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The Freudian Ego has been likened by some commentators to the Phenomenological Transcendental Ego, and such a position appears to receive further support in the light of the Freudian claim that his Psychology is Kantian. The first function of the Freudian Ego is the protection of the body which for Freud means that the “I think” was definitely present in the intentional act of withdrawing the hand from the flame. On such accounts the “I” is the principle uniting the representations of the candle-flame and the pain. In this situation the I thinks what it ought to do and does it immediately. Such action is very similar to the action of a driver turning the wheel of a car to negotiate a curve that immediately presents itself in the visual field—what the driver ought to do and what he does are almost simultaneous. The representations that are transcended in such action are that of the road and that of the sensation of the turning of the wheel. This idea of the spatiality of the body is to be found in Kant’s discussion of space and the incongruent counterparts of a right and left handed glove.. Here Kant argues that there is nothing in space itself that guarantees the difference between the spatial orientation of the two gloves. It is rather the difference in the respective intuitions of the respective gloves that accounts for the difference. This explanation of Kant’s would probably be accepted with certain qualifications by MP. For Kant space is an a priori transcendental principle that determines the nature of external spatial relations. MP’s preferred approach to making his transcendental case is to examine pathological cases in which body-image is distorted or lost.. MP insists that in normal cases where body-image is intact, the normal person reckons with “the possible” in terms of possible actions. It is almost as if the thought of what is possible is a necessary prerequisite for the action of the normal person: when for example such a person points at his nose (a relatively abstract movement) or if he is ordered to move his hand. MP criticises the Kantian “I think” as a unifier of diverse representations on the grounds that a representation of the movement to be performed is essentially a sensory and not a motor project or motor intentionality (P. 127). This is a puzzling criticism because MP himself claims that the difference between a normal person and a patient who cannot carry out an order to do something is that in the normal person the movement and consciousness of movement are one unity. Kant is not an associationist, and would not therefore claim that there is an external causal link between the consciousness of the movement and the movement. The “I think” is not “associated” with the manifold of representations, it rather “logically” accompanies, these representations and forms a unity of consciousness. For Kant, the “I think” also includes amongst the manifold of representations the background of the movement which is to carve out its path in a world of possible movements.. MP discusses the patient Schneider, who has sustained brain damage to the occipital lobe of his brain. Schneider cannot recognize an object my merely looking at it and abstract movements such as pointing at his nose are only possible if he keeps his eyes fixed on the arm and hand he is going to use to perform the task. The patient attempts to use observational knowledge to supplement what is left of his normal intentional power. What is missing for the patient is an epistemological attitude or power in which the movements and visual activity give form or structure to the situation (P132). The explanations MP searches for both furnish meaning and are only disclosed to a certain kind of reflection. It is clear that in Schneider’s case his deficiency runs deeper than the powers of touch or vision conceived of as collections of sensations or qualities. No explanation is final for this case MP argues. Visual representation, sensations of touch, and abstract behaviour are merely aspects of one and the same phenomenon: they are three expressions of a disturbance of our fundamental power to organise the world. The above is actually, with certain reservations over the allergic reaction of MP to causation and rationality, a hylomorphic argument for the Aristotelian notion of a power, and could even be appropriately included in the Aristotelian discipline of Practical Science. This power of organising the world for Kant would occur under the auspices of his faculty of Sensibility that would then differentiate into functions of objectification, symbolic functions, representational functions and a function of projection. All of these functions could then on a Kantian account, be involved in a categorical attitude that would be subsumed under Kantian categories of understanding. MP, on the contrary maintains that consciousness is the central focus of this power and he condenses his opposition to Kant in his characterisation of Consciousness as a power of intentionality and motility(I can”) rather than the Kantian alternative of Thought(”I think”). The “I think” of the Kantian system is the unifier of representations some of which may concern what ought to be done. It was Schopenhauer and not Kant that dualistically divided the world up into the world as will and the world as representation. Kant’s division of the practical relations we have with the world through action and the theoretical relation we have with the world through belief is not dualism. Neither does it justify the criticism of MP that Kant prioritises theoretical judgment over practical concrete action. Sensibility functions theoretically in terms of forms of intuition of space and time which are for Kant principles of structuring the world: e.g. “seeing” the ship sailing down the river in terms of before and after in relation to its changing positions in relation to the river. These are not thoughts governed by the categories of understanding but rather sensible relations to the world. One can truly say that insofar as Sensibility is concerned we “inhabit” space and time and we are not representing to ourselves in this context that we are “in” space and time, which incidentally is perfectly possible at the level of understanding and judgment when we are generating knowledge statements. For MP, on the other hand, the sensory-motor functions of a body image are, for some mysterious reason, more fundamental than the representational or symbolic functions. All of these functions contribute in their various ways to organising the world. MP and perhaps Sartre too, prioritize the “I can” over the “I think” which entails seeing the road ahead not in terms of its black tar or its objective relation to other roads and vehicles travelling on it. My “hodological map” as Sartre calls it, grasps the road in terms of my instrumental task of walking along it, its feeling as if it will never come to an end, its unyieldingness beneath my tired feet. In walking along the road I am clearly exploring its potentialities—of coming to an end, of leading to my friends house, etc. These are practical tasks that can be expressed by Kantian instrumental imperatives which relate ontologically to Spinoza’s transcendental power of striving to maintain oneself in existence, and perhaps also, insofar as being human is concerned, striving to maintain oneself or create for oneself a qualitative mode of existence that constitutes the Aristotelian state of Eudaimonia (a good spirited flourishing life). Kant’s response to MP’s criticism would have been to point out that he was the first major philosopher since Aristotle and Spinoza to shift attention away from the theoretical realm to the practical realm of Philosophy. Kant claimed in this context that our moral personality or nature is an important aspect of human Being. Our moral nature, he continued, may even be just as important and perhaps even more important than our explorations of Physical Nature and the truth thereof. Recall the 4 Kantian questions that define the realm of Philosophy: “What can I know?” “What ought I to do?” “What can I hope for?” and “What is man?”
MP it ought to be noted is also critical of certain conceptions of an all constituting Consciousness which imputes meaning to everything that lacks meaning under the condition that such a conception does not inhabit a body which acts transcendentally and becomes in the diversity of its acts, a general function.
Kant is criticized for artificially connecting the perception of an object with the perception of space. Space is, MP insists embedded in existence. It is not clear what the thrust of MP’s objection is here but there is a suggestion, equally vague, that Kant’s theory reduces a thing to its space. In relation to this discussion perhaps we should remind ourselves of Kant’s actual position in his Critique of Pure Reason:
“Space is not something objective and real, nor a substance, nor an accident, nor a relation; instead it is subjective and ideal, and originates from mind’s nature in accord with a stable law as a scheme, as it were, for coordinating everything sensed externally.”(Ak2:403)
One of the reasons that, on Kant’s position space could never become thing-like is that causal relations must exist within a thing and in the relation between things. Causality is a function of the understanding and the law that Kant is referring to is not a metaphysical law but rather a transcendental law. Space is an apriori principle or condition independent of experience and could never become thing-like, become a substance that one can attribute attributes to.
For MP space is intimately related to body image and to strengthen his earlier discussion of the Pathological case of Schneider he takes up a more everyday example of a lady with a feather in her hat negotiating obstacles non observationally in order to avoid damage to the feather. The point of this discussion is to highlight the transformation of the object-feather to becoming part of her body-image. We know from earlier discussions that the use of the body is transcendental for MP. For Leibniz too the body was an effective law of its use but MP rejects this in favour of the formulation “nexus of living meanings”(P.175)
In the work “Phenomenology of Perception” MP turns to considering “The Body in its Sexual Being”. He acknowledges that there is a certain difficulty attached to rediscovering the relation of the subject to his world by taking into account merely epistemological-metaphysical issues. The task requires taking an original position with respect to the fact that nature is independent of the experiencing subject. This is a nature that does not depend upon being perceived to exist. MP now pins his hopes and arguments on the affective life of sexuality because in this sphere of experience something begins to exist in relation to us through sexual desire and love. Affectivity is therefore an important form of Consciousness for the phenomenologist. Again MP appeals to pathological phenomena, phenomena that are “objectively” examined by empirical and intellectualist psychologists. Neither an account in terms of reflexes nor an account in terms of representations suffice, it is argued by MP for an adequate explanation of what is occurring in the pathological phenomena he discusses. Sexuality is, rather an intentionality embedded in existence, an intentionality that manifests itself in activity. Freud, that scientific rationalist par excellence is paradoxically quoted favourably in this discussion, in particular his claim that every human activity including dreaming has a meaning.
On the issue of the body, however, MP rejects Freudian references to genital organs and erotogenic zones when it comes to explaining Sexuality as a phenomenon. For MP Sexuality as a phenomenon is a general power of the psychosomatic subject, a power that creates meaningful structures of conduct, and a power that has internal links to both our cognitive and active natures.
We know from earlier chapters in this work that Freud’s work was conceived of as “archeological” insofar as another phenomenologist, Paul Ricoeur, was concerned. Ricoeur means by this term that there is in Freud a desire to return historically to the origins of things in the process of explaining their meaning. This from an Aristotelian point of view is merely a commitment to one form of causal explanation that we know neither MP nor Ricoeur are in favour of. Claiming, in the context of this discussion, as MP does, that sexuality does not have an intimate relation to the genitals when it is so apparent that the genitals are the focus of so much attention and representation is to say the least a paradoxical claim. Freud, as we know traces the history of the movement of erotic sensitivity and stimulation from the mouth to the anal zone to the phallic region, all before the age of 6. The whole investigation is Aristotelian and conducted under the auspices of the Aristotelian pleasure-pain principle thus avoiding the modern biological tendency to reduce all activity to reflexivity or a “ blind” form of instinct. Images, which are representations are key components of sexual activity, These images are also related to pleasure and pain and connected fundamentally to erotic zones of the body. Freud is undoubtedly a hylomorphic Psychologist and this is evidenced by his choice to found his whole mature Psychology on what he calls a “mythology” of instincts and their vicissitudes. Instincts and their vicissitudes (which include Consciousness) are regulated by three principles: the Energy Regulation Principle(ERP), the Pleasure-Pain Principle(PPP),and the Reality Principle(RP). This does not mesh with the account MP gives of the libido where he specifically declares that the libido is not an instinct. In making this statement it is not clear whether he also meant to deny that it was a vicissitude of an instinct. Freud’s response to this claim of MP’s would probably have been to claim that Instinct is merely a general power of the body, a power that reaches deep into our Being-in-the-world. We should not, however be surprized at these paradoxical criticisms of Freud, considering MP’s attitude toward the work of Kant. We have pointed out previously that many problematic interpretations of Kant rest upon an ignorance of the fact that he was to some extent, a hylomorphic philosopher.
MP, in elaboration upon sexuality and its relation to our existence shows the resemblance of their positions when he asserts that :
“all existence has a sexual significance…every phenomenon has an existential significance.”(P.184)
This is highly suggestive of the Freudian position and MP continues to elaborate upon this point by referring to sexual sectors of our life. In the context of this discussion MP cites the case of a woman who has lost the use of speech in response to a parental prohibition forbidding her to see the man she loves. This obviously suggests, MP maintains, the oral phase of psycho-sexual development but it is a phase the patient regresses to as a consequence of the traumatic prohibition. Any in-depth analysis will no doubt reveal the work of the pleasure-pain principle operating in the defence mechanism of regression in this patient. This together with the truth that “Trauma disrupts normal psychological functioning” helps us, then to give an “interpretation” in terms of intentionality. There is here an intentional refusal of the life of discourse with others, returning the patient to the kind of existence an animal enjoys. In refusing to eat (another symptom) the patient is also intentionally demonstrating the presence of Freud’s Death Instinct (opposed to the life sustaining libido). MP fails to mention this aspect of the analysis that Aristotle would have no objections to. It is true that sexuality appears to be present in this case only in outline (in the regression to the oral phase and the implied sexual deprivation brought about by the prohibition) but its presence is essential to the thesis that MP wishes to defend. It is clear that in more general terms the patient’s body loses a whole range of powers when fields of possibility relating to speaking and eating are closed down. Yet the patient survives in virtue of the presence of the libido that at any moment might resume an interest in the world of possibilities it knows and can see. Existence, for MP is not a set of facts but rather the source we have for metamorphosing these facts.
MP also claims that existence is ambiguous and returns to our relation to the natural world to illustrate the transcendence of the body. He argues that ambiguity is present even in the most basic sense- experience of the colour of blue which for MP is not a sensation or a quality but rather is to be analysed in terms of the transcendental use of the body. The body prompts me to look at blue in a particular way and when I do so it reverberates in the whole of my body and disposes it toward a feeling of slipping downwards. In Aristotelian terms blue is a form that will have certain effects upon the form of the body in the context of certain “causes” in the world including lighting conditions. The water and waves of the sea and the expanse of the sky may look blue but they are really white being endowed with colour by the lighting conditions of the interaction of the golden sun with the darkness of space. This “effect” of blue upon the perceiver could be just as real as the effects of the golden sun or the darkness of space. The effect also for Aristotle causes the body to respond in a certain way. This phenomenon may well require the entire structure of Aristotle’s metaphysics of change for a complete account which subsequent modern experiments with prisms confirmed. Light is white and one of the colours produced by prisms is blue indicating that white light and darkness are primary conditions of our colour system. Further modern quantitative experimentation with colours also indicates that there is a continuum of colours that can be measured in units. Certain measurements, however may not conform to the colour system as we perceive it: certain measurements, for example are not perceivable by the naked eye. If this is an indication of the structure of reality (that it is an infinite continuum) then Kant’s metaphysical contention that we can know very little about this Reality as it is in itself finds some support. This reality can manifest itself in an infinite number of forms including the forms of time and extension and this may be a source of ambiguity for Kant but for the MP of “Phenomenology of Perception” this position is mistaken because for him there is no noumenal reality behind phenomena.
In an attempt to authenticate his view of the transcendent use of the body and its Being-in-the world, he chooses to focus upon an experimental phenomenon in which the whole world appears to the perceiver to be upside down and lack “Reality”. He cites an experiment by Stratton in which an image of the world projected upon the eye is inverted thus creating the sense in his subjects that the world is upside down. Initially nothing is recognizable, not even faces which completely lose their familiarity when seen upside down. Eventually as the subjects are forced to engage with this world by finding their way and doing things, though the image remains inverted, the world returns back to its normal state of orientation. Is this, then, the confirmation that MP seeks to prove that the use of the body is transcendental? MP claims that in the initial phase of the inversion of the image no mere conceptualisation of the world or intellectual attempt to merely identify things in the world would produce the same effect of returning orientation to normal. Merely thinking about the visual field would not, he argues, produce a correction of the orientation of the visual field.
For MP the body’s relation to space is a living one but he adds mysteriously that there is a level of space behind the space the body constitutes. This is a mysterious claim given his consistent opposition to the position which maintains that the conditioned we experience always has logical conditions which the Principle of Sufficient Reason requires we investigate.
MP makes clear that the body he is referring to is not a personal body but rather one that is “ a system of autonomous functions”(P.296). These functions constitute its general project that is as he puts it, “a communication with the world more ancient than thought”. These functions and this project are not, he argues, accessible to reflection and it is not clear what is meant with this statement. He certainly cannot subscribe to equating what he is saying with the Kantian noumenal self that is revealed in categorical ethical actions. The project that man is , is “invaded by the outside”(P.370) , to use MP’s terms. The object in the noumenal world, for him is merely a phenomenon formed as a result of the unity of sense provided by a transcendent body. This project is in typical existential fashion thrown into the natural world, which can only be explored in terms of inter-sensory relations that cannot be captured by formal mathematical or scientific thinking. The way in which transcendence enters the system from the outside is via the perception of Others. Other people’s perspectives on landscapes we will never see creates a continuous chain of experience that may extend into infinity.
Sometimes this continuity and reality of the perceived world is ruptured as is the case with Macbeth’s hallucination of a dagger hanging in the air, and the ghost of Banquo at the feast. MP claims that hallucinations are neither sensory experiences nor judgements. They are for him enigmatic forms of consciousness. This strangeness is illustrated by a considering a report by a schizophrenic that there is a bird in the garden singing but the fact of the bird and the fact of its singing seem not connected to each other. Here is appears, from a Kantian point of view that the structure of judging something about something has collapsed into the simpler power of merely “thinking” something. This thinking moreover does not respond or connect to either logic or what Wittgenstein would call the grammar of language and seems rather to be conducted in the medium of projected images. MP’s diagnosis is that the inter-sensory unity of the bird singing has fallen apart. He sticks at this description and refuses to think hylomorphically about this phenomenon, which would entail accepting a “causal” account of powers building upon powers. For Aristotle there are many ways in which the normal structures constituting man- the rational animal capable of discourse- can fall apart. For Kant the problems are with the faculty of Sensibility and the power of the imagination to “construct” our normal world. When the power of the imagination is isolated from the powers of perception, understanding and reason we are then confronted with enigmatic phenomena. The accounts of Aristotle and Kant would amount to nothing more than what he would call “mental chemistry”. This objection by MP, however, would be rejected, in turn, by both Aristotle and Kant, on logical and conceptual grounds.
The General Project that we are includes Consciousness that, according to MP does not know what it is doing when it is hallucinating. This must amount to some kind of negation of the transcendental use of the body. There is a mysterious defence of this position that relates to the possibility that there is a possible hiatus in relation to the time between one act of consciousness and another. It is this that allows consciousness to doubt itself. M argues. (P402). This “anything is possible” last resort of the sceptic does, however, seem to be a controversial explanation of a phenomenon that appears to require, at least insofar as Freud (the Kantian Psychologist) is concerned, more analysis and justification.
This theme of the precarious hold that Consciousness has on the past and the future is continued, and MP claims that, “the transcendence of the instants of time is both the ground of and the impediment to, the rationality of my personal history”(P. 404).
Being thrown into the world as this general project testifies to the general fact that the powers of my body (to use Aristotelian language) are anonymously integrated into an anonymous life. Spinoza would have characterised this state of affairs in terms of his “first idea of the mind”, namely “the idea of the body”. This body lives in the natural world of Aristotle, a world composed of earth, air, water, and fire conditioned by the processes of hot and cold wet and dry which as we know in certain combinations can produce both a Shakespearean Tempest and also the calm before and after the storm. We also live in the Aristotelian cultural world of arête in which three kinds of forms are transmitted in Time: the reproduction of children, the reproduction of artefacts, and the reproduction of ideas. The cultural landscape of houses, villages, cities, fields, roads, churches bells, hammers and anvils overlays the natural landscape of the hills and valleys. MP claims that each of these cultural kinds of object is formed after the human action it is created for. He uses the Hegelian term of Objective Spirit to describe the cultural presence in the scenery we have just described. We sense, he argues, the presence of Other persons in the form of a general I. The question he then asks himself is whether his Consciousness can in fact think this general I, or a general “One”. In a sceptical recital he claims that all we in fact see are detached projects constituted of the thoughts and intentions of transcendent bodies. This introduces the challenge that Sartre met with his eavesdropping example. Sartre argues that I become aware of the gaze of another accusing me. In this spirit of shame and injustice I encounter others. Rousseau responds to the challenge of Other persons by claiming that we encounter others in a spirit of “amour proper”. Hegel responds to the challenge in the spirit of his raw master-slave relation. MP slips into Sartre’s characterisation of the problem of Other Minds by re-iterating that the Other person is both in-itself and exists for-itself. The ambiguity of this description implies, MP argues that I have an apparent choice to treat the Other person as either an object or as a Consciousness.
MP rejects all scientific accounts in which the body is placed in a spatio-temporal continuum of the world as a centre of movement and activity to be measured by a system of physic-mathematical correlations. He does this because, as he puts it, there is nothing in this kind of account allowing us to conceive of the inhering of Consciousness in a transcendental body. Such accounts do not allow the attribution of Consciousness either to myself or to Others. Scientists faced with the challenge of Consciousness or Others sometime slip into a form of dualism in which they agree that Consciousness can inhere in my body on Cartesian grounds (namely that I know that I think). Having established such a position they are then forced to resort to any number of logical contortions to attribute Consciousness or Minds to others. Aristotle the scientist is not a dualist and yet is able to describe and explain the functions of the body, and the structure of powers that enable us to transcend our merely physical natures. In Aristotle’s hylomorphic theory, the organ system of a human body contains the principles necessary for a life that is captured in his hylomorphic definition: rational animal capable of discourse. Powers building systematically upon powers and powers integrating themselves with other powers generate an ability to transmit the forms of children (with long childhoods compared to the animal world), the forms of artefacts, and the forms of ideas, the essential components of our cultural world. For MP, however, any mention of physiology or physiological events is merely an abstract schema of concrete phenomena.
It is clear that for MP, the gaze of the other whilst being a trace of Consciousness has a distinctly Sartrean character. The gaze is responded to as an alien existence that I “re-enact”. I know of the existence of Other persons because, MP argues, I am not transparent to myself. Presumably this means that we are not fully aware of all aspects of the functions of our bodies: the workings of the organs (including the brain) for example. MP rules out the idea that we become an object for the Other, and the idea that he becomes an object for me. He is in the world as I am, and neither of us is shut up in their perspective. When the other is engaged in instrumental action involving objects, his activity is both a mirror of mine yet adds some further significance. It is clear that on this account the world is no longer mine, it belongs to the general I, or One. I know that the body over there making use of the world has the same structure as mine. The intentions that are being enacted “over there” are products of the same structure. Just as the parts of my body form a whole: Others pursuing their business in the world also form the whole of this general “One”. I, and Others can engage in discourse and when that happens our thoughts form a single fabric of thought: the language used to accomplish this is the Language of the anonymous “One”. This might be an account of the world we could find in the work of the ancient Greeks. This common world of the general “One” was both maintained and improved by the spirit of arête(doing the right thing at the right time in the right way) and the telos of arête, for the Greeks, was the common good(The Platonic “Form of the Good”, the Aristotelian “principle”)
The tenor of MP’s reflections are sometimes difficult to fathom because there is a distinctive shift from analytic scepticism to a more neutral Heideggerian view of Being in which our Being-in-the-world is an issue for us. This latter position would to some extent accommodate Aristotelian and Kantian attitudes in which we experience awe and wonder in the face of the natural world and our own Being.
In an interesting discussion of Piaget MP claims that even if the child at 12 reaches an understanding of what he calls the truths of rationalism, underlying this achievement are earlier forms of mentality and it is these forms that are primarily of interest to MP because:
“My awareness of constructing an objective truth would never provide me with anything more than an objective truth for me”(P.414)
This can be construed as an expression of transcendental solipsism. It implicitly denies a number of the major premises of hylomorphism in which it is claimed, for example, that a decentering operation occurring in us as powers build upon and integrate with other powers is part of an actualisation process connected to rationality. This decentering operation then results in , or is transcended by, a common world in which we participate in a spirit of areté. The problem of other minds does not manifest itself in such accounts (Piaget’s and Aristotle’s) MP, however, given his scepticism over “causation” would see in these reflections reference to the purely analytic components of the body and behaviour which without the presence of a general project would never result in the general I. Neither Aristotle nor Kant would, however, accept such a description as relevant to their accounts because for them both the structure of the body (its organs and limbs) and the use to which these are put in behaviour are conceptually connected with the state and structure of our minds. Sceptical recitals that fail to consider conceptual and logical connections end in the paradoxical position of claiming, for example, that we can never know what another person is thinking because we only see their body behaving. Such sceptical recitals also raise the earlier question concerning the sceptical appeal to the consciousness of time in relation to hallucinations.
MP would, however claim that he has good grounds to insist that we can directly see the anger and grief in the behaviour of others because the emotions obviously are conceptually identifiable through bodily reactions and behaviour. True, it can be maintained that my grief and anger is mine and his belongs to his consciousness on the grounds that my grief and anger are lived through and his is merely out there on display in a scene in the theatre of the world. MP points out that if Pierre is grieved because Paul has lost his wife Paul is grieved at the fact of Pierre’s grief and their grief is therefore different because the objects of their grief are different. Yet surely, one could respond, there is a concept of grief that comprises bodily reactions, behaviour and relevant worldly circumstances if the emotion is to be fully characterised. If this is the case then a suitable combination of the above factors could be judged universally to be grief.
MP’s flirtation with solipsism continues when he boldly asserts that solipsism is grounded in living experience in spite of an acknowledgement that my sensory-motor functions and cultural objects, institutions, and works in the world around me are not mine. The fact that it is I that experience all these things suffices for MP to make a claim for the truth of solipsism. Every Other, for example must, he continues, be experienced by me in order to exist for me. The fundamental Cartesian fact that I am given to myself and the fact that every experience is a particular experience that refuses generalisation, is sufficient for MP to defend this uniquely popular 20th century position (adopted by Husserl, Heidegger, the early Wittgenstein, William James etc.)
What looked to be a final position is then metamorphised in a later elaboration in which MP argues that a subject’s Being-in-the-world guarantees activity that must assume the existence of Others. It is now argued that the social world is a form of existence that I live. It is admitted that a fundamental contradiction is involved in this ambiguous stance and it becomes clear even to MP that this position cannot be sustained via a pure phenomenology of description. We need, it is argued, a phenomenology of phenomenology that returns us to the Cogito and a “logic” of lived meaning (which presumably thinks that contradictions are acceptable). MP accepts the inconstancy of this position and claims that this “logic” will only have what he calls a “relative validity”
So how will MP characterise this Cogito? In a Cartesian way? We should recall in this context that Descartes in a mediating, Heraclitean mood found no problem in thinking away the transcendental power of the body. He then paradoxically characterises the return of things and ideas to the self as “final truth”. But this final truth is a truth related to consciousness and not thought because thought is opaque to itself in the sense that it is the end of a process that arbitrarily suspends further questioning. Thought must on this account be a consciousness of thinking. This MP argues is the reason why Descartes felt compelled to attach to certain thoughts the qualities of clarity and distinctness, thereby making these thoughts immune to sceptical doubt. These thoughts are self-evident and differ from evident thoughts insofar as they are not challengeable. “I think therefore I am” must be immune to doubt if one can prove the premise “I think” and the question is whether Descartes manages to do this in his “test”. This test takes the following form: Try to doubt that you are thinking and then ask yourself what you were doing when you were doubting. The only reasonable answer to this is that you must have been thinking. The methodical doubt of Descartes does have a reservation over the self-evidence of this conclusion and resolves this with an appeal to God. Descartes asks himself whether we can be deceived into thinking that we are thinking and answers in the negative because God would have to be malevolent and capable of deception if this was the case.
One reading of Descartes is that his proof guarantees only the fact that I am thinking and not the truth of my thoughts. If doubting always presupposes this act of thinking then at least this leaves no logical space for the doubting sceptic to cast doubt upon thinking by questioning the truth of the thought. Descartes´ method also, as we have mentioned, inconveniently for MP, doubted the body of the thinker leaving no logical space for an account of the transcendental body. For Descartes the movement of the body was a mechanical affair and could be characterised in the way we characterise the moving parts of a machine.
MP does not criticize Descartes in the above terms but he does take him to task for not giving an account of the role of language in our Being-in-the-world. MP claims that in reading the Meditations on the Cogito we focus on the words and are carried beyond them in a world of thought. Descartes words express their meanings but neither words nor their meanings are the creation of consciousness (because meanings are not images—the language of hallucination?). Meanings are rather motor significances of the words. Wittgenstein in his later Philosophy will appeal to the use of words that he claims in many philosophical discussions serve to bewitch the intellect with hallucinatory meanings. For Wittgenstein it was vital to his account that the use of language is not merely an empirical phenomenon but rather something transcendental that provides us with the norms of representation—provides us, that is, with rules that representations follow. Indeed, for Wittgenstein we are rule following animals.
Words are not norms for MP they are gestures. We begin by imitating and thereby understanding the gestures of Others (so surely they must exist—to use an ancient argument of Socrates). A word is pronounced in certain circumstances and I imitate this phenomenon and suddenly almost magically I have grasped the meaning of the word. Indeed, learning the word “Blue” for Wittgenstein would be a part of a form of life in which one surveyed or manipulated the circumstances to find something blue to point to (an “abstract” movement for MP) and then uttering the word ”Blue!” whilst adopting an imperative attitude. The pupil then demonstrates that he has grasped the rule for the use of this word by uttering it in relation to all appropriate circumstances when called upon to do so. My wonder in the face of the blue of the sky or sea is thus converted into rational discourse. Here arête amounts to saying the right thing at the right time in the right way. MP claims that language presupposes a silent consciousness of language, whatever that means. In this silent “space” words are given their meaning and form, but again we are asked to consider the solipsistic truth “myself experienced by myself”(P.469) which is then conveniently converted into the formulation “oneself experienced by oneself”(P.470) This “silent consciousness” is then characterised in terms of the formulation “One thinks”. This formulation may be as close as MP comes to defining the general project that we are. The project can also be described in terms of action, i.e. “One can”, a characterisation in which intentions and expectations enter into relation to our action. Here we can assume that the transcendental use of the body which “One can” refers to, obviously includes the use of language, i.e. “one can speak” appears to have transcendental significance in the Phenomenology of MP. In his analysis of temporality MP makes an Aristotelian move by criticizing the use of the term “events” and the division of a whole phenomenon into parts that are events. The river which is fed by glacial ice melting yesterday and contains the piece of wood I threw into the glacial melt-water today will discharge into the sea tomorrow.