MERLEAU PONTY, The Structure of Behaviour, published by Beacon

Press, 1967

Structure and signification; the problem of perceptual consciousness

What is called bodily, psychological or social determinism in hallucination and error has
appeared to us to be reducible to the emergence of imperfect dialectics, of partial
structures. But why, in existendo, does such dialectic at the organic-vegetative level break
up a more integrated dialectic, as happens in hallucination? Consciousness is not only and
not always consciousness of truth; how are we to understand the inertia and the resistance
of the inferior dialectics which stand in the way of the advent of the pure relations of
impersonal subject and true object and which affect my knowledge with a coefficient of
subjectivity? How are we to understand the adherence of a fallacious signification to the
lived, which is constitutive of illusion?

We have rejected Freud's causal categories and replaced his energic metaphors with
structural metaphors. But although the complex is not a thing outside of consciousness
which would produce its effects in it, although it is only a structure of consciousness, at
least this structure tends as it were to conserve itself. It has been said that what is called
unconsciousness is only an unperceived signification: it may happen that we ourselves do
not grasp the true meaning of our life, not because an unconscious personality is deep
within us and governs our actions, but because we understand our lived states only
through an idea which is not adequate for them.

But, even unknown to us, the efficacious law of our life is constituted by its true
signification. Everything happens as if this signification directed the flux of mental
events. Thus it will be necessary to distinguish their ideal signification, which can be true
or false, and their immanent signification, or to employ a clearer language which we will
use from now on their ideal signification and their actual structure. Correlatively, it will
be necessary to distinguish in development an ideal liberation, on the one hand, which
does not transform us in our being and changes only the consciousness which we have of
ourselves, and, on the other, a real liberation which is the Umgestaltung of which we
spoke, along with Goldstein. We are not reducible to the ideal consciousness which we
have of ourselves any more than the existent thing is reducible to the signification by
which we express it.

It is easy to argue in the same way, in opposition to the sociologist, that the structures of
consciousness which he relates to a certain economic structure are in reality the
consciousness of certain structures. This argument hints at a liberty very close to mind,
capable by reflection of grasping itself as spontaneous source, and naturalizing from
below the contingent forms with which it has clothed itself in a certain milieu. Like
Freud's complex, the economic structure is only one of the objects of a transcendental
consciousness. But "transcendental consciousness," the full consciousness of self, is not
ready made; it is to be achieved, that is, realized in existence. In opposition to Durkheim's
"collective consciousness" and his attempts at sociological explanation of knowledge, it
is rightly argued that consciousness cannot be treated as an effect since it is that which
constitutes the relation of cause and effect. But beyond a causal thinking which can be all
too easily challenged, there is a truth of sociologism. Collective consciousness does not
produce categories, but neither can one say that collective representations are only the
objects of a consciousness which is always free in their regard, only the consciousness in
a "we" of an object of consciousness in an "I."

The mental, we have said, is reducible to the structure of behavior. Since this structure is
visible from the outside and for the spectator at the same time as from within and for the
actor, another person is in principle accessible to me as I am to myself and we are. Both
objects lay out before an impersonal consciousness. "But just as I can be mistaken
concerning myself and grasp only the apparent or ideal signification of my conduct, so
can I be mistaken concerning another and know only the envelope of his behavior. The
perception which I have of him is never, in the case of suffering or mourning, for
example, the equivalent of the perception which he has of himself unless I am sufficiently
close to him that our feelings constitute together a single "form" and that our lives cease
to flow separately. It is by this rare and difficult consent that I can be truly united with
him, just as I can grasp my natural movements and know myself sincerely only by the
decision to belong to myself Thus I do not know myself because, of my special position,
but neither do I have the innate power truly knowing another. I communicate with him by
the signification of his conduct; but it is a question of attaining its structure," that is of
attaining, beyond his words or even his actions, the region where they are prepared.

As we have seen, the behavior of another expresses a certain manner of existing before
signifying a certain manner of thinking. And when this behavior is addressed to me, as
may happen in dialogue, and seizes upon my thoughts in order to respond to them - or
more simply, when the "cultural objects" which fall under my regard suddenly adapt
themselves to my powers, awaken my intentions and make themselves "understood" by
me-I am then drawn into a coexistence of which I am not the unique constituent and
which founds the phenomenon of social nature as perceptual experience founds that of
physical nature. Consciousness can live in existing things without reflection, can abandon
itself to their concrete structure, which has not yet been converted into expressible
signification; certain episodes of its life, before having been reduced to the condition of
available memories and inoffensive objects, can imprison its liberty by their proper
inertia, shrink its perception of the world and impose stereotypes on behavior; likewise,
before having conceptualized our class or our milieu, we are that class or that milieu.

Thus, the "I think" can be as if hallucinated by its objects. It will be replied (which is
true) that it "should be able" to accompany all our representations and that it is
presupposed by them, if not as term of an act of actual consciousness at least as a
possibility in principle. But this response of critical philosophy poses a problem. The
conversion of seeing which transforms the life of consciousness into a pure dialectic of
subject and object, which reduces the thing in its sensible density to a bundle of
significations, the traumatic reminiscence into an indifferent memory, and submits the
class structure of my consciousness to examination-does this conversion make explicit an
eternal "condition of possibility" or does it bring about the appearance of a new structure
of consciousness? It is a problem to know what happens, for example, when
consciousness disassociates itself from time, from this uninterrupted gushing forth at the
center of itself, in order to apprehend it as an intellectual and manipulable signification.
Does it lay bare only what was implicit? Or, on the contrary, does it not enter as into a
lucid dream in which indeed it encounters no opaqueness, not because it has clarified the
existence of things and its own existence, but because it lives at the surface of itself and
on the envelope of things? Is the reflexive passage to intellectual consciousness an
adequation of our knowing to our being or only a way for consciousness to create for
itself separated existences quietism? These questions express no empiricist demand, no
complaisance for "experiences" which would not have to account for themselves. On the
contrary, we want to make consciousness equal with the whole of experience, to gather
into consciousness for-itself all the life of consciousness in-itself.

A philosophy in the critical tradition founds moral theory on a reflection which discovers
the thinking subject in its liberty behind all objects. If, however, one acknowledges-be it
in the status of phenomenon-an existence of consciousness and of its resistant structures,
our knowledge depends upon what we are; moral theory begins with a psychological and
sociological critique of oneself; man is not assured ahead of time of possessing a source
of morality; consciousness of self is not given in man by right; it is acquired only by the
elucidation of his concrete being and is verified only by the active integration of isolated
dialectics-body and soul-between which it is initially broken up. And finally, death is not
deprived of meaning, since the contingency of the lived is a perpetual menace for the
eternal significations in which it is believed to be completely expressed. It will be
necessary to assure oneself that the experience of eternity is not the unconsciousness of
death, that it is not on this side but beyond; similarly, moreover, it will be necessary to
distinguish the love of life from the attachment to biological existence. The sacrifice of
life will be philosophically impossible; it will be a question only of "staking" one's life,
which is a deeper way of living.

If one understands by perception the act which makes us know existences, all the
problems which we have just touched on are reducible to the problem of perception. It
resides in the duality of the notions of structure and signification. A "form," such as the
structure of "figure and ground," for example, is a whole which has a meaning and which
provides therefore ' a base for intellectual analysis. But at the same time it is not an idea:
it constitutes, alters and re-organizes itself before us like a spectacle. The alleged bodily,
social and psychological "causalities" are reducible to this contingency of lived
perspectives which limit our access to eternal significations. The "horizontal
localizations" of cerebral functioning, the adhesive structures of animal behavior and
those of pathological behavior are only particularly striking examples of this. "Structure"
is the philosophical truth of naturalism and realism. What are the relations of this
naturalized consciousness and the pure consciousness of self? Can one conceptualize
perceptual consciousness without eliminating it as an original mode; can, one maintain its
specificity without rendering inconceivable its relation to intellectual consciousness? If
the essence of the critical solution consists in driving existence back to the limits of
knowledge and of discovering intellectual signification in concrete structure, and if, as
has been said, the fate of critical thought is bound up with this intellectualist theory of
perception, in the event that this were not acceptable, it would be necessary to define
transcendental philosophy anew in such a way as to integrate with it the very
phenomenon of the real. The natural "thing," the organism, the behavior of others and my
own behavior exist only by their meaning; but this meaning which springs forth in them
is not yet a Kantian object; the intentional life which constitutes them is not yet a
representation; and the "comprehension" which gives access to them is not yet an
intellection.