ABSTRACT
The point of view from which this chapter approaches the philosophy of Merleau-Ponty is fundamentally in agreement with Evan Thompson’s work Mind in Life: Biology, Phenomenology, and the Sciences of the Mind. However, our readings differ in regard to intersubjectivity, and the reading of ambivalence provided here is the key to that difference. Whereas Thompson sides with the ideas of intentionality and appresentation from Edmund Husserl’s generative phenomenology to ground intersubjectivity in empathy, Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s existential-phenomenological reading of ambivalence, which he avowedly appropriated from Object-Relations psychologists, is more primordial than empathy. Therefore, this chapter discusses the natural development from primal ambivalence to subjective and intersubjective ambiguity through Merleau-Ponty’s discussion of “lived space” and “embodied time” in the Phenomenology of Perception.
Merleau-Ponty distinguished between two primal modes of embodiment, that is, two primal modes of the “lived body”: being a body and having a body. Though consciousness belongs to both modes of embodiment, he situated pre-reflective bodily self-consciousness in the ambivalence between these modes. On the one hand, this (ontological) ambivalence is the lived body functioning as the ground of the life world. On the other hand, just as the “mineness” that constitutes subjectivity, of the latter mode of embodiment, is grounded in the consciousness of that ambivalence, so too is the “otherness” that allows for the consciousness of intersubjectivity. Lastly, Merleau-Ponty’s distinction between ontological and subjective ambivalence is considered toward accomplishing two clarifications. First, if the lived body is primarily ambivalent and subjectivity and intersubjectivity are primarily ambiguous, then what is the difference between ambivalence and ambiguity? Second, if ontological ambivalence is considered natural, then why is subjective ambivalence considered pathological?
