Concept of Nature and the Ontology of Flesh

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O R I G I N A L P A P E R

Merleau-Ponty’s Concept of Nature

and the Ontology of Flesh

Ane Faugstad Aarø

Received: 9 February 2010 /Accepted: 12 March 2010 /

Published online: 23 April 2010

# Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2010

Abstract The essay attempts to delineate how Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s phenom-

enology of perception can be applied to theories of sign processes, and how it

reworks the framework of the phenomenalist conception of communication. His later

philosophy involved a reformulation of subjectivity and a resolution of the subject/

object dualism. My claim is that this non-reductionist theory of perception reveals a

different view of nature as we experience it in an expressive and meaningful

interaction. The perspective that another living being has and communicates entails a

form of depth, the invisible dimension of the visible or audible. These two aspects of

perception and dialogue are intertwined in a dialectic of presence and absence, so

that sense arises in the perceptual field rather than in subjectivity. This, I argue, is the

most fundamental result of his theory. The origination of meaning in the workings of

the chiasm of visible and invisible in perception opens up an objective sense of

intersubjective nature. The essay also deals with the role of the phenomenological

reduction; a suspension of beliefs and existence claims in experience. The reduction

enables us to take a step back and look more closely at our understanding of nature

in light of the historical and cultural influence on our thinking.

Keywords Phenomenology . Communication . Interpretation . Perception .

Transcendence . Subject/object dualism

Introduction

One of the most interesting statements that I have come across in semiotics is the

claim that for Hoffmeyer, biosemiotic signs are “inherently meaningful due to their

direct involvement in the processes they signify” (Emmeche et al. 2002). Evenagainst the background of the Peircean triadic conception of signifying processes,

Biosemiotics (2010) 3:331 – 345

DOI 10.1007/s12304-010-9080-2

A. F. Aarø (*)

Department of Philosophy, University of Bergen, Sydnesplass 12/13, 5014 Bergen, Norway

e-mail: [email protected]



this represents a shift towards a more integrated view of expression and interpretation

of nature, which can be further complimented by certain other non-reductionist

theories. Within the thematic of interpretation across the boundaries of the human –

non-human we find that explorations of nature still bear the mark of our scientific

heritage from the 17th century. How is it that a shift can come about in theconceptions of nature? Perception is very often determined by an interest or a project.

When the motivation is to extract power from a lake, the perception of the water is

dominated by this interest. But we all know that the power aspect is not all that is

present in the perception of the lake. The phenomenology of Maurice Merleau-Ponty

can provide valuable insights into perception that connect very interestingly with

biosemiotics. This essay is an attempt to show how Merleau-Ponty’s approach to

problems in perception and communication theories is relevant to semiotics.

Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s last work The Visible and the Invisible (Merleau-Ponty

1968) was an attempt at finding ways to view perception and its relationship with theworld that maintain the experienced immersion in the world of the Self. Merleau-

Ponty felt that philosophy offered theses on subjectivity and perception that create

dichotomies which are difficult to bring together. The paragraph cited below shows

that he wanted to find an opening for a philosophy about our relationship to being

that elaborates on the depth that exists between us and our environment. He wanted

to do this without ascribing to subjectivity an infinite distance to being through

negation of being, as Sartre’s existentialism entails. Neither was he content with

objectivist theories of perception that understand the depth of perception as a

determinable layer of subjective constellations open for us to analyze. Philosophythat understands perception as coinciding with being is likewise inadequate, because

the depth in perception means that something is hidden and intangible; however, we

are still in a profound and fundamental way in contact with it. This essay will

attempt to show the new approach to perception and being that evolves in Merleau-

Ponty’s late philosophy, mainly by analyzing the central concept of reversibility in

perception. To begin to understand the mystery of transcendence in perception,

Merleau-Ponty said, we need to re-evaluate our conceptions, even those of

subjectivity, perception and transcendence. This may be thought to have normative

implications, and my essay will touch on the possibilities within this philosophy

towards an eco-phenomenology that enables us to describe our world as both an

inner world and a natural world in which we are immersed by our perception,

movements, considerations and judgments. As Merleau-Ponty wrote in The Visible

and the Invisible:

That the presence of the world is precisely the presence of its flesh to my flesh,

that I “am of the world” and that I am not it, this is no sooner said than

forgotten: metaphysics remains coincidence. That there is this thickness of

flesh between us and the “hard core” of Being, this does not figure in the

definition: this thickness is ascribed to me, it is the sheath of non-being that thesubjectivity always carries about itself. Infinite distance or absolute proximity,

negation or identification: our relationship with being is ignored in the same

way in both cases. (Merleau-Ponty 1968: 127 – 128)

One of the most pressing issues of our times is to show how a different path to

understanding the experience of nature is needed, and possible. The modern

332 A.F. Aarø



scientific theories of the physical world presuppose an idea of man as an

autonomous, rational subject that explores and manipulates nature. But, as many

contemporary writers have claimed, this view diminishes our contact and

communication with nature, animate and inanimate. Perceiving the natural world

as something more than an opening to gaining knowledge of the world, but rather asthe possibility of a meaningful experience inherent of quality, is made possible

through Merleau-Ponty’s most important and radical developments in his late

philosophy, in which he reformulates his thoughts on subjectivity. The problem of

the dualism of subject and object lies at the root of the destructive practices of

modern human societies. And, as we will see, this dualism is also an important factor

by which theories of communication and sign processes are hampered. How is the

dualism of subject and object related to perspectives on sign processes? The whole

tradition of philosophy of knowledge, being, and world is affected by this dualism

by the crucial question “How is it that we as natural beings can orient ourselves in anenvironment and know something of the world and communicate to each other the

sense of phenomena?” It is by this question that we are made aware of our

fundamental embodied being in which the interaction with and interpretation of

nature originates.

It may not be obvious at first glance, but the primacy of perception to all thinking

and all subjectivity effectively overturns the rationalist dilemma of mediation

between mind and world. Furthermore, it is related to communication if we are to

avoid solipsism or objectivism. Think about how difficult it is sometimes to

understand another ’s thinking, and how the perspective of the other is hidden to us ineverything except expression. Further, imagine how difficult it is to talk with

someone who constantly asserts his or her autonomy and self-sufficiency by raising

his/her voice, thus dominating the conversation. Think how easy it is to want to

withdraw, to refuse to communicate and simply not be heard. Genuine communi-

cation presupposes attentiveness and openness as well as an ability to listen in order

for sense to be revealed. Exploring nature by cutting it open in order to view and

calculate its potential for usefulness involves putting us in a position whereby we

cannot understand the expressions that are involved; it involves seeing a natural

thing as an object to our will and projects, which is a product of our misconceptions

regarding our own perception. This is where the thought that signs are inherently

meaningful due to their direct involvement in the processes they signify is a useful

key to reconsidering our practises, and I believe it can have very much to do with the

subject/object resolution by which Merleau-Ponty was motivated in his last book.

The Problem of the World1

There are many ways in which we could approach Merleau-Ponty’s thoughts on the

challenges represented by interrogating the world of our perception. A concept that

is especially promising in that respect is the very central concept of reversibility. And

I will try to clarify some features of the experience of reversibility to which Merleau-

1 The first part of the article was presented in an earlier version at the conference “Environment,

Embodiment and Gender ” at the University of Bergen, Norway, in 2008.

Merleau-Ponty’s Concept of Nature and the Ontology of Flesh 333



Ponty devoted so many pages of The Visible and the Invisible to convey its meaning

and implications. By clarifying the idea of this central key to the experience of the

world, Merleau-Ponty was hoping to open the field to further, more fruitful

investigations. It is an investigation that involves our own existence in the midst of

the problematic that he makes thematic, and it will sometimes mean chasing our ownshadow in the flux of continuous experience. Needless to say, such a project is rather

wanting of the solidity and grounding that is so much sought after in philosophy. But

uncompromising as Merleau-Ponty’s investigations were, he found no way to mould

the answers of the world to fit our philosophical projects.

The pronounced project in the The Visible and the Invisible of reworking the

dualism of subject and object is closely connected to the possibility of sense in

experience. His final contribution to the critique of objectivist thought was the

exposition of the idea of an intertwining of depth and absence with the experience of

immediacy and presence of the world. A reformulation of our questions was what was needed to overcome the dichotomies of our thinking, he maintained in the The

Visible and the Invisible.

His suggestions might have been radical, but it can’t be denied that we are facing

some rather radical problems in the world that demand a rethinking of traditional

concepts and attitudes, which ultimately are governed by a motivation to control,

and which have epistemological consequences because they reduce the natural world

into manageable properties. In Merleau-Ponty’s late philosophy the idea of the

material of the world, flesh, is developed, in which the elements of being are

intertwined in a reciprocal connection. This means that the different elementscompose a unity, or whole, in which differences in expressions present in the

phenomena are kept intact. It was Merleau-Ponty’s hope that he would be able to

convey his vision of this reciprocal unified relationship as the origin of the truth,

knowledge and history of the world. That was only indicated by his last writings, but

never fulfilled as a finished theory before his death in 1961 while he was working on

the The Visible and the Invisible.

Truth was, for Merleau-Ponty, the invisible element of the ‘ brute being’ of our

existence that he described during the last few years of his life, and was the

grounding for all perceptual faith, all ideas and all logic, he wrote in the notes for

The Visible and the Invisible. But the seed of this thought is present in the earlier

writings, and appears as something of a lead motif when reading his work.2 M. C.

Dillon argues in Merleau-Ponty’ s Ontology (1997) that Merleau-Ponty tended to

think that truth is in closer connection to the pre-reflective and pre-linguistic than the

linguistic; although Dillon is cautious to say that he can’t document this

understanding. I find this perspective of the invisible in one’s experience of the

world and others as constitutive of a meaning and a truth quite pronounced in

Merleau-Ponty’s writings, and I will try to show how in the course of this essay.

In this approach to meaning and truth it is necessary to emphasize an important

distinction between phenomenology and phenomenalism. An understanding of

speaking as existential and bearer of a meaning, that Richard L. Lanigan (1991)

2 The writing of the two works, La Prose du Monde and L’ Origine de la vérité, was abandoned in 1959

when Merleau-Ponty focused on The Visible and the Invisible, the work that most explicitly represents his

philosophical foundation for theses on truth and intersubjectivity.

334 A.F. Aarø



among others has shown, opens up Merleau-Ponty’s philosophy of language to

original non-linguistic meaning that is part of the lived gesture rather than of a

sedimented sign system. Lanigan writes:

The point to be kept in mind concerning linguistic phenomenalism is that

meaning is a function of objective reality as known by a perceiving subject. By

this “meaning” is meant a conscious construct derived from objective

encounter. The dualism of subject and object is prerequisite to a coherent

formulation of meaning in either sector — the personal or the mundane.

(Lanigan 1991: 29)

The linguistic phenomenalism Lanigan refers to is any semiological theory that

bases the function of signs on the triadic structure of object — sign — interpreting

subject. In this understanding the sign is derived from the object (in reality) and

recognized by a knowing subject. Anyone who hesitates facing this explanation of the communication of meaning will find the phenomenological perspective useful in

their work.

Lanigan’s Speaking and Semiology contributes an explanation as to why the

phenomenalism of C. S. Peirce is of the subject/object dualism and how Merleau-

Ponty’s theory can overcome it. There may be some indications that the two

philosophers are not dealing with the exact same matter, for instance, where

Merleau-Ponty seeks to reach an understanding of perception and “the birth of

meaning,” Peirce’s focus is with the acquisition of knowledge, i.e. a “learning by

experience”

(Peirce 1958: 134). The following lines from Lanigan (1991: 53) areinformative in this context: “For Peirce every object appears to a subject as a

representamen that is composed of the ‘ground’, the “‘object ’ and the ‘interpretant ’.

That is, a perception that operates as a sign-gestalt or signification is the result of a

perceiving subject who recognizes the object within a context which indicates the

usage meaning.”

Our primary concern (and reservation) with regard to this triadic conception of

sign processes is that it is still confined to the limits of the subject/object dualism

already mentioned. With this in mind we might wish to explore how sign theories

could be further complemented by an elaboration of perception at a deeper level,

where one will have to sort out how perception of the surroundings works for there

to be instituted any sort of sense or meaning-content. The spheres of the two

philosophers are thus divergent, but this divergence points to the need for a more

thorough understanding of perception itself in order to account for the signification

process.

Even so, or perhaps for this same reason, it is the art of painting that is seen

as conveying the meaning of being to the fullest in Merleau-Ponty’s writings.

The creative act of painting is, in a way, the archetypical perception and it is

perception that is expressed through the painting. I interpret this as an

acknowledgement of the non-linguistic, perceptual world that is constitutive of

meaning, and that which makes the painter responsible for the expression of being.

Understood in this manner, the painter is accountable for the expression of the

meaning inherent in being through her perspective of the world and her

interweaving with the world. And it is Merleau-Ponty’s thesis of reversibility that

makes the painter ’s perspective valid. At the same time, the perceptual field is now




centred in the foreground, whereas before the subject of interpretation was

standing autonomously.

A Normativity of Perception?

If we go beyond the descriptive analyses of the grounding elements of Merleau-

Ponty’s philosophy and want to take a few steps towards making use of his concepts

as a foundation for a normative philosophy, based on the insights that the

reversibility thesis represents, I think that we are in accordance with Merleau-

Ponty’s fundamental project.3 Leaving aside for now the problems of the objectivist

and instrumentalist attitudes to the world of perception, which have been a point of

departure for both Husserl and Merleau-Ponty in their work, allow me to indicate a

possible opportunity to make use of the concept of reversibility to form a basis for anethics of being, and even demonstrate how reversibility implies this further

development into a normative concept.

Reversibility in the various perceptual experiences is a reciprocity that makes

apparent the seeing as also seen, the toucher as also touched. The reciprocity

between subjectivity and the materiality of the world is a central aspect of the

philosophy of Merleau-Ponty. Sight and movement are the elements of perception

that are most evidently marked by the reversibility that characterized the way he

understood the field of perception:

Once again, the flesh we are speaking of is not matter. It is the coiling over of the visible upon the seeing body, of the tangible upon the touching body,

which is attested in particular when the body sees itself, touches itself seeing

and touching the things, such that, simultaneously, as tangible it descends

among them, as touching it dominates them all and draws this relationship and

even this double relationship from itself, by dehiscence and fission of its own

mass. (Merleau-Ponty 1968: 146)

The description offered is partly an interpretation of Husserl’s description of the

body relating reflexively to itself, to things and to nature. The double relationship

that he mentions is the two aspects through which the body functions as ‘sensing-

sensible’ in a reversible flux. The plan that is available in the working notes of the

The Visible and the Invisible shows how reversibility moves beyond the visible and

constitutes a fundamental relationship that is consequential to the understanding of

the self, language, thought and intersubjectivity.

As unexpected as it might be, this implies an identity between us and the

visible, although it points to a break that separates us from mere physical entities.

The layers never coincide; the perception of the self, in the meaning-laden

perception of the hand touching the hand that touches, is only imminent, is in

3 A similar argument has been proposed by Sean Kelly (forthcoming) in his article “The normative nature

of perceptual experience”, forthcoming. He argues that in The Phenomenology of Perception Merleau-

Ponty describes how perception avoids unclear views of objects and that this normativity of experience

belongs to experience itself and is not grounded in the subject ’s take on it.

336 A.F. Aarø



principle unattainable, nor can there be any coinciding aspects of the self in

consciousness.

This imminence represents the passivity in perception, also of the self. There is

passivity in the experience of the invisible, as a depth and a present negativity or

verticality. “But my seeing body subtends this visible body, and all the visibles withit.” (Merleau-Ponty 1968: 138).

As Merleau-Ponty understands it, reversibility is a pre-given, pre-reflective bearer

of existential meaning, which is in its central function manifested in the depths of

existence as the intertwining of the invisibility of being. In my view it is in the

passages where he writes about the perspective of the painter, where the painter ’s

interaction with the world of perception constitutes a perspective that enjoins the

individual to be responsible for that perspective in communication with other

individuals, that Merleau-Ponty illuminates just this understanding of perception.

This is the single most important area in his expositions where we are led tounderstand descriptive phenomenology as also entailing a normative stance as far as

various perspectives of the world are concerned.4 Edward Casey (2003) writes in

Eco-Phenomenology: Back to the Earth Itself that we discover imbalance or

destruction in surfaces of the landscapes in the same way as we apperceive the

expression of a face in Levinas’ ethics. And further, that we experience these

disturbances as something wrong or something not right in nature. His account

seems to hold the basic phenomenological claim that it is impossible to view

anything indifferently, as a neutral spectator.

Merleau-Ponty opened the field of experience, an element where mediation andinteraction between body and world is possible. In “An unpublished text ”, printed in

the Primacy of Perception (Merleau-Ponty 1964), he promises to work further with

this field in an effort to sort out the task of “vocalizing the mute world”:

For these studies on expression and truth approach, from the epistemological

side, the general problem of human interrelations — which will be the major

topic of my later studies. […] Our inquiries should lead us finally to a reflection

on this transcendental man, or this “natural light ” common to all, which appears

through the movement of history — to a reflection on this Logos which gives us

the task of vocalizing a hitherto mute world. Finally, they should lead us to astudy of the Logos of the perceived world which we encountered in the earliest

studies in the evidence of things. (Merleau-Ponty 1964: 9 – 10)

I’d like to draw attention to another statement that he made in “An unpublished

text ”. He was at that point convinced that the phenomenon of expression was the

right place to investigate intersubjectivity, history, nature and culture. He wrote: “To

establish this wonder would be metaphysics itself and would at the same time give

us the principle of an ethics.” (Merleau-Ponty 1964: 11)

4 Contrary to Toadvine’s claim in Merleau-Ponty’ s Philosophy of Nature (Toadvine 2009), where the idea

of an ethics of being is ruled out as far as the ontology of the flesh is concerned, I emphasize how the

origination of sense in the sensible field, which is flesh, is constitutive of all truth, meaning and

expression, and therefore ‘ better ’ or ‘truer ’ perspectives. Cf. the statement (Toadvine 2009: 133): “A

similar mistake has often been made by those who look to Merleau-Ponty’s descriptions of flesh as the

basis for new ethical principles in our relation with nature.” I base my argumentation on a different aspect

of flesh, namely its founding function for sense and expression.




Nature in the Epoché of Phenomenology5

Phenomenology aims to reduce the influence of inherited thought patterns and

prejudice in understanding, by introducing the ‘reduction’ or ‘epoché’; a suspension

of beliefs and existence claims in experience. The reduction will enable us to take astep back and look more closely at our understanding, it suspends our natural beliefs

regarding the experienced things; a state of “reduced” consciousness, because it is

abstaining from claims regarding the state of things. This “transcendental

experiencing ego” is therefore more aware of its own constitution of meaningful

experiences, by focusing on the act of perception itself. This is done to make us

aware of what and how we are experiencing, and whether there are any patterns at

work in experience that are free riding in our minds and produce preconceived

understandings of the world or of other subjects.

This reduction, then, could help us uncover faulty thinking around what nature is,what humans are, and what our place is in this picture. The reduction is a method

which enables us to question what the mechanistic view claims is the only ‘real’

world of things, and to reveal what the experience itself tells us. It changes the world

of Descartes, Bacon and Galileo into precisely “the world we perceive”, as Merleau-

Ponty writes in the Preface to The Phenomenology of Perception (Merleau-Ponty

2008). Reflecting on the first beginnings of meaning in our world presents us with a

very peculiar problem. The nature of our lifeworld seems to hold its own expressive

force, and at the same time hides its deeper aspects in a shadowy half-light, that

attracts our scrutinizing gaze and promises to reveal itself. When Merleau-Pontyturns to the perceptual field, the material flesh, in order to seek there our primordial

relationship with the world, it is a return to the beginnings where philosophy can

establish a ground from which it may see the primary movements of original sense.

But the philosophical reflection is circular, and in its progress returns to its

determining forces, as John Sallis has formulated it (Sallis 1973). And Merleau-

Ponty writes in “The Philosopher and his Shadow” (in Merleau-Ponty 1995) that it

must be our task to think again, give new interpretations, and perform again what

Husserl’s phenomenology describes as the ultimate groundwork. The circularity in

reflection means that our initial questions make an imprint on the results of the

interrogation; therefore, the phenomenological reduction is never complete and must

be returned to as a continuous task.

When we ask the question of what experience is and what its preconditioning

structures are, the challenge of confronting the directly-given experience is therefore

made particularly acute.6 It is certainly an ambiguous and unfulfilled task to return to

the source of experience and to try and seize the moment of institution of sense, and

to catch in the act a natural, brute perception; to will to see the world as it is before

philosophy and science, reflection and language shape and mark experience. This

task is in itself a question of ourselves, intersubjectivity and nature. There are some

powerful prejudices concerning experience that base perception either on an access

5 The second part of this article was presented in an earlier version at the conference “The Genesis of

Phenomenology: From Husserl to Merleau-Ponty” at the University of Bergen, Norway, 2009.6 See for instance “Preobjective being: The solipsist world” in The Visible and the Invisible (Merleau-Ponty

1968).

338 A.F. Aarø



from the inside of subjectivity as an immanence, or from the outside, as a given, in

realism.7 Neither of these suppositions can be carried over into interrogation of the

world, even if we must confront our perceptual faith after all, which is our only

access to our fundamental relationship with the natural world.

But nature is more than our reflection on it. We must somehow reflect onexperience without positioning or determining the essence of experience in advance,

for instance as originating from within the immanence of the ego, which will only

duplicate experience within consciousness. All expression of the world and of our

situation bears the mark of our complete involvement in the world.

It is our faith in a common world that makes possible the experience of truth. In

Merleau-Ponty’s words (1968: 11), it is “[...] this unjustifiable certitude of a sensible

world common to us that is the seat of truth within us”. This will be my point of

departure in analysing the concept of nature. For in the same question lies the

question of how meaning is generated: “Thought must put to itself the problem of the genesis of its own meaning”, he writes (with reference to Husserl) (Merleau-Ponty

1968: 12). This endeavour is present throughout Husserl’s writings, and in Merleau-

Ponty’s late writings. It is further worth noting that the constitution of meaning is not

a central theme in this philosophy. He states that understanding and experience are

not correlative to knowledge of (Fr.) language, but rather that they build on an

unarticulated familiarity with the world through the body. Language in its turn has its

materiality also, and an ideality that reflects perception.8 But it is remarkable that the

question of quality in perception is not spoken of more often. It seems that if we

should take seriously the claim that the key to perception lies in returning to direct experience, or to the things themselves, we would also be truthful to that which the

experience of the world tells us. Merleau-Ponty never returned to the question after

having mentioned the topic as an expected result of the analyses of the expressive

capacity in perception. But the way in which he wielded his words in describing the

world of our perception, basically as communication, implies that he saw meaning

and quality as communicable properties in the depth of perception’s chiasm of

visible/invisible, verticality and horizontality of interrelations.

It is in our primordial, pre-reflected familiarity with nature that we will find the

phenomena that give rise to our sense of a common world. The following sentence

from his lectures on Nature offers a lead as to how we should begin: “We can

elaborate a valid concept of Nature only if we find something at the jointure of

Being and Nothingness” (Merleau-Ponty 2003: 70). This statement reveals what

tradition has to offer in terms of perspectives, and what we should be aware of when

starting an analysis of perception. There is something that withdraws from us in

perception that represents an enigmatic force which seems alien to our intentional

activity. And this force motivates our attention and interest to look again, find out

more, and adjust our perspective to get a better grip on things that we see. In

interrogating the natural world we need to communicate, adjust and listen well. The

opposition that meets us in experiencing natural being represents a transcendence

7 By “access from the outside” I mean theories based on logical investigations that are intended to test the

legitimacy of direct experience; or as in realism or empiricism; collectively called objectivism in this

context.8 See for instance Thomas Langan’s Merleau-Ponty‘ s critique of reason, on language and expression,

where Langan describes language as world (Langan 1966: 125).




that challenges us to interpret and to get the interpretation right ; it is unsatisfactory to

project some answer that we produce onto nature without seeking after the better,

truer perspective, insofar as we can. This is what I believe to be the normativity of

perception. We are drawn to listen, look and understand, for example, the mood of a

silent forest, the rage of an ocean, the pain of an animal, or the vital drive for survival in every living creature that we co-exist with.

Needless to say, it is the thesis of reversibility that carries our understanding of

the natural world (and has bearings for an intersubjective communication as well).

Merleau-Ponty’s analyses of perception and the lived body’s relationship to itself

and the world of perception show the difficulties involved in our traditional ways of

interpreting the self and the thing. It is as if the self and the physical world were

located on opposite sides of an abyss, where the self reaches in vain after the object

as though it were a Kantian Ding an sich, forever inaccessible to our understanding.

It is correct that Kant saw reason in unity with perception of the world. But there isstill the problem of subjectivity’s status of being the precondition for a world on one

hand, and the idea of subjectivity as existing in separation from experience on the

other — or, as Merleau-Ponty calls this philosophy in The Phenomenology of

Perception (Merleau-Ponty 2008), ‘analytical reflection’.

Identification or Negation — Proximity or Distance?

In his lectures on The Concept of Nature, Merleau-Ponty said:In terms of this preview, which we shall complete at the beginning of next year

by sketching the problems of the systematic theory of descent, we may already

say that the ontology of life, as well as that of “ physical nature,” can only

escape its troubles by resorting, apart from artificialism, to brute being as

revealed to us in our perceptual contact with the world. It is only within the

perceived world that we can understand that all corporeality is already

symbolism. (Merleau-Ponty 1988: 166)

The announced lectures on Symbolism and the Human Body were delayed in

order to make time to work with The Visible and the Invisible. It is, therefore, in the

latter that we may find the theory of corporeality as communication which is of interest

in the context of a semiotics of being. He there describes perception as something

between identification with and negation of the world; and in so doing addresses Sartre’s

concept of nothingness and negation. He developed an alternative to Sartre’s thesis of a

nothingness that produces a distance and divergence between perception and the world,

which could be seen as an aspect of the traditional isolation of the perceiver, and which

can be placed within dualistic thought. What was needed at the time, was a critical

analysis of the dichotomies transcendence/immanence — pour-soi/ en-soi, inner and

outer, form and matter — which has been mentioned by many interpreters and, first and

foremost, by M. C. Dillon (1997: 159) in his Merleau-Ponty’ s Ontology.

It is through his thesis of reversibility that Merleau-Ponty finally works out the

relation between identity and distance, the anonymous primal perception or the pre-

reflective experience, put en face ‘subjectivity’ and reflection. As Ted Toadvine

(2009) writes in Merleau-Ponty’ s Philosophy of Nature, Schelling was the first to

340 A.F. Aarø



address the question of the paradoxical self-mediation of being by posing the

question of how reflection can think pre-reflective nature. The Erste Natur (first nature),

which he describes as “the excess of being over the consciousness of being” ( Nature,

p. 62/38) is a “ barbaric principle that reveals itself in our perceptual experience prior to

reflection […] By retrieving the perceptual ‘state of indivision’ prior to subject andobject, Schelling aims to disclose our commonality with all of life in a ‘common root

of pre-objective being’ ( Nature 64/40).” (Toadvine 2009: 118).9 The perceiver as

perceived marks out the core elements of the structure of reversibility.

We should be cautious not to presume the pre-reflective experience of nature to be

anything like the unconscious. It is far from the unconscious responses to an already-

constituted world. The intertwining is an ontological basis, a structural precondition

for experience, on the grounds that it is necessary that the world is not an ‘outer ’ and

the thought an ‘inner ’ phenomenon, but that there is reciprocal interaction of the

perceived and the perceiving; the perceiving in flesh. These elements encroach onone another as elements of being , with no clear boundaries, though they are catalysts

for each other within the total being (Merleau-Ponty 1968: 139). The chiasm of the

perceived and the invisible, deeper aspects, is thereby the profound and unbreakable

tie and passageway between ourselves and our world of perception, which, if our

concern is to find a valid concept of nature (“somewhere at the jointure of Being and

Nothingness”), at the same time reworks the problems of dualism and its (isolated)

subjectivity.

The Ontological Function of Flesh

What has been achieved by the concept of flesh with regard to the interpretation of

natural phenomena? Can it be said to represent a fruitful philosophical explanation

of the properties of natural being? Flesh is introduced in Merleau-Ponty’s

philosophy by the discovery of the affinity of the visible and the tactile aspects of

perception: between the visible and the seeing. The experience of the visible and the

touchable, and the enfolding of the visible on the seer and the look of the visible —

all aspects point to a mutual element that can include and uphold these phenomena,

but maintain their qualities within the structure.

The flesh is not a denominator for the union of body and spirit, but an ontological

emphasis of the embodied relationship between perception and world and as

universal horizon. The materiality that the flesh represents is not ‘matter ’, but should

rather be understood as the material principle, giving a generality to the field that is

still related to facticity. It is the condition for embodiment, between the spatio-

temporal and the idea (Merleau-Ponty 1968: 139). I understand it as a principle of

both function and structure, which resists the categories of both essence and ideality,

such as a regulating metaphysical principle would represent. The material element of

flesh allows us rather to approach the phenomenon of the visible in a way that

reveals the depth inherent in perception, a depth that pertains to its never-present

perspectives, which are still there upholding the phenomenon. In the context of the

experience of nature the concept will serve as a grounding of the sphere where we

9 References in the citation are to Merleau-Ponty 2003, French edition and English edition.




are studying, interpreting, and making sense of the natural environment and its

organisms. It is thus a theory that sustains the process of interpretation in an anti-

reductionist manner. Furthermore, it ensures that the perceptual field itself is part of

the interpretation that takes place and that yields an understanding of nature. This

emphasis clearly leads us out of the objectivistic thought of nature, which has beenthe objective and main focus of this essay. And it is the vital body’s character of

being flesh, material, that maintains this phenomenological field, by the activity that

sight and movement exert on the world.

As the first result of the thesis of reversibility, the phenomenal body described in

The Phenomenology of Perception is later described in The Visible and the Invisible

as a ‘sensible sentient ’. The two aspects of the body exist side by side as a

continuous movement that acquires to the body everything that is visible; as an

inescapable element, like air or water. In the same instance we realize that the body

is of this element. The visible (sensible) is the materiality (familiar to the body’smateriality) that provides us with the connection to and opening towards the natural

world by relating to the body through the reversible interaction of the seeing and the

visible (perceiver and perceived).

In order to account for the non-identification with the world, there is the question

of the depth that is not presentable (presenting itself, or not possible to uncover).

There is a depth in the world of perception that is never present, or the Husserlian

Nichturpräsentierbarkeit . There are always some aspects of the natural world that

are not seen or even possible to see, such as the example of the dice with its six sides

(from the first meditations in Husserl’s Cartesian Meditations (Husserl 1991)), or aswhat is under a huge rock that fell down ages ago. At least it is impossible to see all

perspectives at once. But there are also depths that are in principle not perceptible.

These depths of perception may be as simple as the density of the inside of a thing

which the surface reminds us of, which is more inaccessible to us than the back side

of a thing, which you can study by moving the thing around, or moving around the

thing. The transcendence of the Other is the archetype of this resistance in

perception. By understanding the genesis of meaning through the workings of the

chiasm of visible and invisible in perception, it is possible to account for the shared,

intersubjective, sensible world of nature.

The visible about us seems to rest in itself. It is as though our vision were

formed in the heart of the visible, or as though there were between it and us an

intimacy as close as between the sea and the strand. And yet it is not possible

that we blend into it, nor that it passes into us, for then the vision would vanish

at the moment of formation, by disappearance of the seer or of the visible.

What there is then are not things first identical with themselves, which would

then offer themselves to the seer, nor is there a seer who is first empty and

who, afterward, would open himself to them — but something to which we

could not be closer than by palpating it with our look, things we could not dream of seeing “all naked” because the gaze itself envelops them, clothes

them with its own flesh.” (Merleau-Ponty 1968: 130 – 31)

The metaphors in this quote from the The Visible and the Invisible underline the

evasive nature of the element of flesh in description. The unity of the body and the

unity of the visible wash and flood each other ’s boundaries. It is an original way of

342 A.F. Aarø



seeing the gaze as part of and co-operant in the perceptual field, a field that is neither

mind nor matter, neither idea nor facticity.

As was indicated earlier, the interaction or intertwining also produces a

distance and negation of the perceived by a gap, ecart , arising in perception,

when the perceiver (a going beyond oneself and coming back into oneself)reaches for the thing and finds that the two are separated by a ‘friction’ in

between them that prevents the gaze from appropriating the world completely,

and likewise, that the vision should drown in what it sees. The identity between

the seer and the visible is not absolute. Where is the boundary between the body

and its world? The chapter “The intertwining — The chiasm” seeks to explore

just that.

It is precisely in the chiasm of identity and difference to the perceived, in this

phenomenon of structuring perception, that the break occurs creating a distance to

nature, because perception is to leave oneself and to return to oneself in a continuousmovement. It is in this movement that the mystery of perception lies hidden,

according to Merleau-Ponty, who alludes to Hegel. This is, however, a ‘hyper-

dialectic’— it is what it is — and should not result in higher forms of self-

consciousness. The hyper-dialectic of the chiasm could hardly be thought without

the influence from Hegel’s dialectical thought (Merleau-Ponty 1968: 264).

“Grasp this chiasm, this reversal. That is the mind”, says Merleau-Ponty (1968:

199) in The Visible and the Invisible. The reversal must mean having an ability to

leave oneself and seek ‘opposition’ or resistance by entering into the world of our

perception; then the gap or break occurs, producing a non-identity and a distancethat brings one back to oneself. This has bearing on passivity, and the way in which

transcendence and immanence works. In other words, it is here, in this chiasm of

the visible and the invisible aspects of the world, that we should interrogate the

experience in order to understand how thought arises within the materiality of the

visible, which is the field of Sense and the Sensible.

The impossible in this is comparable to the untouchable, complete negativity. It is

not transcendence, which could be positivity: “It is a true negative, i.e. an

Unverborgenheit of the Verborgenheit , an Urpräsentation of the Nichturpräsentier-

bar , in other words, an original of the elsewhere, a Selbst that is an Other, a Hollow

[…]” (Merleau-Ponty 1968: 254). There is a passivity in the experience of the

invisible depths, which as a present negativity and verticality offers us resistance and

a surplus in perception, so that the experienced nature will always exceed my grasp

of it at the moment. A reflexive relationship that echoes dialectical thought, but goes

beyond dialectical thought in that it encompasses the embodied world relationship —

through its character of being flesh. No nature can be thought of as objective, ‘outer

reality’ in this description. It is with this idea that Merleau-Ponty seeks to avoid the

dualism of subject/object and, further, the inner-outer division. The continuous

chiasmatic interaction serves as that which institutes both perception and sense in the

natural world.

It is, however, important to be aware of the continuity of the movement, or the

dynamic. The distance to the seen is not the opposite of the identity with the seen —

they co-exist in a criss-cross weave of identity-and-difference. The dynamic between

them is upheld by the gaze, which creates difference, and the thing that hides its

depths is, therefore, alterity. Flesh makes sight possible, and the gaze can take place




within this materiality. But the flesh also encompasses what cannot be present and

demands ‘un-covering’, even while it withdraws from our positing.

We understand then why we see the things themselves, in their places, where

they are, according to their being which is indeed more than being-perceived —

and why at the same time we are separated from them by all the thickness of

the look and of the body; it is that this distance is not the contrary of this

proximity, it is deeply consonant with it, it is synonymous with it. It is that the

thickness of flesh between the seer and the thing is constitutive for the thing of

its visibility as for the seer of his corporeity; it is not an obstacle between them,

it is their means of communication. (Merleau-Ponty 1968: 135)

The thickness of flesh, the materiality of animate and inanimate being, is not an

obstacle but their means of communication. Thus it becomes necessary to redefine

the concept of perception (as something other than identity or negation) in order toreach a viable understanding of our contact with the world of nature. The gaze on the

world produces a break, a distance between us and the world, which is also our

opening to communicating with it. Pre-reflective perception (the natural attitude) has

that primordial contact, whereas reflection and positing of this perception (or faith)

transforms the experience to reflection or interrogation. This will mean that we are

forever in a chiasm of pre-reflective experience and posited reflection, in a

dialectical movement that is paradoxical and evasive and one which motivates our

efforts, and again leaves us with the posited to be analysed. I think there are

sufficient signs in the way Merleau-Ponty chose his words to indicate that what hewas trying to explain was the full experience with its sense of quality. We would be

reducing experience if we did not ascribe also the sense of quality to the chiasmatic

character of the experience of nature. By that I mean that the intersubjective sense of

quality must have its origin in the deeper, hidden aspects of perception, i.e. in the

chiasm of the visible and the invisible in pre-reflective perception, rather than in any

subsequent analysis and reflection. Such a perspective would fulfil the critique of the

mechanistic view of nature inherited from the scientific revolution of the 17th

century, and facilitate further studies of our place in nature as interpreting and

communicating beings.

Husserl (2002) wrote in Ideen II , under the headline “The constitution of material

nature”:

Nature is an intersubjective reality and a reality not just for me and my

companions of the moment but for us and for everyone who can have dealings

with us and can come to a mutual understanding with us about things and

about other people. There is always the possibility that new spirits enter into

this nexus; but they must do so by means of their bodies, which are represented

through possible appearances in our consciousness and through corresponding

ones in theirs. (Husserl 2002: 91)

And what Merleau-Ponty (2008: 366 – 369) writes later echoes this perspective,

when he says that the unity and identity of the perceived qualities are founded on

the unity and the identity of the body, understood as a synergic totality. The body

is the centre of expression and sense through its belongingness in the natural

world.

344 A.F. Aarø



Having outlined how the interpretation of natural being takes place in experience

as the field of Sense and the Sensible, a few final words must be said about the

implications for a semiotic methodology based on the theory of embodied

experience here outlined. In this philosophy the sense of expressions is seen as

inextricably linked to the living gesture. The semiology of Merleau-Ponty is afurther development in ontology, which we have tried to show by investigating a few

important concepts that changes the overall view of nature; from being on the realist

side of the table an objective ‘outside world’, and on the other idealistic side being a

derivation from the reflection of the ego. The important, radical insight with this

ontology is that the meaning of the world arises in an intertwining dialectic of

embodied interaction. The basic tenets of his overall philosophy have far-reaching

implications, which Lanigan (Lanigan 1991: 83) calls reaching “ behind the

constructions of objective and subjective phenomena to the very basis of existence,

to a basic semiotic by which meaning is generated and constituted as a perceptibleentity.” This philosophy aims at overturning the objectivist attitudes which permeate

the dominant technological worldview of our age, and to restore our fundamental

contact with our natural being.

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Concept of Nature and the Ontology of Flesh