Sense and Normativity

Abstract

The notion of sense is central to Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s entire phenomenological project but it remains conspicuously absent from contemporary discussions of perceptual normativity. My intervention in this paper addresses this gap and contributes an account of perceptual norms as embodied orientations towards sense. To begin, I distinguish between two conceptions of norms: in contradistinction with Sean D. Kelly’s and Hubert Dreyfus’s accounts, I argue with Merleau-Ponty that perceptual norms emerge at the intersection of inherently labile, fallible, and temporally thick body-world entwinements with existential significance. Because it makes clear that our body’s orientation in the world is labile and dynamic, Merleau-Ponty’s notion of ‘levels’ helps me formulate this view. I introduce Merleau-Ponty’s description of spatial levels as a theoretical exemplar for perceptual normativity in the Phenomenology of Perception (1945) and his analysis of love as a level in the later Passivity lectures (1954-1955). By shedding light on the ecstatic temporality of levels of embodiment that allow us to orientate ourselves in the intersubjective lifeworld, Merleau-Ponty’s account of sense also forcefully reminds us of the disorientations that singularly transform the world of our experience.