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Highlights of book: Phenomenology and the Social World by Laurie Spurling, Routledge Kegan Paul 1977, ISBN 0-7100-8712-8

Introduction

This book is the work of an ex-PhD student who went on to work in Social Services. It represents his search for practical application of philosophy to that area. The book contains a very full analysis of the ideas of the French philosopher, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, who was for some time a colleague of Sartre and De Beauvoir. Merleau-Ponty started from Husserl's Phenomenology, but then moved towards Existentialism. However he did not go all the way with Sartre (or his Stalinist sympathies), and eventually split from Sartre. Merleau-Ponty seems to have a better balance than the extremes of both Sartre-style existentialism and pure Phenomenology. Merleau-Ponty (M-P for short) died in 1961 at age 53.

This book is very hard going, and uses some fairly long quotations as well as detailed discussion of what M-P's ideas meant. In my amateur view, it's all a bit over-elaborate and nit-picking. Nevertheless it does provide a way in to M-P's interesting thinking, and I feel the author justified his effort through its practical relevance.

Chapter	Page	Highlight
Introduction	2	Positivism can't do much for the social world. "Ordinary Language Analysis" (in the UK and America) can't offer much more.
	3	M-P puts Wittgenstein into perspective (not the other way round). Social Science (as practised) tends to be too positivist (the university influence).
	4	M-P's philosophy is a mix of classical Phenomenology (Phy), classical existentialism, Hegel, Heidegger, Marxism, Psychoanalysis, Gestalt psychology, structural linguistics and Sartre.
	5	Sartre said M-P was a lieur (not a liar, but someone who binds). He was "born of union", so it was his function to bind, bring different strands together.
1 Pheno- menology	7	Phy refuses to consider the world as independent of consciousness. It frequently uses the word intentionality, meaning that all consciousness is consciousness of something.
	8	Phy "brackets " the common sense attitude to life or Lebenswelt, which is independent of consciousness.
	9	Existential Phy is the study of phenomena, both factual (exist for consciousness) and essential (meaningful for consciousness). But complete phenomenological reduction is impossible, because we are not "absolute mind".
	10	M-P rejects the notion that consciousness constitutes the world in the sense of creating it. We are in it.
	11	M-P uses evidence of "substitution skills" (e.g. transferring writing to a blackboard) and "bodily detours" (when a limb or other organ is out of action) as against empiricism. Behaviour is a dialogue between the organism and its environment, in which each patterns the other. "Pure" sensations are too simplistic; there is a "field structure".
	12	Rationalism is merely a higher level layer on top of empiricism.
	13a	Rationalism isolates consciousness from the world; rationalist reflection loses sight of its own beginnings and ground in the pre-reflective and unreflective. It forgets that reflection entails a change in the structure of consciousness; it inaugurates a division.
	13b	Empiricism is seen as "blind receptacle of stimulation from outside"; Rationalism as a "wholly constituting and explicit enterprise"
	14	Instead, what we do is Gestalt - a combination of both the above, as being in the world. Active consciousness can be morbid, primitive and childlike. A lot of what we do is unlike this, e.g. dreaming, forgetfulness, slips of the tongue).
	15	The "phantom limb" paradox; the missing limb is "ambivalently present".
	16	Some soldier on, others become premature invalids. Our life is directed at a pre-conscious level.
	17	Intentionality of acts (conscious) v operative intentionality (pre-conscious); the relationship of being rather than knowing.
	18	Consciousness and the world are patterned through their intercourse.
	21	M-P rejects the conception of a pure, spectator consciousness.
	22	The phenomenal body is to be understood as an "expressive unity", a "synergetic system; like a work of art, not a manufactured object.
	23	Sedimentation: skills and habits being acquired through action.
	28	Our view is perspectival; we fill in the missing details (like Gestalt).
	31	We do not perceive discrete objects, but chains of objects linking up with each other, and subject to the overall patterning of our visual field. Perception is incomplete; there can be illusions and misperceptions.
	32	M-P's 3 levels: the pre-objective world proper, the Lebenswelt (interpreted but pre-consciously) and the scientific world.
	33	Dreams operate at the pre-objective level, also drug trips and "mystical experiences".
	35-40	Space, distance, movement and time are all examined on the above 3-level basis.
	40-3	Spurling extends this treatment to "other people" and talks about "intersubjectivity".
	43	Consciousness is not a perceptual creation ex nihilo, but has an intentionality which pre-supposes a body of sedimented and already constituted operations. But in itself it has no "content".
	44	There is no existence which does not express something - even if it's "null response".
	45	The brain is actively translating experiences into symbols.
	47	Being is not a substance, but a relationship between body and world.
2 Speech	49	There is no analysis capable of making language crystal clear. People speak to us and we understand. We only need to reinstate this experience in its dignity as evidence, which it lost through the very use of language.
	54	Conceptual and gestural layers of speech; we grasp the meaning of a speaker's gestures. The conceptual layer lies on top of this.
	57	Thought is "interwoven" with speech; it isn't a case of "thought first, speech after". Sedimentation (habits) very much apply to speech.
	58	The "langue versus parole" distinction is too extreme and simplistic. There is Gestalt in language (filling in the missing bits).
	59	Meaning is "diacritic", i.e. not in the actual words, but between them, together with Gestalt.
	62	M-P is definitely not with early (more positivist) Wittgenstein; later Wittgenstein (i.e. language games) is a refinement of M-P.
	65	In Ethnomethodology (finding out reality by getting participants to talk about it naturally), all utterances can be understood as performative (i.e. they change the state of affairs).
	66	Rules only exist in the practices (linguistic and non-linguistic) that embody them. This display or detection of intentionality is not a self-conscious, reflective process, but is pre-reflectively carried out by any competent member of a group.
	67	Four forms of ambiguity in speech: 1) when something is neither thing nor mind, but involves inter-subjectivity and Gestalt; 2) essential allusiveness, with interplay between the different layers; 3) it is split between what man does to the world and vice versa; 4) it has some level of independence (pre-existence) from any speaker. Commonplace utterances (which have ready-made meanings) demand little or no effort from speaker or listener.
	69	To make ordinary conversation possible, we have to agree to accept certain meanings (possibly "until we know better").
	73	Authentic speech really only occurs when we have to formulate something for the first time.
	75	The crisis in language today: Sartre spoke about the "sickness of words", used to mask, rather than disclose, reality.
3	76-9	Current sociology (especially in universities) is too positivist; everything has to follow a scientific style, with hypotheses, evidence, deduction etc.
Society	81	Positivism, as an approach to sociology, is unable to handle the concept of meaning.
	83	Motive and action are not discrete, separate phenomena, since the motive is usually an interpretation of the action.
	85	Society, then is not a collection of monadic individuals in the classic liberal sense. The social is, rather, a fundamental structure of experience.
	86a	Society is "inter-subjective reality". All human action is subject to habitualization (i.e. becoming a habit, similar to 'sedimentation'), thus leaving parts of our energy free for deliberation and innovation.
	86b	Institutionalization occurs whenever there is a reciprocal typification of habitualized actions by types of actors. This leads to routines and roles (RT: sounds like workflow!). It's reciprocal if at least 2 persons are involved.
	87	Institutions imply control and historicity. Control comes by pre-defining patterns of action and expected ways of behaviour. The institution crystallizes and becomes historical and inter-generational.
	89	What do I take as my "situation" in a society? It could be based on my past life, family, profession, bank balance, race, gender, emotional make up etc - or some combination of these. The theorist risks imposing his own views of the balance. Phy tries to take this into account.
	90	Structures (of society): Examples are Marxist, feudal, capitalist & social, Lévi Strauss's primitive and advanced, Foucault's epistèmes (i.e. conditions of social dominance pertaining at some stage of history). They may only exist as a "potential consciousness" among committed members. Phy would try to avoid premature theorizing and classification, and to recognize different levels of analysis.
4	92	M-P moved from phenomenological sociology to treating Marxism as an implicit and fundamental part of Phy.
Marxism	93a	Marxist Phy challenges the naïve philosophy, and looks to roots in human praxis.
	93b	Aron criticized M-P and Sartre for saying that the individual and his destiny constitute the central theme of their reflection, and for disregarding "totality".
	95	Spurling argues that they don't substitute for each other, but there needs to be fusion between existentialism (individual) and social (totality).
	98-9	Is M-P's idea of alienation the same or different to Marx's? M-P's view is that it is inherent in all relationships between a human and other individuals or institutions. Marx's use of the word is much narrower. Spurling thinks there should be a continuity between the two views.
	100	Truth, for Marxism, is a totality; Spurling says "for Phy too" - I'm not sure I (RT) agree.
	101	M-P says historical events are not pre-ordained, meaning is not closed, and directions and significances are only "probable".
	102	Class must be lived before it can be known. Our "proletarian class consciousness" exists as a "potentiality", which may become real or actual depending on our social conditions.
	105	Going beyond relativism is always partial. Lukacs: "truth is always 'to come'".
	106a	The class struggle is effectively masked, and Marxism has found no significant response among the working class.
	106b	The revolutionary impulse becomes transformed into a bureaucracy which will stagnate and pervert the aims of the revolution. Marxist 'mainliners' "ignore the inertia of infrastructure ... and forget that history has density, that it drags, and its meaning appears only gradually".
	107	"Moral Marxism" is not a philosophy of history which keeps up with events and can adapt.
	108	Marxism must accord with the probabilities that a historical understanding throws up.
5 Ethics	111	Spurling attempts to clear a preliminary hurdle, namely the positivist view of language. He takes until p 116 to dispose of it. Positivism distinguishes description and evaluation, i.e. description should avoid evaluative, emotive or ethical terms.
	112	Spurling says it is a bad distinction, since most evaluation necessarily includes some description. And description is coloured by one or more levels of perception (e.g. pre-reflective and reflective).
	113	There are no "pure actions"; they all depend on context.
	114	Only computers can have an evaluatively neutral attitude to the world.
	116a	Naïve perception is affective as well as cognitive. We apprehend objects not as mental husks, but charged with affective and vital meaning, and as "poles of intentionality".
	116b	There is a distinction between perceptual objects (~ facts) and how I perceive them (~ values). (RT: sounds like Pirsig.)
	117a	Phy seeks to trace the birth of values and morality in perceptual experience. Morality is possible because perceptions open me to other people and a common world.
	117b	Moral discourse is possible because of the ambiguity and uncertainty of our actions in the social world; because any behaviour on my part can have unintended or unforeseen consequences. Morality is one way of lessening the cost of such actions that are seen to be mismanaged.
	118	Marxism (and Phy) demand that values be concrete, and different from equivocal "principles".
	119	M-P's view is that man's existence is a manifestation of freedom (c/f Sartre); one cannot be free by conforming to an external moral code or rule book.
	120a	Freedom is not absolute but "embodied" in a "field" (i.e. a social space not of our own making or choosing). In this field there exist obstacles, institutions, conventions etc. This adds up to an "opacity" or weight which holds us away from our goals, and which prevents us from achieving our goals.
	120b	Total freedom is fantasy. In reality, freedom is always limited by our capacities, our knowledge and our situation. Sedimentation is a necessary ground of freedom.
	120c	"It is by giving up part of our spontaneity, by being involved in the world through stable organs and pre-established circuits, that man can acquire the mental and practical space which will theoretically free him from his environment and allow him to see it."
	120d	Freedom is not the same as free will. This all sounds quite a change from Sartre.
	121	"What defines man is the going beyond created structures in order to create others." (RT: hopefully better ones!)
	123	In Sartre we have a plurality of individual choices, but no inter-subjectivity. Sartre ignores the "interworld".
	124	There is no "pure" responsibility because: 1) what we are abd what we do is to a large extent the result of our interaction with other people (e.g. motivated by a prior action from someone else); 2) all our actions admit of more than one explanation; 3) our conscious intentions differ from the consequences, because we are never in complete control (and our meanings are not the meanings ascribed to our actions by others).
	125	True morality does not consist in following external rules or respecting objective values. Rather, it's how we live and what we actually do that counts. Morality cannot be guaranteed in advance.
	127	We can only know ourselves in an ambiguous way, because 1) we can only catch fleeting glimpses of ourselves as we are involved in the world; 2) so much depends on other peoples' opinions; 3) we can usually only get feedback after the event; 4) language can sometimes serve to hide our feelings from ourselves.
	130	The way to sincerity is a blind plunge into doing. Sincerity or authenticity should not be the end in itself. Spontaneity is the cash value of authenticity.
	131	Spontaneity is opposite to control; it is being like children, we let go and relax, and have trust in the world and ourselves. Spurling comments: M-P never recovered from an incomparable childhood; it was "superintended liberty". But we can't prolong, nor relive, our childhood - we shouldn't go beyond what are "naturally preserves". Child-like - yes, but not childish.
	133	Truly embodied or spontaneous action presupposes insight, the ability to fuse theory and praxis. Clear-sightedness is not enough. "Act in harmony with reason, in tune with emotions."
	134	All of us, who at some time are not resigned to passivity or submission, are faced with a situation which, by its very logic, demands some violence on our part. "We have unlearned pure morality and learned a kind of vulgar immoralism, which is healthy."
	136	Ambiguity is, then, for M-P, a positive phenomenon, a description of being-in-the-world. This is not the same as ambivalence (e.g. Feiffer cartoons in the book)
	137	"Ambiguity is ambivalence that one dares to look at face to face."
	140	Manser's criticism of existentialist ethics: it completely fails to give any concrete advice on what to do, and no criteria for any choice. But, one could reply, authentic choice arises out of a person's concrete situation.
	141	MacIntyre: this view of morality only works for "extraordinary situations" not covered by conventional morality. But even if an established moral universe is presumed, how to actually employ it is context-specific.
6 Philosophy	144-6	Spurling attempts to defend M-P against the charge of trying to describe the pre-reflective. As stated on p 146, we either have to live the unreflective, but then not be able to reflect on it; or we withdraw from the reflective, reflect on it, but then cannot apprehend its real structure.
	145	Spurling demolishes the alternative of "introspection" (i.e. to fix in clear and concise terms the contents of consciousness). Knowledge is an act of coinciding with consciousness. This is easy for "tables", but hard for "love" or "hate". If I try to communicate my intuitions to others, I have to assume that their minds will work like mine.
	146	M-P plumps for "radical reflection". The unreflective as lived is not the same as the unreflective as apprehended by reflection. Reflection results in a change in structure of the unreflective.
	147	Radical reflection is mediation between the unreflective and the reflective; the mediation runs in both directions. "To possess ourselves we must begin by abandoning ourselves. To see the world itself, we must first withdraw from it."
	149a	Our ordinary language separates body and mind a lot, also subject and object, reason and emotion, real and imaginary. We have to sidestep this, hence the many funny words and phrases in philosophical writing and talking.
	149b	Synaesthesia: means our senses working together, not separately; our senses "interpenetrate".
	150	M-P's philosophy tries to get over the simplistic contrasts: cause-and-effect versus thought-and-reason; motivation versus primitive phenomena; nature versus culture, contingency versus necessity, habit versus memory (p 152).
	151	"Creative repetition": we iterate towards understanding, including by "going back to lived experience".
	153	Using metaphor to link concepts to peoples' life experience.
	156	Truth is not arbitrary or inescapably subjective; it is grounded but one needs to show the grounds and recognize one's own presence as the philosopher.
	157	Phy's ultimate court of appeal is "lived experience", but that's not enough by itself. There are also tacit criteria like intelligibility, comprehensiveness, consistency and practical realization.
	160	Phy directs us back to lived experience before it has been "thematized" (see this paper's opening description of Phenomenology).
	163	The fact that M-P's philosophy is built on such apparently shifting sands is no reason for him to "pack up his tent" and go home. It is, rather, an occasion for striking deeper roots.
7	164-7	There are 2 types of social enquiry: analysis (of grounds) and concrete inquiry (reporting what one can observe).
Conclusion	167	This corresponds to transcendental versus descriptive in philosophy. For Blum (RT: I'm not sure which Blum!), analysis is the only valid concern. For M-P, there is a constant dialectic between the two.
	168	Phenomenological description is not a copy of the world, but a hermeneutics (RT: presumably in the sense of interpretation, reading between the lines).
	169	The world transcends us; it has a solidity with which we must learn to come to terms.
	170	In the same way, society transcends the individual, but the facticity of the social depends for its existence on the willingness or collusion of individuals to see it as such.
	170-1	On their own, descriptive and transcendental approaches both fail.
	171-5	Schulz (RT: I think this should be Schütz): has some merits but is too positivist and suppresses the transcendental.
	175	Wittgenstein does try to include the sort of dialectic M-P sees (p 167), but ...
	176-7	Description for M-P is always "from a transcendental perspective", whereas for Wittgenstein it is atheoretical, disconnected from the observer's experience, and consists only in language games.
	177	Wittgenstein: philosophy is grammar; to imagine a language game is to imagine a form of life. He can be read from either a transcendental or descriptive perspective, but it's difficult to mediate between the two.
	179	Sartre: a dialectic without any synthesis. See M-P's criticisms below.
	179.1	His notions of a) absolute freedom b) consciousness as pure spontaneity and c) choice or action as voluntarist are all open to question.
	179.2	He ignored or underplayed a) the incarnation of consciousness in the world; b) the fact of passivity or sedimentation in being-in-the-world; c) the mediation between men and things in the "interworld"; d) the essential limits on freedom, choice and action as a result of this fundamental ambiguity.
	179.3	Sartre's ontology (being and nothingness) and basic pre-suppositions are too simplistic.
	179.4	He defined consciousness as nothingness and the world as positivity/being.
	179.5	He was very stuck with subject and object when dealing with others.
	179.6	His ontology precludes significant contact with the world, and is weak on the descriptive side.
	179.7	He doesn't provide a way in which the transcendental (his ontology) and the descriptive can meet.
	182	Sartre is a showman, a conjuror with abstruse concepts and gripping descriptions. M-P is a craftsman, wearing a variety of different colours and patterns into his philosophic fabric.

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This version updated on 13^th January 2011

If you have constructive suggestions or comments, please contact the author rogertag@tpg.com.au .