ABSTRACT
A Leitmotif of Merleau-Ponty’s thought is the drawing of a distinction between the abstract and the concrete, or between what is thought to be the case and what is experienced to be the case. Following Kant, he maintains that ‘the ultimate court of appeal’ (PPT, 244) (‘dernière instance’ PP, 282) in establishing how things are is experience. This places Merleau-Ponty much more firmly in the empiricist than in the rationalist category of philosophical thought. Despite his professed intention of synthesising rationalism and empiricism he provides something like an empirical account of how rationalism is thinkable. Experience, however, is lived embodied experience, not simply the sense experience and introspection of the British empiricists.1 Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenology of space plays a crucial role in his attempt to ‘go beyond’ rationalism and empiricism.
