Merleau-Ponty's Ontology

by M.C. Dillon

Originally published in 1988, M.C. Dillon's classic study of Merleau-Ponty is now available in a revised second edition containing a new preface and a new chapter on "Truth in Art." Dillon's thesis is that Merleau-Ponty has developed the first genuine alternative to ontological dualism seen in Western philosophy. From his early work on the philosophical significance of the human body to his later ontology of flesh, Merleau-Ponty shows that the perennial problems growing out of dualistic conceptions of mind and body, subject and object, immanence and transcendence can be resolved within the framework of a new way of thinking based on the exemplar of the worldly embodiment of thought.

Genres: Philosophy

306 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1988

Reviews

[Kamakana · Rating 5 out of 5]

190917 this is a much much later addition (four years): decided to read again 260917 well i have read it again. faster, longer sections, as it has been six books by m-p and 59 (74) or so on or involving m-p, also other phenomenology, continental, historical, indic, philosophy, read in years since... and again great pleasure... new reviews below...

220517 this is a much later addition: as this review is incomplete, i am wondering how to approach this text, how to read again, for this is not an academic but passion project, this is something just for me (and any of my efriends might be interested) and perhaps i should find someone or somewhere to discuss this work... on the other, my obsessions with philosophy might now be more deleuze and bergson and heidegger... well maybe in the new year? maybe...

110113 first review (incomplete): this book reminds me of how much i love philosophy- and of philosophy, how much i love merleau-ponty… i needed this reminder after reading heidegger. indeed in this review i wonder whether i can (thereby i am) impress how much i enjoyed reading this engaging exploration of how unique and convincing is m-p’s ontology. i have a new favourite of m-p, but this definitely is not introductory, this definitely benefits from all the previous readings of m-p in particular and continental syllabus in general…

perhaps it is best to remark that this is the first time i read it, that i am neither prof or student, that i am not studying this, that all this review is first draft and not for class and therefore more an appreciation than a critique. perhaps it is best to render this review essay according to the organization of parts and chapters in this book…

introduction: the problem. introduced by quoting socrates hearing the paradox of meno, in which the concept of transcendence is forcefully denied, in that if something is to be known, either it cannot be known from beyond itself because 1) it must already be known: it is immanent or 2) it cannot be known because we do not even know what it is we do not know: it is transcendent. in ontology, we search for the saving foundation of what is the real. in myth, socrates replies that there is only the remembering of what we did know before birth, but have forgotten, but this is the problem dillon suggests is central to all conceptions of immanent/transcendent duality…

part one: antecedents and consequences.

of course, the entire history of philosophy must somehow go beyond this, somehow go beyond mythic solutions to philosophical problem. here, descartes is the modern origin of the two major themes of answers to immanent/transcendent way of being- ontology– that continues to dominate recent philosophy. this book is from 1988, so maybe they have moved on from this, but aside from dismissive comments about post-modernism/structuralism and futility of semiology etc. dillon does not address this other thread of thought. i have not read enough derrida to know but his comments are convincing and m-p’s ontology seems much more promising…

cartesian origins: empiricism and intellectualism. here, in searching for some way to find the saving foundation of what is the real, there is what is to me an arresting contention that descartes’ methodological doubt, the core quoted as ‘i think therefore i am’, as beyond doubt as foundation for what is– is actually an abstraction, an original error, a logical myth, and is indeed only clear and distinct as such, whereas what is is much bumpier, irregular, and shows in m-p’s great essential home term: ambiguity. descartes ignores this ambiguity and so creates that original schism of the real into dualities: into appearance and reality, into subject and object, into thought and matter, into immanent and transcendent- this underlying, unthought, unnoticed ontological error that is genesis for all conceptions of the real…

empiricism: all knowledge comes from experience, that is sourced by transcendence, the world, the objective, as against ourselves as the self, the subjective. who is a spectator distinct from all sensory perceptions, which are incorrigible, distinct, atoms, however complex or multiple. who is free from burdening innate ideas, as these are obviously not ‘out there’ to be perceived. experience is the saving foundation of what is the real…

intellectualism: all knowledge comes from thought, that is sourced by immanence, the self, the subjective, rather than the world imperfectly certain by sensory perception- and once again, as spectator, for whom any transcendent perception is possibly mistaken. but the immanent thought is immediate and thus transparent, as this certainty is developed from kant to husserl. thought can be understood as the saving foundation of what is the real…

paradox of transcendence / immanence: so, faced by these sedimented concepts, what does m-p decide? rather than one over the other, he argues with his ontology for both/and neither! i have read a lot of philosophy by now but this answer has the same great pleasure i felt so many years and books past, when i first read kant’s intellectualism response to the radical skepticism of hume. and of course, kant has since been superseded…? m-p? well, the innovations of thought m-p uses to surpass the paradox, that this book shows as continued elaboration from his earliest phenomenology of perception, to the visible and invisible, that he was working on when he died- is to deny that persisting cartesian reduction and subsequent dualities. he re-unites the real: from dualities, from subject and object, from thought and matter, from immanent and transcendent, into his insistence of embodied consciousness. his ontology described here seems the saving foundation of what is the real…

here is a great m-p quote: 'the perceived world is the always-presupposed foundation of all rationality, all value and all existence'

thesis of the primacy of perception: this sounds like empiricism but note the difference- the sensory, the self, is now thought of not as a spectator, not distinct from the world, the objective, but more correctly as always already embedded in what it perceives. this is a great, concise, engaging chapter that describes m-p’s essential epistemological conception that manages to overcome all those dualities, a synthesis that integrates and surpasses towards a greater truth. a chapter i reread simply for intellectual pleasure. dillon even throws in a few helpful diagrams. it is properly a phenomenological theory, as derived from husserl, because it insists on the ontological primacy of phenomenon- what is– though it is not intellectual description, not ideal form. what is perceived is not something that is distinct sense or idea- not atoms of empiricism- what then?

ontological implications of gestalt theory: i am familiar with gestalt theory, indeed in my art days it seemed obvious that every notation or emptiness on the drawing offered something of meaning to the whole, that there was no unused space, that all elements of an image might have no meaning but in final composition. i like m-p because he philosophically values art, like heidegger, maybe even overstating it- but this was art. i do not remember when i first drew anything but i do remember something of a car i did when i was ten or so, and how important it was that it resembled what a photograph would offer- this representational fidelity of course failing in many ways, but an attitude that never left as i grew up. but this was art. it is only in reading this particular chapter that i fully realize gestalt theory as originary impulse of m-p’s epistemological and ontological thesis of primacy of perception. art does, after all, have something to do with the world. the implication of gestalt here is that what is perceived can never be reduced to clear and distinct atoms of sensory elements: as such, the perceiver is never separate from what is perceived, as such all those dualities of other ontologies collapse, all is reunited…

part two: implicit ontology of phenomenology of perception.

phenomenal world: unstated, essential, core tenet of m-p’s ontology is the phenomenology of perception (this will be later used as title)- this is not remarked in his earlier work, but the epistemological correlate of primacy of perception presupposes it. to some degree, m-p was perhaps hampered in his thoughts by his phenomenological inheritance from husserl and sartre- words that carry unnoticed the thought of dualities– of consciousness, of intentionality– that he will replace in his thinking only in the later work. the phenomenal world/the objective world, here dillon raises the conception of how these are not the same, trying to free thought from this chimera of some overall perspective, trying to explain that the phenomenal world is prior to either subjective or objective, again using helpful diagram. here, m-p insists on the original anonymity of perception, where it is not i see the tree but the tree is seen- and i happen to be attuned to this. but i do not create the world perceived (idealism) as much as not receive the world (empiricism). but the world is what is perceived, there is no methodological doubt, no deception, only partiality: which can be altered by our embodied consciousness, say moving to another perspective, revealing another side. the problem with objective world is that it says the world is what is, but cannot verify its truth because there is no perception other than a mediation of perspectives. this is when m-p talks about the tree sees me as i see the tree, not literally with eyes but literally as being of the same world- what in later work he refers to as flesh…

here is where i ended first time (110113), so here is new review (260917):

consciousness: and here is where m-p incorporates and surpasses the ontology of intellectualism. this contrasts the 'deifiers' of soul/consciousness such as descartes, kant, husserl, with the 'defilers' of soul/consciousness such as nietzsche, heidegger, sartre. whereas the first attitude leads to the ideal of cause the world, original, as separate, the second falling back into the world as nothing, emptiness, again separate- but m-p makes the soul/consciousness embodied in the world and not separate. from sartre m-p takes the idea of the 'tacit cogito' that necessarily 'is able to', is perception, is non-reflective, is foundation, before exactly how reflective consciousness comes- where dualisms spawn easily, such as object/subject, immanence/transcendence, animate/inanimate. m-p recognizes his error in starting from the cartesian concept of consciousness-object distinction and it is only by proposing a third way between substance and thought, that his thought can progress. here the implicit ontology is based on thesis of primacy of perception- not separable as if only the sensed is real, but that there is no gap, no representation, but the world of being is immediately perceived...

intersubjectivity: this is the question/puzzle that absorbs many philosophers in continental and other traditions, the question of how solipsism is to be avoided, and this is more than a simple philosophical mistake but an entire misconception, for if we start by separating self from world we do not realize that there must be adequate coherence of both intra- and interpersonal, both the private self and the shared world. basically, why make problems where they do not in our living exist? the classic text for phenomenology is husserl's 'Fifth Cartesian Meditation'- for if self and other are essentially reduced to private, interior thought- to immanence which by definition cannot be known by others: this requires 'empathy', requires 'pairing', that preconceives the other as oneself as much as self yourself. dillon calls this a 'noble failure'. this requires a 'corporeal schema' that must be transferred on perception of the other, but unfortunately this only proves what it assumes, that the object pairs with the subject from our perspective, and m-p investigates through developmental child psychology how we find ourselves aware of these distinctions rather than start from them...

lived body: this begins with kant's most influential concept of transcendental idealism, in which organization of the world must start, must follow categories, of immanence, in this way privileges thought over sense. and here is the core, the conception, that differs m-p from previous philosophies, in borrowing and extending husserl's 'lived world' to the 'lived body'. for the body is not simply residence of consciousness, but also perspective, source, determining 'how' we experience the world. m-p recounts the experience of difference as evidenced by brain injured patient, between 'pointing' and 'grasping', that is, abstract ignorance and practical knowledge, how the first requires deliberately dividing self from world, and the second understanding through 'primordial' sense and therefore not abstract, not 'known' by separate consciousness. the body is necessary. here m-p refers, argues, with Sartre, and this is perhaps one reason i so liked this text when first read, for i did know some and wanted another view. sartre tends to sense the other as 'for me', m-p sees the other as 'part' me. in the 'double sensation' of one hand touching another s posits an complete, incommunical gap, where one side is subject and the other is object and never both. m-p disputes this: for him it is exactly how the hand is both, is ambiguous, never resolved into one or the other, and the key is the lived body... the perceptual capabilities of the body need not remove it from the phenomenonal world and transform it into a transcendent subject. the body is part of the world, is lived body in the world... how else could we learn but in the world? how else could we have connection between transcendent and immanence...

part three: explicit ontology of the visible and the invisible

reversibility thesis: here dillon refers to 'the visible and the invisible' as organized by claude lefort, a work i had not read the first review, but have now, posthumous, incomplete work, to which m-p has been headed towards throughout his thought evolution. for here m-p speaks of exactly that perceptual ontology and calls it the 'flesh'. this is beyond my reading then, perhaps beyond my understanding now. it seems m-p is arguing with s, with what he calls 'high altitude thought' that tries and fails to reconcile our lived experience with either transcendent or immanent, the 'for itself', the 'in itself'. m-p creates the 'chiasm', for me, the image of crossed optic nerves resolving in one image, of the 'flesh' which is both substance and style. there is the truth of what we sense, the truth of how we sense. perception is thought. perception precedes self or rather creates world and self. there is no reliable way of deciding our stance as one subject or object but that of reversibility, which is extended from hand on hand to painter's eye to tree. it is not that the tree 'sees' through eyes in the same way human eyes see it, but m-p is decentering, is recasting, reversing our perceptual ontology from one to an anonymous perception we are attuned to. the tree is visible' to us only because we are 'visible' to it. and this is based, sedimented, on the 'invisible', which is not a nothingness but a 'fold' in the very real phenomenonal world, which leads to his arguments with semiological reduction...

language: dillon is most interesting here in arguments against semiological reduction, against the ideal all our thought can only be limited, characterized, by limitations of our language. m-p precedes this but offers arguments against what d calls 'post-hermeneutical scepticism' of heidegger as extended by some continental philosophy that would have unmoored language from reference to the endless 'deferring', for m-p this is not only against the entire purpose of language but a mistake of the transfer from gestural language, to speech, to art- all attempts that 'refer' to 'truth' rather than just itself. dillon uses a few useful diagrams to illustrate the 'founding' model of language by which original expressed thought becomes 'sedimented' which then returns to perception of another original expression, and so on and so on. perception is where this cycle begins and returns and begins again. all perception is foundation, truth, within culture, from development of child, of language, of thought. d then uses : to indicate the reversible relations between body: perception: language: thought:: signifier: signified:: being: Being... this i can only understand as the way we humans live the perceptual world, how truth is not in language but in the source, founding, perceived world that founds it, and how we originate our trend to truth in philosophy as in the arts...

conclusion: dillon here refers to the ontological sources which must be confronted through nietzsche and heidegger- 'the abyss' and 'the logos'. there is n saying that there is no final ground, h concurs but uses language as the answer. m-p uses h but searches for something that grounds the ungrounded that is language, and rather than the abyss uses the invisible as source of all human thought which is all perception. or something like this. by this point i have tried to capture some sense of why this book is a five, on first reading and now five years later. does he resolve the paradox of immanence / transcendence? by accepting both, by seeing the one transcendence as 'what' and the other immanence as 'how', m-p has reached the point when he died, of the 'somehow' that unifies the two. this point works for me and is why i love m-p: he is kind of unfinished, his work inspiring, his work necessarily calling for further elucidation. m-p does not propose a 'system' but attends to our lived experience through all its ambiguity, which to me appears sensible and humble and real. i have read much philosophy since the first time i read this and perhaps my thoughts have moved on, but i still value this beginning. if there is one thing m-p has said in all his work, it is as quoted above: 'the perceived world is the always-presupposed foundation for all rationality, all value and all existence', in other words, perception is ontology. this is the 'chiasm' of the 'flesh'. necessary to this is the awareness of 'embodied consciousness' through which subject/object is inherent, is in the world. here is where i add from other work read since as well as this: the world is not 'objective', not a 'view from nowhere', but always a view from 'many wheres', that creates the abstraction, the 'achievement' of objectivity, not where we start but where we end. and these perceptions are not atomistic, not sense data, not quale, but within our organic perception as gestalt of figures and ground ambiguous and reversible. and so it is always already from perception we found sense. i do not believe i understand it or m-p completely but it reminds me of why i love his thoughts. this is not merely analytical logic but rather the more engaging artistic sense of the world. i am not a scientist. i am not a philosopher. i am an interested amateur...

supplement: this second edition also has this 'homage to m-p' in the form of an interesting essay on a particular sculpture that can be viewed as an 'application' of insights from m-p. the sculptor is john McCarty and is articulate in words as well as work, though m-p uses painting as his model, rather as heidegger uses poetry. language has a 'ductility' but images have 'the voices of silence' and so is less based on that particular concept of abyss, is less captive to limits of expression, but is by its nature all expression. as such this work is its own 'system of truth' having no particular sedimented conceptual ground but only itself... this is a great supplement, now i want to experience this work...

[Michael · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is an incredibly lucid book on Merleau-Ponty's ontology. Dillon is an exceptional scholar who does an exceptional job. Like Caputo's treatment of Heidegger in Radical Hermeneutics,Dillon strives for clarity in laying out the structural force and philosophical interest of Merleau-Ponty's works. A great way to get introduced to and learn about one of the 20th Century's most underrated phenomenologists.

[Kyle David · Rating 5 out of 5]

A magnum opus in its own right, this is the definitive backdrop for Merleau-Ponty studies. An introduction it is not, but a comprehensive interpretation of M-P's project and the resources it can provide for contemporary philosophical issues. Dillon's thesis is that M-P provides the only alternative to the dualism that besets Western philosophy. One for the drudgers, but certainly insightful and commanding.

[Rodger Broome · Rating 5 out of 5]

Fantastic ontology work that is not an easy-read, but worth the effort. There are some Greek and German terms/phrases that the author assumes the reader knows. Parenthetical translation of these into English would "teach" them to the unfamiliar or more novice reader. Having the internet close by helps.

[David Markwell · Rating 4 out of 5]

Dillon's Merleau-Ponty's Ontology is a well written and well argued. Dillon holds (as due I, if anyone was curious) that Merleau-Ponty's earlier phenomenological studies give way to his ontology, not in the sense of a reversal, but in the sense of a completion of his philosophical project. A good read for one interested in Merleau-Ponty, ontology and the unfinished The Visible and the Invisible.

[Aman · Rating 5 out of 5]

Never have I read such an addictively written work of scholarship. Once I picked it up, I couldn’t put it down. (Even though I did put it down, and in fact, I put it down quite a bit, simply because I needed a lot of time to digest all the ideas. Similarly, I put this review off quite a bit because I needed time to think about what he was trying to say.)

This book exhibits tremendous conceptual precision, and yet its prose is not dry. This is a book of history (of the history of philosophy), and yet it’s focused on philosophical problems. This is a work focused on getting right Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s views on ontology, and yet it strikes a good balance between quoting and giving us a sense of the big picture. I aspire to write history and philosophy in such an engaging manner.

As for its content, this is a book of ontology. What is the goal of ontology? The goal is to understand being, to describe what fundamental being is like. And the goal of this book in particular is to show what Merleau-Ponty took fundamental being to be like. Why Merleau-Ponty in particular? Because, as Martin Conboy (M. C.) Dillon argues, what Merleau-Ponty was able to do was to show that (1) traditional ontologies (such as those of Descartes and Hume) systematically lead to certain problems, and that (2) such problems could be avoided if we adopted what Dillon calls a phenomenological ontology. Thus, it is necessary to take up Merleau-Ponty’s ontology if we are to avoid to skeptical issues that fundamentally plague the dualist ontologies of traditional, “modern” European philosophy—perhaps issues that in principle plague all dualist ontologies.

The central issue is that once a dualism is created between what is immanent (subjectivity and its structures) and what is transcendent (the world and its objects), this bifurcation cannot be crossed without triggering an onslaught of skeptical concerns. This is what Dillon calls “the paradox of immanence and transcendence”. This paradox has a multitude of instantiations, but they are just that: instantiations. They fundamentally betray the same problem.

Exactly how all of these are unified is not something I’ve thought through, so I want to focus on one particular instance of the paradox: the problem of perceptual atomism. For its explication and resolution, see Chapter 4, "Ontological Implications of Gestalt Theory".

The basic problem with perceptual atomism is ontological. Perceptual atomism begins with a fairly intuitive ontology, according to which our sensory apparatus provides us with sensations (perceptual atoms, which are the irreducible units of sensory experience), to which our mind adds forms (or categories) which render these sensations intelligible in some manner. The problem here is that this ontology can never explain why a given assortment of sensory atoms are formed with X form over Y form. Consider, for example, the categories of cause and effect and Kant's classic example (from the "Second Analogy" in the First Critique) of a boat moving downstream. Cause and effect allow us to organize our experience, so we not only see different snapshots of the boat at different points on the river, but we see the boat moving down the river because the river's current is pushing it. However, the problem is that, given the sensory content alone, it is not clear why we should apply the categories of cause and effect in this case: nothing about the sensory content informs us that the river's current is causing the boat's movement. Rather, it is just river movement and boat movement that we see. Generalizing this to the utmost, we can make similar arguments against every single form applied to any sensation: there is no reason any sensory atoms ought to be formed by the categories we apply, as opposed to some other categories.

This critique, in my view, is undoubtedly right, and a devastating criticism for anyone adopting this kind of ontology. Here’s the problem: Clearly, we do have reasons and motivations for making causal judgements in the case of the current pushing the boat down the stream, and just because these don't have an absolute foundation, does not mean they cannot be true (or "track the truth", as they say). So any ontology which makes our categorial judgements (about cause and effect, or any other categories) in principle absurd, in virtue of the fact that they are completely unmotivated, is a bad ontology. It is a bad ontology because our categorial judgements are not in principle unmotivated.

Dillon argues that Merleau-Ponty's solution is a Gestalt-theoretical solution: that the matter comes pregnant with form. This he calls the "principle of autochthonous organization". The principle itself is adopted from Gestalt psychology, a movement in psychology founded in the early 20th century. Dillon describes the principle as follows:

The principle of autochthonous organization maintains that there are intrinsic relations obtaining among the parts of the perceptual whole, that these relations are grounded in phenomena, and that they constitute the perceptual significance or fundamental meaning of phenomenal experience. (p. 65-6)

But in my view, this solution comes with its own problems or areas for further inquiry. First, is matter indeed pregnant with form? This requires detailed (and interesting) philosophical and phenomenological work. Maybe this is true in the case of the phenomenon of time—that matter and form come together in that case, that in our experience of the world, we experience temporality—but what about the phenomenon of race? There are complex questions here, some which Dillon does address when he says that we extract forms from the “ambiguous” phenomena, only to explicitly apply them again. Given their ambiguity, this can leave room for error, which is why mistaken concepts such as race emerge. Ultimately, I think this is a very fruitful phenomenological enterprise, to do a phenomenology of matter pregnant with form.

The second potential issue: If phenomena are just matter-pregnant-with-forms (which are ambiguous and context-sensitive), then this has ontological consequences. Dillon holds that, for Merleau-Ponty, phenomena are ontologically primordial, meaning that phenomena are being, that ultimate being is phenomenal manifestation. But in what sense are they ontologically primordial? Dillon attempts to answer this in relation to the objective and subjective world, and he argues that both are grounded in the phenomena. It is the former that interests me right now: What does it mean to say that the objective world is grounded in phenomena? Does this mean that our conception of the objective world is grounded in the phenomenon, or that the objective world “itself” is grounded in the phenomenon? Of course, some questions are ill-posed, and this may be one of them: the answer might just be that there is no objective world itself. This thesis might be admissible, depending on how we interpret it and what consequences follow from it. Instead of beginning with the epistemological question (“How do we know that the objective world doesn’t exist?”), let us first ask the ontological question: What is the objective world? Is it just a world independent of every subject? Can it change, as in truly change?

These are the crucial ontological questions that need to be raised about the phenomenal world and the objective world, in order to better understand the consequences of this ontology. We might worry that consigning the objective world to this derivative place loses something, but we cannot determine whether this is a legitimate worry until the proper ontological work is done. Meanwhile, Dillon, following Merleau-Ponty and the other phenomenologists (such as Heidegger), develops a robust ontology of the phenomenal world, and from my view, we might be able to adhere to it without losing much at all.

[daniel · Rating 4 out of 5]

a really nice book, if you're into this sort of thing. dillon argues (twenty years ago) that the ontology merleau-ponty had begun (but never finished) developing is a way out of the dualistic metaphysical quagmires that culminated in the works of the "analytical" linguist-philosophers, the postmodernists, and the sartrean existentialists.
it's long and dense, but if you're interested in merleau-ponty, it's one of the best expositions and exegeses of his work that i've come across.