ABSTRACT
Merleau-Ponty offers an alternative vision of phenomenology as a forward-looking method of discovery. This also helps to explain his interest in the process of making art, which he likewise saw as the outcome of a particular form of experience. Spoken speech referred to the conventional language typically used in everyday conversation, including the kind of heavily codified functional terms that we use to communicate factual information. Speaking speech described the more obscure forms of literary language; the kind of poetic expressions that push at the boundaries of convention and test the limits of what can possibly be said. According to Gail Weiss's recent analysis of Merleau-Ponty's understanding of habit, even in the most sedimented patterns of conduct, ambiguity and indeterminacy are nonetheless present, guaranteeing that the repetition of old habits will never be a complete repetition of the same. Merleau-Ponty's account of the acquisition and execution of behavioural routines therefore suggests a somewhat counterintuitive conclusion.
