Merleau-Ponty, Maurice (1908–1961)

Maurice Merleau-Ponty was a French philosopher in the tradition of phenomenology. He taught at the École Normale Supérieure, later held the chair of child psychology and pedagogy at the Sorbonne, and in 1952 became the successor of Louis Lavelle at the Collège de France. In 1946 he founded the journal Les Temps Modernes together with Jean-Paul Sartre, but he withdrew his cooperation in 1955 and subsequently left the editorial board.

Merleau-Ponty developed his thoughts under the influence of various schools of thought, the phenomenology of Husserl and Heidegger being the most important; others were dialectics (Hegel, Marx), existentialism (Sartre) and neocriticism [Page 854](Brunschvicg). His theory of time is based on the Husserlian phenomenology and is to be found in two of his major large-scale works: the early work Phenomenology of Perception (1945) and the unfinished manuscript The Visible and the Invisible (1964), which was posthumously published by Claude Lefort.

In the discussion surrounding his work, it remains contentious whether there is any continuity between the early and the late thought or not. Time as subject is treated quite differently in the two works mentioned above: In Phenomenology of Perception, Merleau-Ponty analyzes time in a phenomenological manner, and in The Visible and the Invisible, in which Merleau-Ponty seeks for a way of thinking beyond subject-object dualism, time becomes a subject of ontology. But already in his early work, Merleau-Ponty argued against the dualism of subject and object and the theoretical concepts of empiricism and idealism, which emphasize a dualistic way of thinking. Although his analysis of time exhibits a tendency toward a subjective notion, it would be a misinterpretation to speak of a subjective view of time. In fact, Merleau-Ponty's concept of time undergoes continuous development throughout his life's work.

In Phenomenology of Perception, Merleau-Ponty argues against the idea that time resembles a flowing river. This image of time is problematic from two perspectives: First, it suggests that time has an existence in itself and, therefore, is something in the world; and, second, that time flows from the past to the future or vice versa. Merleau-Ponty denies that time exists in the world; he says that there is no such thing as succession to be found in the world of things. This position has led to the widespread conviction that he defends a subjective view of time. But time is also not to be found in consciousness, according to Merleau-Ponty. The role of the subject is to unfold time, and it does so from the present, which Merleau-Ponty considers to be the source of time. Therefore, there is no flow of time from the past to the future. Moreover the concept of unfolding or constitution of time is not completely subjective, because contact with the world is necessary. Furthermore, this special kind of constitution does not imply a completion—time is never wholly constituted, it remains in statu nascendi as Merleau-Ponty calls it. That means it cannot become an object of complete recognition. Merleau-Ponty understands time in Phenomenology of Perception as a dynamic structure that constantly evolves from the primordial interaction of subject and world.

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