The Relevancy of Merleau-Ponty’s Political Theory
by Douglas
Low
Copyright May 2003
Merleau-Ponty’s political ideas, formed approximately fifty years ago, are
still remarkably relevant today. In this paper I will provide a brief summary
of his two mid-century political treatises, set his “new liberalism” and
“non-communist left” against traditional liberalism and the left of the
communist orthodoxy, and attempt to apply his position to turn of the century
conditions and events. I will conclude with a brief consideration of how
Merleau-Ponty’s left liberalism is community based.
In Humanism and Terror, Merleau-Ponty’s first political treatise, written shortly
after WWII, he states that the liberal values of Western democracies are
associated with individual conscience, truth based on knowledge, the order of
law, and with an appeal to universality and equality, that is, to legal and
moral principles applied consistently to all. Merleau-Ponty supports these
values, as he believes Marx does, but finds, as does Marx, that they are often
not practiced as they are preached by Western societies. In fact, these
societies often display a dramatic gap between theory and practice, for their
appeal to law frequently justifies exploitation and suppression by force both
at home and abroad. Moreover, liberalism often justifies its use of force by
appeal to rational argument, but, Merleau-Ponty argues, this rationality is its
rationality, even the rationality of its dominant class, and it is neither
absolute nor already established, as has often been presumed. This, of course,
implies that the supposed purity of its principles is not so pure, for it
frequently does not recognize that it is not the rational law of all things
and, subsequently, its own face in its forceful and sometimes even violent
imposition of its values and norms upon others. The West believes it brings
truth, morality, and prosperity to all, but it is frequently not perceived this
way by all. And this is not just a matter of a faulty perception or the lack of
the proper public relations campaign. It is often the matter of substantial
disagreements, disagreements that are often ignored or sometimes not even
perceived by the West. Here, in this text, as early as 1947, Merleau-Ponty
offers the remedy of what is now called a multicultural approach, for he argues
that rationality remains to be established and will only be established
by listening to all voices, even those of whom we may disagree. (Humanism
and Terror, trans. J. O’Neill, Boston: Beacon Press, 1969, pp. xiii, xli,
35 note, 187)
In Humanism and Terror
Merleau-Ponty still has hope for Marx’s vision of a proletarian revolution to
establish a more democratic society. Given that this will be the first
revolution of the majority of the population, society will be based on majority
or even universal interests and not just the interests of a small dominant
class, as has been the case in all previous societies. In Adventures of the Dialectic, Merleau-Ponty’s
second political treatise, published in 1955, he abandons this hope. His main
reason for doing so was that this sort of view, the view of the communist
orthodoxy, assumed a mechanistic tendency toward social, political, and
economic revolution. He here more appropriately reasons that there is no
automatic movement of history, the seeds of which are in socio-economic events
or the human essence and its drive toward freedom. There may well be certain
tendencies in certain socio-economic structures but there is no fixed logic of
future development. Moreover, human nature is malleable enough to accept a
variety of social, political, and economic conditions and, subsequently, is not
predestined for any one of them. We have learned from history what does not
work, he concludes, but we have not definitively learned what does or will
work. (Adventures of the Dialectic, trans. J.
Bien,
It is also reasonable to surmise that Merleau-Ponty abandons the hope of
a proletarian revolution because he was fully aware of the growth of a large
middle class in Western societies by the mid 1950’s and that social allegiances
may be formed along a variety if lines other than that of class, as Max Weber
had already maintained a generation before. (AD 9ff) Yet in Adventures of the Dialectic Merleau-Ponty
thinks that class analysis is still important because, frankly,…classes still
exist. Socio-economic groups tend to act in their interest, tend to at least
try to enhance their economic and social standing, even if this is difficult to
do so uniformly and with consistency. Merleau-Ponty is fully aware that
democracy, truth and freedom are only possible within certain socio-economic
conditions, and that these conditions were ushered in by capitalism. (AD 9) Yet
he also says that the continued existence of classes in capitalist societies
make the possibility of a truly representative democracy highly problematic.
(AD 225)
Merleau-Ponty does not abandon the hope of a more democratic society.
What he abandons is the hope that this will be accomplished by a proletarian
revolution. Yet, it is clear from the above that he does not completely abandon
the political left, for he will continue to use Marx’s analysis and criticism
of capitalism, particularly of its class structure, to make sense of and
criticize current institutions and events. He claims that the class structure
of capitalism continues to interfere with democracy.
The claim can be made, then, that Merleau-Ponty’s political treatises,
taken together, continue to support
democracy, since both works strongly support the democratic process,
i.e., the equal participation in the political life of the community by all
citizens of that community. The early work hopes that this will be accomplished
by a working class revolution that establishes a classless society, while the
later work arrives at the belief that parliamentary democracies, at least in
the circumstances of the mid-20th Century, are the best means yet to
achieve this goal, for they provide at least a minimum of access to the
political process by the majority of the population. The later work also
explicitly agrees that the aim of political action should be the increased
awareness of and equal participation in the political process by all
adult members of the society. Both political treatises also support various
liberal principles, such as, the order of law, equality of opportunity, and a
minimalist moral/political framework. The order of law is supported because it
implies the equal consideration of all in the creation and enforcement of the
law. The equality of opportunity is supported because a society should give
access to its goods and services in a way that is not greatly imbalanced by the
structure of class, or by any other unfair advantage. And finally, the
minimalist position is supported because the whole point of a minimalist
framework such as “do what you want as long as no harm is brought to another”
is to establish a principle of social constraint that grants as much freedom as
possible to the individuals that must submit to the constraint. Minimalist
systems, such as that immediately above, constrain only the behavior that
directly harms another. Merleau-Ponty’s philosophy would support such a
framework, since, for him, there is no pre-established formal rationality by
which all are likely to agree to a more comprehensive system. Rationality,
rather, is established because humans have similar bodies that open upon the
world in similar ways. Yet because we are only similar, and not identical in
either body or mind, differences, and subsequently the possibility of conflict,
remain. Since it is more difficult to reach consensus or even majority
agreement on comprehensive issues then it is on minimalist ones, and since
Merleau-Ponty is acutely aware of the differences between human beings, as well
as their similarities, his philosophy is consistent with an approach that
allows the greatest expression of differences, as long as no harm is brought to
another, that is, with a minimalist approach that grants the greatest amount of
freedom of action and conscience to its individual citizens. Yet unlike
traditional liberalism, Merleau-Ponty’s new liberalism/non-communist left
argues that the rights of the individuals are established not by a natural law
grasped intuitively by all rational minds, but are negotiated by embodied
beings who are engaged in an already existing natural and social world. Rights
are established by people making claims to one another in already existing
communities, communities that must be supported if these rights are to continue
to exist. Merleau-Ponty’s liberal values are thus community based.
As we can observe immediately above, Merleau-Ponty does not abandon the
possibility of shared experience and even of rational agreement. In fact, he is
quite explicit about not abandoning rationality, logic or presence. What he
seeks to do is place them in a broader context. He seeks to place the
thematized, the objectified, the abstract and reflective back in contact with
their origins, with a pre-reflective perceptual openness upon a patterned but
not fully formed and precise world. Following the studies of Gestalt
psychology, Merleau-Ponty claims that the simplest element of perception is a
figure against a background. The figure is focused upon and is usually
presented with some clarity. While the background helps articulate the
foreground, it remains implied and out of focus. Presence therefore occurs
within the context of absence and difference. It is referential, open and
fluid, but it does occur—in perception as well as in the sublimated structures
of language. (Phenomenology of Perception, trans. C.
Smith,
The principles of logic, then, are to be regarded as abstractions from
sense experience that are neither absolute nor arbitrary. They help stabilize
the flow of perceptions, yet they themselves are suggested by the perception.
This relationship has been appropriately referred to as a non-reciprocal
reversibility, for perception remains the primary term for more abstract
thought and language, yet thought and language fold back upon the ambiguously
perceived to help articulate and express it more clearly. And just as the body
must adjust itself to the world to perceive with a maximum of clarity and
detail (if I stand to close to a painting, I cannot take it in as a perceptual whole, and if I
stand too far away, I cannot see the detail that helps create the impression of
the whole), (PhP 250) so also language must adjust itself to the gestures of
perception to express them with a maximum of clarity and detail. (PhP 187, 403)
Since words contain some emotional/sensual value, since a words meaning is associated
with our emotional and needful encounter with the world and others, certain
expressions will express this encounter more accurately than others, as, for
example, a shout or scream expresses our encounter with a life threatening
event more appropriately than a laugh or a snicker. An expression is true,
then, if it “hits the mark,” if it makes sense of our encounter with the world
and others. (See Bernard Waldenfels “Verite a
Faire: Merleau-Ponty’s Question Concerning Truth” in Philosophy Today, Summer 1991, pp. 190, 192.) No expression is exhaustive or complete, for nature is
infinite and open to a variety of human interpretations. Yet some expressions
work better than others, for just as the body is limited in its encounter with
the world, just as it cannot make the world anything it wants, so language is
likewise limited.
Rationality for Merleau-Ponty is thus something different from the
modernist adherence to pre-existent forms of thought and logic proposed by the
liberal tradition. Since rationality is connected to the shifting contingencies
of perceptual structure, rationality is provisional and open and remains to be
established. Yet since perception displays relatively stable patterns, the
structures of rationality are not arbitrary and themselves remain stable. They
may well act as guiding ideas, ideas that must be continually checked against
the structures of perception and against the perceptions experienced by others.
Rationality can thus be defined as an agreement of perceptual profiles, of mine
within me as I actively open upon the world, and of mine with those of others
as we actively open upon the world together. (PhP xix) And while it is true
that one system of rationality may be better than another, because it offers
greater clarity and adaptation, and because it solves problems that others
cannot, it is also true that the system must continue to prove itself as such,
and it must do so from a variety of perspectives.
Merleau-Ponty thus focuses on an embodied rationality, but this
in no way implies a biological or materialist reductionism. First of all,
Merleau-Ponty adheres to a subtle and complex form of emergentism, that the
human species has evolved from simpler forms of life to which the species can
no longer be reduced. Now, humans are certainly influenced
by their environment, yet because of a more complex form of phylogenic
development we have the capacity to pause and reflect upon our environment and
our behavior within it. We can break the rigid chain of material cause and
effect. This does not mean that we can step completely out of it, but we have
enough awareness to take up our conditions and our past in order to try to move
them in a different direction. Secondly, and subsequently, when attempting to
understand human beings, their communities, and their behavior within them, all
aspects of human experience must be taken into account. (AD 11ff) We must
attempt to understand not just the biological or economic aspects of human
experience and behavior, but also religion, art, politics and law. To gain
access to this general milieu, this life-world within which these aspects
interact and flow into one another, here in Adventures
of the Dialectic, Merleau-Ponty appeals to the young Marx and his notion
that human labor inscribes meaning into nature. (AD 38, 143) When laborers
perceive their creations, they are able to perceive their own subjective forms
impressed upon them, including certain habitualized forms of behavior and
common human relationships. Human experience thus opens upon not only a
material world but also a human one. Humans are born into not only a material
world but also into certain economic, social and political institutions, into
patterned ways of acting into and interpreting the world, including so-called forms
of discourse. We take up these patterns, usually without understanding the
whole, in order to gain recognition, to confirm satisfactory relationships and
challenge dissatisfactory ones. And this is how
history moves: individuals living in the present take up the past in the form
of customs and institutions, grasping them only incompletely, and attempt to
move them toward a more satisfactory future. Moreover, if people do not have
legitimate ways to do this, they will often seek other means, including “underground”
economies, violence and even terror.
Merleau-Ponty thus thinks of historical rationality as the
confirmation of social/political/economic solutions by succeeding generations,
the elimination of conflicts and attempts that did not work, and the move
toward greater participation and harmony. (AD 77, 203ff) This rationality is
not the already established rationality of the liberal tradition, but is a
rationality in the making. It is a rationality that must prove itself to each
of those involved, that must be worked out in actual events, and that must
prove itself to each generation. Even though Merleau-Ponty is critical of the
West’s ethnocentrism, its frequent blindness to its own assumptions, its
consideration of its rationality as the only rationality, he recognizes
the ethnocentrism of other cultures as well. He therefore thinks that to date
it is Western parliamentary democracies that have most approached the ideal of
rational agreement. Yet, he exclaims, we must still call into question the
assumptions of Western rationality, point out the interest of the dominant
class in its “rational arguments,” and we must continue to point out where
democracy does not live up to its ideals, always in an attempt to move toward
increased democratic participation by all. Again, we can do this by pointing
out the gap between democracy’s theory and practice, between its ideals and
what it actually does, between its claim to universal access to the economic
and political process, on the one hand, and the inequitable influence of
classes, on the other.
With these goals in mind, let us now turn to current economic conditions
in the U.S. and how they undermine, first, democracy (one person/one vote),
second, liberal principles (do what you want as long as you do not harm or deny
another, another’s property, or another’s freedom; equality under the law;
equality of opportunity), and third, identification with the
community—principles that in general Merleau-Ponty supports and that in general
he warns may be corrupted by the class structure of capitalism.
Sociologist agree that social stratification exists in the United
States, that this stratification is based in large part on economic
stratification, and that this stratification lends itself to the formation of
social and economic classes. More specifically, G. William Domhoff’s two
important studies Who Rules
Domhoff argues that the following indicators can be used to demonstrate
power or the ability to influence others. 1.) “Who Benefits?”—by which he means
the following: “Those who have the most of what people want are, by inference,
the powerful. Put another way, the distribution of valued experiences and
objects within a society can be viewed as the most visible and stable outcome
of the operation of power…” (AN 11) 2.)
“Who Governs?”—by which Domhoff means: “Power also can be inferred from the
studies of who occupies important institutional positions and takes part in
important decision-making groups. If a group or class is highly over-represented…in
relation to its proportion of the population, it can be inferred that the group
is relatively powerful…”(AN 12) 3.) “Who
Wins?’—by which Domhoff means: “Power can be inferred from…issue conflicts by determining
who successfully initiates, modifies, or vetoes policy alternatives.” (AN 12)
Using these three indicators, Domhoff will argue that in the
Along with social registers and elite social clubs and schools, the most
compelling evidence for an upper class in the
Proportion of Annual
Family
Households Class
Income
1% Upper $1.5 million
14% Upper
Middle $80,000
30% Middle $45,000
30% Working $30,000
13% Working
Poor $20,000
12%
Underclass
$10,000
*11.8% or 32.3
million persons officially below the 1999 poverty line.
Notice that 85% of
Percent Distribution of Total Income
Lowest 5th Second 5th Third 5th Fourth 5th Highest 5th Top 1%
4.2% 9.7% 14.7% 21.3% 50.4% 12.9%
The chart above reveals that the top 1% of the earning population has approximately 13% of the annual income, while the top 20% has 50.4%. This of course means that the other 80% of the earning population must divide the remaining 49.6% of the annual income. In addition, the figures on wealth (defined primarily as ownership of stocks, bonds and real estate) are even more striking, for they report that the top 10% possesses almost two-thirds of the nation’s wealth. (Gelles and Levine, Sociology, p. 285)
These cited figures show the stark difference of income in the U.S and
that a vast amount of the nation’s wealth goes to a small percentage at the
top. These figures coupled with other evidence (of social registers and elite
clubs and schools) provide significant evidence for the claim that an upper
class exists in the
In order to make the claim that the upper class dominates economic policy, Domhoff provides evidence “to show that
1.) members of the upper class own a majority of all privately held corporate
stock in the
In order to show that an upper class dominates
public policy decisions Domhoff provides evidence for the following.
“First, [members of the upper middle class and corporate community] finance the
organizations that are at the core of these efforts. Second, they provide a
variety of free services for some of the organizations in the network…Finally,
they serve as directors and trustees of these organizations, setting their
general directions and selecting the people who will manage their day-to-day
operations.” (AN 82)
Domhoff’s evidence shows that members of the upper class and corporate
communities dominate the financing of, the management of, and membership in
important policy shaping organizations such as The Council of Foreign Relations
(AN 85-88), The Committee for Economic Development (AN 88-89), The Conference
Board (AN 89-90), as well as the financing and management of, if not membership
in, foundations, think tanks, and research institutes. (AN 92-98)
Finally, Domhoff attempts to show that the “members of the power elite
directly involve themselves in the
federal government through three basic processes…,” 1.) the candidate
selection process, 2.) the special interest process, and 3.) the policy-making
process. (AN 116) To provide evidence for 1.) above, Dommhoff informs us that
the elite’s campaign contributions and favors to politicians far outweigh those
by other groups. To provide evidence for 2.) above Domhoff reminds us that the
special-interest process is one of the most documented relationships between
big business and government. (AN 129-131) And finally, in his analysis of 3.)
above, Domhoff sees three main groups involved in the struggle to enact policy
in the federal government. Two of these groups are “rooted in the power elite
and corporate community.” They are the moderate conservatives, rooted in the
Council on Foreign Relations and the Committee for Economic Development, and
the ultraconservatives, exemplified by the Chamber of Commerce of the
Domhoff’s Who Rules
First, the current class and economic stratification undermines the
democratic process as one person/one vote, for the wealthy clearly influence
the political process well beyond their proportional representation in the
population.
Secondly, the current class and economic stratification undermines the
liberal principle of “do what you want as long as you do not harm another,
another property, or another’s freedom,” for harm is brought to the middle
class and especially the poor by the gross inequality of wealth and power. The
whole point of the liberal principle is to express a principle for community
that respects the rights of each individual. The whole purpose of the well
known “state of nature” thesis (approached as a question: “how can individuals
in a constraint free ‘state of nature’ enter a community without the loss of
freedom, or with the loss of as little freedom as possible?”) is to find a
principle for a community that provides a minimum of constraint of each
individual on each of the others. The answer to this question is that each is
to have as much freedom as is consistent with the freedom of everyone else.
This implies an equality of constraint, that is, each person’s freedom is
constrained by that of all the others. Or stated positively, as has been done
above: you can do whatever you want as long as you do not harm another,
another’s property, or another’s freedom of choice and action. Yet this is
precisely what is violated by the unequal distribution of wealth and power.
Moving from the last point back to the first, inequality of wealth and power
means a.) that the freedom of choice and action of one class is not only
greater than that of the others but that it also severely limits the freedom of
choice and action of the others. The wealthy can influence economic and
political policy in ways that benefit them and constrain the middle class and
poor. The wealthy can influence economic and political policy in ways the
middle class and poor cannot. This obviously violates the principle of equality
of constraint, for the wealthy constrain the middle calls and poor far more
than vice versa. Greater equality of income and wealth, and therefore greater
equality of power, would undoubtedly mean greater freedom of choice for the
vast majority of the population. The inequality of wealth and power (the lack
of mutual constraint, particularly in the economic and political process) also
puts the wealthy in the position b.) to harm the property values of others,
for, generally speaking, their disproportionate control of economic policy
favors their own property values often at the expense of others. And finally,
the inequality of wealth and power brings c.) direct harm to the middle class
and poor in the form of unequal access to and control over physical and mental
health care, retirement programs, legal advice, etc. This liberal principle of
“do whatever you wish as long as you do not harm another, another’s property,
or another’s freedom of choice or action” is thus violated on each count.
Moreover, the idea
that economic benefits to the wealthy (in the form of tax breaks) will “trickle
down” to the middle class and poor has proven to be patently false. The gap
between the wealthy, on the one hand, and the middle class and poor, on the
other, got dramatically wider under such programs in the 1980s. In 1991 U.S. News and World Report indicates
that “the share of the nation’s wealth held by the richest 10 percent climbed
from 67.5 percent to 73.1 percent between 1979 and 1988” and that “the ratio of
CEO’s income to that of an average worker was 12 to 1 in 1960; in 1988, it was
93 to 1.” (U.S. News and World
Report, November 18, 1991, p. 35) Commenting on similar trends a major
metropolitan newspaper reports the following decline of middle class income
over the twenty year period from 1973 to 1993. Those households earning below
$25,000 grew from 39% in 1973 to 40.3% in 1993. Those earning $25,000 to
$75,000 fell from 52.7% in 1973 to 47.1% in 1993. And those earning above
$75,000 increased from 8.2% in 1973 to 12.5% in 1993. (The Columbus Dispatch, Columbus, Ohio, October 18, 1995, Section B,
p. 1) These changes and the dramatically
widened gap between the wealthy and the middle/poor classes were brought about
primarily by changes in the tax structure. This suggests, of course, that the
gap can now be narrowed by returning to these tax structures, this time to
favor the middle class and poor. Not only will this make economic distribution
more equitable and fair, but there is at least some evidence to suggest that
overall economic growth increases during periods of lower inequality.
(Edward Wolff, “How the Pie is Sliced: America’s Growing Concentration
of Wealth” in American Prospect, Summer 1995, 62-63) In addition, since the economic
system as a whole produces a nation’s wealth, it is unjustifiable for some
members of the system to receive benefits far exceeding those rewarded to any
of the others.
The main point I
wish to make here is that under current class and economic conditions the
liberal principle of “do what you what as long as you do not harm another,
another’s property or another’s freedom of choice or action” is dramatically
violated. The freedom of choice and action of one class far outweighs that of
others and begins to harm and severely limit the freedom of choice and action
of the others. The principle of the mutuality of constraint has thus given over
to the practice of the constraint of most by the very few.
The current class
and economic stratification also undermines both the principle of equality
under the law, for the poor (and even the middle class) do not have the access
to the legal system or to the legislative process that the rich do, and the
principle of equality of opportunity, for dramatically different economic
conditions create dramatically different enabling conditions.
Third and finally,
the current class and economic stratification undermines the principle of
identification with the community which is so important to the maintenance of
the values of the community, for so many people in the middle and poor classes
(the vast majority of the population) feel they have little or no influence
over the community’s economic and political forces, the forces that so
powerfully impact upon their lives. If people are to value and identify with
the community, then they must have meaningful and equal access to it. And this
access must not be only an empty formal equality of opportunity. It must be
based upon an actual equality of enabling conditions. If we want people to
value and identify with the community, then they must have real access to and
democratic control over the economic and political institutions that so impact
upon their lives. The current class and economic stratification largely
prevents this access and denies broader democratic control.
The main purpose
of this section has been to show that our current class and economic
stratification undermines, first, democracy (one person/one vote), second,
liberal principles (do what you want as long as you do not harm another,
another’s property, or another freedom; equality under the law; equality of
opportunity), and third, identification with the community. The case has been
made here with respect to class structures within the
What I have
attempted to do thus far in this essay is apply some of Merleau-Ponty’s
insights to contemporary events and practices. Merleau-Ponty’s two political
treatises clearly warn us of the dangers of economic stratification and its
negative influence on the democratic process. I have tried to demonstrate this
with an appeal to Domhoff’s work and an observation of current socio-economic
relationships and events. In closing I shall now return to Merleau-Ponty
political ideas to offer a final discussion of his new community based
liberalism.
Merleau-Ponty’s New Community Based Liberalism
Critics of
liberalism are right to claim that there is no individual prior to community
who naturally possesses certain inalienable rights, that rights are established
by individuals within communities, and that these rights remain subject to
re-evaluation by both current and future generations. Yet abandoning the claim that Western liberal values are
established prior to community does not necessarily mean that we should abandon
these values. The minimalist liberal notion of moral good (i.e., allow each
citizen to choose for him or herself as long as no harm is brought to another)
can be argued for in other ways. This, in fact, is what Merleau-Ponty has done.
Merleau-Ponty’s notion of a “new liberalism” argues that the liberal notions of
personal autonomy, moral good, and even of rationality must themselves be seen
as community and history based and bound. (See above.) The self, moral values,
and rational agreement form in social interaction, and only form within the
context of certain social and political institutions. If we therefore wish to
maintain liberalism’s values of democracy and individual conscience, then we
owe allegiance to the community and political institutions that maintain them.
If we wish to maintain individual conscience and a healthy sense of autonomy,
this ironically will require a great deal of community support—certainly for
children, but for adults as well. If we want children to grow into
psychologically healthy and relatively autonomous adults, we will need to
provide them with the proper community support, with love and care, and with
quality training and educational programs. (Currently we are not doing this, at
least for the poor and perhaps even for the middle class. Jonathon Kozol’s
figures, cited above, reveal the dramatic inequality of educational
expenditures in the
Merleau-Ponty
would thus agree with the critics who claim that there is no self apart from
the community and its history, as “old liberalism” has often maintained, and
that the West needs to renew its sense of community. Yet Merleau-Ponty hopes to
establish this community by respecting the rights of each individual. We must
listen to all voices, try to move toward shared values, and support the
community institutions that allow us to do so. This is consistent with
liberalism’s original goal of trying to find a principle for community that
does not violate the rights of the individual, since it respects the rights of
each. Yet it does not rely upon traditional liberalism’s appeal to an isolated
individual, as we have just seen, nor upon its appeal to a pre-established,
ahistorical rationality, as we have seen earlier. For Merleau-Ponty, the way to
establish unity and community is to articulate the relationships that already
exist between cultures, groups, and individuals—this is, to express points of
contact and similarities as a lateral or oblique universal. For Merleau-Ponty
we must start this pursuit of shared truths and values with the individual’s
concrete, lived through bodily perception of the world and its particular
objects and events. The perceiver must then reflect on this experience, compare
it to other experiences and to that which is experienced by others in order to
move toward shared and stable meanings. Human beings will tend to have similar
experiences because they have similar bodies with similar needs, because they
are members of the same species, and because their experiences open out unto a
common world. Yet, even through human beings are similar, they also reveal a
degree of individuality in their thinking, their behavior, and even in their
biology, since no two people are exactly the same. Thus, out of the shared
world upon which the individual’s experience opens, there is a degree of
individuation and separation. This kind of epistemology and social ontology
leads naturally to a community based liberal policy: we must listen to the
voice of each relatively individuated and engaged adult, check each voice
against that of the others, and try to move toward the shared values that rest
upon our similar but not quite identical experiences.
To summarize,
then, Merleau-Ponty’s position is preferable to traditional liberalism because
it does not assume an untenable pre-established rationality upon which to base
its values, or a pre-established individual fully possessing certain rights, or
that there is no gap between liberal principles and the actual practice
of liberal societies. Within Merleau-Ponty’s philosophy the possibility of
shared values and beliefs is based on the lived body, on the lived experiences
and needs shared by members of the same species, and on an open ended,
non-coercive dialogue by equals attempting to give expression to these
experiences and needs. Also, for Merleau-Ponty, individuals and their rights
are formed only in social interaction and only within the context of certain
social and political institutions. Therefore, if we wish to maintain a degree
of individuality and individual rights, we owe allegiance to the community
institutions that bring them into existence and support them. And finally, for
Merleau-Ponty, liberal values remain to be more fully established in actual
concrete relationships, and they will be established only when the society
actually takes equal account of all voices, that is, when society provides more
equitable access to the economy and to the economic and political policy
decisions that so impact upon people’s lives.
Merleau-Ponty’s
position remains relevant today because it seeks to establish community values
by respecting each person’s conscience, by respecting and supporting the
political and social institutions that support each individual equally and
substantially (not just formally), and by attempting to move toward shared
values—values that do not violate basic (minimalist or universalist) rights,
values that can hopefully be confirmed by all and that remain to be confirmed
by each.
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