Soul, mind and body are three important and core subjects under study when discussing

the philosophy of human beings. The understanding of the relationship between soul
and body has always been a source of concern among philosophers. The existence of
soul and justifying mind as a separate entity from brain is never completely understood.
The relationship of mind with the body i.e. how the mind controls the body and how
changes in the body affect the mind is always been a main issue in studying philosophy
of mind. Mind philosophy is a complex subject. Some of the functions of the mind work
independently from body. But others do work in collaboration with the body.
Philosophers have accomplished variety of studies to understand the actual role and
existence of mind that includes if mind is a physical or non-physical matter, if it’s the
part of the body or the soul? And other issues like that. Dualism gives a good
explanation of all these problems. Though there are objections to it. But it does address
all issues of independent working of mind and body.

Human nature is in turn a complex subject and it is difficult to grasp full knowledge of
philosophical explanations of human beings… Descartes used to believe that mind
interacts with the brain. Though he used to consider mind as spiritual and immaterial
and brain as spatial. This paper discusses why human nature and human being have
problematic philosophical explanations and how mind-body relationship makes it
complex and difficult to understand.

The philosophy of mind gives a contemporary view of the entity mind or soul. The
contemporary views do accept soul as an independent existent. The main concern of the
contemporary approach is also to understand the relationship between the physical
working of brain and states of mind. My theoretical outlook for the problem stated
would be dualism. According to which mind is a non-physical entity and it can exist
separately from the body.

In this essay firstly I will explain the phenomenal features of human experience which
differentiate them with other living things. The power of intelligence and consciousness
produces such features. Then in the light of theories and philosophies presented by
renowned philosophers such as Aristotle and Descartes, I will analyze these phenomenal
features in the context of soul-body relationship. After this, a brief explanation of the
concept of dualism will be presented which will serve as a theoretical outlook for this
paper in discussion ahead. With the help of dualism I will explain these features. Then,
there will be a brief explanation of a major objection to the concept of dualism and that
is how mind and body communicate with each other? I will try to justify my response
over this objection in the next part. Then I will conclude the paper having all important
points.
There are some features of human beings which differentiate them from other living
things. With the thinking power, use of intelligence and intellect and consciousness has
give human beings the power to rule the world. These phenomenal features are the
most important characteristics of human mind. It’s charismatic that how human mind is
capable of producing all these emotions with exceptional brilliance. I will explain some
of these phenomenal features.

Reason is one of the phenomenal features of human being through which. With the
help of this a person can draw results from the given data or observations and can make
hypothesis and assumptions. Moreover, one can support its argument through
reasoning. Reflection is a process depending upon thinking; augmenting and analyzing
one own self. It’s more of spiritual phenomena where one examines one’s own conduct,
feelings and actions. Emotion means the mood, feel, temperament, attitude, state of
mind and heart over certain action or happening. It mostly is a part of one’s personality.
Motivation is a very important part of emotion. Abstraction (as discussed in the course)
is a thought process which includes ideas on a general level. More general and common
features or details are put together and specific details and features are left out. It
involves a process of classification.

Faith is one of the very strong phenomenal feature of human being. It requires a process
of events and mental activity and thought process to finally able to develop faith over a
certain phenomena or understanding. Socrates believed in transcendentalism and he
believed that each human being is like a spark of the over soul. He also thinks that soul
will be separated by the body just in case of death and it is kind of a form. ‘Faith’ was
the head start of the discussion of our course. Understanding and wondering which
reasons and miracles had made us believe in God? The example of two places which had
a bridge in between them is great in emphasizing faith. A person will cross even an
unbalanced bridge if he has faith in his constructor, but he will never cross the bridge if
it’s perfectly fine and has no belied a faith in its constructor. So we see that courage is
the outcome of faith. And faith is achieved by different reasons. In fact every human
being has his own reasons for faith. The idea of Skinner on PFHE is hopeless; it is not
deliberately true that we do everything by aiming at some benefit. It’s not verified in
every case. We see that naturalism has been derived from metaphysical realism. Moral
valuation is a study of approach, direction and way in which or through which human
beings believe and develop some kind of values or beliefs. Human beings does compare
things and make a choice, this behavior is valuation. The techniques to inquire
investigate and acquire new aspects, information and knowledge by gathering
observations, collecting evidences, making hypothesis and then proving certain
hypothesis is called scientific inquiry. The emotion, urge of human being to explore,
investigate, inquire and learn more about a certain thing is called curiosity. It’s the
driving force of advancement in science and technology.

Many philosophers explained unique features of human beings through different

concepts and tried to develop a connection between these features and working of the
body. Aquinas used the natural theology; I still recall the long debate on natural and
revealed theology. But I think Aquinas was true to some extent on proving the existence
of God by the means of the natural processes and nature itself. The “First Mover” theory
can be taken into account too. While if we see St. Thomas we will come to know that
being a Christian he declined Aristotle points of views. He thought that God is actually a
cause for all the natural things that had happened.

Aristotle gave the philosophy of Hylomorphism, according to which soul is something

which makes a body alive. Soul is a set of properties; a form….such as glass is the form
of water in it. According to Aristotle soul is related to body as a form of matter. So
whatever phenomenal features of human being are that are the characteristic of body
because soul is the part of the body which is accomplishing all these phenomenal
features. Aristotle explained the unity of soul and body, both needs each other to work.

Descartes gave the philosophy of dualism, according to which mind is a separate

existence from brain and is a non-physical entity. All these phenomenal features are part
of mind. He was first to identify mind with consciousness, awareness and intelligence.
According to him brain is a material substance which is a part of body but mind exists
separately from the body. The mind according to Descartes was a non-material entity.
And he considered body as an extended and non-thinking thing. He argued that mind
can exist apart from its extended body. And therefore mind is not a part of the body, it’s
a different substance. Because the essence of mind is in the power of thinking. the
actual idea behind his philosophy is that mind and body can interact. He argued that
only humans have minds. Animals do not have minds. They lack the feature of self-
consciousness. Living things can have three grades of sensation: physical, conscious,
self-conscious. According to Descartes animals and human have only first sensation in
common and that is physical. For example if an animal has felt a sensation e.g., the only
possible reactions would be physical like dancing, screaming etc. But they will not
consciously feel anything because they lack understanding of mind.

Jean- Paul Sartre presented the philosophy of Existentialism. According to this

philosophy an individual is responsible for its existence and for the standard/quality of
life he is living. Sartre did justice with his opinion about the individuality of human
beings. Sartre’s example of animal and plant was the most amazing of all. He
distinguishes animals and plants from human beings by saying them unconscious and
more mechanically operated things. It supports the phenomena of Atheism. This
philosophy justifies that human being is responsible for its own actions despite of the
obstacles in life.

Now, I will explain the phenomenal features of human beings in the light of dualism.

Dualism is an approach which basic idea resides upon the fact that mind is a non-
physical matter i.e. it is not a part of the brain. It is non-physical. Many philosophers
worked on dualism but a more famous version of dualism was given by Rene Descartes
who maintained that mind is a non-physical thing. According to this mind is not a part
of brain. According to Descartes mind is a thinking thing. We can take the example of
container to elaborate it. Consider human being as a container which has body and
brain in it along with a SEPARATE non-physical mind. Mind thinks, hopes, believes and
have the consciousness and intelligence to deal with situations. Moreover Descartes
argued that mind is a separate non-physical entity which can exist without the body.

Phenomenal features of human beings can be well explained through Dualism.

All the phenomenal features explained above are states of mind which are attributes of
a non-physical matter. A physical matter cannot think, reason, and argue. These feelings
of curiosity, believes, enquiring, emotion and reflection are the products of mind. Mind
is the force which pushes the body to work to learn more about a certain thing. For
example a person read something, it always has some effects on his/her mind. Mind will
ponder about that subject and ideas are built through it, which as a result produces
curiosity to learn more. And scientific inquiry takes place to reach to a certain solution.
And the mind develops values and believes on the basis of the observations and results
around it. And all these features of human being which are related to awareness,
consciousness and intelligence are the products of mind. Mind is the one producing and
operating them. If dualism is not true then mind is only the physical brain. Then in this
situation we cannot think of a material substance to possess the qualities of
consciousness which is the central ingredient for possessing phenomenal features. We
cannot then expect features like consciousness, emotions, curiosity, sensations, desires,
beliefs etc. So there has to be something which is responsible for these behaviors, and
that is mind which is not material and which is a non-physical substance.

Interactionism is a view of dualists, which can explain well these phenomenal features
which occur as an interaction of mind and body. Thomas is said to be the symbolic
founder of interactionism. Thomas thought that people were not exclusively controlled
by the socialism and social pressures. Mental states always have this link with physical
states. When we see something, we use our eyes and eyes send message to mind which
invokes some kind of emotion, action or feeling.
If a person has got an injury, he will feel pain and he will cry for help. And if somebody
hears him, he will experience an emotion to reach for help. So the process continues
with the series of interactions. And we can see the example of a sailor and a ship. The
sailor can feel the bruise he has on his hands but he can’t actually feel the pain when the
ship is damaged or broken.

There is also some objection for this school of philosophy. One of the major objections
is casual interaction. A major objection to this view is that how mind interacts with the
body i.e. how physical states interact or send a message to mental states and vice versa.
If mind is a non-physical matter then how it is interacting with a physical matter. There is
no explanation to this.

When a person is injured, how the message is transferred toward mind which as a
results cause the state of pain. When mind is not a part of body then how this
communication is working? Obviously, we assume there will be a series of events which
will finally let this pain feeling happen. There will be nerves playing around sending the
message finally to the brain. But then how brain (a physical matter) will send or transfer
this message to mind (a non-physical matter). That is a very big question mark?

Descartes himself did not have a proper answer to this problem. His meditations which
we have elaborately studied in this course have revealed to us many of his point of
views. He says that we can doubt all the things and he considers mind as indivisible and
body as divisible. He was of the view that this interaction of soul and body or mind and
body is through PINEAL GLAND, which is a gland in human brain. He says how the idea
of a ruling absolute power exists in our minds? Thus he says that we distinctly perceive.
All he was trying to do was to prove the immortality of the soul. He maintained that
casual interaction is taking place through pineal gland. But this is not a very good
explanation. Again the problem is same, how a non-material mind is interacting with
pineal gland (which obviously is a physical matter). Some of Descartes’ students, ef
Arnold Geulincx adopted a different frame of mind for this problem. And I find that
solution very satisfactory. According to Arnold that all these mind-body interactions are
a result of direct intervention of God. So, when God wants, these interactions happen
otherwise not. These interactions are not because of a certain mechanism or through
some medium; they happen and occur when there is God’s will. Only God knows how it
works, he is responsible for this stimulation.

Human body and human nature is a very complex subject. The human nature cannot be
understood easily. There are phenomenal features of human beings which differs them
from other living things and those phenomenal features have convinced us that there is
something non-physical in human body which is responsible for these phenomenal
features. Dualism answers some of such questions and consider mind a non-physical
entity responsible for such features and it is a separate entity from brain. But a major
objection to dualism is that how mind interacts with the body? What is the medium of
communication between a physical and non-physical matter? And a satisfactory answer
would be that God is above all. The interaction between mind and body is dependent
on God. And may be only he knows and he is responsible for such bizarre
communication.

https://www.ukessays.com/essays/philosophy/mind-body-and-soul-in-humans-philosophy-
essay.php
The author seeks an explanation for Merleau-Ponty's expression "the body understands", to
which a real value is applied: the objects of the world have a signification that the body grasps
by way of perception. The analysis focuses on Merleau-Ponty's Phenomenology of perception and
on notes from two of his courses, Le monde sensible et le monde de l'expression and La nature.
In these works, there is a constant allusion to the I can as an underlying and grounding mode
with regard to the I think. The French philosopher thus grants a central role to movement that
demonstrates the interweaving of the body with the world.

INTRODUCTION

In various passages of the Phenomenology of perception (from here on PP), Merleau-Ponty

speaks about an understanding that the body fundamentally attains through perception.
What is perceived appears to us as bearing a meaning. It has an imminent and pre-
objective signification that is the fruit of what our philosopher calls "inhabiting the thing."
(MERLEAU-PONTY, 2012, p. 70-71).3 This signification of the perceived, which has no equivalent in
the universe of the intellect,4 is only understood if one considers the anchored perceiving
subject-situated-in the world. The subject is never an "acosmic" thinker that sees the world
from all angles; rather, what he perceives primarily has connotations linked to action,
sentiment and the will, rather than the concept (MERLEAU-PONTY, 2012, p. 26). So, throughout PP,
Merleau-Ponty privileges the Husserlian I can over the I think, thereby privileging action
over thought. On occasion, he also dialectically contrasts both expressions in order to
emphasize the temporal primacy of the situated being, understood as a category from which
any lived experience begins.5

The most obvious question to ask is how we can speak of "understanding"; how can we
attribute to the body an operation that is more properly attributed to the intellect? An easy
response could be that Merleau-Ponty is using this expression figuratively. But it isn't so.
According to Merleau-Ponty, the body really understands, albeit in a different sense than
that of the intellect. One can speak of a "broadening" of the term "understanding" and also
of an original manner in understanding the body that permits attributing this capacity to it.
The clearest example of this understanding of the body are the habits, either motor-like
habits or habits of a more complex nature, such as grasping a melody or rhythm. 6

My proposal in this article is to give an explanation of the body's understanding on the basis
of the notion of motricity. I will establish what is characteristic of perceptive or corporeal
signification, in contrast to intellectual signification. It is to keep in mind that, while both
complement each other and intermix, perceptive signification is at the basis of all
understanding of the intellect. This radicality or originality does not function as a kind of
stratum or structure in which thought is nurtured; instead it provides space for an approach
to the world that is different from the one that is the primary fruit of mere reason. In order
to focus on the perception-movement relation, I will first analyze the chapter in PP entitled
"The spatiality of one's own body and motricity," included in the first part of the book
dedicated to the body. While in this chapter and the work in general the relationship with
motricity is extensively discussed, I also integrate within this article the class notes from the
courses Le monde sensible et le monde de l'expression (1953) and La nature (1956-1960),
which are not known in the literature I have consulted. This is a contribution that
strengthens the thesis of a true understanding of the body closely linked to motricity, a
thesis that has not been explicitly discussed in Merleau-Pontian literature. When pertinent, I
will also take other works from the French philosopher into consideration.
I have chosen motricity as a perspective for the analysis of the body's comprehension,
because movement is the basis for all forms of action in the living being and, in the case of
humans, it is the key to penetrating the relationship they maintain with the world in which
they are inserted. Without saying so explicitly, Merleau-Ponty is constantly referring to the
original and material strata of human behavior. In this regard it is significant that in his
seminar "The philosopher and his shadow," published in Signs, Merleau-Ponty cites this text
from Husserl's Ideas III, a text that repays the effort required for reflecting on it:

The reality of the soul finds its basis in corporeal matter, and not the other way around.
More generally, the material world is, within the total objective world that we call Nature, a
particular world closed in on itself, which does not need the help of any other reality. On the
contrary, the existence of spiritual realities, from a world of real spirits, is linked to material
nature, and this is not due to contingent reasons, but to questions of principle. When we
interrogate the essence of the res extensa, this latter does not contain anything that
depends on the spirit, nor anything that demands a mediated connection with a real spirit.
On the contrary, we find that a real spirit, by its essence, cannot exist except as linked to
materiality, being the real spirit of a body. (MERLEAU-PONTY, 2008, p. 201).

The radicalness of the text is surprising, and perhaps for that reason Merleau-Ponty,
immediately after citing it, writes, "We do not cite these lines except as a counterweight,"
that is, in order to counteract affirmations where Husserl appears to give primacy to the
spirit over nature. Further on, in the same text, he explains: "Phenomenology is not, in the
end, either a materialism or a philosophy of the spirit. The operation that is proper to it is
that of unveiling the pretheoretical stratum in which the two idealizations find their relative
right and are overcome." (MERLEAU-PONTY, 2008, p. 201). The task is to find that point of
equilibrium where the spirit, the "psyche," and the "animus" are not cast aside. Nor is
corporeality disrespected, that is, the matter that links us to what in general we call nature.
Phenomenology's task of unveiling successive strata, the covering over of what is existent,
can be compared to the task of the archaeologist that seeks the most primitive signs of life
or of human existence and organization. The purpose of this article is to descend toward the
most basic stratum of movement as an action proper to the human body and interweave
movement with perception, since both are present in the pre-reflexive realm.

Various authors are in agreement that for Merleau-Ponty the body is a constitutive or
transcendental principle, that is, it is involved in the very possibility of any experience. Our
relations with the world, with others, and with ourselves have their origin in corporeal
experience.7 Without the body not only would we lack perception, which is evident, we
would also lack concepts, propositions, and discourse. In the words of Merleau-Ponty we can
say: "Perception is a judgement, but one that is unaware of its own reasons, which comes
down to saying that the perceived object gives itself as a whole and as a unity before we
have grasped its intelligible law." (MERLEAU-PONTY, 2012, p. 44). Before we can define the object,
even before we name it, it presents itself to the body with its sensorial properties: texture,
colour, smell, taste... the form of an orange appears before we can name it or identify it.
The body runs ahead of thought and, for this very reason, it is hidden, we do not notice it.
It is important to note that the body's dimension of motricity cannot be dissociated from the
perceptive: the body directs and orients itself to what it knows, while at the same time that
what is known arouses its attention. There is a passive and active character in this mutual
relation, which should not be understood in a mechanistic or behaviorist manner, as a
relation of inputs and outputs; rather, it responds to living in the world as well as to the
things that I have referred to above.
In the first part of this article I focus on the insertion of the subject into the world, and
analyze the relation of the perceiving subject to space as a first form of bodily
understanding. The second part is focused more directly on the motor intentionality and
signification with which one attains a more complete explanation of the relationship between
motricity and the body's understanding.

1 Knowing about the place

In the chapter from PP that I have already mentioned, Merleau-Ponty contrasts lived spatial
knowledge (knowledge about a place) with that which is represented. He will rely on the
experiences of a healthy subject, rather than on those of someone unhealthy. 8 In particular,
he will discuss the Schneider case, where a patient suffered a cerebral lesion that affected
the motor relation with his own body and with what surrounded him. 9 The motor
experiences of the healthy subject are characterized by their flexibility, spontaneity, and
adaptability. In contrast, in the unhealthy person movements are fixed, not spontaneous, to
the point that they may even require a kind of deduction or intellectual reflection in order to
perform movement. With this opposition Merleau-Ponty sought to better show the
characteristics of the body's understanding of space from the perspective of what he calls
the proper or phenomenal body (that of the healthy subject), in contrast to the objective or
merely physical body (that of the unhealthy subject) studied by the natural and cognitive
sciences.

From this latter perspective, space is representatively known as "an identifiable term
throughout all of its appearances." (MERLEAU-PONTY, 2012 p. 106). For example, subjects that
have suffered brain damage may only be able to situate themselves in a determined place if
it is presented within the habitual realm of their actions. In contrast, if an unhealthy subject
is asked to point out or touch a place in space or on his body, since it is not a matter of a
habitual action, he may be unable to carry out the request, except via the effort of
representing either his body or the places indicated. The unhealthy subject's perception of
space and his motor capacities belong exclusively to the habitual world. In contrast, the
healthy subject moves without any difficulty from a concrete and spontaneous relation with
space to an abstract one. Healthy subjects know their own body's place and that of other
objects, and can indicate them either when asked by another, or else because this is what is
required by an undertaken action. Merleau-Ponty calls this "a spontaneous and free spatial
thought." (MERLEAU-PONTY, 2012, p. 106, italics added). Another conclusion that can be drawn
from this comparison is that healthy subjects carry out these actions in the most economic
manner possible: if they have to pick up or touch something, they do so directly, without
needing prior or preparatory action. In contrast, the unhealthy subject needs to prepare the
action: first he verbalizes it, repeating the command, while later he positions his body, thus
making the performance possible, and then finally executing it. Clearly this is not the
economical or reduced movement of the healthy subject ( MERLEAU-PONTY, 2012, p. 106).10

Merleau-Ponty indicates another difference that has to do with the free character of the
action and the movement that it implies, upon contrasting a fictitious or virtual action with
that demanded by a real situation. The subject, for example, can imitate a military salute,
just as actors perform the gestures that are indicated in a script, but don't become involved
with them: they move from the real to the fictitious or imaginary without any difficulty. The
healthy person and the actor "each detach their real body from its living situation in order to
make it breathe, speak, and, if need be, cry in the imaginary." ( MERLEAU-PONTY, 2012, p. 107).
There is a separation between fictitious movement and a real living situation, such that in
the imaginary there is a space of movement unlinked from necessary situations (necessary
in the sense of being indispensable for the unfolding of life). This separation also introduces
a realm of voluntariness or dominion over one's own body: I make it laugh or cry, because I
want it to be so, or because it is what is required by the fictitious situation that I am acting
within, which I have voluntarily gotten involved in. The unhealthy person, in contrast,
cannot distinguish movement from the occurrence of his actual or real ego. The movement
is the result of the action in which the sick person's ego is involved or is, in a certain sense,
his ego. Goldstein employs Schneider's description: "My movements and I, we are, so to
speak, merely a link in the unfolding of the whole, and I am scarcely aware of any voluntary
initiative [...] everything works by itself." ( MERLEAU-PONTY, 2012, p. 107). It is also explained that
they must put their bodies in a situation in which movement can continue autonomously,
i.e. they must make their arms, their torsos, etc. available so that they can carry out the
order that they have been given, as though their reflexive ego were not involved in it.

On the one hand, the healthy person is able to voluntarily command the movements of his
body so that it moves from the real to the fictitious. On the other hand, however, his body
disappears in the movement, since the gestures or postures that permit carrying out the
action are not experienced constantly or actually, just as there is also no constant
perception of motor space. In morbid experiences, it becomes clear that we need a mental
or intellectual representation in order to "recuperate" the body that is unavailable to the
subject. Rather, the subject has to constantly reformulate its connection with the body in
order to lose it again and execute the action.

The motor spontaneity that characterizes the action of the healthy subject is worth
emphasizing, based on this brief analysis. The action, and movement with it, initiate
spontaneously, both on the real plane and the fictitious.11 In order for this to occur, motor
consciousness must be present: people come to know themselves in movement. There is no
need for a deductive or reflexive operation of the motor and spatial context. Rather, from
that context they continue or carry out the other movements that demand their existence in
the world, or the fictitious situation that also forms part of their existence.12 All of this forms
part of the knowledge of place that permits movement. This is a knowledge that is
generated in the co-existence of the subject and bodily space and, in the words of Merleau-Ponty
(2012, p. 108)
: "[It] is not a nothingness, even though it cannot be expressed by a description,
nor even by the mute designation of a gesture." As is his wont, Merleau-Ponty explains by
contrast, in this case opposing knowledge of place to the knowledge of objects in the
Kantian sense: it is not a knowledge unified by a law that knows things as though they
existed free of any form or local or temporal adherence (MERLEAU-PONTY, 2012, p. 107-108). In his
course La nature, he expounds on the relationship between movement and the knowledge
that the subject has about things, especially from the perspective of the I can, thus
clarifying the difference from the Kantian objectivity mentioned earlier: the thing appears to
the subject as linked to the movements of his body. And the consciousness that the subject
has of his body is a slippery consciousness (glissante), like that of the capacity to organize
certain perceptive functions (déroulements). The body is understood as able to move from
one appearance to another, organizing what Merleau-Ponty calls a "synthesis of transition."
With his body the subject organizes an understanding of the world, in which the body is not
a pure Ego, which would place before itself both the body itself and the thing, but rather, by
inhabiting its own body, it will also inhabit things. The thing is not distinguished from the
body itself, it is united to it "as though it were embedded in its functioning." The body does
not accompany things externally, but is rather "the field where my sensations are localized."
(MERLEAU-PONTY, 1995, p. 106-107). Furthermore, in Le monde sensible we find a description of
the way in which the person is close to the things in the world, a description which has a
clear relationship with corporeality and movement:
I am close to things but not because of an ideal presence. I am close to the thing because it
takes possession of my body in order to make itself perceptible to the latter (colour imprints
on me a certain vital rhythm, sound gives a certain adaptation of the organ, etc.). [... ] I
am close to the thing in virtue of an expressive relationship between sensible [objects] and
the perceptive organ. (MERLEAU-PONTY, 2011, p. 49).

The subject incorporates the action that the thing exercises in it, that which the latter
demands because of the materiality of the organic influence on the sensory apparatus, but
also because, as I said above, the subject inhabits things.

The constant opposition between the corporeal experience of the unhealthy subject and a
healthy one, proposed by Merleau-Ponty in PP, allows for distinguishing a relationship with
the "thought" world-that of the sick person-from one that is "lived"-that of a normal subject.
The knowledge of the body linked to movement occurs in the phenomenal body that is
situated before a space that is flexible, adaptable, ambiguous on occasion, and opposed to
represented space, which is fixed, the result of a deduction. Just when the unhealthy
subject need not think, when it acts as linked to its habitual existence-that is, its trade or its
basic necessities-then it is assimilated to an immediate and lived relationship to the world
(MERLEAU-PONTY, 2012, p. 108). The body forms part of the subject-world system, in which a kind
of tacit dialogue is undertaken between the requirements of the world and the capacity for
responding to them without the mediation of reflection: "In concrete movement, the patient
has neither a thetic consciousness of the stimulus nor a thetic consciousness of the
reaction: quite simply, he is his body and his body is the power for a certain world." ( MERLEAU-
PONTY, 2012
, p. 109).13

In habitual behaviour and also in the normal relation between the subject and the world,
there is a kind of optimal corporeal knowledge: the best movement, the most economic for
complying with the requirement by which the action unfolds, thereby creating a dialectic
between passivity and activity. Merleau-Ponty affirms that movement has a ground that is
immanent to it, within which "for the subject, the beginning of kinetic movement is, like
perception, an original manner of relating to an object." ( MERLEAU-PONTY, 2012, p. 113), because
perception and movement form "a system that is modified as a whole." ( MERLEAU-PONTY, 2012, p.
113). In the case of an itch caused by a mosquito, the body's knowledge permits the arm or
the hand to find the precise spot where the discomfort is occurring, in order to alleviate it
with the action of scratching. The task draws from the body those movements that must
fulfil this specific request (MERLEAU-PONTY, 2012, p. 116-117). We encounter this idea in a text
of Le monde sensible where he speaks of the body's double function: it responds to that
which is offered, and moves, and then returns upon the world in order to signify or
designate it (MERLEAU-PONTY, 2012, p. 52).14

The immediacy that characterizes the action of the subject is an expression of this
systematic unity not only in its motor behaviour, but also in its link with the world: the
speaker adapts to his audience, not by a "disguise," but because "we literally are what
others think of us and we are our world." ( MERLEAU-PONTY, 2012, p. 109). In order to understand
the meaning of this affirmation, recall that earlier it was said that knowledge of the body
demands some kind of mediation that would explain it as something more than a mere
mechanical reaction. The body achieves fit with the stimulus because, in some way, it
recognizes it as such, it perceives it. But the fitness of the body is the recognition of
something that, in some way, is possessed as one's own. Immediacy, which is highlighted
now, can be explained at different levels or perspectives. In the first place, there is
immediacy because there is a "display" of capacities or possibilities proper to one's own
body, because we have or are the body, with its potentialities, and this means having a
wide field of action.15 Secondly, immediacy is also explained because there is no clear
distinction between subject and world. In PP Merleau-Ponty uses the concept of system that
integrates the subject and world, while in The Visible and the Invisible(VI) this vagueness is
made more radical with the concept of flesh (chair) (MERLEAU-PONTY, 1964). In neither of the two
explanations-be it that of PP or that of VI-, is Merleau-Ponty seeking to overcome the
confused relationship between subject and object, that opacity and generality in which
perception occurs and which forms part of the immediacy understood as an adhesion to the
world, as interlacing with it.16 A third explanation of immediacy is found in the notion of
horizon: there is a vital area of openness of the subject to the world that is broader than
that which permits the immediate action of his perceptive organs. For example, beyond
vision and touch the subject has a universe or motor field, and perception is projected in a
perceptive horizon. In the case of the unhealthy subject the difficulty of achieving fit with
the world is not found in a specific sensory organ, but rather in the completeness relation of
the subject with the world considered from this perspective of horizon. The deficiency
suffered by the unhealthy subject is found in "the subject's living region, that opening up to
the world that ensures that objects currently out of reach nevertheless count for the normal
subject, that they exist as tactile for him and remain part of his motor universe." ( MERLEAU-
PONTY, 2012
, p. 119). Motricity is like the ground on which perception occurs because, as I have
already explained, the relation of the subject with the world is fundamentally a motor issue.
But movement as such is not directly grasped: "It is always before or ahead of or after the
moment in which I grasp it." (MERLEAU-PONTY, 2011, p. 89). The interpenetration of the subject
with the world, the inhabitation of things, are forms of expressing that original motricity
linked to perception.

In the explanations and examples just given, I have mentioned motor finality, that is, the
directing of the body to action by way of movement; for example, the action of grasping or
touching an object that situates the body in a specific direction. Merleau-Ponty affirms that
in the case of practical action movement is present "magically"17 in its end, right from the
beginning, given that it is only by anticipating the end that it attains its goal ( MERLEAU-PONTY,
2012
, p. 106). It is as though movement had just one act, that is, as though that which it
contains from the beginning were to be unfurled in the action. The issue of anticipation has
a predecessor in Husserl18 and has also been studied by contemporary physiology. In what
follows I will refer to certain analyses carried out by Berthoz and Petit (2006).

Physiological studies demonstrate that there is a kind of progressive accumulation of

neuronal activity that little by little constructs the action that expresses itself at the moment
of execution. This is possible thanks to the assemblage of pieces, as occurs with Lego
bricks. But it has also been discovered that the stage that precedes action, which the
authors call the microgenesis of action, is not simply an accumulation of energy that is
waiting for the moment to reveal itself. Rather, the formation of an intention prior to the
occurrence of the movement, that is, a content of meaning that will make it so that the
movement will not be simply "movement," that is, motor behaviour, but will be an "action"
directed to or with a view to an objective (BERTHOZ; PETIT, 2006, p. 68). There is an extraordinary
diversity of mechanisms of anticipation and prediction. For example, the mechanoreceptors
measure the derivations of the magnitude of the movement (velocity, acceleration, shock,
etc.) which permit an anticipation of the future position of the body. This physiological
action permits regulating and, in this way, anticipating movement. The authors affirm that
perception is fundamentally anticipative and is explained by the so-called corollary
discharges by which the brain sends out a copy of the motor order, anticipating the
perceptive centres and permitting them to stabilize the perceived world. An example is the
perception of distances. On many of the occasions in which we move from one place to
another, or in which an object comes toward us, it would be very complex to calculate the
distance. Instead, the brain can directly infer the time of contact for an object that is
coming near and thereby avoid it (BERTHOZ; PETIT, 2006, p. 70).

These considerations are interesting in the light of the ultimate explanation that the authors
provide, which is the relationship of persons or living beings with the world that surrounds
them or in which they live. Speaking of anticipation is to attribute to the human organism a
property of full rights that derives from an ontology of mutual and formational integration
that the organism maintains with its world of life. What occurs in the brief lapse of time-it
might be dozens of thousands of a second-that precedes action or perception, shows us that
for the perceiving subject "reality" is known via a broad anticipatory construction ( BERTHOZ;
PETIT, 2006
, p. 75). The authors conclude that anticipation is a fundamental property of any
organism that possesses a nervous system, and that the list of anticipatory mechanisms
does not merely reveal a collection of means-found by evolution-that strengthen fitness.
Rather, it is more properly an "advisory notice" from the body regarding the time lived and
perceived and, I add, the space lived and the action that is carried out in it, just as I have
explained in this part of my article (BERTHOZ; PETIT, 2006, p. 78). This form of knowledge is not
exactly the understanding of the body that I am attempting to explain, but it accounts for
why, physiologically, there is also a preparation for the interpenetration between the subject
and the world.

In this first part of my article I have explained the relation of the subject with space,
employing the contrast between the healthy person and the unhealthy person. I have
described what we might call motor consciousness, which is at the base of the inherence of
the subject in the world and also in what Merleau-Ponty calls "inhabiting things."

In the second part of the article I will address the issue of how we explain this "re-
cognition" that generates spontaneous movements and immediate responses in the subject.
Merleau-Ponty asserts that it is not a question of kinesthesic residues that awaken in the
presence of the object (MERLEAU-PONTY, 2012, p. 110-111). I would like to respond to these issues
from the perspective of motor intentionality, directly related to the interlacing of the subject
and the world.

2 Motor Intentionality and Signification

In order to advance in the explanation of the content of Merleau-Ponty's affirmation that the
body itself understands, the notions of operant motor intentionality are key, as is the motor
project. Both display the originary character of movement in bodily understanding. The
texts of PP are complemented by the notes from Le monde sensible that permit a
broadening of the notion of perception, and a better explanation of the intermingling of the
subject with the world.

Merleau-Ponty (2012, p. xxxii)

takes the expression "operant intentionality" (fungierende
Intentionalität) from Husserl19 in the same way that he used the contrast between I
can and I think. In Le monde sensible this contraposition instead occurs between praxis and
gnosis, always seeking to explain the radicality of the body's understanding, and also of the
movement that occurred thanks to the I can, just as Husserl had suggested.20

Merleau-Ponty is referring to operant intentionality, in the prologue to PP, as "the

intentionality that establishes the natural and pre-predicative unity of the world and of our
life." (MERLEAU-PONTY, 2012, p. xxxii). In it, our desires and evaluations are made manifest, and it
offers the original text by which knowledge formulates concepts ( MERLEAU-PONTY, 2012, p. xxxii).
It is worth emphasizing the anticipatory quality of this form of knowledge, since it presents
itself as the condition of possibility in a thetic intentionality. Before this latter can be
possible, it is already "operant," immersed in action: it is an intentionality directly involved
in the world, joined with movement and is originary (MERLEAU-PONTY, 2012, p. 453; 113): "The
gesture of reaching one's hand out toward an object contains a reference to the object, not
as a representation, but as this highly determinate thing toward which we are thrown, which
we are next to through anticipation, and which we haunt." ( MERLEAU-PONTY, 2012, p. 140). This
form of intentionality exists without the mediation of reflection. Rather, it is the result of the
coupling or adhesion of the subject to the world (MERLEAU-PONTY, 2012, p. 8-12).

In habitual behaviours one sees more clearly that the body understands, that what Merleau-
Ponty calls a motor signification comes to be. This is not the result of a spatial calculation,
but rather of a kind of synchrony between the body and space and with the objects that are
in it, because the body "understands" either the distance from things, or the affinity with
the melody of the body's movement itself, as occurs, for example, in dance. Merleau-Ponty
explains what happens in these cases as follows: "Places in space are not defined as
objective positions in relation to the objective position of our body, but rather they inscribe
around us the variable reach of our intentions and our gestures." ( MERLEAU-PONTY, 2012, p.
144).21

This quote opens a topic that permits the union of this second part of the article with the
topics developed in the prior section, and which can now be more broadly developed. The
relationship of the subject with space, that knowledge of a place, "can be understood in
several senses" according to Merleau-Ponty (MERLEAU-PONTY, 2012, p. 106). That is, one can
develop an explanation that is more intellectualist or associationist, or another explanation
that has to do with the lived situation of the person: "Bodily space can be given to a
grasping intention without being given to an epistemic one." (MERLEAU-PONTY, 2012, p. 106). This
distinction marks the contrasts described in PP between the healthy subject and the
unhealthy one and, in this latter case, between the habitual actions of the unhealthy subject
and those that respond to an order, that is, those that occur on the abstract plane: "The
patient is conscious of bodily space as the envelope of his habitual action, but not as an
objective milieu. His body is available as a means of insertion into his familiar surroundings,
but not as a means of expression of a spontaneous and free spatial thought." ( MERLEAU-PONTY,
2012
, p. 106). Spatial knowledge, which I will emphasize now, is the fruit of a "sort of
coexistence with that location." (MERLEAU-PONTY, 2012, p. 108). This is why it is also difficult to
explain theoretically, given that it is understood in the context of what Merleau-Ponty calls a
motor field or universe, directly linked with the living project of the subject, its mission in
the world in which it is situated.

The person is originally linked with the world from a dynamic I can but which "hides behind
the objective world that it contributes to constituting." (MERLEAU-PONTY, 2012, note 99, p.
523).22 The concealment of the body makes the explanation of the motor signification
difficult, but it is also a signal of kinetic spontaneity which, albeit completed by learning, is
at the origin of the existence of the subject. As I have already noted, in Le monde sensible,
Merleau-Ponty compares gnosis and praxis, or rather makes the latter the condition of the
possibility of theoretical knowledge: "I want to point out a relationship with the object that
is not, initially, one of knowledge. To deeply analyze the notion of knowledge via that of
praxis. This is a matter of capturing the spirit in its aborning state." ( MERLEAU-PONTY, 2011, p. 52-
53). Further along, in this same work, he affirms that in regards to the world of culture one
can also consider praxis as either constitutive or originary, since by way of our perceptive
consciousness we have a certain familiarity with the things that surround us: "We frequent
them" in a way that is more practical than theoretical. The same phenomenon occurs with
expressive cultural objects, thanks to an effusion of meaning that is equally tacit ( MERLEAU-
PONTY, 2011
, p. 65). Emphasizing this tacit character of practical intellection, Merleau-Ponty
speaks of a "silence" of perception that should be taken in a strong sense. It not only
remains silent, it is opposed to language and to enunciations, to the I know that, given that
it itself is a form of language: "We understand the sensible as though between our body and
the subject's there were a pact that was prior to us, prior to every situation, as though it
were speaking a language to us that we don't have to learn, and about which we know the
science." (MERLEAU-PONTY, 2011, p. 58).23 Continuing with this same idea, Merleau-Ponty suggests
comparing perception with a reading in which the "objective" signs or data were inscribed
within a "field" that grants them a situational value. All perception is a modulation of a
situation, in which the situated subject is not an I think, but rather an I can (MERLEAU-PONTY,
2011
, p. 104).

But even this latter state-the I can-offers limitations, not being a pure possibility.
Its haecceity [thisness] imposes certain limits that derive both from bodiliness and any
deficiencies that might affect it, as well as the spatio-temporal situation in which movement
takes place, as well as action in general. These limitations are primarily expressed in the
descriptions of the unhealthy subject, specifically in the PP by way of the Schneider case.
Illness, in any of its forms, can mean a diminishing of the I can, but also a modification of it,
as in the case of the substitution that the subject discovers in an object, an artefact, which
is added to its potentiality until it becomes one object with it. This is the case with the cane
that the blind person uses, which ends up being an extension of his or her arm or hand
(MERLEAU-PONTY, 2012, p. 144). The negativity of the deficiency, the difficulty or opposition
presented by this relation with the world, causes the person to display original forms of
the I can: having recourse to artefacts, which I have already mentioned, or the broadening
of perceptive capacities, as in the case of the blind person whose senses of hearing and
smelling become more acute. But it is not just the sick person that has limitations; we also
see the healthy subject restricted in his movements, both because of personal factors as
well as environmental ones. Merleau-Ponty does not specifically refer to this aspect, or to
the reality that not all the parts of the body are equally available for action and movement.
The extremities, for example, seem to be more plastic than the torso or the lumbar region.
The hands and legs display more agility and speed in the fulfilment of the movement's
purpose, requiring a lesser impulse from the will, almost moving by themselves. For
example, there is the rhythm that footsteps acquire when nearing the objective, or the
tensing of the hand upon grasping the desired object. These cases show us that the
situation, in some way, configures the I can, which in turn cannot be explained as a pure
capacity; rather, the explanation always resides in a linkage with the world. 24

These examples reflect an I can that displays itself in the perceptive or sensory field, prior
to the will, as the response of the body, without the direction of the rational faculties.
Nevertheless, in Le monde sensible Merleau-Ponty suggests a broader conception of
perception that can also be applied to the intellect, without restricting itself exclusively to
the sensory realm. This is why one can speak of a logos of perception and of an
implicit logic of perception. Upon this logos is mounted, so to speak, the logos of the
intellect, since the object of the intellect redirects to the perceived thing, which forms part
of its signification or meaning. Thus a double relationship is established: the perceived is
there to be thought, while thought is about the perceived ( MERLEAU-PONTY, 2011, p. 54). He
concludes: "Everything is perception, but perception is everything, i.e., our idea of
perception must be broadened so that it will make possible an analysis of the intellect."
(MERLEAU-PONTY, 2011, p. 55). The intellect must open itself, so to speak, to the logos of
perception, so that the aforementioned mutual relation between what is thought and what is
perceived comes to be.
This broadening of perception confirms the affirmation found in PP towards the end of the
chapter, regarding the spatiality of the body itself. Motricity is not like a handmaiden of
consciousness, it does not carry out any orders given by the intelligence, it does not answer
to mental representations. Rather, it has its own reasoning, its own "logic," if this word can
be admitted in this domain (MERLEAU-PONTY, 2012, p. 140). This 'reasoning' of the body is
displayed in dialogue with the spatio-temporal world that it inhabits in opposition to a
mere being-in; it inhabits space and time (MERLEAU-PONTY, 2012, p. 140). In the same way that I
am my body, I do not possess it. I am also of space and time (in French one says à l'espace
et au temps) and this situation is constantly initiated over and over. For this reason, he
concludes that the knowledge of the body is not a particular case of knowledge, it is the
originary "praktognosia" presupposed in all forms of knowledge (MERLEAU-PONTY, 2012, p. 141).
There is a consonance between this affirmation and the prior one, showing that the logos of
the intellect is about what is perceived, since both point to the anticipatory and implicit
character of perception. Again, in Le monde sensible, Merleau-Ponty affirms that there is a
relationship of complicity between the quality and the sensory field, which suggests a
certain affective and vital rhythm to the subject. Thanks to this synchronization the person
can, in the absence of the quality, supply a quasi-presence: an image, a construction of
nearly sensible structures for one's body. There is a vertiginous proximity and, at the same
time, a distance that is due to the thing being of another order. It makes the subject vibrate
in its body, it reaches the body from within, it causes obsession, but is always beyond the
vibration that it communicates (MERLEAU-PONTY, 2012, p. 56). This is the finality that moves the
body, not by an intellectual representation, but by the anticipation that I have already
mentioned (DORRANCE KELLY, 2005, p. 100-101).

We return, once again, to the difference between abstract movement and the concrete
movement that Merleau-Ponty employs as a backdrop in order to compare the behaviour of
the unhealthy subject with that of the healthy one (MERLEAU-PONTY, 2012, p. 125). These two
forms of movement do not obey the distinction between a movement that is conscious and
another that is mechanical or merely physiological. Rather, they require, in order to be
understood, that there be "several ways for the body to be a body, and several ways for
consciousness to be consciousness." (MERLEAU-PONTY, 2012, p. 125, italics by author). One of the
ways of being body is expressed by what Merleau-Ponty calls motor intentionality, which is
not explained physiologically by a causal connection regulated by the nerve system, which
would account for sensorial affections and motor responses. Instead, it is a question of one
of the modes of relating the subject to the world, of being in the world: "The subject makes
that which surrounds him exist for him: either as the pole of activity and the term of an act
of grasping or releasing, or as a spectacle and the theme of knowledge." ( MERLEAU-PONTY, 2012,
p. 117). Both situations will provide the mode of being body and the mode of being Ego, a
pair that cannot be unlinked from one another. Clearly, what we are dealing with now is the
world as a pole of activity that arouses this motor intentionality, i.e., a form of bodily
movement oriented to action. Concrete movement occurs both in the healthy subject as well
as in the unhealthy, but in the latter it is restricted to certain habitual movements, and it
turns out to be exhausting for the unhealthy person to display movements that, for
example, respond to the indications of another person. One could say that movement, in
this case, loses its immediacy and spontaneity. It is no longer a question of movement that
is at the basis of knowledge, but rather of a movement that responds instead to intellectual
representations.

An appropriate understanding of motor intentionality is made easier by the broadening of

the perception mentioned above, since this is how intellectual knowledge is included, for
human behaviour is never entirely sensorial or perceptive. The integration of perceptual
data in the existence of the person occurs in an "experiential situation" that links or unites
the particular or factual-which Merleau-Ponty labels "haecceity" [thisness]-with a global
consideration that includes thoughts and takes up past sedimentations and future projects.
Merleau-Ponty speaks of a "sublimation" of perception, for example of visual contents, at
the level of thought in which they are symbolically integrated. But what I wish to emphasize
at this point is the sensorial base, in this case visual, upon which this sublimation occurs:

the symbolic function does not depend on vision as its ground because vision is its cause,
but because vision is this gift of nature that Spirit had to make for us beyond all
expectations, to which it had to give a radically new sense and upon which nevertheless it
depended, not merely in order to become embodied, but even in order to exist at all.
(MERLEAU-PONTY, 2012, p. 128).

The use of the expression "gift of nature" alludes to a certain passivity, thanks to which we
have sensory and perceptive knowledge, without the mediation of any action on the part of
the subject. It expresses, in some way, the Kantian concept of experience. However, above
all it expresses Merleau-Ponty's idea of anticipation, which holds that all forms of knowledge
are already within us before we possess them in a conscious manner. 25 This anticipation
also expresses the originary and thus impersonal level at which the perception takes place.
Merleau-Ponty says that, rather than saying that "I perceive", one should say "something is
perceived in me": I grasp myself as already feeling. Experience occurs at what he calls
the primordial level:

As a result, if I wanted to express perceptual experience with precision, I would have to say
that one perceives in me, and not that I perceive [...] This activity unfolds on the periphery
of my being [...] Each time that I experience a sensation, I experience that it does not
concern my own being-the one for which I am responsible and upon which I decide-but
rather another self that has already sided with the world, that is already open to certain of
its aspects and has synchronized with them. Between my sensation and myself, there is
always the thickness of an originary acquisition that prevents my experience from being
clear to itself. I experience sensation as a modality of a general existence, already destined
to a physical world, which flows through me without my being its author. (MERLEAU-PONTY, 2012,
p. 223-224).26

In this case, Merleau-Ponty uses the thought of Husserl in order to accentuate, in the
matter-form relation, the foundational character of the matter that in intellectual
sublimation still continues to be a radical contingency, which grounds knowledge and action,
and which is at the base of the grasping of being and from which knowledge and action
constantly extract its wealth (MERLEAU-PONTY, 2012, p. 128-129). Further on, in texts that also
make an express reference to Husserl, he speaks of the unity of the ego as presumed in the
horizon of experience offered at the primordial level where the logos is born ( MERLEAU-PONTY,
2012
, p. 228-229).

Merleau-Ponty illustrates this "founding" relation with the understanding of analogy, which,
being an act of grasping that is properly intellectual, depends on perceptive experience. He
proposes the example of an analogy between the eye and the ear, which the normal subject
easily understands because both are means of access to one and the same world that is
ante-predicatively evident; this analogy is understood prior to being conceived (MERLEAU-PONTY,
2012
, p. 131). Note that he does not say "prior to being known," but rather "conceived,"
because the analogy has already been known-and lived-by the corporeal subject that has
experienced his or her visual and auditory relationship to the world. A properly intellectual
conception comes to be on the basis of this perceptive knowledge. There is no conception
without this peculiar form of understanding; it is not just different from an intellectual
proposition, it originates in the things themselves with this anticipatory and simultaneous
character, because ideas-which can be called sensory ideas-are born at the same time as
the things (MERLEAU-PONTY, 2012, p. 228).27

Taking a step further in order to explain the body's understanding, from a perspective that
is further distanced from the linkage with thought, Merleau-Ponty offers the example of the
corporeal knowledge of his own house, which allows him to move about in it easily, without
hitting the furniture inside, instead recognizing each in its proper functions:

When I move about in my house, I know immediately and without any intervening discourse
that to walk toward the bathroom involves passing close to the bedroom, or that to look out
the window involves having the fireplace to my left. In this small world, each gesture or
each perception is immediately situated in relation to a thousand virtual coordinates.
(MERLEAU-PONTY, 2012, p. 131).

The corporeal subject moves about in a determined space, comprehending it not just in its
immediate possibilities, but also those things that are possible. The body is not just
a haecceity or facticity, but also a possibility, because it is a body that is a body that
is existing in the world. Being a body is not the same as having a body; existing as a body
is to reveal the potentialities proper to the body in its relationship with the world, because
there is no existence without world. Merleau-Ponty contrasts this knowledge of the world
with the mental sedimentations that we constantly employ. Returning to the example of
one's own house, he says that we do not have a group of associated images. Rather, it is
"my house" because "I have 'in my hands' or 'in my legs' the distances and principal
directions to it." (MERLEAU-PONTY, 2012, p. 131). Although in this text Merleau-Ponty mixes
intellectual sedimentation with the body's understanding, I wish to extract just the latter, in
order to accent the linkage of that understanding with motricity. "To have in one's hands
and in one's legs the principal distances and directions" is certainly a knowledge of the body
that is sedimented and therefore is also habitual. How do my hands and legs know? How do
my legs know that I am nearly at my destination and accelerate their steps in order to get
some rest, or to get to my meeting on time? How do they know that I want to hug the
beloved person that appears in my sight and therefore they run? The allusion to
sedimentation is not accidental: my body indeed knows, on the basis of knowledge that is
anterior in time, perceptions that are from my infancy or that have even faded away in the
realm of the unconscious. We can apply here what has been mentioned regarding the fact
that the corporeal subject always knows, on the basis of other knowledge, that the body is
always moving ahead on a knowledge it has already obtained. This knowledge is not
explained by the influence of concepts in consciousness, but by perceptions that bring with
them other perceptions, and so on. This is why one can speak of a knowledge of the
hands or of the legs; a spatial and motor knowledge of distances and directions.28

The anticipation mentioned at the beginning of this second part of my article has to do with
operant intentionality and the motor project. The synchrony of the body with space and
objects is directed by the dynamic "I can," by the primacy of praxis with respect to gnosis.
It is the familiarity that the subject has with the world that is at the base of the later
intellectual production (AHO, 2005, p. 1-23).29

CONCLUSION

Just as Zahavi and Gallaguer indicate, Merleau-Ponty's analysis is not limited to the way in
which the body becomes present in experience. Rather, it is much more the manner in
which the body structures our experience, constituting itself in our primary form of being-in-
the-world. For these authors, the lived body is neither spirit nor nature, neither soul nor
body, neither interior nor exterior, neither subject nor object. All these categories are
derivations of something more basic, which is the body as experience ( GALLAGHER; ZAHAVI, 2012, p.
153-156). Prior to the intellectual recognition of reality, under the form of truth, there is the
experience of this reality. One could speak of a corporeal causality that acts existentially
rather than physically. The phenomenological contribution to a solution of the mind-body
problem does not take the form of a metaphysical theory of mental causality. Neither does
it consist in an explanation of how the body interacts with the mind; rather, it seeks to
understand to what degree our experience of the world, our experience of the ego, and our
experience of other people are formed and influenced by corporeality ( GALLAGHER; ZAHAVI, 2012,
p.154).

From this perspective, the body's understanding acquires a notable relevance and, even
though it is not a knowledge that is easy to specify, it lets itself be seen from the relation of
the person with space, especially in the spontaneity and motor anticipation that Merleau-
Ponty sees in the permanent contrast between the healthy and the unhealthy subject. The
originality of this understanding is primarily due to the motor insertion of the subject in the
world to which Merleau-Ponty alludes, with the constant comparison between the I can and
the I think or between praxis and gnosis. Perception and movement intermingle at the
origin of experience, and are the basis for later intellectual production.

Even if this is, so to speak, the condition of all knowledge, the thing given to the body, that
which the body "frequents," is far from still being the "pure thing." In the course of La
Nature, Merleau-Ponty says that it is imprisoned "like shavings inside my body. The subject
is carried towards things by its body, but the role of the body is still unconscious." One's
knowledge of the body itself suffers lacunae, and the thing is lost in the haze of individual
life (MERLEAU-PONTY, 1995, p. 108-109).30 The precarious nature of the body's knowledge is not a
negative trait for Merleau-Ponty. Rather, it is the condition of its radicalness or depth, in the
sense that it is from this understanding that every other form of knowledge is derived and
links together.

It is not a matter of performing a kind of cognitional reconstitution; rather, we must accept

those lacunae that express the intermingling of the subject with the world. In Le monde
sensible, with the broadening of perception towards understanding, we understand better
that motor signification is directly related to the life project of the subject, and implicates
the totality of the person. Thanks to this unification, logic and the language of the body
intertwine, not just with the world and its demands, but also with the realm of culture and
expression.

1
This paper was completed thanks to the FONDECYT Research Project N° 1150628 entitled
"Una tercera dimensión de la razón: la propuesta gnoseológica de M. Merleau-Ponty" ["A
Third Dimension of Reason: M. Merleau-Ponty's Gnoseological Proposal"].

3
I use the translation of Donald A. Landes, Routledge, USA, 2012.

4
See Merleau-Ponty (2012, p. 48): "there is a perceived signification that has no equivalent in the
universe of the intellect, a perceptual milieu that is not yet the objective world, and a
perceptual being that is not yet determinate being." See also p. 38-39; 52-53; 58; 81-82.
This same idea is already present in Le primat de la perception et ses conséquences
philosophiques (MERLEAU-PONTY, 1996, p. 13).
5
See Merleau-Ponty (2012, p. 88, 139, note 97), in which there is an explicit reference to certain
unpublished texts by Husserl. These are collected in Ideas II, particularly §§ 38 and 59,
where he links the I can more directly with the movement of the body. For this topic in
Husserl, see Serrano de Haro (1997, p. 185-216).

6
See (MOYA, 2012, p. 367-380; TALERO, 2005
, p. 443-461), and, from the same author, (2006, p.
191-203).

7
See Nagel (2000, p. 483): "In short, the primacy of perception should be understood as a sort of
transcendental inquiry into the conditions of possibility of knowledge."

8
In what follows, I will use the restrictive unhealthy-healthy alternative that Merleau-Ponty
employs, but I bear in mind that today scientific study of disabilities distinguishes numerous
nuances, such as, for example, people in a situation of disability or of restricted mobility,
etc.

9
The Schneider disorder is due to a lesion in the occipital region, occasioned by the impact
of shrapnel; see Merleau-Ponty (2012, p. 128). This case was studied by K. Goldstein, a psychiatrist
and neuro-psychologist. M. Luz Pintos Peñaranda recounts the history of the relations
between Merleau-Ponty and Goldstein in detail in Pintos Peñaranda (2009, p. 41-60).

10
See also Merleau-Ponty (2011, p. 70-73) in which he describes the relations between space and
movement.

11
See Sheets-Johnstone (2011, p. 139, chapter 3). Basing himself on Husserl, the author analyzes the
primacy that movement has in the constitution of the subject and of the I can. He affirms
that movement is the original basis of our subjectivity and that we constitute space and
time in our kinesthetic consciousness of movement. In chapter 10, denying the pre-
eminence that language has acquired in the analysis of the mind, he argues that in the
beginning there was not the word, but rather movement. Life, including human life, in its
most fundamental sense, is not a matter of brains or language. Rather, it is more basically
an issue pertaining to tactile-kinetic powers (SHEETS-JOHNSTONE, 2011, p. 347-348).

12
"He does not have his body available merely as implicated in a concrete milieu, he is not
merely situated in relation to the tasks set by his trade, nor he is merely open to real
situations. Rather, in addition he possesses his body as the correlate of pure stimuli stripped
of all practical signification; he is open to verbal and fictional situations that he can choose
for himself or that a researcher might suggest." (MERLEAU-PONTY, 2012, p. 111).

13 Merleau-Ponty (2012, 245-246)

in which Merleau-Ponty refers to the system that is formed between
the subject and the world.

14
Merleau-Ponty compares the motor reaction of the body with other forms of fit of a
cultural or intersubjective type, for example, responses appropriate for the usages of our
environment or words, attitudes or a tone of voice appropriate for a specific public. The
term that is used to explain this fit is that of "best equilibrium", because these attitudes are
also displayed in the interior of the subject-world system, of which the body is not the only
member. The world is also made up of other subjects, culture, customs, etc. Le monde
sensible refers more explicitly to the cultural facet that was already present in the PP.
15
See also Merleau-Ponty (2008, p. 203-204), where Merleau-Ponty emphasizes the interlacing between
the body and the world, as well as p. 150-151.

16 Barbaras (1998, p. 117)

. In part 2 of this article I will return to this topic.

17
Regarding the use of the term "magic" in Merleau-Ponty, see Dreyfus (2005, note 7): the author
explains that in one way it means that the action occurs without any need to understand
how to carry it out. It also can mean a rapport between the body and consciousness that
eliminates the problem of an explanation of a causal type. Both ways are related, since the
rapport is the "explanation" of the action. In Merleau-Ponty (2011, p. 50), the term "magic"
reappears, referring to the affective dimension of the perceived world: "Le monde perçue
est pleine de régions magiques que affectent les êtres qui y entrent de propriétés imprévues
parce qu'elles son l'habitat d'une catégorie affective."

18
"All life rests on anticipation." (HUSSERL, 1991, II, § 9).

19
The expression is found in Husserl's work Formal and Transcendental Logic, § 59. Merleau-
Ponty makes reference to this text in PP, p. 441, and note 13 (p. 560). I believe that
Emmanuel de Saint Aubert's assertion that the expression is never found in Husserl's work
is wrong. Perhaps, as he himself affirms, Merleau-Ponty did not take it from that specific
text, but rather from the work of Fink, "Das Problem der Phänomenologie Edmunds
Husserls," However, the reference of Merleau-Ponty to Husserl's work is correct. See Saint
Aubert (2005, p. 142-143)
.

20
See note 3 in the article.

21
The descriptions that Merleau-Ponty gives regarding the perception of colour are especially
interesting, both because of the beauty of their expression and of the force that attains
com-penetration with the coloured object. In these descriptions the passive trait reappears:
in some way colour "inundates" or "penetrates" the subject. See especially Merleau-Ponty (2012, p.
218-220)
in which he compares perception with eucharistic communion.

22
See Leder (1990), especially chapter 1 for a deeper exploration of this concealment of the
body.

23 Lefort, (2009, p. 275-292)

See also , where the author refers to this silence of the body.

24
I am grateful for the contributions offered to me on this point by the participants in the
seminar that I presented at the UIC (Universidad Internacional de Cataluña), in January of
2016, within the framework of the Seminars organized by the SARX Research Group.

25
The expression "gift of nature" appears at least three times in PP, see p. 45, 224, and
461. It always alludes to a certain receptivity or passivity, an achievement that is attained
without any effort.

26
It is impossible to deal, in this article, with this aspect of anonymity and the generality of
existence, which needs a broader development. I mention it solely to emphasize the depth
of the interweaving between the subject and the world. ( TRIGG, 2014, p. 255-271).

27
Even though in this article I have deliberately left out The Visible and the Invisible, this
quote from the Working Notes is very pertinent: "What consciousness does not see, it does
not see because of principles; it does not see because it is consciousness. What he does not
see is what prepares the vision of others in it (just as the retina is blind at the point where
the fibres that permit vision are distributed). What he does not see is that which makes him
able to see, his linkage with Being, his corporeal nature, the existentials by which the world
becomes visible, the flesh in which the object is born." (MERLEAU-PONTY, 1960, italics by
author).

28
Merleau-Ponty borrows from psychiatric jargon the concept of "intentional arch," which
takes in the entire life of consciousness: concepts, culture, desires, perceptions, as well as
the temporal dimension. All those aspects that constitute human existence, considered
globally, are unified in the case of the healthy subject, but come apart in the sick person
(MERLEAU-PONTY, 2012, p. 138). Even though he doesn't mention it explicitly, Merleau-Ponty is
referring to one's own hands, my hands , my legs, because there is an unavoidable
reference to the subject that experiences this form of knowledge.

29
This article points out important coincidences between Heidegger's thought and that of
Merleau-Ponty that can be considered in a later study.

30
In PP Merleau-Ponty also speaks of these lacunae and fissures; see p. 349.

http://www.scielo.br/scielo.php?script=sci_arttext&pid=S0101-31732019000100201

philosophy and the body The human body occupies an ambiguous, even a
paradoxical role in cultural categorizations — from the cosmologies of the archaic
societies to the concepts and practices of modern Western civilization. It is the most
obvious and familiar visible ‘thing’ perceived, and yet tends to disappear in the very
act of perception of, or relation to, the outside world. The ambiguous nature of the
body may be formulated in a number of binary oppositions. The body is both the
Same and the Other; both a subject and an object of practices and knowledge; it is
both a tool and a raw material to be worked upon. The body appears to oscillate
between presence and absence, most paradoxically in intense feelings — feelings as
sensations and feelings as emotions. The body seems to be simultaneously the
subject of highly articulated utterance and yet at perpetual risk of disappearing from
our awareness.

As an element in cultural categorizations, the role of the human body goes far
beyond its concrete physical boundaries. It acts as the basic model for cosmological
schemes. This is obvious in the overt anthropomorphism of ‘primitive’ cosmologies.
Less obviously, however, it may be detected in the basic scheme by which the order
of the outside world is related to that of the inside in the macrocosm–microcosm
model which has been so central in Western cultural tradition since Greek antiquity.

Body and …
From the start, the human body as a topic of both religious and philosophical thought
has been structured in terms of distinction and difference — which derives from the
very intellectual act of defining the body as an object of knowledge. Thinking about
the body necessarily implies a vantage point which lies outside the body and is not
identical with it. All the dualistic conceptions of the ‘body and x’ (where x = spirit,
soul, mind, reason, psyche, or self) — prominent in the Western tradition — have
their roots in this basic constellation, which allocates the vantage point to a perceiving
and comprehending consciousness viewing the body from a position which is
logically, if not always spatially, detached.

This consciousness cannot grasp its own end (death), despite being fundamentally
consciousness of death's inevitability. Consequently, even the prehistoric peoples
believed in an aspect distinct from the body and residing in it: a spirit or soul which,
according to an anthropomorphic scheme, was projected to all beings of the world. In
animistic thinking, all these beings (humans, animals, trees, and stones) had a ‘soul’
or ‘spirit’ (anima), and thus they conceived of these beings as ‘living’. However, the
fixed point of anthropomorphism was located in the mystery of the life and death of
the human body. Following E. B. Tylor it could be said that the distinction of body
and ‘soul’ is determined in the relationship between the animate and the inanimate
body. The soul is the outcome of the subtraction between them.

This is the basic distinction which is not yet linked to the distinction of material
versus immaterial. Actually, in animistic thought the spirit was conceived of as a
material (fluid) substance. Traces of this mode of thinking are found even in
the Eucharist formula equating the two distinctions of body/soul and body/blood of
Christ. Such ‘materialism’ is characteristic of the earlier stages of the Christian
tradition — from the early Hebrews, who apparently had a concept of the ‘soul’ but
did not separate it from the body, to the subsequent Old Testament formulations of the
soul relating it to the concept of breath. Breath and blood are the two essential
remainders of the live/dead subtraction, and it is worth noting that the term ‘breath’ in
many languages refers also to ‘spirit’, which, not by accident, also indicates a fluid
consistency.

The basic live/dead distinction does not necessarily imply the distinction of mortal
versus immortal, even though the impossibility of comprehending the discontinuity of
consciousness — while witnessing the decay of the body — involves a strong
tendency to make such a connection. Both the difference between these two
distinctions and their close relationship was manifested in the ancient Egyptian and
Chinese ideas of a dual soul. The Egyptian ka (breath) survived death but remained
near the body while the spiritual ba proceeded to the region of the dead. Similarly, the
ancient Chinese distinguished between a lower, sensitive soul, which disappears with
death, and a rational principle, the hun, which survives and joins the realm of
ancestors.

Even the Old Testament — relating the soul to breath — lacks a distinction of the
ethereal soul and the corporeal body: the strong formulation of a body/soul dichotomy
actually originated with the ancient Greeks and was introduced into Christianity by St
Gregory of Nyssa and StAugustine in the fourth and fifth centuries. In fact the major
Greek influence on Christianity was Plato's and the Neo-Platonists' understanding of
the soul as immaterial and incorporeal substance. This was the junction in which two
of the aforementioned distinctions merged: the duality of material versus immaterial
was linked to the duality of temporal (or discontinuity) versus eternal (or continuity).
This is where the ‘body vs. x’ dualism — x being either soul, spirit (now
immaterialized), or mind — is constituted in a stronger sense; it recurs thereafter in a
variety of formulations within the Western philosophical and religious tradition.

However, this is not to say that the variety of attempts to solve the metaphysical ‘body
vs. x’ dilemma did not include a number of reductionistic ‘solutions’ in which the
other pole of the dualism is brought back to or subsumed under its opposite, which is
thus defined as the primary being or substance. Such solutions were proposed within
both idealist and materialist traditions, but more obviously in the latter (crudely: from
Epicureans to behaviourists). On the other hand the philosophical tradition also
contains attempts to overcome the dualism — while at the same time maintaining it —
by means of a third entity which brings the two poles together, into a unity.
From body-mind dualism …
Thus it was, for example, when the paradigmatic figure of the body/mind dualism,
René Descartes (1596–1650), formulated the absolute distinction between mental and
material substance. The characteristic of the former was consciousness or ‘thinking’
(res cogitans) while the characteristic of the latter was that of occupying space (res
extensa). He still needed a third entity to bring these two poles together: God. Then
again, it should be noted that the Cartesian body/mind dualism defines the latter pole
(mind) in a manner which distinguishes it both from the older idea of an immaterial
soul and from the sense of the term ‘mind’, referring in broader terms to the whole
human psyche, which was formulated and taken into use from the nineteenth century
onwards. Descartes' concept of the ‘mind’ includes the acts of pure intellect and of
will but excludes all the other aspects of the psyche — sensations, imagination, and
emotions — which are located in the body and operate in the interactive and
intermediate realm, bringing the body into a close relationship not only with the mind
but also with the external world. So separate status is given only to the pure thought of
the individual capable of controlling himself through acts of will — and being linked
to the body only via the third entity (God). All the other dimensions of the mind — in
the contemporary, broad sense — are conceived of both as bodily processes, in a
manner corresponding to the materialism of humoral medicine, and as components
involved in the interaction between the mind and body. In this respect Descartes'
interactionist stance differs from some later Cartesian formulations, according to
which there can be no direct interaction between mind and body and any instances of
mind affecting body or vice versa must be explained as a result of God's intervention
on the specific occasion.

Benedict Spinoza (1632–77) modified the Cartesian metaphysics of body/mind

duality by replacing the idea of two distinct substances with the ‘double-aspect
theory’. This supposed a single substance (God or Nature) possessed of infinite
attributes, of which the mental and the material are knowable to human beings.
According to Spinoza, whatever manifested itself under one attribute had its
counterpart in all the others; this implied — when reduced to the two knowable
aspects — that to every mental event there was a precisely corresponding physical
event, and vice versa.

In Spinoza's double-aspect theory (as also in later versions of neutral monism) the
third element, which should dissolve the duality into a unity, is located at the level of
substance, while the dual opposition is transferred to the realm of attributes. However,
such a modification does not solve the problem concerning the relationships between
the defined entities any more than the Cartesian abstract synthesis solved it by means
of God. Yet Spinoza's reformulation was a step towards thematizing the body/mind
relationship — and especially the influence of the body on the mind — more
systematically than Descartes had done.

… to brain-mind reduction
Nevertheless, body/mind duality still remains in such neutral monism. Only if the
common substance is interpreted in materialist terms — reducing mind into matter
and, thus, reducing one of the poles in the duality to the other — is there a ‘solution’
concerning the relationship, albeit a reductionistic one. Here the third (uniting)
element is rendered useless inasmuch as matter and its motion is given the quality of
‘the eternal’, of which mind is a specific temporal manifestation. It is temporal both as
structured materiality, the brain (which we would now regard as a product
of evolution), and as functioning mind (thinking, feeling, etc.). Actually, such a
materialism tends to replace the older psycho-physiological parallelism (represented
by Spinoza) — the body/mind relationship — with a narrower one — a brain/mind
relationship in which states of mind, from emotions to thoughts, are reducible to
motion in the brain. Materialism of this sort is not merely pure philosophical
speculation. It figures in some fields of practical research, pursuing the detection of
ever more subtle one-to-one relationships between the processes of brain and mind,
which are strong in contemporary neuroscience and in biologically-oriented
psychiatry. On the other hand, even though modern neuroscientific research may very
well find new correspondences between the actions of brain and mental phenomena,
the problem of duality remains, simply because there is a systemic difference between
action in the brain and the dynamics of the mind. To take a simple example, even
though all the neurological mechanisms involved in the act of seeing could be defined,
the fact that ‘I see’ still remains an unsolved mystery. Explicating the latter
presupposes an essential shift in register. Specifically, we may speak of the
psychodynamics of the process, which is not only located in the body but at the same
time transgresses the bodily boundaries and is a central aspect of relatedness to other
body/minds (= selves) and thus to the shared ‘third world’, which we may now
(following Karl Popper, 1902–94) characterize as society, culture, and language.

However, even though the mind is re-defined in a broader sense which extends
beyond the Cartesian mind as reflective reason, and even though it is granted a certain
autonomy with a dynamics of its own, the mind/body problem still prevails — in so
far as the mind is still conceived of as self-consciousness and the latter is equated with
the constitution of the subject. Such a conception of the self-conscious subject not
only figures in Cartesian rationalism (‘I think, therefore I am’) but is a much more
general characteristic of the Western philosophical tradition from Plato onwards. Even
more generally, it is a characteristic of the whole Judaeo-Christian tradition and the
ascetic ideal it cherishes, privileging soul over body, mind over senses, duty over
desire.

Psychoanalysis and phenomenology

The latter interpretation was made by Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900), whose
philosophy could be characterized as a critique of the philosophical and religious
tradition which cast the body in an inferior and objectified position relative to the
disembodied soul, mind, and consciousness. Nietzsche pursued the opposite direction
by privileging the body over the soul, or better, by embodying the spirit (Geist) and
arguing that the ‘spiritual’ should be understood as the ‘sign-language of the body’. In
other words, Nietzsche emphasized the bodily origins of the spirit — ‘or the soul or
the subject’ — thus formulating an idea suggestive of the subsequent Freudian
concept of ‘sublimation’. In the same vein, Nietzsche shifted the focus from the
conscious to the ‘dark side’ of the human mind, from the rational to the non- and
irrational layers, thus anticipating the later psychoanalytic interpretation of
the unconscious. Nietzsche's philosophical reflections on the human body, and his
pursuit of going beyond the dualistic schemes in which the body had been imprisoned
in the Western philosophical tradition, remained primarily at a programmatic rather
than a systematic level. Nevertheless his thought has surely had an essential influence
on later theorizing of the bodily themes, especially on the ideas of the French ‘post-
structuralist’ Michel Foucault (1926–84), but the more systematic elaborations related
to the problem of body/mind dualism and aiming beyond it are located primarily in
two, partially interrelated, thought traditions: Freudian psychoanalysis and
phenomenology, the latter especially represented by the work of Maurice Merleau-
Ponty (1908–61).

The psychoanalytical approach from Sigmund Freud (1856–1939) onwards, in

different variations, introduces a new formulation of the human mind which
acknowledges its relative autonomy and its own specific dynamism and, furthermore,
locates within it an ‘other scene’, the unconscious. Relating to the body/mind
problem, the unconscious may be conceived as an intermediate realm constituting a
continuity both between the body and the mind and between the mind/body unity and
its social context or the cultural ‘third world’, especially as shared language.

The former link is emphasized in the formulations introduced already by Freud

himself: ‘The ego is first and foremost a bodily ego; it is not merely a surface entity,
but is itself the projection of a surface.’ In other words, the ego, and thus also the
distinction between the ego and the id (involving the acknowledgment of the
unconscious), are seen as deriving from the bodily being-in-the-world or, as Freud
puts it, ‘from bodily sensations, chiefly from those springing from the surface of the
body’. Thus the formulation both establishes a ‘body–mind’ continuum and
restructures the ‘mind’ by introducing its unconscious components. On the other hand,
the bodily being-in-the-world implies always a relatedness to a socially constructed
reality and thus the unconscious can act also as an opening and link to this shared
realm. This latter link is emphasized especially in a more recent reformulation of the
concept of the unconscious by the French psychoanalyst, Jacques Lacan (1901–81).

The other central attempt to go beyond body/mind duality, and the intellectualist and
empiricist stances it involves, is made by Maurice Merleau-Ponty in his project on the
phenomenology of the body. At the outset Merleau-Ponty rejected not only Cartesian
dualism but also both psychoanalytic and structuralist approaches. In his view —
especially in the earlier stages of his project — psychoanalytic conception of the
human mind (unconscious included) reduced the human body to a mere mental
representation (body-image), neglecting its actual bodiliness. So his starting point was
in the sensory and experiencing body ‘before’ the reflective consciousness, as it were,
from which he proceeded to the more complex form of relatedness of the body-subject
to the world of objects and other people. According to Merleau-Ponty the emergence
of the more complex forms of relatedness did not imply the marginalization of the
human body into a mere abode of the mind but, on the contrary, the ‘higher’
functions, including thought itself, should still be regarded as bodily functions
referring not only to the human brain but to the whole body in its relational being-in-
the-world. Consequently, for Merleau-Ponty the speaking subject is still first and
foremost a body-subject: ‘authentic speech is the presence of thought in the world —
not its garment, but its body.’ In his latest writings, just before his death, Merleau-
Ponty was revising his relationship to psychoanalytic thought, and his formulations
approached the psychoanalytic conception of the unconscious.

Pasi Falk

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Johnson, M. (1987). The body in the mind. University of Chicago Press.
Leder, D. (1990). The absent body. University of Chicago Press.
Merleau-Ponty, M. (1968). The visible and the invisible, followed by working notes.
Claude Lefort (ed.). Northwestern University Press, Evanston.