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Overview
The book examines key moments in the development of Merleau-Ponty’s philosophy of nature while roughly following the historical sequence of his major works. Toadvine begins by setting out an ontology of nature proposed in Merleau-Ponty’s first book, The Structure of Behavior. He takes up the theme of the expressive role of reflection in Phenomenology of Perception, as it negotiates the area between nature’s own "self-unfolding" and human subjectivity. Merleau-Ponty’s notion of "intertwining" and his account of space provide a transition to Toadvine’s study of the philosopher’s later work—in which the concept of "chiasm," the crossing or intertwining of sense and the sensible, forms the key to Merleau-Ponty’s mature ontology—and ultimately to the relationship between humans and nature.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9780810125988 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Northwestern University Press |
| Publication date: | 07/16/2009 |
| Series: | Studies in Phenomenology and Existential Philosophy |
| Edition description: | 1 |
| Pages: | 192 |
| Product dimensions: | 6.20(w) x 9.30(h) x 0.80(d) |
About the Author
Read an Excerpt
MERLEAU-PONTY'S PHILOSOPHY OF NATURE
By Ted Toadvine
Northwestern University Press
Copyright © 2009 Northwestern University PressAll right reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-8101-2599-5
Chapter One
Nature as Gestalt and Melody
In the recent wave of interest devoted to questions of nature and animality in Merleau-Ponty's philosophy, the contribution of his first book, The Structure of Behavior, has been entirely overlooked. Structure is never mentioned, for example, in David Abram's The Spell of the Sensuous, the best-known work on Merleau-Ponty and environmental thought, and it receives no more than passing reference in a recent collection of essays also devoted to this theme (Cataldi and Hamrick 2007). This absence is both surprising and unfortunate, since Merleau-Ponty's first book is the only one of his texts published during his lifetime to explicitly propose a philosophy of nature, and he repeatedly refers readers of his later works back to this point of departure. The position established in The Structure of Behavior is foundational because it aims to reconcile mind and nature, to integrate transcendental philosophy with the real, by starting from the holistic and meaningful configurations already encountered in the perceptual world. Rejecting the alternatives of scientific realism and neo-Kantian intellectualism, Structure characterizes the natural world as a self-organizing system of "gestalts"—embodied and meaningful relational configurations or structures. Physical matter, organic life, and conscious minds are increasingly complex strata of such gestalts.
The "gestalt ontology" proposed in Structure anticipates later systems-theoretical descriptions of nature by treating physical, vital, and mental structures as nested sets of holistic relations. Yet gestalts in Merleau-Ponty's sense are irreducible to systems in the realist's sense of this term, no matter how holistic or relational, because the gestalts of which reality is composed are essentially perceptual. Nature at its most fundamental level is meaningful and experiential; its structures manifest the kind of unity and coherence that characterizes perceptual wholes. Already in this first work, therefore, we encounter in nascent form the insight to which Merleau-Ponty returns in his late lecture courses on nature, namely, that nature is inherently perceptual, that in it there is an identity of being and being-perceived (Barbaras 2001, 37).
Merleau-Ponty presents this discovery of the perceptual character of nature as the middle path between the realism of Gestalt theory and neo-Kantian transcendental idealism. Although Merleau-Ponty borrows examples and insights from the works of such Gestalt theorists as Wolfgang Köhler, Kurt Koffka, and Kurt Goldstein, he rejects Gestalt theory's tendency to reinterpret its own results in the terms of scientific naturalism. If Gestalt theory's own descriptions are taken seriously, Merleau-Ponty argues, then reality is inherently meaningful and experiential and therefore irreducible to the ontology of realism. The gestalt must be understood through intentionality; thus, the antidote to this realism is phenomenology, especially as developed in the writings of Husserl, Scheler, Fink, and Gurwitsch. Yet, since consciousness is also a gestalt, it cannot be accorded the priority granted to it by transcendental idealism; despite being essentially intentional, gestalts cannot be the products of acts of consciousness or judgments. Just as phenomenology counters the realism of Gestalt theory, then, an ontology of gestalts counterbalances the idealistic temptations of phenomenology. The ultimate aim of this convergence of Gestalt theory and phenomenology is the formulation of a transcendental philosophy of nature that captures the truth of both realism and idealism while avoiding their limitations. Such a philosophy would be transcendental in its recognition that meaning, sens, is the ultimate ontological category; gestalts are ultimately sensible meanings. But this philosophy would also retain a proximity to realism, since such meanings are not derived from consciousness or mind but are the embodied configurations of nature itself. The fundamental tension of Merleau-Ponty's initial foray into the philosophy of nature therefore turns on how to characterize nature as an assemblage of meanings that are embodied without being real, and experiential without being subjective. The promise of Merleau-Ponty's philosophy of nature emerges from this tension.
Although there is nothing explicitly "environmental" about this effort to reconceive the ontological status of nature and mind, the questions raised by Merleau-Ponty's early philosophy of nature go to the heart of our conception of its meaning and value, and thus are foundational for any effort to conserve nature or to develop sustainable ways of life. The deep ecologist Arne Naess, who offers his own version of gestalt ontology that is indebted to Merleau-Ponty's and shares its core concepts, has articulated most forcefully the need for environmental thinking to engage in an ontological self-examination. Naess has emphasized repeatedly the need for "the philosophy of environmentalism to move from ethics to ontology and back" (Naess 1985, 424), and he prioritizes environmental ontology over environmental ethics as a means to invigorate the environmental movement in the future. Furthermore, Naess accords a certain privilege to gestalt ontology in this effort: "The supporters of the Deep Ecology movement will profit from the further development, and forceful articulation of gestalt perception and, more importantly, gestalt ontology" (Naess 1995, 245). This is precisely because of gestalt ontology's recognition that nature is essentially experiential—"It is the real world we experience. Nothing is more real" (Naess 1995, 244)—and that consciousness must also undergo reinterpretation in terms of gestalt relations: "We are basically gestalt entities experiencing gestalts" (Naess 2004, 13).
Yet it is precisely on the question of the gestalt of consciousness and its relationship with matter and life that Merleau-Ponty's version of gestalt ontology offers an advance over that proposed by Naess, as is apparent from Merleau-Ponty's efforts to understand the recursiveness that characterizes human consciousness qua gestalt. Since consciousness, for Merleau-Ponty, is a gestalt rather than a substance or a concept, it is ontologically continuous with matter and life; consciousness is fully a part of nature. But the gestalts of matter, life, and consciousness participate in a hierarchy of integration: life integrates the configuration of matter in a more complex whole, while consciousness does the same with life. The distinguishing characteristic of consciousness, as the most comprehensive gestalt, is its recursive orientation toward the structure of gestalts as such, toward what Merleau-Ponty calls the "virtual" or the "structure of structures." This "structure of structures" is the ideal and transposable system of relationships that the system of gestalts embodies. In other words, the characteristic structure of consciousness is its orientation toward the configuration of nature as such, which makes truth and objectivity possible.
To elucidate this recursive structure of consciousness, we will first examine Merleau-Ponty's preferred metaphor for explaining the ontology of gestalts, and in particular the relationship between life and consciousness, namely, melody. It is not an exaggeration to say that, for Merleau-Ponty, nature is musical, which is why he can compare the structural aspects of the world to a symphony (SC 142/132). While vital behavior has a "melodic" unity in relation with its environment, human consciousness is oriented toward the theme of nature's melodies as such; it is precisely this melodic essence that constitutes the virtual "structure of structures." This musical interpretation of gestalts suggests the lines along which Merleau-Ponty's inflection of phenomenology and ontology of nature are to be developed: life and thought are different intensities of expression that thematize, in varying degrees, their own configuration. Like a melody, the structure of a gestalt is transposable, iterable. The phenomenological reduction would therefore be precisely the thematization of the structure of structures, the underlying melody, of nature's assemblage of structures, and consciousness emerges as a gestalt oriented toward the ideal structure of gestalts.
But a tension in Merleau-Ponty's philosophy of nature comes to the fore with this effort to understand consciousness as one gestalt among many, and it is to this problem that our chapter turns next. On the one hand, since gestalts are inherently experiential, Merleau-Ponty maintains that every gestalt tacitly refers to an experiencing consciousness, albeit of a "perceptual" rather than an "intellectual" variety. Since every moment of nature refers to perceptual consciousness as its essential correlate, Merleau-Ponty's position retains a close proximity to transcendental idealism, the difference turning on the divergence between these two modes of consciousness. On the other hand, to the extent that consciousness is simply one gestalt among many, incorporating matter and life into a more complex whole, it deserves no constitutive priority. Consciousness would be conditioned by the lower gestalts of which it is constituted rather than being the condition for the appearance of any gestalt as such. But in this case, it is not clear what can be meant by describing gestalts as experiential or perceptual. In other words, Merleau-Ponty lacks a language with which to describe the perceptual character of nature without having recourse to a subject by which nature would be perceived.
The culminating problem of The Structure of Behavior, which Merleau-Ponty terms the "problem of perception," concerns the proper relation and distinction between these two different levels of consciousness, that is, between life (perceptual consciousness) and thought (intellectual consciousness), or, again, between the world of perception and the "true" or "objective" world. Merleau-Ponty does not claim to offer a final resolution of this "problem of perception" in The Structure of Behavior, since a "definitive clarification" would require a deeper interrogation of perceptual consciousness in its own terms (SC 227/210)—and this is indeed the task of his sequel, Phenomenology of Perception. But the analyses of Structure lead us to the brink of a methodological reversal that cannot be carried through within the constraints of the initial inquiry. More precisely, Merleau-Ponty's account of consciousness as a gestalt within the natural assemblage of gestalts complicates the very terms of his inquiry: Does the philosopher who is describing consciousness as embedded within nature stand outside of this nature? Is it possible to describe consciousness as an embedded gestalt without simultaneously addressing the situated character of this very description? In short, MerleauPonty's investigation of the relationship between nature and consciousness rebounds on the terms of his own inquiry in a way that necessitates beginning again "from within."
This leads us, finally, to consider the implications of Merleau-Ponty's descriptions of the embeddedness of conscious gestalts for his own methodological approach. Merleau-Ponty's examples of fully integrated human existence, in which consciousness fully appropriates and integrates the lower structures of matter and life, are rarely philosophers or scientists. Instead, he points toward artists and writers, precisely because they demonstrate a historical grasp of their own situated perspective. This suggests an alternative "teleology" of human consciousness—not in the direction of scientific objectivity, but instead toward an expressive taking-up of life within thought. Although The Structure of Behavior concludes on the brink of the methodological reversal that this insight introduces, the theme of melody suggests an a-subjective logic of reflection as a situated and historical process of expression. The natural embeddedness of consciousness therefore implies an expressive movement within nature itself, a movement that might best be figured as melodic.
The Structures of Behavior
As his paradigm of gestalt structure, Merleau-Ponty focuses on vital behavior—an organism's interaction with its environment—because it is "neutral with respect to the classical distinctions between the 'mental' and the 'physiological' and thus can give us an opportunity of defining them anew" (SC 2/4). Behavior demonstrates a level of meaningful directedness that, on the one hand, cannot be explained in terms of psychological atomism or causal realism. On the other hand, such behavior does not entail conscious self-awareness. As neither a thing nor a concept, behavior discloses a third kind of being, namely, sense. In the first half of The Structure of Behavior, Merleau-Ponty develops his account of behavior by a detailed critique of the theory of the reflex and conditioned reflex. We will not follow the details of his critique closely here, but instead concentrate on the positive characterizations of the gestalt structure of behavior that emerge from his discussion. In particular, this structure has three key elements: first, the organism has a circular or dialectical relationship with its environment; second, this relationship is oriented toward a norm; and, lastly, the structure may detach itself more or less fully from its material substratum to become, at the limit, the "virtual" theme of consciousness.
Drawing on the psychological theories of his day, Merleau-Ponty demonstrates the incapacity of the classical theory of the reflex to account for the irreducibly meaningful character of behavior. But he sees this science as at a crossroads: it could continue trying to patch up its model of behavior with more subtle and sophisticated versions of the same mechanistic approach, or it could revisit the underlying definition of objectivity that guides all such endeavors. The "cleavage between the subjective and the objective" assumed by science has "been badly made," according to Merleau-Ponty, resulting in an untenable "opposition between a universe of science—entirely outside of self—and a universe of consciousness—defined by the total presence of self to self" (SC 8/10). As an alternative, Merleau-Ponty seeks a "new mode of comprehension" that recognizes value and significance as "intrinsic determinations of the organism" (SC 8/10). The study of behavior is a prolegomena to this new mode of comprehension.
In rejecting the meaningful and directed character of behavior, reflex theory and mechanistic physiology more generally eliminate any basis for understanding an organism's actions as adapted or responsive to a specific environmental situation. Merleau-Ponty cites Kurt Koffka's objections to reflex theory in this regard:
Now instinctive and even most of reflexive activity appears to be highly adapted; the animal does what is good for it in its environment. But from the point of view of [mechanistic physiology] this adaptiveness is not a property of these actions themselves, but is instead a mere impression which they give to the onlooker. The actions are not determined in any way by the intrinsic nature of the situation.... The situation enters only as an agency which turns the key, presses the button, makes the machine go.... The relationship between situation and response is consequently purely contingent. (Koffka 1928, 130; cited at SC 35/35)
As an alternative that captures the meaningful relations between a situation and its response, Merleau-Ponty appropriates the notion of gestalt or "form" introduced by Gestalt theorists. Gestalts are here defined as "total processes whose properties are not the sum of those which the isolated parts would possess.... We will say that there is form whenever the properties of a system are modified by every change brought about in a single one of its parts and, on the contrary, are conserved when they all change while maintaining the same relationship among themselves" (SC 49–50/47). Gestalt, therefore, names the transposable structural relations of interdependence among the parts of a system, such as the system formed between an organism's perception of its environment and its responses to that environment.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from MERLEAU-PONTY'S PHILOSOPHY OF NATURE by Ted Toadvine Copyright © 2009 by Northwestern University Press. Excerpted by permission of Northwestern University Press. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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