1. 1 3. Significance The Intentional Arc, Schneider, and Sexuality Speech Email: ka519@york.ac.uk Web: http://www-users.york.ac.uk/~ka519/ Office Hour: Wednesday 10-11, D/140

2. 2 Part 1 Introduction to Part 1: –‘We cannot remain in this dilemma of having to fail to understand either the subject or the object…we must understand how, paradoxically, there is for us an in-itself’ (p. 83) Part 1, Chapter 6: –‘In trying to describe the phenomenon of speech and the specific act of meaning, we shall have the opportunity to leave behind us, once and for all, the traditional subject- object dichotomy’ (p. 202)

3. 3 ‘Intentional Arc’ Underlies and unifies different aspects of conscious life, including: –Motility/motor intentionality (Pt. 1, Ch. 3) –Sexuality or affectivity (Pt. 1, Ch. 5) –Perception –Intelligence or representation Motor intentionality (p. 157, 162) and sexuality (p. 182): ‘basic’ or ‘original’, perhaps ‘primary’ Holism: –Sexuality, activity, thought ‘three sectors of behaviour displaying but a single typical structure, and standing in a relationship to each other of reciprocal expression’ (p. 182)

4. 4 Schneider Sustained brain damage in WW1 to occipital region, small area in visual cortex. Affected sight, motility, sense of bodily location, sexuality, linguistic ability, intelligence Able to perform ‘concrete’ movements, and ‘abstract’ movements only with difficulty. Lacks our ability to ‘reckon with the possible’ (p. 125): act in relation to possible or imaginary situations

5. 5 Sexuality Schneider displays ‘sexual inertia’ (p. 179), and lacks our awareness of ‘sexual possibilities’ (p. 180) Perceived objects have ‘sexual significance’ for us Erotic perception a different form of intentionality: –‘Erotic perception is not a cogitatio which aims at a cogitatum; through one body it aims at another body, and takes place in the world, not in a consciousness’ (p. 181) Just one of the body’s ‘sense-giving powers’: –We see the body ‘secreting in itself a ‘significance’ which comes to it from nowhere, projecting that significance upon its material surrounding, and communicating it to other embodied subjects’ (p. 229)

6. 6 Speech: Background Empiricism and intellectualism –Empiricism: speech explained causally –Intellectualism: speech the ‘clothing’ of thoughts External relation between words and meaning –Empiricism: words ‘thrown up by the working of an objective causality’ (p. 205) –Intellectualism: thought has meaning External relation between thought and speech –Empiricism: speech with no ‘thought’ –Intellectualism: thought with no speech

7. 7 Merleau-Ponty Internal relation between word and meaning –‘the word has meaning’ (p. 206) Internal relation between speech and thought –‘it is indeed part of the experience of thinking, in the sense that we present our thought to ourselves through internal or external speech’ (p. 206) –Speech and thought are ‘intervolved, the sense being held within the word, and the word being the external existence of the sense’ (p. 211).

8. 8 Two Types of Speech Authentic, first-hand, speaking speech –Identical with thought: ‘does not translate ready-made thought, but accomplishes it’ (p. 207 and fn. 4) –Speech ‘of the child uttering its first word, of the lover revealing his feelings, of the ‘first man who spoke’, or of the writer and philosopher who reawaken primordial experience anterior to all traditions’ (p. 208, fn. 5) Concrete, second-order, language, spoken speech –Identical with second-order thought: ‘thought already constituted and expressed’ (p. 213) –Most of speech in daily life

9. 9 Spoken Speech Language part of the ‘intersubjective’ world Daily communication unproblematic –Spoken words with ready-made meanings  second order thoughts in us  spoken words  second order thoughts in our hearers But how does language become part of the intersubjective world? What gives language its sense?

10. 10 Speaking Speech Speaking speech is a meaningful bodily gesture –Gesture’s meaning ‘arrayed all over the gesture itself’ (p. 216) Gestures not expressions of prior thoughts –‘When I motion my friend to come nearer, my intention is not a thought a thought prepared within me’ (p. 127) Understanding gestures involves body, not thought –‘The gesture which I witness outlines an intentional object. This object is genuinely present and fully comprehended when the powers of my body adjust themselves to it and overlap it’ (p. 215) Mutual communication involves ‘the reciprocity of my intentions and the gestures of others’ (p. 215)

11. 11 Speaking and Spoken Speech Spoken speech depends on speaking speech –‘It is, however, quite clear that constituted speech, as it operates in daily life, assumes that the decisive step of expression has been taken’ (p. 214) Speaking speech also depends on spoken speech –‘phonetic ‘gesticulatation’ must use an alphabet of already acquired meanings, the word-game must be performed in a certain setting common to the speakers, just as the comprehension of other gestures presupposes a perceived world common to all, in which each one develops and spreads out its meaning’ (p. 225-6)

12. 12 Schneider Again Generally competent language user But lacks capacity for speaking speech –Speaks only in response to questions or by asking stereotypical questions –Never uses language to discuss possible situations Further evidence that intentional arc subtending his life ‘goes limp’ (p. 157) ‘totally lacking in that productivity which is man’s deepest essence’ (Goldstein, quoted on p. 228)

13. 13 Subject-Object Dichotomy How can there can be for us an in-itself? Answer: because as embedded, embodied subjects (beings-in-the-world) we invest the world with significance ‘We must therefore recognize as an ultimate fact this open and indefinite power of giving significance-that is, both of apprehending and conveying a meaning-by which man transcends himself towards a new form of behaviour, or towards other people, or towards his own thought, through his body and his speech’ (p. 226)

14. 14 Selected Further Reading *Baldwin, T. 2007. ‘Spoken Speech’, in T. Baldwin (ed.) Reading Merleau- Ponty. Routledge. Merleau-Ponty, M. 1964. Signs. Northwestern University Press. — 1973. Consciousness and the Acquisition of Language. Northwestern University Press. — 1973. The Prose of the World. Northwestern University Press. Priest, S. 1998. Merleau-Ponty. Routledge. Ch. 10

15. 15 3. Significance The Intentional Arc, Schneider, and Sexuality Speech Email: ka519@york.ac.uk Web: http://www-users.york.ac.uk/~ka519/ Office Hour: Wednesday 10-11, D/140