Merleau-Ponty''s Intentionality in Phenomenology of Perception
Date Issued
2008
Date
2008
Author(s)
Chiu, Chun-Hsien
Abstract
Focusing on the relatedness of signification and intentionality, every chapter of this article surrounds the axis of the Preface of Phenomenology of Perception, and discusses each relevant facet of intentionality. This relatedness is what I consider the most important contribution of Merleau-Ponty in his oeuvre. However, this is a complex issue, and its complexity is twofold. First, how does Merleau-Ponty proclaim that there exists pre-linguistic or non-conceptual sense (le sens)? (With respect to the insight and the justification of this proposition, I rely heavily on Lazlo Tengelyi’s book, The Wild Region in Life-History) Secondly, intentionality, as the criterion of the mental and the physical phenomenon, must dip into both the nature of consciousness and subjectivity; therefore, the problem of intentionality is ontological. (See chapter one) We all know that Edmund Husserl asserts in section 84 of Ideas I that intentionality is the main phenomenological theme, and its structure is best described by that of noesis-noema. Therefore, it is commonly held that this noesis-noema structure is an epistemological opposition of subject and object, and once a philosophical stance abandon the cognitive subjectivity in that opposition, it must also abandon the noesis-noema structure, a fortiori, the issue of intentionality. Common opinion of this type validates the following specious inference: Merleau-Ponty must abandon the issue of intentionality in Phenomenology, if he holds the monistic stance in the mind-and-body problem, namely, in terms of his notion of body-subject (Subjektleib). However, Merleau-Ponty in Phenomenology doesn’t seem to take the negative stance towards Husserl and the issue of intentionality; instead, he develops Husserl’s notion of operative intentionality (fungierende Intentionalität) into his unique ontological structure in body-subject, namely, (operative) intentionality founding le sens upon the perception of body-subject. On the other hand, he critiques in Phenomenology the structure of consciousness of both empiricism and neo-Kantianism in the epistemological opposition. With regard to the identification of the rivals and interpretation of the problematics in each chapter of Phenomenology, relevant evidence is reviewed in “The Nature of Perceptions: Two Proposals” wrote by Merleau-Ponty in 1933 and 1935, and in “The Philosophy of Existence” (1959). In discussion of these articles, we discover Merleau-Ponty’s connection with Husserl: even though he didn’t, as Jean-Paul Sartre did, attend Husserl’s lecture personally, he believes that he is consistent with Husserl’s final philosophical position. Moreover, in writing Phenomenology, his understanding of Husserl is mainly through the interpretation of Aron Gurwitsch. Therefore, even though Husserl holds that Gestalt psychology, as an empirical science, is incompatible to phenomenology, as eidetic science, Gurwitsch takes the compatiblism of the two, a stance that is inherited in Phenomenology. (See the introduction) The uniqueness of Merleau-Ponty’s theory of intentionality consists in his treatment of consciousness: it is no longer an aggregation of static states of consciousness observed by a spectator as much as scientist observes his object in experiment; instead, from the insight that the irreducible unit of consciousness is significance, and that every conscious content is significant to the body-subject, Merleau-Ponty begins his investigation of how signification happens on the perception of body-subject. Therefore, he understands Husserl’s intentionality, as stated in “Phenomenology and the Sciences of Man”, as “[t]his orientation of consciousness toward certain ‘intentional objects,’ which are open to an “eidetic” analysis, is what Husserl calls intentionality.” (See the final chapter and section four of chapter one) The development of significance in an individual subject has its process and temporality, a common trait of phenomenology extended to Merleau-Ponty. In general, the reason why he preserves intentionality in body-subject is based on the temporality of the stream of consciousness, namely, the derealized consciousness states are connected through significance in the inner time of subject. Basically, Merleau-Ponty implicitly sticks to two aspects of signification: first, the being-for the subject (pour-soi) of significance, and, second, during the first personal understanding and recollection of the of le sens of object, the living present of subject in the event without any distance to it. To describe this inner dynamics, he uses Hegelian terminology, the in-itself (en-soi) and for-itself, and the dialectical argumentation as the neutral language of all theories of consciousness, or as the explicans of his own model of consciousness, a model reminiscent of Henri Bergson’s notion of durée. Mutatis mutandis, durée becomes the important quotation of Claudel’s sentence in Phenomenology, namely, “Le temps est le sens de la vie” (PP, 410); in this formula, Merleau-Ponty’s attempt is effulgent: to create the continuum in body-subject that carries le sens of object. Chapter two and chapter three discusses Merleau-Ponty’s critiques of the structure of consciousness in Humean empiricism and that in Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason. Allow me to put his understanding of the two in scenario: mind in Hume’s empiricism is made of simple impression and compound ideas according to the mechanistic law of association, and in Kant it consists in representations (die Vorstellungen) plus their possible condition, namely, the reflective self-consciousness. According to Kant’s definition in Critique (B377), conscious acts, belongs to the genus of representation, are named perception; under perception there is sensation, which solely related to the modification of subjective states, and those related to object, namely, intuition (which immediately related to it) and concept (which mediately related to it). Chapter two concentrates on the contrast of signification in reflex arc, influenced by the methodology of classical physiology and Laplacean deterministic mechanics, and that in the intentional arc in a holistic manner, influenced by Gestalt psychology. Chapter three is focused on issues relevant to Descartes’ cogito, a philosophical task set up by Léon Brunschvicg; in the mean time, Merleau-Ponty has to sieve out the improper elements—such as representation, analytical reflection, formalism in judgment, and positing activity—in Kant’s philosophy. (But he still attributes the discovery of for-itself to Kant.) In the Preface of Phenomenology, Merleau-Ponty mentioned that “Descartes and particularly Kant detached the subject” (PP, ix). He also distinguished different style of reflection by mentioning that “Husserl’s transcendental is not Kant’s” (PP, xiii). In sum, how to create the transcendental attitude that is necessary for cogito of Husserl’s phenomenology is much more complex than he thought in this period. In The Visible and the Invisible, Merleau-Ponty said: “what I call the tacit cogito [in Phenomenology] is impossible” (VI, 170-1) The final chapter discusses Gurwitsch’s doubt about, namely, whether Merleau-Ponty’s Phenomenology conforms to Husserl’s tenet, if the notion of noema was not mentioned in Phenomenology. The present author argues that what Merleau-Ponty has done in Phenomenology is just a kind of the noematic reflection (PP, x) he set up for himself in the Preface, therefore, it seems to me that Gurwitsch’s doubt is a nominal accusation. This noematic reflection is done through the analysis of le sens that orients (or directs) consciousness towards the intentional objects through sense (understood both as sense-organ and meaning or intelligibility of object). [French word le sens has three meaning: direction, sense-organ, and meaning, as acknowledged by Merleau-Ponty himself in Phenomenology]. I conclude this article with the trigonal pyramid that symbolizes four related nodes in the ontological structure of intentionality in Phenomenology, namely, subject, object, others, and Nature.
Subjects
signification
perception
body-subject
analytical reflection
transcendental attitude
le sens
noematic reflection
Type
thesis
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