Husserl Studies 17: 173–193, 2001.

© 2001 Kluwer Academic Publishers. Printed in the Netherlands. 173

Reading Notes and Comments on Aron Gurwitsch’s

The Field of Consciousness*

MAURICE MERLEAU-PONTY
Edited by Stéphanie Ménasé
Translated by Elizabeth Locey and Ted Toadvine

Editor’s Introduction

Merleau-Ponty’s research between the spring of 1959 and the autumn of 1960,
the period during which he began writing The Visible and the Invisible,1 is well
revealed by his handwritten reading notes on the work of Aron Gurwitsch’s
The Field of Consciousness.2
The comments which accompany these reading notes are often placed be-
tween brackets, and the principal subject of these critical comments is the in-
tellectualism of Husserlian phenomenology, insofar as it makes things into pure
objects of perception, without any reality of their own.3 If the thing is reduced
to being the object of perception, what guarantees its identity (in the sense of
being identifiable)? What guarantees that one is truly thinking something of
that thing, and that it is not a matter of a purely nominal imputation lacking
any objectivity whatsoever – that is, which would neither be based on nor re-
fer to any thing in particular? These reading notes pose the problem of the unity
of experience from the side of the object and the subject and raise a discus-
sion of the eidetic method in a very precise manner. They sketch the possibility
of an interrogation of the unity of perceptual experience such as Merleau-Ponty
announces it in Eye and Mind, where no perception would be named by the
thing: as speech speaks to me, the thing in its nature as worldly object – that
is, as spatial unity, as body in the world, as flesh of the world – arouses my
perception. These notes are in keeping with his research on a non-dualistic
philosophy such as is found in The Visible and the Invisible.
We have identified different levels of reading of this text. Merleau-Ponty
reads Gurwitsch, who reads phenomenology and Merleau-Ponty himself.
Sometimes agreeing with Gurwitsch’s criticisms of Phenomenology of Per-
ception,4 at other times Merleau-Ponty defends certain aspects of his philoso-
phy criticized by Gurwitsch. These reading notes allow one to appreciate
Merleau-Ponty’s critical distance with respect to certain ideas from Phenom-
enology of Perception with which he finds himself at odds when reading
174
Gurwitsch’s work. At this moment, Merleau-Ponty expresses explicitly the
theoretical necessity of choosing a new orientation in his work.
It seems to us that there is a link between Merleau-Ponty’s critique of ei-
detic method, the change of direction of his work between the spring of 1959
and the autumn of 1960, and his reading of Gurwitsch – who cites Merleau-
Ponty’s work and has a different perspective than Merleau-Ponty on the con-
tributions and impasses of phenomenology. This text by Gurwitsch appears
to be a critical catalyst and an important step in Merleau-Ponty’s search for
an indirect ontology.5
We have noted, for example, that Merleau-Ponty’s drafts for his book
project (which he had not yet abandoned in May of 1959) often include criti-
cisms of Phenomenology of Perception, and that the philosopher refers sev-
eral times in these drafts to his own reading notes on Gurwitsch.
Merleau-Ponty breaks free from the eidetic method which, according to him,
gives only noema or acts, that is, which turns being into an eidos or a pure
form. He calls into question any philosophy which reduces all problems to
essence, from which all resistances are erased; that is, any philosophy where
all ambiguity is verbal, or which defines the Ego as self-transparence and being
as pure positivity. Against the dualistic Husserlian opposition of noema and
existing thing, Merleau-Ponty proposes a transcendence as crystallization. In
a short note from the file for the book project, he writes: “Transcendence: the
idea that I am hollowing out of the horizon, being coming to itself starting
from its dispersion – instead of saying as Husserl does: the world is my ek-
stase, is my Sinngebung, centrifugal.” He reproaches the eidetic method for
proposing only intellectual systems rather than lived ones, while he himself
seeks a philosophy that gives access to the world.
In his book, Gurwitsch refers repeatedly to Merleau-Ponty’s work, prin-
cipally to Phenomenology of Perception. For example, Gurwitsch devotes
Chapter Five to “Merleau-Ponty’s Theory of Perceptual Organization.”6
Merleau-Ponty must have read the following criticism addressed to him by
Gurwitsch:

The reason Merleau-Ponty has persuaded himself to maintain a distinction

between the thing itself and a system of concordant appearances is, we sub-
mit, his failure to discern the noematic from the noetic aspect of perception
and to pursue consistent and thoroughgoing investigations of the noematic
aspect. Such investigations ultimately lead to the disclosure of the noe-
matic status of all objects, including perceivable material things. On
strictly phenomenological grounds, there is no justification for distinguish-
ing the thing itself from a systematically concatenated group of perceptual
noemata, all intrinsically referring to, and by virtue of their mutual refer-
ences, qualifying, one another (TCC 241; FC 301).

Merleau-Ponty defends the aspect of his philosophy criticized by Gurwitsch,

that is, he conceives of the identity of the thing and its appearance, that the
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thing is actually (and not possibly) in each intentional aiming. This is precisely
what he examines in all of the working notes where he investigates what he
considers to be the impasses of phenomenology.
Gurwitsch’s question, at the beginning of his book, concerns the unity of
experience. More precisely, James’s philosophy of “radical empiricism” pro-
vides a basis for illustrating the following question: what differentiates con-
texts, systems, and orders of existence? What constitutes the particular nature
of each of them? Is it that the difference between orders of existence is only
relative to the type of conjunction which prevails there? Thus the problem
posed by Gurwitsch, on the basis of a characterization of conscious life as
continuous, is that of the conjunction between mental states. In these notes,
Merleau-Ponty’s intention is to interrogate this characterization of conscious
life. How is the unity of a perceptual flux possible? We see, in these notes,
that he elaborates his position by distancing himself from the principle of
identity; he writes that the in-itself, rather than being the origin of cohesion,
is the result of the carnal grasp. Within this philosophical landscape, Merleau-
Ponty grants priority to the notion of field as “perceptual horizon” and inter-
rogates the notion of horizon. He is opposed to the Husserlian idea of unity
understood as figural moment and proposes the idea of “field experience.”
It is known that, for James, continuity is lived in an immediate fashion.
Whereas Merleau-Ponty gives an important place to ambiguity, it does not
follow from this that the immediate presence to the world is distance from
oneself.7 From this point on, all of Merleau-Ponty’s thought is directed to-
ward the search for an other-than-direct ontology.8 This quest for an indirect
ontology is discernible after May 1959 in the different writings which are part
of his project still entitled Être et Monde. Merleau-Ponty’s manuscripts from
1958–59, the time when he is beginning this vast project, contain abundant
references to Gurwitsch’s text and Merleau-Ponty’s own reading notes on it.
These references appeared during the modifications of the “outlines and writ-
ings.” As the reference in the body of the text itself to the Manchester confer-
ence indicates, this research dates from the spring of 1959; hence, it is probably
contemporary with the eight-page abandoned draft from his manuscript, in-
cluded by Claude Lefort as an appendix in The Visible and the Invisible.9
But elements indicating a re-reading of Phenomenology of Perception can
be picked out starting with a January 1959 working note. Here, he suggests,
with regard to the tacit cogito, that it calls into question the transparency of
the self to itself: “This is how I reasoned in Ph. P. . . . . What I call the tacit
cogito is impossible” (VI 224/170). In February 1959, he writes with regard
to the tacit cogito: “In disclosing it as I did in Ph. P. I did not arrive at a solu-
tion (my chapter on the Cogito is not connected with the chapter on speech):
on the contrary I posed a problem” (VI 229/175–176). He also writes: “Husserl’s
error is to have described the interlocking starting from a Präsensfeld consid-
ered as without thickness, as immanent consciousness” (VI 227/173). Claude
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Lefort, in a note in The Visible and the Invisible, calls to our attention that
Merleau-Ponty “already speaks of the Präsensfeld or of the field of presence
in the Phenomenology of Perception, in the chapters devoted to Space and to
Temporality.”10 As for the date of his reading of Gurwitsch, then, the refer-
ence to the field of presence is not determinate. But, as Claude Lefort speci-
fies, “The analysis [of the field of presence in Phenomenology of Perception]
did not at that time lead to a critique of Husserl” (VI 227/173). Consequently,
it is not impossible that Merleau-Ponty turned a critical eye toward Husserl
before having read Gurwitsch. However, what is new in February 1959, is that
Merleau-Ponty condemns the eidetic method for obliterating the problem of
idealization and language.
One could object that Merleau-Ponty does not truly distinguish himself from
Husserl’s phenomenology, since he devotes his 1959–1960 course to transla-
tion of and commentary on two of Husserl’s works. But this course is less
concerned with the eidetic method11 than with the idealization of history and
language. If Merleau-Ponty re-read Husserl in 1959–1960, he probably did
so in order to immerse himself better in his philosophy – and consequently in
order to distinguish himself better from it.12 In the corresponding course sum-
mary, “Husserl at the Limits of Phenomenology,” Merleau-Ponty writes that
“contact with the texts is here the best of remedies.”13 He employs in the same
text the expression “space of consciousness.”14 Merleau-Ponty notes, by way
of self-interpretation, “I can be sure today of thinking the same thought that I
thought yesterday because the wake which it leaves is or could be retraced
exactly by a fresh act of productive thought, which is the only veritable
fulfillment of my recollected thought . . . . There is an encroachment of the
passive upon the active which is reciprocal” (RC 165; IPP 186). “Living
meaning extends far beyond our explicit thoughts, but it is only open and
without an end; it is not infinite. The sedimentation which makes it possible
for us to go further is also responsible for us being threatened by hollow
thoughts” (RC 166-7; IPP 188).
The critique of the eidetic method leads Merleau-Ponty to re-examine what
he had assumed in Phenomenology of Perception: “the ambivalence of the
imaginary and the real,” or even the “ambiguity of the perceived and the im-
aginary.”15 But it also leads him to propose another modality of experience
not separated from an horizon, by contrast with what he calls the establish-
ment of a fixed consciousness. This fixed consciousness is conceived accord-
ing to the identity in which dominates the still-substantialist idea of being and
the idea of knowledge as absolute (in the sense that future completeness is
still an ideal of philosophy).16 It is at that point that the notion of field becomes
primary.
When did Merleau-Ponty read The Field of Consciousness? On a date book
page dated June 13, 1959 (placed by Merleau-Ponty in a folder entitled “book
project”), he writes:17 “See Gurwitsch, Field of Consciousness,” which leads
 177
us to believe that he is already familiar with it. It is certain that, in the manu-
scripts of 1958, there is neither any mention of this text by Gurwitsch nor any
straightforward critique of the eidetic method. We would only go so far as to
say, in the current state of our research, that references to Gurwitsch often
appear in Merleau-Ponty’s modifications of his plans for Être et Monde. We
would also note that this text by Gurwitsch, which Merleau-Ponty could have
read during the winter of 1958–59,18 plays a role in the change of orientation
in Merleau-Ponty’s work starting in June of 1959.
In the summary of the “definitive outline” where he refers to the “critique
of the analysis of sound in Gurwitsch (notes, p. 7)” or again in the margin of
a section on the notion of field, specifically with respect to the visual field as
Offenheit of the Umwelt, Merleau-Ponty refers back to the reading notes on
Gurwitsch’s book. In the same summary of the definitive outline of Être et
Monde, we read: “To critique the notion of anticipation: it is necessary to have
enjambment against eidetic method: it transforms the Offenheit into ideality,
it masks transcendence, that is, the crystallization of the indefinite into some-
thing.” Against the eidetic method, which he deems positivistic, Merleau-Ponty
proposes the notion of horizon: “Absurdity of an essence of perceptions which
would make them open,” “the eidetic image masks what one must take into
account: the possibility in principle of ‘taking a step,’ ” and, there again, he
refers to his reading notes on Gurwitsch. Merleau-Ponty again refers to the
notes when discussing the concept of opening and un-fulfillment, describing
it as caricatured by the eidetic method which converts it into negation and
possibility. In April 1960, he again cites his working notes on Gurwitsch, and
they figure once again in the work schedule during his summer 1960 vaca-
tion in Aix.
What happened between the spring and summer of 1959 and the autumn
of 1960, the moment when Merleau-Ponty resumes the writing of The Visible
and the Invisible? Merleau-Ponty wrote “Eye and Mind.” He looked over the
old texts for Signs and wrote its preface. He prepared two courses, one de-
voted to commentary on and reading of Husserl,19 the other on the body and
life.20 And he prepared several conference papers, notably the one in Manches-
ter on the first of May 1959, and that on Bergson for 19 May 1959.21 The writ-
ings, preparatory drafts and sketches, between the spring of 1959 and the fall
of 1960, reveal – not thematically but by the meeting of theoretical impasses,
which in a way he takes into account in The Visible and the Invisible – his
course of research which leads him to modify the writing of his book project
when he takes it up again in October 1960. In this period, between June 1959
and October 1960, he abandoned the concluding section of the first draft,
“Preobjective Being: The Solipsist World” (published as an Appendix by
Claude Lefort, VI 207-216/156–162). This text was replaced by two succes-
sive drafts, from October and November, of the chapter “Interrogation and
Intuition.”22
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We present these notes as found in the papers of the author, transcribed from
a small bundle of handwritten pages.23 We have occasionally modified the
punctuation. The bold numbers in the body of the text correspond to the au-
thor’s pagination. Illegible words are indicated by [?] and are occasionally
preceded by the possible word.
We express our gratitude to Mme. Merleau-Ponty who has authorized this
publication.

Stéphanie Ménasé

The Text

(1) What I say differs from the radical empiricism of James24 (cf. Mach25) who
supposes that “pure experience” is “neutral” between the psychic and the
physical; for me, it is not a question of neutrality, but of radical critique of
“psychic” and “physical.” James differs from Mach because for him the con-
text which determines membership in the “physical” or “psychic” is not the
point of view of the subject, but is itself also given with the pure experience
which never presents itself in the original neutrality.
The “figural moment”26 which makes a great many stars or a “crowd” ap-
pear to us is, Husserl says, an idioteron pros hêmas.27 I would say: it is an ex-
perience of field: multiplicity without colligation is only possible through the
field. For Gurwitsch: impossibility of an intuitionist philosophy which deferred
idealization: it is incorporated, he says, to the lived itself. I ground the cohe-
sion of form on the field – but to better define the field: a diacritical system?
a system of equivalences? All of these are intellectual and not lived equiva-
lents. There is no other definition of field than the description of perceptual
horizon, of the living system of the “vertical world.”
The experiments of Ternus28 on the stroboscopic movement of figure (in
these two presentations certain objectively identical points are not identified):
(Gurwitsch, p. 104) {FC 120–121} = perceptual identity is not identity of an
element, it is identity of a whole, identity for the look which scans the group-
ing and not for consciousness of synopsis, composing on the basis of points,
identity before the plane of the in-itself, identity of transcendence: the in-it-
self, the identical, the identifiable = result of carnal grasping of the whole in
its lateral unity, in its cohesion, and not first in relation to this cohesion.
Moreover: generality of something (generality which is essential to it, which
is not secondary or derived: one sees the cross moving toward the right, one
does not see two crosses from which one would derive by synthesis the gen-
eral cross common to the two visions. The “something” is general not in the
sense of the hen epi pollôn, but of a generality that is primary, originary, be-
fore the multiplicity.29 It is the generality of Wesen (verbal, active), of that
 179
which west and acts. Like the world, this generality is before the one and the
multiple.
The notes of a melody “each one in the other” (Bergson).
Husserl distinguishes significations, Sachverhalt, things, perceptual noemas,
etc. This entire bifurcated description does not at all help us to understand the
life of consciousness. I see only slight differences between thing, perceptual
noema (thing under such-and-such aspect), Sinnendung, Sachverhalt, etc.30
Language and perceptual matrices (Gurwitsch, 147) {FC 177} in opposi-
tion to the algorithm – noema-thing split (148–150) {FC 178–181} – no longer
centrifugal consciousness but centripetal being (151) {FC 182–183} – idea-
tion, eidetic variation, for example coherence of eidos – [the] sound [is] ideal
for H., gestaltist for me (157–159) {FC 189–193} – the hinge essence (160–
161) {FC 193–195} – there is a leibhaft of the essence (158) {FC 191}.
(2) Absurdity is not non-sense. The “sense” defined by H. as propositional
unity (161–162) {FC 195–196} (and the antepredicative?)
Gurwitsch, like all rationalist-analytics, analyzes the Gestalthafte into “noe-
matic structures,” the thing into “references to other perceptions” [where are
these references? There are none: there is adumbration as cut-out from . . . as
integrated to a field] (165) {FC 202–203}. The eidetic method is responsible
for the intellectualism of H.: it is this method which causes perspectivism and
the open infinite of the thing, which are the contrary of an ideal truth, to be-
come unified. And that the problem “how can that which is open be there, crys-
tallized?” (problem of transcendence) is masked (166) {FC 204}. The possible
founded on the Wesen in the sense of eidos – instead of being founded on the
verbal Wesen, (167) {FC 205}. The notion of Weltmöglichkeit would be just
the opposite. Eidetic law imposing on incomplete, thus open, perceptions of
being. Is it essence which imposes this on them: essence, i.e., the principle of
identity? i.e., the possibility posed by nominal definition? (169) {FC 207–208}
In reality essence is an in-variant, i.e. it is a hinge and not a quiddity. It is a
“something” and not a positive then, even when it is a question of the essence
of the thing, the essence is divergence and not possession of a positive. The
incompleteness of the thing is not a positive signification, included in a posi-
tive essence, – it is incompleteness. P. 170: Found the evoked “possible per-
ceptions” on the sensible cohesion of the process (170) {FC 209} and on the
“typical structure” of possible modes of variation – Gurwitsch understands
that as “continuity” (a little like Bergson) [but continuity by fusion would never
take place without transcendence]. [The transition synthesis in H., founding
the implicit possible on the “I can” of the body, on the lived cohesion, is pre-
sented under the patronage of the eidetic vision, – of which it is the contrary.
Can one have eidetic vision of an essence which is essence of flux? Is there
an essence of flux if the flux is pre-intentional? Is the essence not to be con-
ceived here as experience of that which resists it? It will still be necessary to
account for the advent of the ideal (which I will do by language).] Then once
180
again (172) {FC 211}, the foundation of the unity is noematic: it is the noema
which causes the Einseitigkeit of the adumbration to be “both experienced and
overcome” (173) {FC 212}. [= a positive noematic ground is supposed by H.
as condition of the consciousness of incompleteness – Positivism – I am against
it, consciousness of incompleteness is not consciousness of completeness =
it is Offenheit. Concretely, moreover, impossible to compose the thing thus:
adumbrations + noema (aspect of the thing at an instant or for a sense) + the
thing itself. The adumbrations already have the value of “something,” the thing
remains oneiric. In a quale, there is as much reality as in a “thing.”]
The “references” to other possible perceptions understood as “anticipations.”
H. will say later Vorhabe. [H. does not see that the sensible world is movement
that is congealed, crystallized, but maintained in the thickness of Gestalthafte.]
[An organism is preserved time [temps en conserve].] Error of H.: to believe
that the identity of the thing results from the Einstimmigkeit of the appear-
ances (that is reflexive). It does not result from it, it precedes it. The unity of
the thing is not constructed on appearances: it is implicated in each partial
appearance, which would be other if it was not part of the thing (for example:
a sound as temporal being).
Gurwitsch: “the preeminent task of philosophy . . . accounting for objects
of every type and kind and for every conceivable sense of objectivity in terms
of subjectivity” (137) {FC 165}. (No).31
(3) Open infinity of perceptual process. Gurwitsch presents it as unful-
fillment here, – and in other places sees that there is no unfulfillment without
reference to a term that he then conceives as noematic. [In fact it is necessary
to have a term in order to have opening, but a term which would not be clo-
sure: it is the horizon.] [Gurwitsch does not see that, if the “thing” needed to
be prepared by this process where real and irreal change places, then there
would never be a “thing,” the zone of the real, of the sensible, would itself be
able to crystallize only by this same consciousness of “something” figured that
one would want to deduce from it.] Gurwitsch allows that the Einstimmigkeit
is more than non-contradiction, is “continuation” and Übergang. And that the
Gestalt had seen that, – had seen that better than Husserl. It is the “growth” of
the system “in accordance with its own style and type” (177) {FC 217} = “good
continuation” of the gestaltists, “Gestalt-coherence” (177) {FC 217}. The
Gestalt, finally, did not see that in the perception of the thing itself this coher-
ence is “open” and not “closed” (217) {FC 177}. “Each single perceptual
noema realizes in its own specific manner the whole noematic system” (178)
{FC 218}. (Against the idealism and dualism of Husserl) The thing is in each
noema, not potentially but actually. The potential “empty intentions,” around
the noematic core, are “context.”32
(4) The Abschattungen are “interwoven” [s’entrelacent] (180) {FC 221}.
Husserl juxtaposes the “originary presenting” and adequate “act,”33 – and the
“opening” of which it was a question above, without saying how they fit to-
 181
gether. They cannot fit together because the opening is conceived negatively
(un-fulfillment).
“Account for the object in terms of subjectivity” (182) {FC 223} – Refuse
the idea of “presumptive” existence of the world founded on the possibility
of explosion and splitting up: such an explosion replaces the perceived with
its truth, which is the resistant core of the world, which is not presumptive
(doubtful, possible nonexistence) which is facticity-rationality.34
The world is not only plausible, it is certain in fact, only a doubt is con-
ceivable, there is “possibility in principle of Nichtseins” (Gurwitsch, 184) {FC
225}35 [this is linked to the positivism of “consciousness”]. Because the merely
presumptive existence of things is due to the fact that the perceptual process
is inexhaustible, open [the opening conceived negatively]. The infinite proc-
ess can however be conceived as the idea in the Kantian sense. The thing is
such an idea. [The very notion of the idea in the Kantian sense, – destined
to “close” the opening of the perceived thing, of the world, is in Husserl
Gegenabstraktion of the opening conceived negatively. The two notions are
destined to be superseded by that of horizon.] [The Kantian idea, as “subjec-
tive,” is solidary with the antinomous thought “objective” finitude-“objective”
infinity.36 It apparently supersedes it, but not truly, because the “subjective”
implies the objective.]
(5) Husserl clarifies his purely negative conception of the “opening” by
introducing the notion of the horizon: “unfamiliarity is a mode of familiar-
ity” (195) {FC 240}. The “references” are “recognition [prise de conscience]
. . . of the interior horizon” (196).37 The interior horizon is ambiguous, but this
is not pure indetermination: “As to the type itself which is realized, it is un-
ambiguous” {TCC 196; FC 242}.
The pure description: difficult: the phenomenologist alters the phenomenon
“by the sole fact that he raises questions” about it (198).38 It is the phenom-
enon that one must interrogate, not oneself – therefore: Befragung = to re-
perceive. The interior horizon: the possibilities which it opens do not entail
privilege in favor of one of them: which does not mean that they have equal
verisimilitude: it is not a question of verisimilitude: here these are pure
possibilities, without motives [motifs]. There it is the difference between “open
possibility” and “problematic possibility” (Husserl) Erf. und Urteil39 (199) {FC
246} [ field]. [A field: we do not know which shore it will be, but it will be a
shore. One would pass from the field to the being of metaphysics in saying:
there is a being of which the sole possibility is the reality, which is entirely
determined as soon as one states its scope of possibility.] [Generality then is
essential to the field structure]. The “open possibility” is not nothing. To be
sure of this, it is enough to think of what it excludes [Cf. my idea of history as
excluding certain solutions].
The phenomenon of horizon exists for the noetic side as well as for the
noematic side (i.e., the correlate of the horizon, the consciousness of horizon,
182
is “intertwining” [entrelacement] of Erlebnisse, for example of those which
give time. “One grasps and realizes a meaning, one apprehends an object”
(216) {FC 266}. The only role of the signs is to transmit a signification of
which they are not a part [this is contrary to the definition of poetry] [my idea
of presence, or of figured World = there is of that world only a poetic knowl-
edge]. For Husserl, in perception, hyletic elements are not signifiers [I reverse:
the very signifiers of language function as perceptual hylê]. The hyletic givens
enter into the definition of the thing itself because it is only a systematic link-
age of noemas. Husserl seems to attribute to the interpreting noesis (dualist
theory) interior horizon, the hyletic givens remain the same in two ambigu-
ous perceptions (mannequin-man).
Absurd to want to analyze a horizon in terms of noesis and noema, con-
sciousness of . . . and object. The horizon40 is not extension of the zone of clear
vision where these structures are realized: it is the milieu of these crystallized
structures, their pre-intentional Worin. The Erlebnisse separate from one an-
other and separate from their ob-ject starting with the horizon as concretion
of their explicit series and with corresponding “noemas.” The horizon is to
my here and now what my birth or my death is to my life: it is the total being
where differentiation arises and dedifferentiation falls back – Take seriously
this idea that the world is around me, not in front of me. The interior horizon
is organized: for example it is for a movement its “total configuration” [one
should add: marked not by an enveloping and exterior view, but by + + meet-
ing points of principal lines, supports or pivots of [the edifice]. The interior
horizon, which creates the unity of the perceptual noema, is cohesion of form,
reciprocity of qualification. (6) The “limitation” of the present perceptual
noema is due to its insertion in the interior horizon [therefore finally the thing
founded on consciousness of horizon].
It is necessary to reinterpret intentionality (228) {FC 284–285}. Un-
bestimmtheit bedeutet . . . Bestimmbarkeit fest vorgeschriebenen Stils” (Ideen,
p. 80).41 Interlocking (like in a plant) of perceptions in each other (226) {FC
281–282} corresponding to the cohesion of noematic form [but the noesis-
noema distinction is not compatible with this lived cohesion]. Every percep-
tion “supersedes itself” (Husserl).42
The “style” as solution beyond the implicit and the explicit (228) {FC 284–
285}. The explication, Gurwitsch says, does not change the explicated. Yes,
it does – It makes the thing caved out from Being (worin) pass into a thing
constituted by matter + Auffassung, etc. It is necessary to rework the very
notion of style as speech of being, and not human construction. Horizon = pos-
sibility (228) {FC 285}. Horizon and I can (which is [superior to]43 de facto
ability (229) {FC 286}.
Reflection in memory = one of these possibilities “each single appearance
thus realizes in its place the entire system” (230) {FC 288}. In order to con-
stitute the thing itself, it is necessary to have more than the Ineinander and
 183
the formal cohesion of the Abschattungen: in addition, it is necessary that the
perceptions by which the thing presents itself be configurations of each other,
fulfillment of one another. And as fulfillment is never total or complete, it is
on the actual, carried out fulfillment that all our certitude about the thing and
being rests, i.e. on “contingency” (232) {FC 290}. Problem of perceptual
substantiality.
Husserl,44 “Per-ception” is “ex-ception” (Husserl, Ideen, 62;45 Erfahrung
und Urteil § 24 and 74) Ricoeur translation.
The passage from the present to the immediately-retained past conditions
the passage of an element, from the position of theme, to that of element of
thematic field, – which adds to the 1st the cohesion of material contents, the
continuity of context, a relation of “relevancy” – Phenomenal temporality is
the necessary but insufficient condition of every act of consciousness. This
does not contradict the fact that the identity of a musical phrase or a geometrical
theorem (referring back to a musical context or a geometrical system) in no
way consists in a remembrance of acts, that the context is not a temporal phe-
nomenon: it is a noematic phenomenon. No contradiction because, while a
necessary condition, temporality is not a sufficient condition of the act of
consciousness where the noema appears. The temporality of an act which
endures does not create the unity of the act: it comes entirely from the noema.
The temporality of acts of consciousness and the atemporality of noemas and
contexts are correlative and not contradictory.
Correlative? It is a relativist notion: no noema without phenomenal tem-
porality and vice versa. Only this eidetic analysis of correlations remains pro-
foundly unintelligible: because there is noematization of flux in reflection
and there are flowing noemas (Zeit). And the experience of temporal beings
(sounds), is the experience of a time which is not mine, but its own, primarily
(7) its own, constitutive of the unity of “noema” and indistinct from it, and
reciprocally in the sound my temporality sediments itself, I am the sound, that
is constitutive of hearing it, of its sensoriality. Before the “correlation” dis-
closed by the eidetic consciousness, there is therefore an inherence which
founds it, and which is the belonging of the two series to Being.

Cogito:

Musical note:46 The im Griffe haben47 emanates from the Ego (?)48 and it
emanates from it in the now. However, it is not focused on this now, but, across
it, on the entire note, retended and protended, the zones of pro- and re-tention
present a modification: noch im Griffe behalten.49 The correlative of this whole
im Griffe haben is the sole theme, the note. “Identity of the noema” (278) {FC
350}. Following from this identity, the im Griffe haben with its protentions
and retentions has the unity of an act. It is to this entire act that the form Cogito
184
belongs. The im Griffe behalten is absolutely distinct from simple retention:
the latter would retain only a marginal consciousness of what has just hap-
pened, without any activity of the Ego. Phenomenological time flows accord-
ing to rigid laws independent of the Ego (the present passes into the retained,
the retained into the retained of the retained, the retained of the retained into
the retained of the retained of the retained, and during this time the future
passes into the present). [But from whence comes this eidos of time? How is
it possible? From whence do we know that it should be this way? And because
this phenomenological flux is selbsterscheinung, how to juxtapose conscious-
ness of time and egological consciousness? Here the eidetic method reveals
itself as an obstacle to constitution, which requires the connection of “layers.”]
For Husserl, the zone of the Ego is the thematic zone, and the marginal zone
is without Ego.
For Gurwitsch one cannot maintain that the Ego can, all by itself, focus the
im Griffe behalten without any help coming from material contents; it is not
the Ego which produces the articulation. Thematic field – marginal zone which
produces these two dimensions. Gurwitsch accepts Sartre’s thesis on the non
Egological conception of consciousness and makes of im Griffe behalten and
of im Griffe haben not acts of the Ego, but noetic correlates of “theme” and of
“thematic field.” On the other hand, Gurwitsch is in agreement with Husserl
for composing the marginal zone of pure phenomenal temporality.
Coherence of form between elements of the theme; unity of context (unity
by “relevancy”) between these and the thematic field or between elements of
the thematic field.50 Purely temporal conjunction between the thematic field
(with its theme) and its margin: simultanity and succession of acts. Idea that
the theme is relatively independent of the thematic field, Pythagorean theo-
rem of its “position” as conclusion or as principle in relation to other propo-
sitions. [The theme is conceived as an essence. In reality, there is no definition
which could be primary. They are all equivalent.]
Gurwitsch considers the figure and ground structure as “specialization” of
“more general notions” of the theme and the thematic field (283) {FC 356–
357}. [Does not see that, in reality, it is the reverse: that we can understand
the intellectual context, the limitation of the intellectual intending, only by
the phenomenon of field as englobing theme and thematic field, by the phe-
nomenon of field as symbolic system and relation to Being. He does not at all
see that, in order to advance the problem a step, it is not enough to character-
ize the thematic field as implicit: implicit means nothing or means sedimen-
tation, that is, expression.] Gurwitsch claims that the figure is transferable just
as a proposition can appear in different contexts [Absurd: it is the ground (as
level) which makes the transposition possible. The theme has no sense with-
out this organization of field.] Gurwitsch attributes the solidity of the theme
to unity by formal coherence and makes it the condition of unity by “relevancy”
(284) {FC 358}. The thematic field gives a positional index to the theme by
 185
perspective and orientation (287) {FC 361}. The theme = central noematic
nucleus; the thematic field (which gives “light,” “orientation,” “positional
index”) = noematic character. [Yes, the proposition, the Pythagorean theorem
are otherwise unified and more than the perceptual Etwas. But not the inven-
tive thought, where the Etwas is always transcendent. Gurwitsch does not see
that the very existence of an eidetic field, of thought, implies use of sedimen-
tation, poses the problem of the grounding of identification and the use he
makes of spatio-temporal structures as permanent analogy.]
To the thought that foresees the consequences of a proposition Gurwitsch
assigns the consciousness of “liberty to ‘go a step further.’ ”51 He analyzes this
consciousness, noetically, as that of a reference of the retained and protained
to the present as their originary mode, as that of a property in principle which
makes of every act either an actual or a potential cogito, either an actual or a
potential theme. [Gurwitsch does not realize that to “go a step” supposes in
thought an entire analysis, just as it does in space: it is not an efficacious act
of bare freedom, it is the use of the system of linguistic equivalencies without
which not only effectuation but even the initiative of “thinking” are not un-
derstood (as motor initiative): it is not first of all a question of identifying, it
is a question of deploying the space of consequences. Moreover: is the present,
as theme or noema, the originary mode? Is there not also an originarity of the
retained as retained which is irreducible?]
Solicitation of the Ego by the givens, with more or less force. [This very
idea, and that of the noise which keeps one from thinking, supposes a field
where perception and thought are rivals, a narrowness of thought.] The hori-
zon for H. is simply of the possible present, potential themes [but this misses
the essential: the analysis of the reality of this possible, – of sedimentation]
(292) {FC 367}, the contour, crystallized possible.
The field is a universal “formal invariant” (299) {FC 379}. (Why? Simple
fact? or essence?) [Anyway, if such is the field, this description of noema has
repercussions on that of “consciousness”.] The thematic field has “remote” re-
gions. [What can be meant by a remote thought?] (299) {FC 379} The context
continues on indefinitely, for example an arithmetical proposition refers to the
entire system of numbers. That is what makes an Einstellung (setting). This group
to which (8) a context refers is an “order of existence” (301) {FC 381}.
Objective time is the constitutive “relevancy”-principle of reality in gen-
eral (302) {FC 382}. “Not differently from phenomenal time, objective time
too has an horizonal structure” (305) {FC 385}. [What could an objective ho-
rizon be?] (Husserl, Erfahrung, § 38). We can “in principle” reopen the linked
retentions and rejoin by a continuous series a past and our present “however
empty and obscure the time-interval . . . might appear at the outset . . . . we
concatenate any segment of our past with any other segment and also with
the actual present” (305) {FC 385–386}. Due to “the possibility of such
concatenation,” there is a history of my life. [What does in principle signify?
186
Of what possibility is it a question? It is saying too much and too little; too
much: this continuity is never realizable, that is not only a de facto impossi-
bility, it is impossibility de jure, the present itself is lacunary, transcendent;
too little: the possibility in question is grounded on structure, hinges and set-
ting of my life. The horizons (and perspectivism) are not herds of individual
possibles. Time is an effective system, and not a source of Zeitpunkte simul-
taneously individual and pure noemas – Flaw of eidetic analysis.]
Gurwitsch the intersubjectivity of memory: someone recounting his or her
life, objective time where mine is already inserted receives this story, grows
larger and in consequence the space of our life grows larger in order to con-
tain the Umwelten of others even if they are located in “places” that we have
never seen. For Husserl, there is no spatial relation between objects except
when they coexist in objective time (Husserl, Erfahrung und Urteil, 182–
183).52 Thus through the objectification of time we have a single spatio-tem-
poral “order of existence:” the Lebenswelt (306) {FC 387}. [1) Is objective
space derived from objective time? Can there be temporality without spatiality?
Retention without a Ürstiftung of something that is spatial? 2) Is there good
reason to constitute the Lebenswelt as product of anterior layers (subjective
time-objective time-objective space Lebenswelt)? Or else are analysis and
reflection only means of distancing [d’écarter] (subjective time, objective time,
etc., in turn) to see how all that holds together? In this case Lebenswelt is not
constituted. No relations of eidetic priority – reflexive between the layers, or
between the “subjective” and the “objective:” there are rays of everything at
once in Presence.]
Objective time = die erste und Grundform, die Form aller Formen,53 the
presupposition of all unifying relations = all the Erscheinungen are Zeit
gebende, und zwar so, daß alle gegebenen Zeiten sich in eine Zeit einfügen
(307)54 (Erfahrung und Urteil, 191) [= are cut out in time.] H. declares that
objective time is die Form jeder möglichen Welt objektiver Erfahrung (ibid).55
What does he know of it? It is not because eidetic intuition gives time as in-
variance of the world and of experience that we can universalize in the name
of essences. That would be a simple nominal definition: I call world a whole
structured according to time. If we want more than nominal definition and
Wortbedeutung, we must add it, it is essential: “now, the world of fact of which
(9) I formulate the invariants is also model of Being because every being is
accessible to me only by my Erfahrung and it is operant in my experiential
contact with it.” This world as Being, the experience and the In der Welt Sein
as foundation of the idealization “world,” is the Lebenswelt, which thus is not
constituted, which is the source of the eidos world. The question: does phe-
nomenology entail the reversal from what is primary for us (Lebenswelt) to
what is primary in itself (in the essences, namely: the constitution of the sense
“world”)? This would be the very negation of phenomenology. There is no
sense in constituting the Lebenswelt: this is to destroy it.
 187
Orders of autonomous existence:

For example, the imaginary and the real: “Excluded from reality are the prod-
ucts of imagination”56 (A. Gurwitsch, 307) {FC 388}: They are “quasi-world”
and “quasi-time” [first of all, why this imitation of the real by the imaginary
if it is autonomous? Then: are the boundaries of the real and the oneiric sharply
defined, or are they “in tatters”?57 Is the time of history and of myth “real” or
“imaginary”? The time of others?]. For Gurwitsch the eidê, being obtained
by free imaginative variation, are excluded from reality; they form systems
independent of reality and each other: “system of colors, of musical notes, the
number system, any system of geometry, or any multiplicity . . . in the math-
ematical sense” (310) {FC 390–391}: these are autonomous “worlds” which,
unlike imaginary ones, are “atemporal” problems of ideation. [The “system
of sounds” with its fixed dimensions (like the system of universal grammar
of which Husserl speaks in the LU)58 is in reality a cultural product (proof:
generalization of music – non-western music – there is no autonomy and
atemporality of the eidôn – there is another temporality. What philosophy must
recapture is not an eidetico-reflexive system, it is the cradle of every system:
the amorphous sound, containing all the possibilities of Bildung, existential
eternity, the active wesen, not as a destiny or a limit to our initiatives, but on
the contrary as an ens realissimum, the sound of Offenheit, gathering into it-
self the Unendlichkeit of Cartesian being.]
Existence, says Gurwitsch, does not confuse itself with contextual relations
which are not the noema, but only the “noematic characters” [correlation
between essentialism of the noema and conception of the existent as absolute
individual. Being is not a predicate: Kant]. Nevertheless: Existenz eines
Realen hat . . . nie und nimmer einen anderen Sinn als Inexistenz, als Sein
im Universum, im offenen Horizont der Raum-zeitlichkeit59 (323)60 “The world-
phenomenon is an extension of the theme-thematic field-structure in the form
this structure has in sense-perception” (Gurwitsch 324) {FC 406}61 [Yes and
No. Certainly not if the thematic field and the theme are conceived as noemas,
the implicit as the compressed actuality, the orders of existence as eidetic
systems. But in Husserl there is the Ineinander, the generalized Einfühlung,
the psychic as “other side” of the body.]
Gurwitsch cites Goldstein62 and his idea of biological existence as not be-
longing to anything that one can produce or observe in the body, – as an ex-
ample of orders of autonomous existence, of closed eidetic and noematic
systems. This is a bad (10) way to understand it: on the contrary, Goldstein
here gives the example of what the Quersein could be, the transversal being of
totality, its spectacle-being, its transcendence, its pivot being or Zwischensein,
not frontal, not of figure, but of field (325) {FC 407–408}. [The critique of
the organism by Ruyer63 is misunderstanding of this inter-being, interworld
being, inverse being. The access to what in this sense belongs to Sein des
188
Organismus (326, cited in Goldstein 244),64 it is also access to a method of
“models” of “symbols” (Gurwitsch, 326) {FC 408}, that Gurwitsch has only
the fault of confusing with the order of the eidôn. The method of models or of
systems makes explicit a Relevanz [the models are fixed configurations but
not “killed”: the model serves to note the divergences and is not positive in-
duction – Cf. physical theory]. [Stupid operationalism closes the model on
itself. To understand science as thought by divergence, negative thought]. To
reflect on the Relevanz, the “pertinence” = not belonging to the eidos but
belonging to a style, implication in a vortex, reference to a “level.”
Absurdity of the eidetic-thematic-reflexive method: a real is linked to space-
time, a proposition, no [there is a latent content of propositions, – where one
must not project all that absolute spirit would think of it, – but even so which
situates it in the history of culture]. Take account however of the meta-
historicity which sedimentation introduces. Gurwitsch: in spite of the diver-
sity of ontologies, there is all the same “unity by analogy” between them, cf.
Aristotle (Tricot, Aristotle Metaphysics, 1048).65 For Aristotle the principle
of analogy is substance, and all the other senses of being are derived: essence
and accident, truth and falsity, in potentiality and in entelechy. Gurwitsch does
not support this, but there is for him a problem of (on hê on); all the same,
it is necessary to distinguish the organic fact and the idea of the organism,
intramundane existence or entity and the world. Physics in the living is to the
entity what the organism is to being. Predications concerning designation are
the Existenzialprädikationen (Husserl, Erfahrung und Urteil, § 74) by oppo-
sition to the Wirklichkeitsprädikationen. And this genre of predications inter-
venes not only in the “real” world, but also in the imaginary quasi-world. Inside
of a fiction, a new play, there are “crossed-out,” unfulfilled anticipations.66 In
the real, the crossed-out does not become imaginary, but other possible real
therefore existence on nonexistence [is different] from reality on fiction. [And
the imaginary is not in a simple relation with the “real.”] When we have to
create real objects, we do not confront them with the concept of reality
(Husserl, Erfahrung und Urteil, § 74a). Similarly when we live in the imagi-
nary, imaginary objects are not given as such. Imaginary and real are phenom-
enally present only as coming and going. Without this, the existential indices
of the real and of the imaginary remain “implicit,” “mute” (330) {FC 413}.
[Hence]67 generalized ontology where real and imaginary are two provinces
and not in a relation of positive and negative, of what is and of what is “only
thought” – (11) Ontology of the Vorsein. In this ontology, it is the “play” which
informs us about the “world” and not necessarily the “world” which informs
us about the “play” as its “copy.” Like the play, the “world” is the invisible
on visible stage uprights. Simply put, in the world, signification descends all
the way into the visible, there is a principle of incarnation (significations sus-
ceptible to incarnation are of unlimited number) and the incarnation appears
total. The play on the other hand bares the existentials (that the world, in prin-
 189
ciple, tends to ignore) and reveals that the “negative” is still a part of the
“world” – according to this it shows us, in the transparency of the quasi, the
very structure of the world. And philosophy is the reconquest of the world as
oneirism. The power of “irrealizing” oneself in the imaginary supposes at least
that one can live in the symbolic (which is not non-being). Speak not of an
ambivalence of the real and the imaginary: understand (true ambiguity) that
they are both cut from the same cloth: the cloth of Vorsein, of being that is
mute, syncretic, egocentric, prereflexive.
Gurwitsch: lived temporality is “inarticulated”68 [but for him this means:
reference to a canonical thetic consciousness, – and not impossibility of the
synthesis of time]. There are other inarticulated spheres: the body [that
Gurwitsch describes as consciousness of body, without warning us that it is
not a question of consciousness of facts but of a general consciousness by
divergence]. From there, Gurwitsch constitutes the apperception of myself as
existing in the world. Our consciousness of the world is intertwined with that
of the body which, itself, is in the world and stirs up acts of consciousness in
objective time and objective space and integrates them there. The nature of
consciousness “is not at all affected by this participation”69 “Bewußtsein, in
‘Reinheit’ betrachtet, (hat) als ein für sich geschlossener Seinzusammenhang
zu gelten . . . als ein Zusammenhang absoluten Seins, in den nichts hinein-
dringen, und aus dem nichts entschlüpfen kann” (Husserl, Ideen, §49, p. 93).70
[This autopositing, insertion into objective time by objectivating appercep-
tion, this subsumption of the (constituting) consciousness under itself, this
absolutely incomprehensible objectivation by it. It is instead a question as in
Ideen II,71 of an undivided coexistence of all, of an inherence to being.]

Maurice Merleau-Ponty

Notes

* This work originally appeared as “Notes de lecture et commentaires sur Théorie du

champ de la conscience de Aron Gurwitsch,” Revue de Métaphysique et de Morale, n. 3
(1997): 321–342. This translation was funded, in part, with support from the Office of
Graduate Studies and Research at Emporia State University, and we would like to thank
Mme. Marianne Merleau-Ponty and Presses Universitaires de France for authorizing its
publication. We also thank John Ellis for verifying our transliterations of Greek characters.
Unidentified notes in the body of the text are those of the editor, though we have sup-
plied cross-references to English translations of texts whenever possible. Author’s notes,
usually marginal comments, are identified as “Author’s Note.” Translators’ insertions of
cross-referenced page numbers into the text are identified by braces. In cases where we
have added notes, these appear in brackets and are identified by “ – Trans.”
1. [Merleau-Ponty, Le Visible et l’invisible, ed. Claude Lefort (Paris: Gallimard, 1964); The
Visible and the Invisible, trans. Alphonso Lingis (Evanston: Northwestern University
Press, 1968). Hereafter cited as VI, with English pagination in brackets. – Trans].
190
2. A. Gurwitsch, Théorie du champ de la conscience, trans. M. Butor (Bruges: Desclée de
Brouwer, 1957) [The Field of Consciousness (Pittsburgh: Duquesne University Press,
1964). Although this work was originally written in English, the French translation was
published first. Hereafter, the French text will be abbreviated as TCC, the English as FC
– Trans].
3. In the course summary from 1959–1960, “Nature and Logos: The Human Body,” Merleau-
Ponty writes “Furthermore (and this is the difference between phenomenology and ide-
alism), life is not a simple object for consciousness.” See Merleau-Ponty, Résumés de
cours, Collège de France, 1952-1960 (Paris: Gallimard, 1968), 176 [(Hereafter cited as
RC); In Praise of Philosophy and Other Essays, trans. John O’Neill (Evanston: North-
western University Press, 1988), 196 (Hereafter cited as IPP) – Trans].
4. Phénoménologie de la perception (Paris: Gallimard, 1945) [Phenomenology of Percep-
tion, trans. Colin Smith (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1962; rev. trans. 1981).
Hereafter cited as PP with English pagination in brackets – Trans].
5. This point will be the object of a future work.
6. TCC 236–245 [FC 295–305. The section of Gurwitsch’s text referred to is Part IV, Chap-
ter 3, Section 5. – Trans].
7. [See note 15 below – Trans].
8. See the question of the impossibility of a direct ontology, RC 156 [IPP 179–180].
9. See Claude Lefort’s “Editorial Note” to VI 9 [xxxiv].
10. VI 227 [173]. See also 307, 475, 483–484, 492 [265, 415–4166, 422–423, 430].
11. He writes in a note dating probably from June, 1959: “The eidetic method as Husserl has
defined it always remains between two propositions, two essences. And it could not be
otherwise: because even the non-essential is fixed in essence and juxtaposed with other
essences without problem, because we are only dealing with essences, and because be-
tween essences everything always works out. This eidetic is antiphilosophy.”
12. This is why we excluded this text from Notes de cours 1959–1961, ed. Stéphanie Ménasé
(Paris: Gallimard, 1996).
13. RC 160 [IPP 182, translation modified – Trans].
14. RC 164 [IPP 185, translated in English as “place of consciousness” – Trans].
15. But he notes that “ambiguity is not due . . . to the fact that the immediate presence to the
world is also distance from oneself.”
16. In a note from June 1959, Merleau-Ponty writes: “Philosophy is knowledge of promis-
cuity, not of the ‘pure’.”
17. That this note is written at the bottom of the page in a different color than the rest of the
note leads us to think that the author may have added it at a later date.
18. This hypothesis concerning when Merleau-Ponty read Gurwitsch’s text is less than likely
given Merleau-Ponty’s relationship in 1958 to Husserl’s philosophy, but one is tempted
to discern traces of this reading in the working notes of The Visible and the Invisible from
January 1959 onwards. One must remember that Aron Gurwitsch had participated in a
volume commemorating the centenary of Husserl’s birth. It is probable that Merleau-
Ponty had read Gurwitsch’s text, “Sur la conscience conceptuelle” in the spring of 1959,
before the volume, Edmund Husserl: 1859–1959, Phaenomenologica IV (The Hague:
Martinus Nijhoff, 1959) appeared in October of that same year. [“On the Conceptual
Consciousness,” trans. F.J. Crosson, in Gurwitsch, Studies in Phenomenology and Psy-
chology (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1966) – Trans].
19. [The two texts by Husserl are (1) “Der Ursprung der Geometrie als intentional-his-
torisches Problem,” Beilage III in Die Krisis der europäischen Wissenschaften und die
transzendentale Phänomenologie, Husserliana VI, ed. Walter Biemel (The Hague:
Martinus Nijhoff, 1954), 365–386; “The Origin of Geometry,” Appendix IV in The Crisis
of European Sciences and Transcendental Phenomenology, trans. David Carr (Evanston:
 191
Northwestern University Press, 1970), 353–378; and (2) “Umsturz der kopernikanischen
Lehre,” Philosophical Essays in Memory of Edmund Husserl, ed. Marvin Farber (Cam-
bridge: Harvard University Press, 1940), 307–325; “Foundational Investigations of the
Phenomenological Origin of the Spatiality of Nature,” trans. Fred Kersten, in Husserl:
Shorter Works, ed. Peter McCormick and Frederick Elliston (Notre Dame: Notre Dame
University Press, 1981), 222–233.
Merleau-Ponty’s lecture notes for this course are now available in Merleau-Ponty,
Notes de Cours sur L’origine de la géométrie de Husserl, ed. Renaud Barbaras (Paris:
PUF, 1998); Husserl at the Limits of Phenomenology, trans. Leonard Lawlor with Bettina
Bergo (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, forthcoming). – Trans].
20. “Nature and Logos: The Human Body,” RC 171–180 [IPP 192–199].
21. “Bergson in the Making,” in Merleau-Ponty, Signes (Paris: Gallimard, 1960), 229–241
[Signs, trans. Richard McCleary (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1964), 182–
191. – Trans].
22. The version from October abandoned by the author is included [as “Brouillon d’une
rédaction d’octobre 1960”] in Notes de Cours (1959–1961), 355–378. The second ver-
sion from November was included [as “Interrogation and Intuition”] in the body of The
Visible and the Invisible, 142–171 [105–129].
23. [Microform copies of Merleau-Ponty’s original notes may be consulted at the Bibliothèque
Nationale de France, Volume VI, MF 9587, 191–204. – Trans].
24. William James, The Principles of Psychology (London: Macmillan, 1901).
25. E. Mach, Die Analyse der Empfindungen und das Verhältniss des Physischen zum
Psychischen (Jena: G. Fischer, 1906).
26. [Gurwitsch’s English text uses the expression “figural factor” to translate Husserl’s
“figurale Momente,” FC 73. – Trans].
27. [Husserl’s text, as cited by Gurwitsch at TCC 71, reads instead “proteron pros hêmas”. –
Trans].
28. J. Ternus, “Experimentelle Untersuchungen über phänomenale Identität,” “Untersuch-
ungen zur Lehre von der Gestalt,” ed. Wertheimer, Psychologische Forschung VII
(1926).
29. Husserl, Erfahrung und Urteil, ed. Ludwig Landgrebe (Hamburg: Claasen & Goverts,
1948), 414 [hereafter cited as EU; Experience and Judgment, trans. James S. Churchill
and Karl Ameriks (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1973), 343, hereafter cited
as EJ. – Trans].
30. This paragraph is written in red.
31. [This remark belongs to Merleau-Ponty, who simply writes: “(Non)”. – Trans].
32. Digression written by Merleau-Ponty on this sheet in red:
[Negations?] for § III
[Perhaps in the World or Being (3rd § of the positive part) make a § on essence, signi-
fication, – as hinges or pivots
<In black Merleau-Ponty continues:>
In the analysis of transcendence, show that one would falsify it in making it a “signi-
fication” = it is incompleteness and not essence or signification of incompleteness – cri-
tique (without naming it) the eidetic method of Husserl applied to presence.
What I reproach Husserl for: his dualism (dualism noema-existent thing) and his igno-
rance of the miracle of transcendence as crystallization (that is, of the identity “thing” –
appearances). In the IIIrd § on Being or entire world, pose the problem of logos and its
relation to the perceived world. Logic for example the definition of structures by Bourbaki
and by us (for us structure = transcendence).
It is necessary to discuss expressly not only the philosophy which would make a Ding
of the Etwas, – but also that which would conceive of it as pure signification eidos – Make
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this discussion in §III of the positive part of Being and World, showing that a philosophy
that installs itself in signification cannot see what we say in § I and II – in this same part,
show that the 3 subsections: thing, others, intersubjective world, are not three phases in
order of constitution, and that homou ên panta.
Show in IIIrd § that it is the same thing to find the pure sensible again, the “amor-
phous” world of the pre-being, of egocentrism, of transitivism, of the Ineinander, of the
Einfühlung, of the “flesh,” – and to raise oneself to the field of Being or philosophy (=
philosophy = nonphilosophy) (*). Philosophy is already in the full comprehension of the
Gestalthafte.]
(*) Husserl describing the Urempfindung by eidetic variation: it is impossible: one
must be time to describe it, since it is not intentionality.
33. [TCC 181; FC 222: “genuine presentation”. – Trans].
34. Gurwitsch refers to PP 343–344, 395 ff. [296–298, 343 ff.], and Husserl, Ideen I,
Husserliana III, ed. Walter Biemel (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1950), 86, 287 [Ideas
I, trans. Fred Kersten (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1982), 102, 332. Hereafter, English
pagination will follow in brackets – Trans].
35. Ideen I, 87 [103].
36. Merleau-Ponty writes “objective” in two syntagmas.
37. [Although this passage would occur at FC 242, no corresponding phrase occurs in
Gurwitsch’s English text – Trans].
38. [FC 244: “the phenomenologist may, by raising questions about the architectural form,
alter his subject matter” – Trans].
39. EU 105 [EJ 96].
40. Author’s Note: [in margin:] The being of horizon: being before I hollow out my place
there, before I split off from it [je l’écarte] in order to see myself.
41. [Ideas I, 94: “Indeed, the indeterminateness necessarily signifies a determinableness
which has a rigorously prescribed style.” Gurwitsch refers to this passage in a note at
TCC 226; FC 281 – Trans].
42. [Husserl, Cartesianische Meditationen und Pariser Vorträge, Husserliana I, ed. S. Strasser
(The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1963), 84; Cartesian Meditation, trans. Dorion Cairns
(The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1970), 46: “This intending-beyond-itself, which is im-
plicit in any consciousness, must be considered an essential moment of it”; and EU 27,
30-1; EJ 32, 35 – Trans].
43. Merleau-Ponty writes “>”.
44. Sentence written in red.
45. [Ideas I, 70].
46. Author’s Note: Erfahrung und Urteil, § 23a.
47. [Gurwitsch translates this as “holding in grasp,” FC 349. Cf. EU 132 (“Im-Griff-haben”);
EJ 118 (“having-in-grasp”) – Trans].
48. The question mark is Merleau-Ponty’s.
49. [Gurwitsch translates this as “maintaining in grasp,” FC 350. Cf. EU 133 (“Noch-im-
Griff-behalten”); EJ 119 (“still-retaining-in-grasp”) – Trans].
50. Author’s Note: [in margin:] noematic connections.
51. [TCC 291; FC 366 – Trans].
52. [EJ 158 – Trans].
53. [EU 191; EJ 164: “the first and fundamental form, the form of all forms” – Trans].
54. [EU 191; EJ 164: “all ‘appearances’ . . . are time-giving, and this in such a way that all
given times become part of one time.” This passage is cited by Gurwitsch at FC 307n1 –
Trans].
55. [EU 191; EJ 164: “the form of every possible world of objective experience” – Trans].
56. Erfahrung und Urteil, § 39–40.
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57. Author’s Note: [in margin:] Generalize the “in tatters.”
58. Husserl, Logische Untersuchungen, 2nd ed., 2 vols. (Halle: Max Niemayer, 1913); Logi-
cal Investigations, trans. J. Findlay, 2 vols. (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1970).
59. Author’s Note: [in margin:] worin.
60. EU 29 [EJ 34: “the existence of anything real never has any other sense than that of ex-
istence-in, than that of a being in the universe, in the open horizon of spatiotemporality”
– Trans].
61. Author’s Note: [in margin:] The eidetic method poses the problem of ideation, which
cannot be definitively resolved except by the theory of language (say this at the end of
my chapter Being and World).
62. Goldstein, Der Aufbau des Organismus (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1934), 244–245
[The Organism (New York: Zone Books, 1995), 309–310 – Trans].
63. Cf. R. Ruyer, Néo-finalisme (Paris: PUF, 1952). This work, like that of Gurwitsch, in-
cludes references to Merleau-Ponty’s philosophy.
64. [The reference to Der Aufbau des Organismus, 244 (The Organism, 310) appears at TCC
326n6; FC 409n82 – Trans].
65. Metaphysics, Bk. Theta, Ch. 6, 1048b, 6 ff. [cf. TCC 328; FC 410. Merleau-Ponty refers
to the translation by J. Tricot (Paris, 1948) – Trans].
66. Author’s Note: [in margin:] Being beyond the imaginary-real distinction.
67. Merleau-Ponty writes “ ”.
68. [TCC 333; FC 416: “phenomenal temporality is experienced in a rather implicit and in-
articulate form.” In a note to this passage, Gurwitsch refers to Merleau-Ponty’s analysis
of temporality in Phenomenology of Perception – Trans].
69. [TCC 336; FC 419: “Though that participation is merely adventitious and un-essential to
consciousness, since its intrinsic specific nature is not affected by such a participation
. . .” – Trans].
70. [Ideas I, 112: “consciousness considered in its ‘purity’ must be held to be a self-contained
complex of being, a complex of absolute being into which nothing can penetrate and out
of which nothing can slip.” Cf. TCC 336n1; FC 419n12 – Trans].
71. [Husserl, Ideen II, Husserliana IV, ed. Marly Biemel (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff,
1952); Ideas II, trans. Richard Rojcewicz and André Schuwer (Dordrecht: Kluwer Aca-
demic Publishers, 1989) – Trans].
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