P E T E R R E Y NA E RT

E M B O D I M E N T A N D E X I S T E N C E : M E R L E AU - P O N T Y
A N D T H E L I M I T S O F N AT U R A L I S M

ABSTRACT

The actual debate about naturalizing consciousness is in need of a more com-

prehensive notion of embodiment. Merleau-Ponty’s existentialism of embod-
iment is relevant for this project. One can accept the validity of a naturalistic
explanation of corporeal functions like perception and movement by corre-
lating them to neurobiological activity. But for Merleau-Ponty, to exist as a
human being means something much more complicated than exerting bio-
logical functions like breathing, feeding, perceiving and moving. We need
to understand man as an embodied sense-giver. For man who “exists” as a
corps-sujet, the lived body is not a functional machine that elicits an appropri-
ate reaction to an environmental stimulus. Following Husserl, Merleau-Ponty
fundamentally challenges this input-output, stimulus-reaction model. Embod-
iment is for him an essential element of human existence, which is defined by
what he calls the symbolic function. Only through an understanding of exis-
tential behaviour can we comprehend the specificity of human embodiment,
and eventually explain it properly. This entails that naturalistic explanations
will have to be integrated in an existential approach. The project of nat-
uralizing conscious embodiment is not invalidated by this approach, but
acquires its proper, i.e. limited significance in the context of understanding
human existence. I will first sketch, with reference to Husserl, the princi-
ples of a naturalistic understanding of embodiment and perception. I will then
present Merleau-Ponty’s original analysis of embodied, meaning constituting
existence and show its relevance for an alternative, more comprehensive expla-
nation of perception, which is supported by recent cognitive science. One can
illustrate this analysis by presenting Merleau-Ponty’s existential interpretation
of the various pathologies of war-injured Schneider. One can then formulate
conclusions as to the broader concept of embodiment that results from this
analysis and point to its implementation in current cognitive research about
intersubjective understanding.

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A-T. Tymieniecka (ed.), Analecta Husserliana CIV, 93–104.
© Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2009
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N AT U R A L I S M

Husserl explains that the naturalistic interpretation of human existence is sec-

ondary to the more fundamental natural experience of the normal phenomenon
world. The world is originally given in what He calls “natural” experience
(natürliche Erfahrung), where it appears in all its richness, displaying not
only physical nature but also living creatures and a variety of meaningful (cul-
tural) objects, that we appreciate for their practical, esthetical or ethical value.
(Husserl, Hua IV, §49e, pp. 182–183; Hua IX, §6, pp. 103–104) Within the
naturalistic attitude abstraction is made from this ideal meaning of cultural
objects. (Husserl, Hua IX, §17) This abstraction is constitutive of a specific
experience, the so-called experience of nature (naturale Erfahrung) or physi-
cal experience, whose object is the totality of physical spatio-temporal things.
These natural things appear as “mere objects” (blosse Sachen), because there
is no attention for their value. (Husserl, Hua IV, p. 15 note 2, §11) We expe-
rience only natural predicates, viz. spatio-temporal properties and sensuous
qualities (naturale, rein sachliche Prädikate). (Husserl, Hua IV, pp. 2, 16; Hua
VIII, p. 315) Naturalism further apprehends things as realities, which implies
a functional definition of nature. We perceive the physical thing in a sequence
of temporal states as a bearer of properties and thus as a substantial reality.
These states are the result of the thing’s causal dependence upon determin-
ing circumstances. For instance only an illuminated object, that is causally
dependent upon the light, displays its color. Spatiality, temporality and causal
reality are its essential characteristics. The world of physical experience is thus
a totality of causal realities. (Husserl, Hua IV, pp. 41–55, §§31, 33)
In line with physical experience, naturalism understands the animated body
as a physical reality. (Husserl, Hua IX, p. 106; Hua XXIX, pp. 23–26, 90–99,
text n 9: Der Physiker und die menschlichen Leiber als Körper) The natural-
istic study of the psychical properties requires a counter-abstraction to direct
attention away from the physical to the psychical. (Husserl, Hua VI, p. 231)
The psyche as a bearer of properties is formally equal to the physical in that
internal psychical mechanisms are causal. The laws of functional coexistence
and succession of the psychical data regulate internal or idio-psychical depen-
dence, which explains the entire conscious life of an individual. As a reality,
the psyche is also causally dependent upon external factors, such as the physi-
cal body and through it upon the surrounding material world. The soul is also
constituted by psycho-physical dependence. Physiological processes, some of
which are induced by external influences, reductively explain all psychical
phenomena, from sense data to moral life. (Husserl, Hua V, p. 16) So the
psyche is a dependent reality, existing as a layer of the psycho-physical real-
ity “animate being”, and can only be experienced when the physical body is
 EMBODIMENT AND EXISTENCE 95

given. Naturalism understands consciousness as a causal reality, which exhibits

psychical properties constituted by psycho-physical and idio-psychical depen-
dencies. (Husserl, Hua IV, p. 142; Hua XIII, pp. 91ff.) Human being as a reality
is thus the causal unity of body and soul. As Husserl formulates it in Philoso-
phie als strenge Wissenschaft: “And so the naturalist (. . .) sees nothing else
but nature, more precisely in the first instance physical nature. Everything that
exists is either in itself physical, and thus belongs to the all encompassing
unity of physical nature, or is psychical. But in that case it is still not more
than a dependent variable of the physical and in the best case a secondary par-
allel epiphenomenon. All that exists is of psychophysical nature, which means:
unequivocally determined by causal regularities.” (Husserl, Hua XXV, p. 9)

EXAMPLE: PERCEPTION

For the naturalist, perception should be treated as an example of psycho-

physical dependence. After all, what else is perception for him but a process
in the brain whereby the perceptual system constructs an internal representa-
tion of the external, physical world? This representation is caused by complex
physico-psychical mechanisms, and is itself a neurological process. In this
view, there isn’t even any reason to understand this representation as something
mental. Merleau-Ponty explicitly mentions this comprehension of percep-
tion where he says that “physiology thinks it can follow, from the receptors
(sensors) to the nervous centres, the projection of the external world in the
organism.” (Merleau-Ponty, 1945, p. 68) The representation is a physical state
of the representing organism, caused by neurological input, and causes itself
behaviour. As Noë says in his recent book on perception, “Susan Hurley has
aptly called this simple view of the relation between perception and action the
input-output picture: Perception is input from world to mind, action is output
from mind to world (. . .)”. (Noë, 2004, p. 3 citation from Hurley, 1998) The
initial idea, that the processor of the input is a black box, whose internal mech-
anisms we ignore, has long since been abandoned for the functionalist view
that has been perfected by computer functionalism.
Phenomenology’s attack on naturalism is complex, but its original analysis
of perception is a core element of this move. This is perfectly comprehensible,
since, as Merleau-Ponty said, perception is our first contact with reality. If a
naturalistic explanation of perception encounters difficulties, then it is evident
that naturalism is a problematical theory of how man is related to the world.
The phenomenology of perception is only possible when the subject as well
as the experienced world is described correctly. As Merleau-Ponty said, the
first philosophical act is to return to the lived world of daily experience that
lies beneath the objective world of science. (Merleau-Ponty, 1945, p. 69) This
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requires a distancing from the “scientific” world, because this conception is

prejudiced (le préjugé du monde). Science presumes that the world is «ready-
made», objective, consisting of physical objects; and understands the organism
as a special physical object, situated in an objective spatio-temporal environ-
ment. This conception founds the traditional epistemological explanation of
knowledge, which starts from the result of knowledge, namely the perceived
object, and then causally reconstructs the process of perceiving. Merleau-Ponty
identifies here what he calls a sensualist conception. The world is the source
of physical stimuli which cause sensations, who then by a passive associative
mechanism or by an active apperception lead to the perception of the object.
It is possible to question this approach on the basis of an interpretation of
the results of cognitive science. This interpretation sustains the rejection of
a functionalist, causal explanation of perception in favour of an intentional
understanding. As a consequence, the subject of perception is not to be under-
stood as an organism that responds to stimuli, but as an embodied subject,
that stands in an intentional relation to the world. Phenomena like change and
experiential blindness are important data, which help to undermine the natu-
ralistic explanation, because they demonstrate that merely to be given visual
impressions is not yet to see. Perception requires an active structuring of the
perceptual field which transcends the information contained in the data. Noë
gives the evidence of congenital blind people, who after surgery get all the
necessary visual input, yet initially don’t see anything (experiential blindness).
(Noë, 2004, pp. 3–11) In the case of change blindness, people neglect evident,
clearly visible changes in their visual field. Without detailing the interpreta-
tion of these phenomena, it is clear that they exemplify cases of input without
perception. Other phenomena illustrate the reverse, namely perception without
input. One can think here of the famous Kanisza triangle, where people see on
the basis of the perception of three triangularly arranged so-called pacman-
figures, a slightly brighter triangle against a background. (Kanizsa, 1955,
pp. 7–30) The perception of a homogeneous, filled-in visual field, although
there is no input at the level of the fovea and of the so-called blind spot (papila
nervi optici), equally illustrates this point. So there clearly is a discrepancy
between input and perception, which forces us to conclude that the relation
between the perceiver and what is seen, is not a simple causal relation. Per-
cepts do not cause, but are constituted or constructed by the perceiver. This
constitutive relation is not causal but intentional. With Merleau-Ponty we may
conclude that the naturalistic analysis of perception is highly problematical.
“The sense and structure of the perceived are for us not the simple result of
psychophysical processes.” (Merleau-Ponty, 1945, p. 73)
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T H E B O DY A N D T H E S Y M B O L I C F U N C T I O N

The critique of the naturalistic explanation of perception is based on an alter-

native comprehension of embodiment as the fundamental mode of being of the
subject of perception. The subject of this intentional relation is not the brain,
nor the mind as causally related to the body, but an embodied, sense-giving
existence. Consequently, the comprehension of the perceived world equally
differs from the naturalistic approach. The perceived world is not a totality of
causally related physical objects, but what we should call, following Merleau-
Ponty, a phenomenal field, which consists of three core elements: the embodied
subject, the other person and the lived world (Merleau-Ponty, 1945, p. 73). We
can refer to A. Noë again, who adopts this criticism of a naively naturalistic
explanation of perception, by further developing this new notion of the perceiv-
ing, embodied subject in his so-called enactive approach. I cite him extensively
to illustrate this point. “It is a mistake to suppose that vision just is a process
whereby an internal world-model is built up (. . .). Vision shouldn’t be thought
of as a computation performed by the brain on inputs provided by the retina.
There is a solidifying consensus in cognitive science that information available
to an active animal greatly outstrips information available to a static retina, and
that it is a mistake to suppose that the animal’s data for visual perception are
confined to the contents of the retinal image. If we think of the perceiver not
as the brain-photoreceptor system, but rather as the whole animal, situated in
the environment, free to move around and explore, then we can take seriously
the possibility that the data for vision (as distinct from data for the photore-
ceptor) are not the content of a static snapshot-like retinal image. Perceivers
aren’t confined to their retinal images in the way traditional theorists have sup-
posed.” (Noë, 2004, pp. 20–22) So we must reject the input-output picture.
“To see is not just to have visual sensations; it is to have visual sensations that
are integrated, in the right sort of way, with bodily skills”. (Noë, 2004, p. 29)
This leads Noë to formulate what he calls the enactive approach to perception,
where the basic idea is that “Perceptual experience acquires content thanks to
our possession of bodily skills. What we perceive is determined by what we
do (or what we know how to do); it is determined by what we are ready to
do. (. . .) We enact our perceptual experience; we act it out. To be a perceiver
is to understand, implicitly, the effects of movement on sensory stimulation.”
(Noë, 2004, p. 1) Rectangularity for instance is not captured by specific tactile
sensations when you hold something in your hand or touch it. But it is under-
stood by manipulating the object, i.e. by turning it around or by your active
explorative touching. It is the experienced movement of your hand over the
object that makes you capture its form. This movement causes proprioception
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and more precisely kinaesthesia, the sensation of movement. Only the combi-
nation of kinaesthetic and tactile sensations, whereby as Husserl showed the
second kind of sensation is motivated by the first, generates this perception
of the rectangular form. One can generalize this finding into the principle: No
perception without movement.
The idea that the perceiver is an embodied subject governing over her body
as a freely moveable organ of perception was first formulated by Husserl.
(Husserl, Hua I, p. 128; Hua IV, p. 145; Hua VI, pp. 220–221) Merleau-Ponty’s
phenomenology of perception can be considered as a further development of
this analysis of embodied existence. To be embodied means to situate one-
self in a specific environment, to engage in a particular situation. The world
is for instance visible, can be manipulated etcetera, because I am embodied.
Perception has its origin in the vital bond between the perceiver, his body and
the world. I perceive, I am sensitive to colours and other sensible qualities,
because my body has an original pact with empirical reality. Sensation is a
natural co-existence and communion with this reality. (communion, connatu-
ralité, Merleau-Ponty, 1945, p. 370) This follows from my bodily constitution.
Consequently, my natural affinity with the world has to be understood as an
impersonal, anonymous pact (on perçoit). Perception is not the result of a con-
scious, intentional act, but is naturally mine. The perceiving “corps-sujet” is
a natural self (moi naturel, Merleau-Ponty, 1945, p. 250). Sensibility occurs
in the margin of my personal live, since I’ve always been an embodied self
that sides with the world. Vision is a capacity that is naturally directed at,
attuned to a visual field. My organism is originally a pre-personal belonging
to the world; it is anonymous and exists in an impersonal mode. (l’anonymat
de notre corps, Merleau-Ponty, 1945, p. 101) Merleau-Ponty calls this kind of
embodiment the normal, habitual or customary body, and he distinguishes it
from the actual body a person lives. A person who suffers phantom-pain in an
amputated limb neglects this amputation, and returns to the habitual body. The
person refuses to acknowledge the actuality of the mutilated body. According
to Merleau-Ponty, this is neither a conscious nor an unconscious mental act.
But this pain can’t have a simple physiological explanation either, since the
physical cause is literally absent. In the case of the lived body, we are con-
fronted with a third term, the so-called existential attitude, which supersedes
the dichotomy of the physical and the psychical. “To refuse the mutilation is
an attitude of our existence.” (Merleau-Ponty, 1945, p. 102)
This lived body is not experienced as an object, nor does it simply function
as a cause of sensations. Psychology elucidates bodily experience in terms of
a body schema, which means that we have at every moment a global, prac-
tical and implicit notion of our proper body, of its posture and its relation to
other objects. My body appears as an attitude towards the world, in relation
 EMBODIMENT AND EXISTENCE 99

to an actual or possible task. I thereby experience my body as dynamical, as

what Merleau-Ponty calls an “I can”. It is a capacity, a propensity to do certain
things. (Merleau-Ponty, 1945, p. 160) He speaks of a practical knowledge of
the body, which is not representational: praktignosia. (Merleau-Ponty, 1945,
p. 114) This practical knowledge also structures the space of my agency. The
spatiality of my body and my space constitute a practical system (Merleau-
Ponty, 1945, p. 119). The proper spatiality of my body manifests itself in my
activity. If I want to move, I do not first have to locate my body as an object
in objective space and situate it with respect to the place I want to reach. On
the contrary, my activity itself situates my body in a given world, which is
structured around my body, and orients it towards and in a virtual space as
the correlate of my actual and possible movement. Mobility is thus essentially
linked to a possible space into which the organism can project itself, even in
the absence of any concrete, urgent task. The possible, abstract movements
and the virtual space that is linked to them, transcend the actual, given world.
In that sense, Merleau-Ponty attributes to moving lived bodies the so-called
projection-function or the symbolic function, which is essential to embodied
existence. (fonction de projection, Merleau-Ponty, 1945, p. 129–130; fonction
symbolique, ibid. p. 141). It is because of this “reaching beyond” that the sub-
ject is situated or embedded in its environment. To be situated by definition
means to be surrounded by a horizon of what is not (yet) actually there. The
symbolic, referring function is in that sense for Merleau-Ponty the expression
of a fundamental mode of being, which he indicates with the term “intentional
arch”. (arc intentionnel, Merleau-Ponty, 1945, p. 156) The embodied subject
exists as transcendence, as a directedness towards the other, which is symboli-
cally represented, although not mentally, in the present. This transcendence is
not confined to movement alone, but characterizes our entire way of being, and
projects around us the past, the future, our human environment, the perceived
world, our physical, moral and cultural situation, and in that sense situates us
in all this respects.
The study of war-injured Schneider, whose projection-function is disabled,
clarifies what this means. Schneider is unable to situate himself in the practical
world, because he became incapable of executing actions which transcend the
immediate here and now. For instance, he can indicate his nose when the doc-
tor previously touched it, but doesn’t succeed in putting his finger on his nose
when not touched and only asked to do so. Because his nose isn’t tactually
or visually given, and to find it requires the execution of a virtual movement
of the arm, Schneider is incapable of initiating that movement. The existen-
tial diagnosis further indicates that the projection-function is not localised in
some particular perceptive system like seeing, although he suffers massive
visual deficiencies, which then causes the dysfunctions in other systems. This
100 P E T E R R E Y NA E RT

function doesn’t belong to any sort of symbolic consciousness either; it would

be absurd to say that Schneider’s lesion is metaphysical. The symbolic func-
tion rather founds the subject’s total attitude towards the world; which means
it is present in seeing, touching as well as in the explicitly conscious rela-
tion to the world. It characterizes and pervades the entire way of existing,
and explains the proper synthesis and coherence of all different bodily and
existential capacities.
The symbolic function founds the crucial notion of meaning and signifi-
cation, which has a basic existential connotation. To signify means to refer
beyond itself. The sense-giving activity of the embodied self presupposes the
transcendence that characterizes its symbolic functioning. The presence of this
function entails that everything is meaningful for a normal existence, because
the world is not confined to its actual, present state. In that sense, the whole of
human embodied existence is significant and constitutes meaning. Synaesthe-
sia, Merleau-Ponty claims, should be clarified on the basis of this referring.
The senses refer to each other in the sense that an inter-sensorial experi-
ence, where e.g. colours are heard or sounds felt or smells seen, is possible
and necessary. Sexuality too is a mode of existential being, that implies the
projection-function. Merleau-Ponty refuses the causal role of the sexual drive,
and hence any reductive biological or psycho-analytical explanation of sex-
ual behaviour, but understands sexuality as a mode of intentionality which
bestows a sexual significance on the world by referring to the other on the
basis of love or lust. Because of the dysfunction of the projection-function,
Schneider’s sexuality is equally deficient. When his partner takes the initiative,
he is capable to join in the foreplay, but when she stops, he doesn’t under-
take any further action. For Merleau-Ponty, this means that Schneider’ sexual
actual state doesn’t refer beyond itself, that it is encapsulated in the here and
now, and so that it doesn’t have any significance. Because of this deficiency,
the foreplay isn’t lived as what it should normally mean, namely directed at
what should follow it: sexual intercourse.

MEANING AND PERCEPTION

Merleau-Ponty claims to give a new, existential analysis of perception on the

basis of the central role of the symbolic function of embodied existence.
The sense-giving, structuring activity which is the condition of possibility
of the appearance of the empirical world is founded on the projection-
function. Perception is sense-giving by the very mobility of my body. And
Merleau-Ponty wants us to understand this quite literally. “So we have to
recognize under the name of look, hand and of body in general a system
 EMBODIMENT AND EXISTENCE 101

that is dedicated to the inspection of the world, capable of bridging dis-

tances, of piercing into the perceptual future, of painting a sense in the world.
(. . .) Every perception, every action presupposed by it, every human usage
of the body is already primordial expression, (. . .) the primal operation which
implants a sense in what had none, and which thus (. . .) installs an order (. . .).”
(Merleau-Ponty, 1960, p. 108) Expression doesn’t mean here that something
is expressed, like for instance a thought in words, but means constitution of
meaning, sense-giving. “The most proper characteristic of human gesture is
to signify beyond its simply given existence, to inaugurate sense (. . .).” (ibid.,
p. 109) The world in all its aspects, spatial, visual, tactile etcetera is structured
by embodied subjectivity.
Reality is spatial because the embodied subjectivity co-exists with the
empirical reality. The spatial orientation of the visible world is not determined
by the position of my body as an object in three-dimensional space, but by my
body as a system of possible action, that is by my virtual body, of which the
phenomenal, i.e. central position is defined by its task and situation. My body
is there where it has something to do, says Merleau-Ponty. (Merleau-Ponty,
1945, p. 289) Emanating and radiating from itself, the body projects an envi-
ronment in which it can act, and this is the source of space with its subjective
orientation, directions and co-ordinates. This system constitutes the phenom-
enally oriented space. (Merleau-Ponty, 1945, p. 291) The perceived world is
necessarily oriented around this subject, based on it anchoring (ancrage) in the
world. The pre-personal existence opens a structured field of action in which
to move.
The unity of the object and of the world is not the result of an intellectual
synthesis by a knowing subject, but is correlated with the mode of being of
the embodied existence. The unity of the subject manifests itself in the body
schema, body image and the phenomena of proprioception and synaesthesia. I
live my own unity which founds the empirical, experienced unity of the object.
The pre-objective unity correlates with the unity of the phenomenal, lived
body. (Merleau-Ponty, 1945, pp. 276, 363) The perceived object has a form, a
location, colours, tactile properties etcetera because my body is situated, I can
see, feel, and etcetera. The intentionality of perception is not an intellectual
process, but a mode of being embodied. The mobility of my body is funda-
mental for this intentional relation to the world. Being able to move opens and
directs the body to a presumptively totally given object, and to a world wherein
this object appears. In this sense movement exemplifies the symbolic character
of my embodiment. Because I can move around the object, and complement
my limited sight of it with new perspectives, the complete object is the object
that I’ve seen from all sides. To move is an original intentional relation to the
world. If one accepts that perception is perspectival because of the situation
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of the moving body, one also presumes that different, complementary perspec-
tives of the same object are possible. From my own point of view, I am present
in and to the world which is the horizon of my perception, and which as such
founds my particular perspective of it. It wouldn’t make sense to speak of my
particular view on the world, if this completed world weren’t implied by my
proper perspective. (Merleau-Ponty, 1945, p. 380) So situated perception and
particular point of view mutually co-found each other. The totally given object
correlates with my movement, and the specific position I have at this moment
can only be identified as a particular view of the object when it is presumed to
be more than the object of this actual perspective. The natural world is the hori-
zon of all horizons. To perceive means to engage in the present a multitude of
future possible perceptions, which the future cannot guarantee. In this respect,
one must understand the object as the target of a bodily teleology. (Merleau-
Ponty, 1945, p. 373) It is the correlate of a practical and horizon-like synthesis.
(Merleau-Ponty, 1945, p. 376)
Temporality is the original essence of being embodied. Time does not
belong to the objective world, because past and future do not exist (any-
more or not yet). They are both a dimension of our subjective presence in
the world. Merleau-Ponty underlines the priority of the present wherein past
and future appears. He refers to Husserl’s analysis of internal time conscious-
ness, who understands retention and protention as the conscious modes of past
and future, to illustrate this embeddednes of past and future in the present.
Time consciousness is a condition of possibility of the subject’s life. Time
is in that sense a transcendentale. Perception for instance is only possible
when the perceptual presence of the perceived object is sustained by a past
and directed at a future. Embodied existence is this openness towards other
temporal dimensions, which emanate from the present, but also give it its sig-
nification as now. A momentary snapshot of a perceived object is necessarily
integrated in a series of experiences which are directed at a presumptively
future appearing object that confirms the past experiences of it. So embod-
ied perception presupposes temporality, this mode of existence is necessarily
temporal. (Merleau-Ponty, 1945, p. 483) Temporality is openness, and pre-
cisely this characteristic founds meaning and significance. The significance
of the perceived object is precisely that it is only one aspect of a complete
object, which appears as goal at the horizon of perception. This sense-giving
openness, which coincides with temporality, is the functioning intentionality,
another name for embodied existence.
The object is more than the correlate of an actual perception, because it is
also perceived as really transcending embodied perception. It appears as exist-
ing in the world, which presupposes a completed synthesis, which is actually
 EMBODIMENT AND EXISTENCE 103

impossible because of the facticity of the perceiving subject. This contradic-

tion between the reality of the world and its incomplete appearance defines
the phenomenal field, the world as the correlate of embodied perception. Yet
at the same time, it opens up another dimension of existence. This new con-
ception of embodied existence enables us to eliminate the classical problem
of the other mind that is linked to naturalism and helps to further explicate
the symbolic nature of embodied existence. I want to conclude by just briefly
indicating this solution. Merleau-Ponty’s main argument for the condition of
possibility of intersubjectivity rests on the fundamental epistemological prin-
ciple that defines Phenomenology. Since nothing can count as real unless it
appears in my experience, everything which is true is mine. But precisely this
truth or reality also requires its giveness for others. Objectivity means intersub-
jectivity. These other perceivers are symbolically implicated in my perception,
because my perception is necessarily, due to my situated embodiment, only one
possible view of the percept, and thus refers in principle to all other possible
perceptions of the object. This means that my bodily exploration of the world
can be generalised. (Merleau-Ponty, 1969, p. 190) So my proper embodiment,
which is defined by the symbolic function, is the transcendental condition of
possibility of intersubjectivity. But of course the next question then is how the
other can be experienced. This demands an analysis of the phenomenon of bod-
ily expression, which I will reserve for another paper. But the main idea should
be clear by now. The subject of intersubjective experience is not an embodied
mind which tries to perceive another mind on the basis of her bodily behaviour.
Against this theory of empathy, Merleau-Ponty argues that intentions, feel-
ings etcetera don’t lie hidden behind bodily behaviour. The body expresses
my existence, and the same holds for another person. Her sad face is her sad-
ness. When she laughs, she is happy; she doesn’t laugh because she is happy. I
can encounter another person because we share our embodiment. This sharing
entails that my body symbolizes the intentionality of the other and vice versa. I
don’t have to compare my bodily behaviour with the behaviour of the other per-
son. Because of our shared embodiment – intercorporéité – everything we do
has immediately intersubjective signification, and we do understand directly
what the other means. Recent cognitive research confirms this phenomeno-
logical claim. Intersubjectivity is fundamentally an understanding of the other
embodied self as another situated subject, whose situation is a possibility for
me. (see Gallagher and Zahavi, 2008, Chapter 9, pp. 171–196)

University of Antwerp, Belgium

104 P E T E R R E Y NA E RT

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