3.11 The Self Is Embodied Subjectivity: Husserl and Merleau-Ponty

In a radical break from traditional theories of the mind, the German thinker Edmund Husserl* introduced a very different approach that came to be known as phenomenology. Phenomenology refers to the conviction that all knowledge of our selves and our world is based on the “phenomena” of experience. From Husserl’s standpoint, the division between the “mind” and the “body” is a product of confused thinking. The simple fact is, we experience our self as a unity in which the mental and physical are seamlessly woven together. This idea of the self as a unity thus fully rejects the dualist ideas of Plato and Descartes.

A generation after Husserl, the philosopher Maurice Merleau-Ponty* articulated the phenomenologist position in a simple declaration: “I live in my body.” By the “lived body,” Merleau-Ponty means an entity that can never be objectified or known in a completely objective sort of way, as opposed to the “body as object” of the dualists. For example, when you first wake up in the morning and experience your gradually expanding awareness of where you are and how you feel, what are your first thoughts of the day? Perhaps something along the lines of “Oh no, it’s time to get up, but I’m still sleepy, but I have an important appointment that I can’t be late for” and so on. Note that at no point do you doubt that the “I” you refer to is a single integrated entity, a blending of mental, physical, and emotional structured around a core identity: your self. It’s only later, when you’re reading Descartes or discussing the possibility of reincarnation with a friend that you begin creating ideas such as independent “minds,” “bodies,” “souls,” or, in the case of Freud, an “unconscious.”

Breathing Head (2002) by Fred Tomaselli.

This painting evokes the idea of the self as a perceiving being. This image teems with life and energy. Might this view of the self suggest how you could feel more fully alive?

(Fred Tomaselli, Breathing Head, 2002. Leaves, photocollage, acrylic, gouache, resin on wood panel. 60 × 60 inches. Image courtesy of James Cohan Gallery, New York.)

According to Husserl and Merleau-Ponty, if we honestly and accurately examine our direct and immediate experience of our selves, these mind-body “problems” fall away. As Merleau-Ponty explains, “There is not a duality of substances but only the dialectic of living being in its biological milieu.” In other words, our “living body” is a natural synthesis of mind and biology, and any attempts to divide them into separate entities are artificial and nonsensical.

The underlying question is “What aspect of our experience is the most ‘real’?” From Husserl’s and Merleau-Ponty’s vantage point, it’s the moments of immediate, prereflective experience that are the most real. It is the Lebenswelt or “lived world,” which is the fundamental ground of our being and consciousness. To take another example, consider your experience when you are in the midst of activities such as dancing, playing a sport, or performing musically—what is your experience of your self? Most likely, you’re completely absorbed in the moment, your mind and body functioning as one integrated entity. For Merleau-Ponty, this unified experience of your self is the paradigm or model you should use to understand your nature.

Phenomenologists do not assume that there are more “fundamental” levels of reality beyond that of conscious human experience. Consistent with this ontological (having to do with the nature of being or existence) commitment is the belief that explanations for human behavior and experience are not to be sought by appeal to phenomena that are somehow behind, beneath, or beyond the phenomena of lived human experience but instead are to be sought within the field of human experience itself, using terminology and concepts appropriate to this field. And when we examine our selves at this fundamental level of direct human experience, we discover that our mind and body are unified, not separate. It is this primal consciousness, Merleau-Ponty notes in his book Phenomenology of Perception, that is the foundation for our perception of the world and our knowledge about it:

Consciousness must be reckoned as a self-contained system of Being, as a system of Absolute being, into which nothing can penetrate and from which nothing can escape. On the other side, the whole spatio-temporal world, to which man and the human ego claim to belong as subordinate singular realities, is according to its own meaning mere intentional Being, a Being, therefore, which has the merely secondary, relative sense of a Being for a consciousness.

For Merleau-Ponty, everything that we are aware of—and can possibly know—is contained within our own consciousness. It’s impossible for us to get “outside” of our consciousness because it defines the boundaries of our personal universe. The so-called real world of objects existing in space and time initially exists only as objects of my consciousness. Yet in a cognitive sleight-of-hand, we act as if the space-time world is primary and our immediate consciousness is secondary. This is an inversion of the way things actually are: It is our consciousness that is primary and the space-time world that is secondary, existing fundamentally as the object of our consciousness.

Nor is science exempt from condemnation, according to the phenomenologists, for scientists are guilty of the same flawed thinking as expressed in abstract philosophical and religious theories. Too often scientists treat their abstract theories as if they take precedence over the rich and intuitive reality of immediate lived experience. In cases when the two worlds conflict, scientists automatically assume that the scientific perspective is correct, and the direct experience of the individual wrong. This is the difficulty we pointed out with the concept of the unconscious: It was considered by Freud and many of his followers to be of such supreme authority that no individual’s contrasting point of view can measure up to the ultimate truth of the unconscious interpretation. In his Phenomenology of Perception, Merleau-Ponty makes the crucial point that these theories couldn’t even exist without the primal reality of lived experience to serve as their foundation. And then these theories have the arrogance to dismiss this fundamental reality as somehow secondary or derivative:

Scientific points of view are always both naïve and at the same time dishonest, because they take for granted without explicitly mentioning it, that other point of view, namely that of the consciousness, through which from the outset a world forms itself around me and begins to exist for me.

As a philosophical theory of knowledge, phenomenology is distinctive in the sense that its goal is not to explain experience but rather to clarify our understanding of it. A phenomenologist like Merleau-Ponty sees his aim of describing what he sees and then assuming that his description will strike a familiar chord with us, stimulating us to say, “I understand what you’re saying—that makes sense to me!” From this perspective, the responsibility of philosophy is not to provide explanations but to seek the root and genesis of meaning, “to reveal the mystery of the world and of reason,” to help us think and see things more clearly. For example, to develop a clear understanding of your “being in love,” you need to delay using elaborate psychological theories and instead begin by describing the phenomena of the experience in a clear, vivid fashion, trying to uncover the meaning of what you are experiencing. Then you can begin developing concepts and theories to help you make sense of the phenomena of “being in love.” The danger of using theories prematurely is that you may very well distort your actual experience, forcing it to conform to someone else’s idea of what “being in love” means instead of clearly understanding your unique experience. Concepts and theories are essential for understanding our selves and our world. It’s simply a question of which comes first—the concepts and theories or the phenomena of experience that the concepts and theories are designed to explain. For phenomenologists, it’s essential that we always begin (and return regularly to) the phenomena of our lived experience. Otherwise, we run the risk of viewing our experience through conceptual or theoretical “lenses” that distort rather than clarify. For instance, in providing a phenomenological analysis of “being in love,” you might begin by describing precisely what your immediate responses are: physically, emotionally, cognitively. I’m currently in love and,

By recording the direct phenomena of our experience, we have the basic data needed to reveal the complex meaning of this experience and begin to develop a clearer understanding of what “being in love” is all about, by using concepts and theories appropriate to the reality of our lived experience.

What exactly is “consciousness”? For Merleau-Ponty it is a dynamic form responsible for actively structuring our conscious ideas and physical behavior. In this sense, it is fundamentally different from Hume’s and Locke’s concept of the mind as a repository for sensations or the behaviorists’ notion of the mind as the sum total of the reactions to the physical stimuli that an organism receives. Consciousness, for Merleau-Ponty, is a dimension of our lived body, which is not an object in the world, distinct from the knowing subject (as in Descartes), but is the subjects’ own point of view on the world: The body is itself the original knowing subject from which all other forms of knowledge derive.

Accomplished writers often have a special talent for representing human experience in a rich, vibrant, and textured way. The French novelist Marcel Proust* is renowned for articulating the phenomena of consciousness in a very phenomenological way. Consider the following descriptions of experiences and analyze their effectiveness from a phenomenological perspective on the self.