January 14, 2017 

Merleau-Ponty’s​ Phenomenology of Perception​ (Part 2) 

 
This paper is a continuation of my presentation of the major concepts and theories in ​The 
Phenomenology of Perception​. I will cover parts 2 and 3, involving topics on the external world, spatial 
perception, lived space, addiction, hallucinations, intersubjectivity, and freedom.  
 
The World 
In part 2 “The World As Perceived” Merleau-Ponty focuses on the world aspect of the 
body-world dynamical coupling that constitutes my sense of subjectivity and the outer world. Self 
and world are inseparable at the most fundamental level of analysis, which is the existential, 
phenomenological, and bodily realm. Only when we take up empirical or intellectual attitudes, 
which are necessarily determined by and arise from this existential level, can we come up with 
derivative concepts of self and world as objective and separate.  
Merleau-Ponty’s overall idea is that the intellectualist dichotomy between f​ or itself ​and i​ n 
itself​, which refer to opposing modes for understanding phenomena, is wrong. An object as ​for itself 
refers it as appearing in relation to my subjectivity and conditioned by the transcendental 
conditions of my subjectivity, whereas this object ​in itself​ refers to it as existing independently of my 
perception and which we could never access (Kant makes this distinction in the terminology of 
phenomena and noumena). This dichotomy prevents us from accessing the more fundamental 
existential level where the dichotomy collapses. 
At this existential level we see that every object we encounter transcends or is greater than 
the form it is in our immediate access to it. This transcendental object, or the object in its totality of 
which we partially encounter, is given by my body’s coupling with the world. My body is familiar 
with the world and presents it in terms of indeterminacy and potentialities, whereas my immediate 
conscious awareness is limited and accesses objects in finite, determinate forms. All the possible 
aspects I can encounter of some object is determined by my embodiment and exists within greater, 
indefinite boundaries of the pre-objective body’s coupling or familiarity with the world.  
So whenever I see an object and it seems to be independent and external to me—or more 
than what I’m presently aware of—this impersonal appearance or opacity of the object is enacted by 
my body’s coupling to the world and depends on my embodiment. Merleau-Ponty describes the 
ability of sensory modalities to give access to an external world as not a matter of empirical causality 
but rather of this deeper embodied coupling, which presents to me a world without my voluntary 
willing or intellectual effort. Since this coupling interaction is always ongoing and continuous, I 
always discover new aspects of the world, and they can become part of this pregiven world if I 
engage with them often enough. 
When we understand how the body’s coupling with the world is the key mechanism in 
presenting a seemingly independent, external world, we can more accurately understand the nature 
of hallucinations and mental illness, which will be discussed later in this paper. 

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Spatial Perception 
Merleau-Ponty maintains that space is not an objective grid composed of homogeneous 
units, but rather space always emanates from, and is determined by, an embodied standpoint. He 
makes this claim relative to the existential, phenomenological level, which he believes is most 
fundamental to all levels of analysis. Objective space exists only for the empirical level, which is 
merely derivative of this existential level.  
Merleau-Ponty gives empirical support for his claim by investigating some notable 
psychological and neurological studies of his time. In one study, participants wear special glasses 
that invert the visual field, so everything appears upside-down. Participants, at first, have extreme 
difficulty to navigate their field of vision or interact with objects. However, after a few days of 
constant attempts at interaction, participants gradually become acquainted with this inverted world 
and can navigate it as well as the former, regular world. This development occurs in two main 
stages. At first, phenomenologically the inverted world appears to be normal. However, their bodies 
still seem inverted, and they cannot control bodily movement. The participants feel a mismatch 
between the world and their bodily movements. On the next stage of acquaintance, they gradually 
gain body control, until the entire domain of the world and their bodies seem normal. When the 
glasses are removed, the participants are as disorientated as when the glasses were first put on.  
Merleau-Ponty believes this study shows that space is foremost existential and 
phenomenological. He believes an empirical, objectivist understanding of space cannot account for 
the changes in experienced, lived space as demonstrated in the study. An intellectualist view on 
space claims that space is a priori, and every object appears in perception in the format of this 
objective space. This view cannot account for how wearing these special inverted glasses can flip 
one’s sense of space, and then a person can come to experience this inverted, impossible space as 
completely normal and navigable. The best way to account for these changes is to take space as not 
an objective, a priori condition, but instead to take space as dependent on a more fundamental a 
priori condition of embodiment and the bodily familiarity or coupling acquaintance with the world. 
“There is another subject beneath me, for whom a world exists before I am here… this natural spirit 
is my body, not the momentary body which is the instrument of my personal choices and which 
fastens upon this or that world, but the system of anonymous ‘functions’” (321). Whenever I take up 
an empirical or intellectualist attitude, I can apply it only onto phenomena that have already been 
determined by my embodiment. The limits of any theoretical investigation are a priori determined 
by embodiment, or the history of my body’s coupling to the world.  
Merleau-Ponty’s theory that space is fundamentally existential can explain many puzzles in 
science on perception. One such puzzle is how we perceive a figure as moving towards or away 
from us in our field of vision, rather than its spatial form increasing or shrinking. Scientific theories 
posit that we first perceive the objective spatial shrinkage of the figure, and then go through some 
cognitive or inferential process that arrives at the conclusion that the change is in the figure’s 
distance rather than its size. Merleau-Ponty believes this account is wrong. In existential space, 

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there is never any spatial shrinkage to begin with; the notion of spatial shrinkage is ad-hoc 
constructed when we take up an empirical attitude, reflect on the experience, and arrive at thoughts 
about changes in empirical space. In the original existential space, the figure retains its same size 
throughout its movement, and I do not perceive any empirical sense of space at all. Perception is 
thoroughly indeterminate and relative to my existential concerns and bodily familiarity with the 
world. A figure moving in my environment is a phenomena I’ve commonly experienced, so my 
body presents this meaning to me immediately. There is no need for mediating cognitive processes 
to arrive at this fact.  
 
Addiction and Obsession 
Merleau-Ponty discusses how we can live in spatial-temporal environments that are not 
literally present. In daydreaming or homesickness, for example, our experience is located in some 
space that is not the visible, public one. Experiencing virtual environments is possible because all 
experience, of any sort of world, is always disclosed by the body. The set of possible virtual 
environments I can find myself in are made possible by the repertoire of potential bodily 
orientations I have. While in some literal, public place, my body can take up an orientation that 
enacts a world that is not literally present. In homesickness, I experience home in an emotional way 
and yet not actually be there at all, and there is no contradiction between these facts because space is 
foremost existential, rather than empirical. My home is so familiar and deep in my embodiment and 
looms large in my existential space. Existential space always determines my surroundings foremost, 
whereas the realization of other aspects of physical surroundings are secondary and require explicit 
thought.  
Merleau-Ponty calls this existential space​ lived distance​ or space too, and this notion is crucial 
to explaining seemingly unusual behaviors, including those deemed as pathological, observed in 
other people. Lived distance refers to the scope of my current lived world, which depends on the 
history of my embodied familiarity and orientations. My embodied familiarity, in turn, depends on 
my way of life, cultural embeddedness or tradition, personal historical events, mood, and other 
cultural and personal factors. Lived distance essentially describes the breadth of the domain of 
activities and things I care about and deal with normally. A person lost to an addiction or obsession 
has a constrained, tiny lived distance. There are only a few things that matter, and “they enshroud 
me and rob me of my individuality and freedom… I am possessed” (359); this notion of freedom will 
be discussed later in this paper.  
There is no clear causal order between my obsession, the narrowed world I find myself in, 
and the loss of my freedom and individual potentiality. When I am obsessed, the world shrinks 
down to the objects of my obsession, so I cannot access the other parts of the greater world that 
other people see. Because the world is so tiny, and the few objects of my addiction bulges out and 
encompass the entire world to me, I cannot help but give in to the obsession, and cannot find or 
latch onto alternative objects that would help me overcome this constrained concern and world.  

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 My sense of causality and chance also distort within a constrained lived space and addiction. 
“The shrinkage of lived space, which leaves no margin, leaves no room for chance… like space, 
causality, before being a relation between objects, is based on my relation to things. The 
‘short-circuits’ of delirious causality, no less than the long causal chains of methodical thought, 
express ways of existing” (359). In a healthy world, there is a wider array or variety of objects and 
activities that I can access; I have a broader network of interrelated things, so any one thing could 
take on many different relations with other objects and be mediated through many different objects, 
as well. There are many potential options for explaining causality and arriving at a meaning for an 
object. Objects can naturally appear to me in a manner of chance and accident. I am free to be easy 
going, and things rarely have emotional power over me.  
However, in obsession, every single thing within the tiny world around me emerges with 
hyper-significance. There are very few objects that exist in the first place, so any given thing has 
very few possible objects to relate to. There aren’t enough objects to build up connections between 
many objects and allow the experience of given thing to be mediated through the various meanings 
of these other objects. Every appearance in this world will immediately impact me with a very 
particular, powerful meaning. There are very few options for explaining causality, and each option 
is extremely simplified, without many causal links, and so especially forceful. There is no room for 
chance, and everything is an omen or command on my body. In addiction or obsession, I am 
paranoid, always reading meaning into every little thing, and being emotionally bombarded by 
every little event. 
 
Hallucinations and Dreams 
Merleau-Ponty also explains schizophrenia with his theory of lived space. People with 
schizophrenia see a non-visible, existential or lived space cut into the visible space, which is public 
and shared among people in general. This non-visible space can be more immediate and salient to a 
person with schizophrenia, so she acts according to this non-visible space and is cut off from the 
common world. All perceptual elements of a hallucination come from fragments of real experiences 
at different times. For example, a person hallucinates that her food is poisoned and someone is out 
there to kill her. This hallucination is made possible by pieces of various past ​actual​ perceptual 
experiences, which left behind potential bodily orientations in the repertoire of those that can be 
taken up in different situations. Although hallucinations are not genuine perceptions, they have the 
value of reality because of their effects on the person (424). The person is impacted by the 
hallucination with all the emotional reality and need for action as any genuine perception.  
Merleau-Ponty thinks objectivist, empirical frameworks dismiss hallucinations, dreams, and 
myths as confused, subjective feelings, far off the mark of the one true objective world, simply 
because these phenomena cannot be explained within such theoretical framework. He criticizes 
these theorists as arrogant for thinking their explanations are absolutely true, and people with 
schizophrenia are wrong about their own experiences. Only with a phenomenological, embodied 
framework can we see that the content of hallucinations and dreams are not supposed to be 

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representational of some public, visible world in the first place. Hallucinations take on their own, 
absolutely real presence in a person’s lived world.  
An objection to Merleau-Ponty is that his phenomenological reasoning produces a view of 
extreme solipsism; every person lives and functions within her unique world, given by her unique 
embodied history. This view rejects rationality, which is our only access to objective, universal truth 
that we all share, and instead validates the most irrational, subjective experiences as truth. This 
framework opens up way for dangerous relativism.  
Merleau-Ponty responds that insanity and dreams are not isolated but can be described 
objectively and made public entities. He never meant to reject empirical and rationalist methods 
altogether, but he simply warns that they should not be applied prematurely, and he denies that 
their conclusions could touch the most fundamental content of experience. The fact that we can 
give detailed descriptions of experiences of insanity and dreams, and these descriptions can be 
understood between many different people, shows that these experiences are not completely 
solipsistic and hidden. They are just as private and public as any kind of objective or rational fact, 
which every person experiences personally and yet is public.  
Furthermore, Merleau-Ponty never claimed that the content of insanity and dreams are 
absolutely true or objective. At this deeper existential level, the notion of absolute truth doesn’t exist 
at all; this notion belong strictly to derivative theoretical frameworks. The idea of truth and falsity 
cannot exist at this deeper existential, phenomenological level, because this level consists of strictly 
appearances of the world and experiences. Experience itself cannot be true or false but is simply that 
which is disclosed to the subject. So, the risk of relativism dissolves, since relativism holds that 
anything can be true in the sense of absolute or logical truth.  
Additionally, Merleau-Ponty argues that everyone has experiences similar to those of 
schizophrenia hallucinations, but we might have an easier time distinguishing this non-visible 
realm from the public one and so not succumb to the emotional and behavioral effects of conflating 
the two. Healthy children have plenty of fantastic imaginative experiences and act them out in play. 
Healthy adults have daydreams and mind-wandering narratives that have no material substance and 
are not shared by other people. Religious experiences and practices might even be categorized 
closely to schizophrenic hallucinations. There is nothing fanciful and fantastic about the fact that 
humans live in an experienced world, enacted by the body, that holds non-visible meanings and 
experiences, along with perceptual objects. This fact is objective and can be confirmed empirically. 
Merleau-Ponty affirms that as much as space is existential, our existence is also spatial; in 
other words, what we experience as space surrounding us is completely dependent on our 
embodiment and history of body-world coupling. Likewise, our so-called “inner” experiences, of 
thoughts, feelings, plans, or memories, are also experienced as spatial, or part of the world that I 
find myself in. “Through an inner necessity, [existence] opens on to an ‘outside’, so that one can 
speak of a mental space and a ‘world of meanings and objects of thought which are constituted in 
terms of those meanings’. Human spaces present themselves as built on the basis of natural space” 
(367). Because so-called “external” or physical space and so-called “internal” or subjective spaces 

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equally are dependent on our embodiment and share the same general causal structures, the two 
kinds of spaces are fundamentally the same at the level of embodiment, and even experientially they 
share many qualities.  
 
Temporality 
Merleau-Ponty explains how temporality plays a constitutive role in making possible the 
experienced world as independent of and external to us, “opaque” or “impersonal,” and yet remains 
open for new exploration, discovery, and expansion. “The transcendence of the instants of time is 
both the ground of, and the impediment to, the rationality of my personal history: the ground 
because it opens a totally new future to me in which I shall be able to reflect upon the element of 
opacity in the present… and since the lived is thus never entirely comprehensible, what I 
understand never quite tallies with my living experience, in short, I am never quite at one with 
myself” (403). At any given moment, I always experience and see objects in terms of their becoming 
or status in the future. I always transcend the literal, present moment, and I experience the present 
from the perspective of having a foothold in the future and moving forward.  
This transcendence of time is the a priori condition that makes possible my sense of 
personal history, but it is also an obstacle for me to grasp my personal history. Transcendence of 
time gives me an upcoming future, and from future standpoints I can look back and understand my 
previous situations with greater breadth and perspective. But transcendence of time also implies 
that any future point in time continues to open into the future, so any sense I make of my past 
situations is indeterminate and open to revision as I encounter new facts in the future. So, 
transcendence of time amounts to the fact that who I am in any given moment is indeterminate and 
implies more possible forms than that which it currently manifests, which could be manifested in 
the future. I am never my entire being in any moment, because every moment is open and involves 
the future.  
So for every human being, it is impossible for any temporal point to have absolute meaning. 
The meaning of object in the world, as well as the meanings of my actions and who I am, depend on 
my embodiment, and my embodiment changes over time. Furthermore, there are plenty of events 
in my life history that I do not remember, and if I recovered them, then they would shift the 
meaning of other parts of my life that I know. Time is given by my body in coupling with the world 
and is always more than what my self-conscious awareness can access at any given moment.  
Furthermore, Merleau-Ponty emphasizes time exists only from a point of view; outside of 
any point of view, at the frame of reference of the world in itself, there would be no time but a static 
eternity. Time is not a genuine entity in itself, on an objective succession that I can observe from a 
distance; time always arises from my relation to things and so depends on and is changed by my 
observation. So, psychologists who try to explain consciousness in terms of past memories and the 
future in terms of one’s projection of these memories is problematic. It presumes that past temporal 
points are objective entities that can be simply re-accessed. It neglects how in fact features of my 

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current embodiment will constitute and determine the disclosure of any past moment. There is no 
such thing as a stable, objective event in time.  
 
Intersubjectivity 
Merleau-Ponty explain the role of intersubjectivity, or the reciprocally determining 
interactions between different people, on our body’s coupling with the world and everything we can 
possibly encounter. Just as I find myself in a natural world (e.g. physical laws, environmental 
features, seasons) that I did not choose, I also find myself in a cultural world (e.g. cultural norms, 
infrastructure, and technology) that is given to me. This cultural world determines the history of 
my body’s coupling to the world and appearances of the surrounding world. “Now, although it may 
not be surprising that the sensory and perceptual functions should lay down a natural world in front 
of themselves, since they are prepersonal, it may well seem strange that the spontaneous acts 
through which man have patterned his life should be deposited, like some sediment, outside himself 
and lead an anonymous existence as things” (404). The pregivenness of the physical world is 
intuitive; it’s easy to see that my perceptual capacities access some world independent of me. But the 
pregivenness of my personal life seems counterintuitive. My personal choices, activities, and 
concerns seem to be internal, or part of me, rather than independent of me and out in the world. 
Merleau-Ponty insists that aspects of my personal life are as independent and and pregiven to me as 
the so-called physical world is. The possible arrays of decisions and activities are like objects that I 
encounter and do not determine.  
Merleau-Ponty argues that my sense of self-identity or subjectivity is determined and made 
possible by other people and intersubjectivity. Whenever I see any object in the world, the presence 
of it implies other people, in two ways. First, if the object is a cultural artifact, like a knife, the 
meaning it presents to me in the world involves its general use, which is not strictly based in myself 
as the user but rather as people in general as potential users. Second, and more fundamentally, the 
quality that any thing in the world is actually an object depends on the precondition of 
intersubjectivity. A thing can be an object only with the sense that it is independent of me and could 
appear to other people. My body’s fundamental openness and understanding of other people 
provides this condition that allows an object to stand as publically viewable and to be an object at 
all.   
Furthermore, this transcendental openness to others is the precondition for the perception 
of other people as people. Empirical theories claim we first perceive the visual-perception form of 
other bodies, go through inferential processes, and then make conclusions that they are people with 
minds and experiences like my own. Merleau-Ponty argues this explanation is wrong. Our 
immediate perception is given by the history of our body’s coupling with the world, and this bodily 
coupling reveals other human bodies as living and conscious from the very beginning. The 
possibility of seeing a human body as distinct from her personhood is an intellectualized idea, 
resulting from ad-hoc reflection and the application of some theoretical framework. 

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 Perception of other people as people, in more detail, is made possible by the fact that our 
perspectives are not disconnected and isolated within our embodiment. Rather, each perspective is 
fundamentally indeterminate and easily takes up other perspectives, given that all people share this 
same general cultural and natural world. We all have similar histories of body-world coupling, as 
well as general genetics and biological capacities, and so are presented with the overall same world, 
although particular details might be idiosyncratic and individual. Given this broad overlap between 
people’s experienced worlds, I can immediately experience myself as body in another person’s field 
of experience. I can take up other people’s perspectives spontaneously, without intellectual 
inference or empiricist associations. Empathy is a natural aptitude of my embodiment. So, I am 
always experiencing myself from other people’s perspectives, and my decisions and understandings 
concerning my personhood are fundamentally from an intersubjective perspective. The 
development and states of my personhood are dependent on other people.  
Merleau-Ponty elaborates that our bodily coupling with the world are all very similar, if not 
the same. “As the parts of my body together compromise a system, so my body and the other’s are 
one whole, two sides of one and the same phenomenon, and the anonymous existence of which my 
body is the ever-renewed trace henceforth inhabits both bodies simultaneously” (410). Because we 
are intersubjective creatures, and all our purposes and activities are determined by other people’s 
perspectives and social influences, it is more than a mere metaphor to claim that our bodies are 
conjoined together under the same system. All people in a society reciprocally determine each other, 
and no individual can be epistemologically understood in isolation from the rest, as well as 
metaphysically the same entity if it had developed in isolation from the rest.   
Since we all co-determine each other and have bodily coupling with the world that are all 
relatively the same, perception of other people’s communicative expressions are also immediate and 
not done through intellectual processes. The ‘physical’ forms of facial gestures or linguistic 
communicative acts are inseparable from their meanings. For example, an angry facial expression is 
not a physical event that symbolizes the meaning of anger, but rather i​ s​ the anger itself. At the 
existential level, meaning is the basis of the immediate perception; we don’t go about detecting 
spatial-visual details and inferring meaning from them, but the meaning is there in the beginning. 
Spatial-visual details are only potential and indeterminate at this primordial level. An angry face can 
be meaningful from the start because this face is part of my own bodily coupling with the world in 
my perceptual world and evokes my bodily orientation that corresponds to my own experiences of 
anger and facial expressions. Seeing another’s angry face is made possible by bodily adjustments that 
give rise to the lived spaces of anger that come from my past experiences of first-hand anger.  
My own subjectivity is intrinsically transcendent from itself and is determined by 
intersubjectivity. The social world is not a collection of cultural objects but is a fundamental 
dimension of experience for all people; everything I see and experience had been determined by 
intersubjectivity.  
 
Freedom 

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 Merleau-Ponty discusses human freedom. He starts with the question of how an injured 
person who becomes a cripple can choose to still live, and even live with as much vigor and depth as 
anyone else. According to Merleau-Ponty, a cripple can only feel horrible and sorry for himself 
when he looks at himself from another person’s gaze and objectifies himself. But this presentation 
of selfhood is not normal. The baseline, for humans in general, is to experience self and world 
pre-objectively or in immediate experience, where there is no distinction between self and world 
nor any judgement or interpretation of experience. At this existential, transcendental level, any 
definite thing, whether conceptual or physical, cannot affect me or tamper with my freedom. 
It seems paradoxical to say that we have freedom in some cases, and no freedom at all in 
others. There is no paradox when we see that in the latter, empirical realm, it doesn’t make sense to 
look for freedom. The weakness of will argument against freedom makes this mistake of evaluating 
a person’s state of freedom in the level of analysis of her definite, observable actions. This argument 
states that if we have freedom, we would be able to accomplish every task we target. But, we cannot 
do so, and instead always face obstacles, many of which prevent us from carrying out our 
intentions. So, we do not have freedom. Merleau-Ponty shows that all this argument shows is that 
there are limitations in a physical, determinate world, but it makes no point about the deeper level 
of being, the existential or phenomenological realm. At this more fundamental realm, we can see we 
have total freedom.  
For example, a rock climber scaling a mountainside encounters enormous, jagged rocks as 
obstacles. Maybe one rock is too big, and the rock climber cannot overcome it and must give up. 
The weakness of will argument would describe this failure as evidence of a lack of freedom. But 
Merleau-Ponty would show that this failure is in fact evidence that supports complete existential 
freedom. The fact that the rock counts as an obstacle to the rock climber depends on previous 
decisions or existential commitments to the practice and way of life of rock climbing. The person 
had the initial complete freedom to practice rock climbing and take up this tradition. The proof that 
she has successfully taken up this tradition, and so exerted her freedom, is that objects, like these 
rocks, are obstacles or enablers to her practice when they appear in her world. To anyone who is 
not a rock climber, these rocks might be just protrusions on the mountain side or geological 
features. Only a person with the freedom and power to have taken up the way of life of a rock 
climber can encounter these rocks as obstacles or bridges to her project.  
Generalizing this example, anything that counts as a hindrance to one’s plans is not a barrier 
to freedom but in fact living proof of her freedom. An object can take on the status of hindrance 
only when a person has exerted her freedom and successfully taken up a way of life, involving 
networks of understandings of relevant objects and existential commitments, that shape her bodily 
attunement so that this object in the world is disclosed with this meaning of being a hindrance. 
Freedom is acquired primordially, in one’s existential commitments and a priori traditions, 
rather than demonstrated in particular, determinate actions. Freedom is constituted by cycles of 
stable behavior that maintains a way of life, and it is impossible to separate out one specific 

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temporal point that began all the successive cycles; the idea of identifying this starting point 
presupposes that freedom is found on an empirical, determinate level, which it is not.  
Furthermore, freedom depends on there being constraints. Freedom can happen when there 
are constraining circumstances, and yet one can accomplish the intended task. Freedom depends on 
there being a set of alternative possibilities and counter forces, so that I can choose to pursue one 
particular possibilities from this set. If there were no constraints at all, which is found in dreaming 
for example, I cannot be free because there is only one way the world can go, the way that I will, and 
no alternative possibilities. 
It is important to distinguish that the freedom I have on the existential level has no power to 
determine the particular interactions I have with objects in the world. Instead, this freedom 
determines the general categories of objects, which are relevant to the existential commitments and 
goals that I have chosen in my freedom, and then the particular events that come from my 
interactions with these objects, such as whether the object is an obstacle or bridge for me, are 
subject to many other environmental and circumstantial factors.  
We can also distinguish between personal, expressed intentions and general, natural 
intentions. The latter are given biologically; for example, I come into the world with four limbs and 
bodily capacities, as well as a particular perceptual system that organizes the possibilities of my field 
of vision, and these determine at a general level what kinds of goals I can pursue and what ways of 
life are possible for me. The former, in contrast, involve my personal concerns and 
meaning-making capacities, which make any biological limitation fully meaningful so that I can 
have projects and take actions relative to these meanings. For example, if a person is physically 
exhausted and has aching limbs, these physiological conditions will be painful, due to natural 
intentions and the biological constitution of human beings. But different personal, expressed 
intentions between different people can completely change this biological situation. A runner might 
take this pain as a beautiful feeling and be energized or exhilarated by it, due to her personal 
intentions. A non-runner might want to cry and find somewhere to curl up and rest. Although pain 
will exist due to our bodies, the significance of the pain and the causal role it has on a person’s 
behavior depends on existential commitments. 
It is important to remember that all existential commitments, ways of life, and personal 
projects are constituted socially or intersubjectively. We find ourselves with ways of life made 
possible by their transcendental influence and mark on our expectations of stages we should go 
through in life, activities we should accomplish at different stages, and all the material and social 
infrastructures that facilitate these potential paths through the world. Intersubjectivity is also 
inseparable from temporality or history; the dimension of culture and intersubjectivity of my 
embodiment, the ways I am determined by other people, constitutes this historical moment, and my 
lifetime adds to historical progress. History refers to the continuation and development of culture, 
which is nothing but the reciprocal determinations between all people, or intersubjectivity.  
Intellectualist and rationalist views miss this true freedom and instead objectify human 
action and evaluate these acts as isolated from the person’s experienced world and lived history. In 

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this objectified mode, social roles or ways of life become objective factors that causally determine a 
person’s subjectivity and behaviors. This mode cannot capture how ways of life are actually 
transcendental conditions that don’t linearly cause a person’s decisions but instead holistically 
disclose the entire world and potential sets of available objects to a person. This mode also cannot 
capture how ways of life are always indeterminate and adjust according to the particular experiences 
a person achieves.  
Our freedom is parallel to the fundamental indeterminacy of embodiment and transcendent 
nature of temporality. Even though we are determined by intersubjectivity and history, there is 
always an ambiguity of our situations, because any temporal moment involves movement into a 
future that is not yet determined. Through reflection we can take command of our existential 
freedom, evaluate the ways of life and social roles we’ve taken up, and move forward into 
developing or challenging these roles. I can never take an action out of nothing, or displaced from a 
context and history, but I can always interrupt an action and work on committing to a different way 
of life, available to me due to my openness to other people and the richness of possible ways of 
being in this intersubjective realm. “I am a psychological and historical structure, and have received, 
with existence, a manner of existing, a style. All my actions and thoughts stand in a relationship to 
this structure… I am free by means of them… by means of entering into communication with 
[nature, history, and the world]” (552). When I take up ways of life given by history and culture, I 
access a world of relevant objects, activities, and thoughts and this entrance in this world 
demonstrates my freedom. Nothing totally from outside me can determine me, because from the 
beginning I am the openness onto a world, and the world occurs through me, or rather my 
embodiment and way of life. I am influenced from within my way of life, and so influences are all 
part of the way of life I’ve chosen and consistent with my freedom.  

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