Introduction
In our last lesson, we explored Merleau-Ponty's complex relationship with Edmund Husserl, framing it through the metaphor of "The Philosopher and His Shadow." We saw that Merleau-Ponty was both a faithful heir—adopting the phenomenological method, intentionality, and the concept of the lived body (Leib)—and a radical revolutionary who pushed Husserl's own insights toward an existential ontology of Being-in-the-world, grounding consciousness in the body's motor intentionality.
Today, we turn to the second major figure looming over Merleau-Ponty's thought: Martin Heidegger. If Husserl provided the initial method and vocabulary, Heidegger provided the existential framework that Merleau-Ponty would profoundly reshape. Your learning outcome for this lesson is to summarize Merleau-Ponty's key debts to and departures from Heidegger's phenomenology.
This analysis is essential. Many commentators argue that the philosophy of Phenomenology of Perception is, in many ways, closer to Heidegger's Being and Time than to any of Husserl's works. By dissecting this relationship, we will gain a much sharper definition of Merleau-Ponty's unique contribution to philosophy. We will proceed systematically, first outlining the profound debts and then identifying the critical points of departure.
1. The Heideggerian Inheritance
Merleau-Ponty adopted and built upon several of Heidegger's most fundamental and revolutionary concepts. These ideas represent a decisive break from the Cartesian and even the early Husserlian traditions, and they form the bedrock of Merleau-Ponty's own project.
The philosopher Hubert Dreyfus was a master at explaining these core Heideggerian ideas with remarkable clarity. The following video clips will provide our foundation for understanding what Merleau-Ponty inherited.
Hubert Dreyfus discusses Heidegger & Merleau-Ponty
In this classic interview, Hubert Dreyfus explains the core of Heidegger's early philosophy. Watching these segments will make Heidegger's critique of the philosophical tradition—a critique Merleau-Ponty largely accepts—very clear.
Please watch the following three segments from 'Hubert Dreyfus discusses Heidegger & Merleau-Ponty': First, from 01:02 to 04:03: Focus on the central concept of 'Being-in-the-world' as absorbed, skillful engagement where the 'ego' or 'inner mind' disappears. Note the critique of the idea of constant, private inner experiences. Next, from 04:24 to 07:45: Pay attention to the argument that the 'inner' is a historical invention, not a given of experience. Note how for Heidegger (and Merleau-Ponty), qualities like 'sadness' are features of the world, not private feelings inside us. Finally, from 07:54 to 17:11: This long section details Heidegger's concept of skillful coping with equipment. Focus on the distinction between the smooth, 'invisible' use of a tool (like a hammer or a stick shift) and the breakdown situation where the tool becomes an object of thought. This illustrates the difference between the 'ready-to-hand' and the 'present-at-hand'.
Based on the concepts Dreyfus explains, we can pinpoint four major debts Merleau-Ponty owes to Heidegger.
A. Debt: Being-in-the-World
This is the most fundamental inheritance. Heidegger replaces the traditional philosophical subject (a mind, consciousness, ego) with Dasein, a term that means "being-there." The structure of Dasein is Being-in-the-world (In-der-Welt-sein). This is not like water being in a glass; the "in" signifies a relationship of intimate involvement and belonging. Dasein is not a subject that stands over and against an external world of objects. Rather, its very being is to be absorbed and engaged in a world. This concept is Heidegger's primary tool for dismantling the subject-object dualism, and Merleau-Ponty adopts it wholesale. For Merleau-Ponty, our primary state is not one of detached reflection but of perceptual immersion in a world that we inhabit.
B. Debt: The Primacy of the Practical
As Dreyfus's examples show, Heidegger argues that our primary mode of encountering things is not as objects of theoretical knowledge (present-at-hand, vorhanden), but as equipment we use in our practical projects (ready-to-hand, zuhanden).
- When a carpenter hammers skillfully, the hammer is not an 'object' she is thinking about; it is an extension of her body, part of the activity of hammering. It is ready-to-hand.
- Only when the hammer breaks does it cease to be a tool and become a problematic object that must be inspected and analyzed. It becomes present-at-hand.
This establishes a crucial hierarchy: practical, skillful engagement is primary, while theoretical contemplation is secondary and derivative, arising only from a breakdown in our smooth coping. This directly parallels Merleau-Ponty's critique of empiricism and intellectualism, which both wrongly begin by treating the world as a collection of objects for a detached mind.
C. Debt: The Critique of the 'Inner' Mind
Heidegger, along with Merleau-Ponty, rejects the Cartesian picture of the mind as a private, inner container of thoughts, feelings, and sensations. As Dreyfus explains, meanings and moods are not "in our heads" but are public features of the shared world. The room is "somber"; the situation is "promising." For Merleau-Ponty, this is crucial. The meaning of what we perceive is not a private mental representation but is directly there in the perceived thing, within our shared world.
D. Debt: An Existential, not a Transcendental, Starting Point
In our last lesson, we saw that Husserl's phenomenology sought to uncover the structures of a transcendental consciousness that constitutes the world's meaning. Heidegger fundamentally shifts the ground. His analysis focuses on Dasein's existence—its finite, temporal, and practical engagement in the world. As one academic paper puts it, Heidegger criticizes Husserl's project as being too subjective and abstract, and instead focuses on "interpretation and meaning of being" within our historical, temporal lives. Merleau-Ponty follows Heidegger in this existential turn, seeking to describe the structures of our concrete, embodied existence rather than a pure, world-constituting consciousness.
2. The Departures: Giving Heidegger's Philosophy Flesh
Despite this profound inheritance, Merleau-Ponty was not simply a follower of Heidegger. He felt that for all its revolutionary power, Heidegger's analysis in Being and Time remained strangely abstract, overlooking the specific, concrete role of the living, breathing, perceiving body.
Merleau-Ponty's project can be understood as an attempt to take Heidegger's formal, existential structures and show how they are lived and realized in the flesh.
A. Departure: The Lived Body vs. Dasein
Heidegger's Dasein is defined by its existential structures: care, thrownness, temporality, and Being-towards-death. While it is "in-the-world," the specific contribution of its corporeal nature is left unanalyzed. For this reason, many critics, and Merleau-Ponty himself, saw Dasein as a strangely disembodied agent.
Merleau-Ponty's central move is to replace the abstract concept of Dasein with the concrete reality of the lived body (le corps vécu or Leib). For him, our Being-in-the-world is nothing other than our being-a-body. It is through the body's senses and its motility that the world opens up for us. Heidegger's "skillful coping" is, for Merleau-Ponty, the motor intentionality of the lived body.
The following video clip nicely summarizes this critical shift.
Phenomenology | Kant, Heidegger, Merleau-Ponty, Ahmed | Keyword
This video from Theory & Philosophy helps clarify Merleau-Ponty's unique position by contrasting him with his predecessors, including Heidegger.
Please watch the segment on Merleau-Ponty, from 13:17 to 17:41. Focus on the core argument: Merleau-Ponty critiques philosophers like Heidegger for forgetting that the world is a 'purely subjective experience' given 'only...through our bodies.'
B. Departure: Perception vs. Temporality
While both thinkers are concerned with the ultimate nature of Being, they approach it from different angles.
- Heidegger's analysis is fundamentally organized around Time. The meaning of Being is revealed through Dasein's temporality—its projection into the future, its inheritance of the past, and its engagement in the present.
- Merleau-Ponty's analysis is fundamentally organized around Perception. The "primacy of perception" means that it is in the perceptual encounter with the world that Being is first revealed. The structures of the perceptual field (figure-ground, depth, color) are the fundamental structures of our access to reality.
To put it simply, for Heidegger, the central analytic is time and history; for Merleau-Ponty, it is perception and the body.
The following brief reading confirms this key point of differentiation.
Three Pillars of Phenomenology: Husserl, Heidegger and Merlau-Ponty
This short academic paper provides a useful, high-level comparison of the three main phenomenologists. The concluding section directly addresses the Merleau-Ponty/Heidegger relationship.
Please read the two paragraphs in the conclusion that begin 'Merlau-Ponty’s phenomenological stance is closer to Heidger’s...'. Note the two key distinctions it makes: the concept of 'Being' and the focus on perception over time.
As the text notes, this different focus also leads to a different conception of Being itself. While Heidegger's Being is disclosed through Dasein's projects, Merleau-Ponty's later work comes to describe a "wild Being" (être sauvage)—a pre-objective fabric of existence that our perception is part of, which we will explore in detail in Module 9.
Conclusion
Merleau-Ponty's relationship with Heidegger is one of deep, critical inheritance. He takes Heidegger's revolutionary existential framework as his starting point but finds it lacking in concrete, bodily reality. He accepts the critique of the Cartesian subject and the primacy of our practical engagement but argues that this engagement is fundamentally that of a lived, perceiving body.
Key Takeaways:
- Key Debts: Merleau-Ponty is profoundly indebted to Heidegger for the concepts of Being-in-the-world, the primacy of practical engagement (ready-to-hand), and the critique of the mind as a private, inner space.
- Key Departures: Merleau-Ponty's main departure is his insistence on centering the analysis on the lived body, which he feels Heidegger neglects. This leads him to prioritize the study of perception over Heidegger's focus on temporality, and to develop a unique ontology centered on concepts like "Flesh" and "wild Being" rather than Dasein's structure of "Care."
In essence, Merleau-Ponty's project can be seen as an attempt to give Heidegger's brilliant but formal existential analytic its "flesh and bones," grounding the structures of existence in the concrete life of the perceiving body.
Preview of the Next Lesson:
Having now mapped Merleau-Ponty's position relative to both Husserl and Heidegger, we will move from this high-level philosophical cartography to a concrete case study. In the next lesson, we will analyze the Schneider case and its philosophical significance for Merleau-Ponty's arguments. This case of a brain-injured soldier was profoundly important for Merleau-Ponty, as he used it to provide empirical, real-world evidence for his critique of intellectualism and his theory of the lived body.