Introduction
Welcome to our final lesson in the module "The Fabric of Perceptual Experience." In our previous lesson, we explored how motility—the body's inherent capacity for movement—is the fundamental way we constitute lived space. We established that our primary relationship with the world is not a cognitive "I think that," but a practical, embodied "I can." The body schema, a dynamic sense of our motor possibilities, anchors this spatiality.
This raises a crucial question: If our engagement with the world is a set of motor skills, how do we acquire, retain, and expand these skills? How does the body learn? The answer lies in Merleau-Ponty's theory of habit.
Today's learning outcome is to explain Merleau-Ponty's account of habit acquisition as a form of bodily knowledge. We will see that for Merleau-Ponty, habit is neither a mindless mechanical reflex nor a consciously applied intellectual formula. Instead, it is a form of intelligence that resides within the body itself, a "knowledge in the hands" that fundamentally restructures our being-in-the-world.
1. Habit as Bodily Understanding
Merleau-Ponty's analysis begins by challenging the two dominant philosophical traditions:
- Empiricism views habit as a mechanical process, a simple stimulus-response loop etched into the nervous system.
- Intellectualism (or Rationalism) sees habit as the unconscious application of an intellectual formula or rule that was once consciously learned.
Merleau-Ponty argues that both views miss the essential phenomenon. A habit, like playing a sport or driving a car, is too flexible and responsive to be a mere mechanism, yet it operates without the constant intervention of reflective thought. To resolve this, he proposes a radical revision of what it means to "understand."
The following reading from the Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy provides an excellent, comprehensive overview of Merleau-Ponty's concept of habit. It introduces the core ideas we will build upon throughout this lesson.
Merleau-Ponty, Maurice | Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy
This article provides a clear and detailed explanation of habit, using examples from sports and driving to show how it represents a form of pre-reflective, bodily intelligence.
Please read section 3.a., titled 'Habit'. Focus on how Merleau-Ponty refutes the need for a separate act of intellectual interpretation and instead describes a practical 'skilful coping.' Pay special attention to the redefinition of understanding as a 'harmony between what we aim at and what is given' and the concept of 'knowledge in the hands.'
The crucial insight here is that it is the body that "understands" in the acquisition of habit. This is not a metaphorical statement. Merleau-Ponty is arguing for a genuine form of non-conceptual, motor intelligence. When a basketball player is "in the zone," they are not calculating angles and forces; their body is solicited by the situation and responds appropriately. This understanding is a practical mastery, a harmony between intention and performance. The body is our "anchorage in the world," and habit is the way this anchor learns to hold fast in new ways.
2. The Habitual Body and the Incorporation of Instruments
This bodily knowledge accumulates, forming what Merleau-Ponty calls the habitual body (corps habituel). This is the background layer of all our acquired skills and dispositions—walking, typing, speaking a language. It is the stable set of "I cans" that we take for granted. This habitual body provides the foundation for the actions of our actual body (corps actuel), the body as it exists and acts in the present moment.
The phantom limb phenomenon, which we've encountered before, provides a stark illustration of this distinction. The amputee who tries to step on their missing leg is acting from their habitual body, which still retains the "I can" of walking with two legs, even though their actual body has changed.
This process of habituation has a remarkable power: it allows us to incorporate external instruments into our body schema. A tool is no longer an object we perceive and manipulate; it becomes an extension of our own body, a new organ of perception and action.
The following video clip explains how instruments like a blind person's cane are absorbed into our body schema, becoming a transparent medium for our engagement with the world.
Maurice Merleau-Ponty on The Lived Body and Habit
This clip from 'Socratic Swansongs' uses several clear examples to illustrate how habit allows us to incorporate new instruments, effectively dilating our being-in-the-world.
Please watch the segment from 24:52 to 28:07. Notice how the examples of the feathered hat, the car, and the blind person's cane all demonstrate the same principle: the instrument ceases to be an object of thought and becomes part of the body's own spatiality.
As the video explains, "to habituate oneself to a hat, an automobile or a cane is to take up residence in them." Habit expresses our power to dilate our existence by making the world's instruments participate in the body's own volume. This is how the "I can" grows.
3. The Deeper Structure of Habit: Sedimentation and Consecration
To provide a richer description of this process, Merleau-Ponty builds on the work of earlier philosophers, particularly Henri Bergson. Bergson described habit as the "fossilized residue of a spiritual activity," meaning that an initial act of intelligence withdraws, leaving behind an inert mechanism.
Merleau-Ponty finds this description insightful but incomplete. He enriches it with two powerful metaphors: sedimentation and consecration.
- Sedimentation: Our habits build up in layers over time, like geological strata. Each new skill is built upon a foundation of prior skills, forming the stable ground of our habitual body.
- Consecration: This is the more profound idea. When we acquire a habit, we are not just learning a mechanical procedure. We are imbuing movements and objects with a new layer of meaning and value. The body "consecrates" or makes sacred a certain way of engaging with the world.
This next video clip explains these concepts before providing a marvelously detailed example—an organist learning a new instrument—to make the idea of consecration tangible.
Maurice Merleau-Ponty on The Lived Body and Habit
First, this clip will introduce the concepts of sedimentation and consecration. Then, it will use the rich example of an organist to show how acquiring a new habit involves creating an 'expressive space' and orienting the body toward 'affective vectors'—not just geometric points.
First, watch from 15:11 to 18:48 to understand the core concepts of sedimentation and consecration. Then, watch the extended example of the organist from 28:07 to 39:42. Focus on how the organist's gestures are not aimed at physical locations (the stops) but at expressive meanings (the sounds). The organist's body learns to inhabit this new 'expressive space.'
The organist example is a perfect illustration of bodily knowledge. The organist does not think, "To create a solemn mood, I must pull stop X, which is located 15cm to my left." Rather, their body, steeped in the desire for a certain musical expression, reaches for the stop that has been consecrated with that meaning. The gesture grasps a musical signification directly, a "motor grasping of a motor signification." This is the pinnacle of "knowledge in the hands."
4. Synthesis: Habit as a Global Reintegration
Finally, it's essential to understand that acquiring a new habit is not like adding a new file to a computer. It is a global reintegration of the entire body schema. The whole body must find a new equilibrium with the world.
Maurice Merleau-Ponty on The Lived Body and Habit
To conclude, this short clip uses the example of learning to swim to powerfully illustrate that habit acquisition is a holistic process.
Please watch from 39:42 to 41:56. Note the key point: swimming isn't created by simply combining the movements of walking and waving your arms. It requires a complete modulation of the body's way of engaging with the world, a 'global reintegration of our body schema.'
This idea of global reintegration should resonate with your mathematical background. When one learns a new area of mathematics, such as moving from classical Euclidean geometry to topology, it is not merely a matter of learning new axioms. It requires a fundamental shift in how one "sees" space and relation. One must habituate oneself to a new set of possible operations and a new way of being-in that conceptual world. The "body schema" of the mathematician is globally reintegrated to accommodate this new "I can."
Conclusion
Today, we have explored how Merleau-Ponty's theory of habit provides the mechanism for learning and expanding our bodily engagement with the world. Habit is the process by which the body's motor potential becomes stable, skilled knowledge.
Key Takeaways:
- Habit as Bodily Knowledge: Habit is a form of pre-reflective intelligence, a "knowledge in the hands" that bypasses the empiricist-intellectualist dichotomy.
- Incorporation: Through habit, we incorporate instruments into our body schema, expanding the reach of our "I can" and making them extensions of our own body.
- Sedimentation & Consecration: Habits build up in layers (sedimentation) and, more importantly, they imbue our world with new layers of practical meaning (consecration).
- Global Reintegration: Learning a new habit is not an additive process but a holistic restructuring of the entire body schema to find a new equilibrium.
Preview of the Next Lesson:
This lesson concludes our module on the fabric of perceptual experience. We have dissected Merleau-Ponty's accounts of sensation, space, motility, and now habit. In our next lesson, we will begin a new module, "Synthesizing 'Phenomenology of Perception'." Our first task will be to analyze the Schneider case and its philosophical significance for Merleau-Ponty's arguments. We will revisit this crucial piece of evidence to see how it acts as a powerful synthesis of all the themes we have explored, cementing the central role of the lived body in Merleau-Ponty's philosophy.