¹ This theme is echoed to varying degrees in every commentary on The Visible and the Invisible, beginning with both Kwant, Remy's From Phenomenology to Metaphysics: An Inquiry into the Last Period of Merleau-Ponty's Philosophical Life (Pittsburgh, PA: Duquesne University Press, 1966)Google Scholar and Langan, Thomas's Merleau-Ponty's Critique of Reason (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1966)Google Scholar and continuing through the subsequent efforts of Theodore Geraets in Vers une nouvelle philosophie transcendental: la genèse de la « Phenomenologie de la perception » (La Haye: Martinus Nijhoff, 1971), Sallis, John in Phenomenology and the Return to Beginnings (Pittsburgh, PA: Duquesne University Press, 1973)Google Scholar, Madison, Gary in La Phenomenologie de Merleau-Ponty, un recherche de limites de la conscience (Paris: Editions Klincksiek, 1973)Google Scholar, and most recently in Schmidt, James's Maurice Merleau-Ponty: Between Phenomenology and Structuralism (New-York: St. Martin's Press, 1985)CrossRefGoogle Scholar. While some see continuity and the attempt to overcome earlier problems and others claim Merleau-Ponty's later work is radically different in its approach, all seem to deem the attempt unsuccessful. The most succinct summary of this view is given by Gerard Brand in his DieLebenswelt, Eine Philosophie des Koncreten Apriori (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 1971)Google Scholar. He writes: “In spite of all the struggles which deepen our understanding of corporeity and the world, Merleau-Ponty appears to have failed to resolve the contradictions shown by him. So there remains this fundamental ambiguity; is the world the universal body that absorbs my body, or is it my body which is the world?” (197).

² Merleau-Ponty, Maurice, Phenomenology of Perception, trans. Smith, C. (New York: Humanities Press, 1962), 403.Google Scholar

³ Merleau-Ponty, Maurice, The Visible and the Invisible, ed. Lefort, C., trans. Lingis, A. (Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 1968), 171.Google Scholar

⁴ Ibid., 176.

⁵ Ibid., 56.

⁶ Criticism of Merleau-Ponty's version of the cogito falls into two camps, those who question the existence of a new approach and those who accept that there is a new approach, but find it unsatisfactory. Both Xavier Tilliette and Gary Madison fall into the former category; both offer a detailed study of the cogito and from this suggest that the tensions of the Phenomenology of Perception are not overcome. Tilliette, in Merleau-Ponty ou la mesure de l'homme (Paris: Editions Seghers, 1970)Google Scholar, argues that one finds parallels between the tacit and spoken cogito of the Phenomenology of Perception and the analysis of silence and speech in The Visible and the Invisible, and that the same oscillation exists in both the text and the working notes. In Gary Madison's book (mentioned above) he also observes that traces of the tacit cogito remain, leaving Merleau-Ponty's intent in doubt; as Paul Ricoeur notes in the introduction, there remains the question of how the cogito is attached to the world. The second alternative is presented by John Sallis in Phenomenology and the Return to Beginnings. The author accepts the new attempt to found thought upon a prereflective cogito but finds the approach of The Visible and the Invisible to be unsatisfactory. He notes that thought, in order to be thought, must break from perception and in so doing, never completely coincides with its own beginnings. Both objections can be answered by showing the ontological format of The Visible and the Invisible.

⁷ The view that the completed chapters of The Visible and the Invisible are primarily a meditation of the positions of other philosophers was championed by Remy Kwant in From Phenomenology to Metaphysics: An Inquiry into the Last Period of Merleau-Ponty's Philosophical Life, and seems to have been uncritically accepted by each subsequent interpreter. The same confusion attended the early reviews of the Phenomenology of Perception. It arises because of the circuitous style of writing practiced by Merleau-Ponty. Like the earlier work, The Visible and the Invisible delineates a new and original point of view through a meditative approach toward the work of predecessors.

⁸ Merleau-Ponty, , The Visible and the Invisible, 8.Google Scholar

⁹ The analogy between the hands and perception is by no means a perfect parallel; since touch is a sub-universe of perception both phases of the touch are open to sight, which serves as a transcendental observer in respect to both phases of tactility. Merleau-Ponty would deny such a position is possible within perception. The analogy is based upon the phenomenon of touch; any attempt to define touch experientially leads to paradox and show touch to defy localization. He argues that perception poses the same type of problem.

¹⁰ Ibid., 9.

¹¹ Ibid.

¹² Ibid., 179.

¹³ Ibid., 16.

¹⁴ Ibid., 38.

¹⁵ Ibid., 177–178.

¹⁶ Ibid., 27.

¹⁷ Ibid., 53.

¹⁸ Merleau-Ponty, , Phenomenology of Perception, 403.Google Scholar

¹⁹ Merleau-Ponty, , The Visible and the Invisible, 57.Google Scholar

²⁰ Ibid., 58.

²¹ Ibid.

²² Ibid., 63.

²³ Ibid., 62.

²⁴ Lingis, Alphonse, “Translator's Preface”, in Merleau-Ponty, The Visible and the Invisible, xlvii.Google Scholar

²⁵ Merleau-Ponty, , The Visible and the Invisible, 132.Google Scholar

²⁶ Lingis, Alphonse, “Being in the Interrogative Mood”, in Gillan, G., ed., Horizons of the Flesh (Carbondale, IL: Southern Illinois University Press, 1973), 89.Google Scholar

²⁷ Merleau-Ponty, , The Visible and the Invisible, 150.Google Scholar

²⁸ Ibid., 82.

²⁹ Ibid., 90.

³⁰ Ibid., 95.

³¹ Ibid., 151.

³² While the relationship of painting to the preobjective is readily discernible, perhaps the connection of painting to speech stands in need of clarification. For Merleau-Ponty, the contrasts of colour which inspire the painter are the same contrasts which form the categories of thought. Painting captures these contrasts between colours which are the intrusion of the invisible into the visible in the same way the contrasts between words renders the invisible accessible to speech. And, while Merleau-Ponty uses the mechanics of linguists such as Saussure to document the nature of speech, it is equally apparent that the idea behind his theory of signs is largely a derivative of his study of painting.

³³ Ibid., 213.

³⁴ Ibid., 176.

³⁵ Schmidt, James, Maurice Merleau-Ponty: Between Phenomenology and Structuralism (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1985), 103–136CrossRefGoogle Scholar. This passage contains an excellent discussion of Merleau-Ponty's theory of signs. Schmidt introduces Roland Barthes' distinction between the symbolic, paradigmatic, and syntagmatic functions of signs and examines the degree to which each can be found in Merleau-Ponty's thought.

³⁶ Ibid., 110.

³⁷ Ibid., 95.

³⁸ Merleau-Pbnty, , The Visible and the Invisible, 119.Google Scholar

³⁹ Ibid., 102–103.

⁴⁰ Ibid., 103.

⁴¹ Ibid., 129.

⁴² See Dreyfus, H. L., and Todes, S. J., “The Three Worlds of Merleau-Ponty”, Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 22 (06 1972), 559–565CrossRefGoogle Scholar and also Banon, John, “The ‘Later’ Thought of Merleau-Ponty”, Dialogue 5 (12 1966), 383–403CrossRefGoogle Scholar. While these attempts to divide Merleau-Ponty's thought into periods allow for a closer examination of certain doctrines, it also tends to impart a different intentionality to each period—the psychological period, the political period, the metaphysical period—and in so doing, it posits different doctrines which must then be reconciled. The missing ingredient is the intent of Merleau-Ponty's project; many ideas simply cannot be reconciled because he abandons the terminology of earlier writings, extracts the idea unresolved by the attempt, and then reintegrates this idea into the larger, interconnected problematic of perceptual faith.

⁴³ For example, let us take the objections of John Sallis to the prereflective cogito (see note 6 above). His objection is based upon the Heideggerian notion that thought quits perception in order to become thought, and Merleau-Ponty does not explain how the two remain joined. We have seen that not only does Merleau-Ponty explicitly reject this notion, but also we have seen that the whole thrust of his ontology is to explain precisely why thought must remain bound to the preobjective in order to be mean ingful. From this standpoint, Sallis' argument appears to miss the point of Merleau-Ponty's approach. The problem lies in the application, within his critique, of the very ideas Merleau-Ponty seeks to question. Thus, much of the scholarship in this area obfuscates rather than enlightens.

⁴⁴ For example, in his discussion of Merleau-Ponty's theory of history in Maurice Merleau-Ponty: Between Phenomenology and Structuralism, James Schmidt correctly observes that there is a tension between the view of history to which Merleau-Ponty seems to subscribe and the view of history to which his modified Saussurean analysis leads. The advantage which an understanding of indirect ontology offers is a clear textual criterion by which Merleau-Ponty's attempt may be measured.

⁴⁵ The intense interest in the linguistic aspect of Merleau-Ponty's philosophy was piqued by the appearance of fragmentary works such as The Prose of the World, and Consciousness and the Acquisition of Language. Both appeared at a time when the structuralist view of language pioneered by Saussure and applied by Levi-Strauss and Jacques Lacan was at its peak and the deconstructionist theories of Michel Foucault, Jacques Derrida, and others began to attract notice. Since his philosophy had elements common to each, Merleau-Ponty was considered a precursor of these post-phenomenological movements. While many of their methods can be discerned in The Visible and the Invisible, their aims are manifestly inconsistent with Merleau-Ponty's, which were much more closely tied to perception. The ascendency of language as the central focus of Merleau-Ponty's “later” thought and the coincidental diminution of perception was in part a result of the new emphasis placed upon the role of language by the translators; both John O'Neill's introduction to The Prose of the World and James Edie's “Foreword” to Hugh Silverman's translation of Consciousness and the Acquisition of Language frame the issues of cultural expression and history upon Merleau-Ponty's treatment of language. This notion is correct, yet incomplete; these ideas of culture and history involve language, but with the proviso that language retains its “vertical history”, its connection to perceptual faith.