Body and Flesh: Did Merleau-Ponty Reject His Earlier Account of Embodiment?

摘要

Secondary literature on Maurice Merleau-Ponty seems in some agreement that he developed two, apparently distinct notions of our human embodiment: "the body" in Phenomenology of Perception and "the flesh" in The Visible and the Invisible. The latter concept of embodiment, it is claimed, represents a criticism and rejection of the earlier. While I agree that these notions are different, I nevertheless emphasize the continuity rather than the discontinuity of Merleau-Ponty's lifelong preoccupation with the corporeal nature of human existence. I argue, in fact, that the concept of "the body" is an essential, preparatory, and yet abiding element of his full understanding of human subjectivity. Finally, I offer an analogy between, on the one hand, Martin Heidegger's transition from his phenomenology to his ontology—from the analysis of human being [Dasein] to the study of being [Sein]—and, on the other hand, Merleau-Ponty's transition from his phenomenology to his ontology—from the phenomenology of "the body" to his ontology of "the flesh." Merleau-Ponty's later works are not, I believe, a rejection but, instead, a development of his earlier works. Many commentators argue that his later notion of human embodiment, "the flesh," is a rejection of his earlier notion of " the lived body." I argue against this in two steps: first, I reconstruct the notion of "the lived body" in terms of dispositions, capacities and practices—what I will call "embodied know-how"—and then I demonstrate that "the flesh" is just a way of talking about an important aspect of embodied know-how. If the reconstructed concept of "the flesh" can be seen as an elaboration of the reconstructed concept of "the body," then I will have offered an argument for the claim that Merleau-Ponty's later philosophy is a development, not a rejection, of his earlier work.