Cartesian dualism

Chapter 2

Maurice Merleau-Ponty

THE EXPERIENCE OF THE BODY AND

CLASSICAL PSYCHOLOGY utti£)

From M. Merleau-Ponty (2002) Phenomenology of Perception, London and

New York: Routledge. ----

I N ITS DESCRIPTIONS OF THE BODY from the point of view of the self, classical psychology was already wont to attribute to its 'characteristics' incompatible with the status of an object. In the first place it was stated that my body is distinguishable from the table or the lamp in that I can turn away from the latter whereas my body is con- stantly perceived. It is therefore4 n \?!>ject which dQes not leave me. But in that c;as~ iu_t still an obj~ If fhe object is an invariable structure, it is not one in spite of the changes cJ°"perspective, i;t in that change or throu9h it. It is not the case that ever-renewed per- spective simply provide it with opportunities of displaying its permanence, and with con- tingent ways of presenting itself to us. It is an object, which means that it is standing in front of us, only because it is observable: situated, that is to say, directly under our hand or gaze, indivisibly overthrown and re-integrated with every movement they make. Otherwise it would be true like an idea and not present like a thing. It is particularly true that an object is an object only insofar as it can be moved away from me, and ultimately disappear from my field of vision. Its presence is such that it entails a possible absence. Now the permanence of my own body is entirely different in kind: it is not at the extrem- ity of some indefinite exploration; it defies exploration and is always presented to me from the same angle. Its permanence is not a permanence in the world, but a permanence on my part. To say that it is always near me, always there for me, is to say that it is never really in front of me, that I cannot array it before my eyes, that it remains marginal to all

_ my perceptions, -that it is with me. It is true that external objects too never turn one of their sides to me without hiding the rest, but I can at least freely choose the side which they are to present to me. They could not appear otherwise than in perspective, but the particular perspective which I acquire at each moment is the outcome of no more than physical necessity, that is to say, of a necessity which I can use and which is not a prison for me: from my window only the tower of the church is visible, but this limitation simultaneously holds out the promise that from elsewhere the whole church could be seen. It is true, moreover, that if I am a prisoner the church will be restricted, for me, to

a tr and j fact

pern It sh instr

firs~

phy are hanl - I not

.,.__ I 1tse

I WOl

OWi

abli and ey wh mil

in 1 an<I

in tait cot qu: th am in ha1 hai

po in se, tu· as ob ab ol: pr is in

th

ND

tion, London and

view of the self, ' incompatibl e

distinguishable body is con-

~aLc;aI~ is.~ the changes uewed per-

11ith con-

standing in our hand

THE EXPERIENCE OF THE BODY AND CLASSICAL PSYCHOLOGY 53

a truncated steeple. If I did not take off my clothes I could never see the inside of them, and it will in fact be seen that my clothes may become appendages of my body. But this fact does not prove that the presence of my body is to be compared to the de facto permanence of certain objects, or the organ compared to a tool which is always available. It shows that conversely those actions in which I habitually engage incorporate their instruments into themselves and make them play a part in the original structure of my own body. As for the latter, it is my basic habit, the one which conditions all the others, and by means of which they are mutually comprehensible. Its permanence near to me, its unvarying perspective are not a de facto necessity, since such necessity presupposes them: in order that my window may impose upon me a point of view of the church, it is nec- essary in the first place that my body should impose upon me one of the world; and the first necessity can be merely physical only in virtue of the fact that the second is meta- physical; in short, I am accessible to factual situations only if my nature is such that there are factual situations for me. In other words, I observe external objects with my body, I handle them, examine them, walk round them, but my body itself is a thing, which T do not observe: in order to be able to do so, I should need the use of a second body which l_tself would be unobservable. When I say that my body is always perceived by me, these words are not to be taken in a purely statistical sense, for there must be, in the way my own body presents itself, something which makes its absence or its variation inconceiv- able. What can it be? My head is presented to my sight only to the extent of my nose end and the boundaries of my eye-sockets. I can see my eyes in three mirrors, but they are the eyes of someone observing, and I have the utmost difficulty in catching my living glance when a mirror in the street unexpectedly reflects my image back at me. My body in the mirror never stops following my intentions like their shadow, and if observation consists in varying the point of view while keeping the object fixed, then is escapes observation and is given to me as a simulacrum of my tactile body since it imitates the body's actions instead ofresponding to them by a free unfolding of perspectives. My visual body is cer- tainly an object as far as its parts far removed from my head are concerned, but as we come nearer to the eyes, it becomes divorced from objects, and reserves among them a quasi-space to which they have no access, and when I try to fill this v~id _by recourse to the image in the mirror, it refers me back to an original of the body whic~ 1s not _out there among things, but in my own province, on this side of all things see~. It 1s no ~Ifference, in spite of what may appear to be the case, with my tactile body, for 1f_I c~, with my_left hand, feel my right hand as it touches an object, the right hand as an ob1ect 1s not the nght hand as it touches: the first is a system of bones, muscles and flesh brought down ~t a point of space, the second shoots through space like a rocket to reveal the external O~Ject

in its place. Insofar as it sees or touches the world, _my body ca~ ~erefore be neith~: seen nor touched. What prevents its ever being an ob1ect, ever be":1g compl_e~ely ~onstl tuted, I is that it is that by which there are objects. It is neither tangible nor v1S1ble msofar

·t · that which sees and touches. The body therefore is not one more among extern~] as 1 1s f . . t th permanence IS objects, with the peculiarity of always being there. I it IS perm~en , _e b" l absolute and is the ground for the relative permanence of dis~p~earmg_thino. Jectfise, l~e;f

f l b · t only vanatJons WI a 1 objects. The presence and absence o ex~erna o Jhie_chs are body exercises power. Not only

. d" l eptual domam over w c my . prunor ia presence, a perc . I f th manence of external ob1ects

f b d ot a parncu ar case o e per . is the permanence o my o Y n d d t through the first: not only IS th

d t be un erstoo excep in the world, but e secon canno . 1 f that of objects, but furthermore, the the perspective of my body not a parncu ar case o

54 MAURICE MERLEAU-PONTY

presentation of objects in perspective cannot be understood except through the resistance of my body to all variation of perspective. If objects may never show me more than one of their facets, this is because I am myself in a certain place from which I see them and others, which I cannot see. If nevertheless I believe in the existence of their hid- den sides and equally in a world which embraces them all and co-exists with them, I do so insofar as my body, always present for me, and yet involved with them in so many objective relationships, sustains their co-existence with it and communicates to them all the pulse of its duration. Thus the permanence of one's own body, if only classical psy- chology had analyses it, might have led it to the body no longer conceived as an object of the world, but as our means of communications with it, to the world no longer conceived as a collection of determinate objects, but as the horizon latent in all our experience and itself ever-present and anterior to every and anterior to every determining thought.

[ ... ]

Note

G Husserl, ldden T. II (unpublished). We are indebted to Mgr Noel and the lnstitut Superieur de Philosophies of Louvain, trustees of the collected Nachlass, and particularly to the kindness of the Reverend Father Van Breda, for having been able to consult a certain amount of unpublished material.

Chapte

H

Tl

Ol

( .. . 1

Fro Aw

0 ~ And this they the: continua Thus, to they do i to go on requisite ment that the begil its very t

Wh:

of ontol1 "doing"1 and met nonlivin, the en Sujfwech vast w01 stone, a for its al of matte ing chao single st