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Merleau-Ponty's phenomenological critique of natural science

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 April 2013

Thomas Baldwin
Thomas Baldwin*
Affiliation:
University of Yorkthomas.baldwin@york.ac.uk
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Abstract

In his Phenomenology of Perception Merleau-Ponty maintains that our own existence cannot be understood by the methods of natural science; furthermore, because fundamental aspects of the world such as space and time are dependent on our existence, these too cannot be accounted for within natural science. So there cannot be a fully scientific account of the world at all. The key thesis Merleau-Ponty advances in support of this position is that perception is not, as he puts it, ‘an event of nature’. He argues that it has a fundamental intentionality which configures the perceived world as spatio-temporal in ways which are presupposed by natural science and which cannot therefore be explained by natural science.

This is a striking and original claim. When one looks in detail at the considerations Merleau-Ponty advances in support of it, however, these turn out to be either inconclusive or to draw on idealist presumptions which a contemporary naturalist will reject. So while there is much of interest and value in Merleau-Ponty's critical discussion of naturalism, he does not succeed in establishing his central claim.

Type
Papers
Information
Royal Institute of Philosophy Supplements , Volume 72: Phenomenology and Naturalism , July 2013 , pp. 189 - 219
Copyright
Copyright © The Royal Institute of Philosophy and the contributors 2013

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References

1 Merleau-Ponty, M., Phenomenology of Perception, trans. Landes, D. (London: Routledge, 2012)Google Scholar, lxxii. I have generally adopted the new translation of Merleau-Ponty's Phénoménologie de la perception by Donald Landes (hereafter PhP 2012). But I have occasionally departed from it. For example in this passage Landes has translated ‘l'expression seconde’ as ‘second-order expression’. It is not obvious what Landes means here by ‘second-order’ (presumably nothing connected with second-order logic); but ‘seconde’ often means ‘second-hand’, and that is surely the meaning in play here.

2 Merleau-Ponty, M., The Primacy of Perception, trans. Edie, J. (Evanston, IL, Northwestern University Press, 1964)Google Scholar

3 Ibid.

4 PhP 2012, note 1, lxxxiv.

5 PhP 2012, 54–5.

6 PhP 2012, 54–5.

7 PhP 2012, 26.

8 PhP 2012, 315.

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23 Ibid., 145.

24 Ibid., 176.

25 Ibid., 184.

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30 PhP 2012, 22–3.

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48 PhP 2012, 214–5; the reference here to a ‘flaw’ in a ‘great diamond’ is an allusion to a famous poem by Valery, ‘Le cimetière marin’.

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73 I am indebted to Brendan Harrington for this suggestion.

74 PhP 2012, 45.

75 PhP 2012, 25.