Introduction
In our last lesson, we explored the crucial conceptual shift that motivated Merleau-Ponty's later philosophy. We saw how his own critique of Phenomenology of Perception—for its failure to fully escape the subject-object dichotomy and its reliance on the "impossible" tacit cogito—pushed him from a phenomenology of lived experience toward a new, more fundamental ontology of Being. He needed a new way to describe the fabric of reality that precedes the split between consciousness and the world.
Today, we will delve into the heart of that new ontology. Our learning outcome is to explain the concept of 'Flesh' (chair) in Merleau-Ponty's later ontology. This is arguably the most significant, and most challenging, concept from his final, unfinished work, The Visible and the Invisible. 'Flesh' is his term for the elemental medium of Being, the answer to the problem of how a world can appear to us without presupposing a separate subject and object.
1. The Problem Revisited: Overcoming Dualism
As a brief recap, the central problem Merleau-Ponty confronted was the persistent dualism in Western philosophy: the split between mind and body, subject and object, the perceiver and the perceived. His early work centered the 'lived body' as the point of mediation, but he later felt this was not enough. The very language of a "body-subject" still hinted at a separation that needed to be overcome at a more fundamental, ontological level.
To do this, he turns to a primordial experience that confounds any simple division: the body's capacity to sense and be sensed simultaneously.
2. Reversibility: The Gateway to the Flesh
Merleau-Ponty uses a now-famous example: one of your hands touches the other.
- When your right hand touches your left, the right hand is the sentient (the toucher, the subject). The left hand is the sensible (the touched, the object).
- But you can, at any moment, reverse this. You can start to feel the touch with your left hand, which then becomes the sentient subject, while your right hand becomes the sensible object.
In this experience, the touching and the touched are not two separate entities. They are two sides of a single event. There is a divergence or gap (écart) between them—you can't be purely subject and purely object at the exact same instant—but they are bound together in a relationship of reversibility. They are intertwined.
The following reading explains how Merleau-Ponty uses this principle of reversibility to build his new ontology.
Merleau-Ponty, Maurice | Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy
This section of the 'Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy' article on Merleau-Ponty, which we consulted in the previous lesson, moves from his critique of his earlier work to the core ideas of his late ontology. It uses the touching-touched example to introduce the concepts of reversibility and chiasm, which are essential for understanding Flesh.
Please read the first three paragraphs of the subsection 'b. The Chiasm/Reversibility.' Focus on how Merleau-Ponty describes the relationship between the touching and the touched as neither pure identity nor pure separation, but as an 'intertwining' or 'encroachment.'
This idea of an "intertwining" is the key. Merleau-Ponty realizes that this structure of reversibility isn't just a curious fact about our hands. He proposes it as the fundamental structure of Being itself.
3. Defining the Flesh (La Chair)
Merleau-Ponty gives a name to this fundamental, pre-dualistic fabric of Being, this elemental medium where the sentient and the sensible are interwoven: he calls it the Flesh (la chair).
It is crucial to understand that 'Flesh' is an ontological concept, not a biological one. It is not the meat of my body. Rather, it is the primordial element—like the way ancient Greek philosophers spoke of 'air' or 'water' as a fundamental principle—out of which both my sensing body and the sensible world are formed.
The reading from the IEP article you just started explicitly defines Flesh as the general principle of this intertwining. He extends the structure of reversibility beyond touch to all dualisms:
- Mind and Body
- Subject and Object
- Self and World
Merleau-Ponty terms this "interdependence of these various different notions the flesh" (VI 248-51).
To deepen our understanding, let's turn to another text that contrasts the 'flesh' of the later work with the 'lived body' of the earlier work.
The Lived Body in Heidegger, Merleau-Ponty and Derrida
This scholarly thesis, 'The Lived Body in Heidegger, Merleau-Ponty and Derrida' by Manhua Li, contains a section that precisely explains the move from the concept of the 'body' to the ontology of 'Flesh.' It will help us solidify the definition and its ontological significance.
Please read the subsection '3.2 Flesh and Being'. Focus on how the author contrasts the 'body' (le corps) of 'Phenomenology of Perception' with the 'flesh' (la chair) of 'The Visible and the Invisible'. Pay attention to how Flesh is described as a 'pre-personal and anonymous' 'element of Being.'
This reading clarifies several essential points:
- From Subject to Element: The 'lived body' (le corps) in the early work was still a locus of subjectivity, the "I can." The 'Flesh' (la chair) is more fundamental. It is an anonymous, pre-personal 'element' of Being that precedes subjectivity.
- Flesh is Not a Thing: As the text notes, Flesh is not substance, matter, or form. It is a "style or a manner of Being." It resists the neat categories of traditional philosophy. It's the tissue from which things are woven.
- The Flesh of the World: Crucially, Flesh is not just the stuff of my body. It is the Flesh of the world. My sensing body is made of the same elemental fabric as the sensible things it perceives. The seer is made of the same 'Flesh' as the visible. This shared nature is what makes perception possible in the first place.
As the IEP article puts it, because of this shared Flesh, "we may say that the things pass into us, as well as we into the things." There is no longer a clear boundary between the inside (subject) and the outside (object); there is only one continuous, interwoven field of Being: the Flesh.
Think of it this way: for perception to occur, the perceiver and the perceived must have something in common. For traditional philosophy, this common ground was a 'representation' or 'idea' in the mind. For Merleau-Ponty, the common ground is ontological—it is the Flesh itself. My eye can see the color blue because my seeing is a power of the Visible, and the color is a quality of the Visible. They are two expressions of the same elemental Flesh.
Conclusion
We have now defined the core concept of Merleau-Ponty's late ontology. 'Flesh' is his attempt to provide a radically new starting point for philosophy, one that begins before the subject-object divide.
Key Takeaways:
- Flesh as an Ontological Principle: 'Flesh' is not biological tissue but Merleau-Ponty's term for the fundamental fabric of Being. It is an 'element' from which both sensing subjects and sensible objects emerge.
- Solution to Dualism: The concept is designed to overcome the subject-object dichotomy by positing a shared medium in which perceiver and perceived are primordially intertwined.
- Grounded in Reversibility: The structure of the Flesh is revealed in experiences of reversibility, like the touching-touched hand, where subject and object poles are shown to be interchangeable aspects of one reality.
- The Flesh of the World: Flesh is not confined to my body. It is the shared tissue of my body and the world, making perception a form of communion within this single element, rather than a problem of a mind trying to access an external world.
Preview of the Next Lesson:
We have used the phenomenon of reversibility as our entry point into the concept of Flesh. In our next lesson, we will focus directly on the reversibility thesis. We will analyze this structure in greater detail, exploring how Merleau-Ponty sees it as the dynamic, chiasmic (criss-crossing) life of the Flesh itself.