From Time to the Flesh

Abstract

For both Levinas and Merleau-Ponty, the question of temporality is inseparably linked with that of corporeity. Indeed, the relation between these key terms constitutes one of the crucial points of contact between two otherwise disparate thinkers. This is not to say, however, that Levinas and Merleau-Ponty were here in agreement, Levinas, for his part, invokes a radically original account of temporality in order to secure an understanding of corporeity as the basis for a subjectivity completely closed-in about itself and yet, paradoxically, open to the Other, i.e., in order to account for the possibility of the ethical relation. Merleau-Ponty's analyses, however, proceed in an opposite direction. From his initial excursus into the pre-objective experience of the lived body to the later, more ontologically motivated discussions of the flesh, MerleauPonty's desire to preserve a richer conception of the corporeal motivates him to steadfastly preserve a notion of the "living present," i.e., that sense of continuity that lived experience uniquely possesses. Taken together, what Levinas and Merleau-Ponty demonstrate is that an adequate account of ethical relations is impossible without an understanding of how temporality and corporeality are interrelated in the constitution of the human subject. Looking comparatively at the accounts provided by these two thinkers is especially instructive, for while each account stands on its own, together they illustrate two different, though interrelated, strategies for approaching the place of the other within accounts of human subjectivity. At stake then is the question of the nature and constitution of our experience of others, and thus that upon which such fundamental moral notions as responsibilities and obligations toward others are to be derived. My claim will be that this encounter between Levinas and Merleau-Ponty concerning temporality and corporeity can of fer a clue for readdressing ground ofthe ethical in contemporary thought. Specifically, I maintain that Merleau-Ponty's later philosophy eludes the bulk of the criticism Levinas directs toward Merleau-Ponty's initial accounts of intersubjectivity. While Merleau-Ponty's analyses may not ultimately satisfy Levinas's demand for a relation with the Other, conceived of in Levinas's terms, they allow for an exposure on the part of the human subject to a dimension of otherness that is elided in Levinas's own analyses of the ethical relation with the Other. That this added dimension recognized by Merleau-Ponty is moreover essential for adequately thinking the ethical relation I shall argue for below. If this is indeed the case, then Merleau-Ponty's later philosophy can be read as providing a necessary supplement to a Levinasian ethics. Surprisingly, given their close historical association, neither Levinas nor Merleau-Ponty offered much by way of commentary upon each others work.1 Merleau-Ponty's most extensive mention of Levinas is confined to a critical response that appeared alongside the latter's "Reality and it's Shadow" in a 1948 issue of Les Temps Modernes.2 There MerleauPonty took Levinas to task for his rejection of the ethos of artistic engagement that then predominated among many of their contemporaries. Levinas, on the other hand, offered a somewhat more frequent commentary upon Merleau-Ponty's work as part of his more general project of arguing the priority of ethical meaning over that of the meaning of Being. For instance, in the essay "Meaning and Sense," Levinas at first praises Merleau-Ponty for his efforts at uniting "the subjectivity of perceiving and the objectivity of expressing" in an incarnate thought modeled off of artistic practice. He then notes the inability, however, of this same thought to provide being with the "unique sense" a recognition of the ethical demands. This sense can be provided only if an ethical meaning-via an exposure to the radically Other is posited as prior to that of Being and consciousness, something MerleauPonty's phenomenology, Levinas suggests, is unable to provide. …