working notes of this book are utterly staggering in their implication to ontology. What is being? Merleau answers in the manner of Lao-Tse, and alludes to something like a divine-feminine at the heart of wild perception. It was said by Sartre in his autobiography "Situations" that after Merleau's mother died who was like a "goddess" to him Merleau returned began the project anew. What is intimated in the working notes is invaluable to the true student of philosophy and life. And in the end, Merleau returns to the very object of his study. You can really feel this descent at the book nears its end. It is, however, an ascent of the entirety of the history of philosophy to a new level of comprehension. That I assure you.