Ted Toadvine

This dissertation reconstructs the development of Maurice Merleau-Ponty's position on intersubjectivity and argues that the faults of his earlier formulations are eliminated in the final, viable account of the experience of others. ;During the Phenomenology of Perception period, Merleau-Ponty treats the experience of others as a "transcendental contradiction," a finite and precarious synthesis between the contradictory requirements that the other be presented to consciousness yet escape the constituting power of consciousness. While at the Sorbonne, drawing on analyses of language acquisition and linguistics, he reconceives the self as a power of expression in contact with others by means of a corporeal mediation termed "encroachment." Finally, Merleau-Ponty's last writings while at the College de France develop an ontology to account for both his previous phenomenology and the essential resistance of the prereflective to reflection. "Flesh," the medium of this ontology, constitutes a diacritical nexus within which each subject forms a "fold," a concretion point at which inside and outside meet. The deferral of the identity of each point throughout the whole entails both a kinship and a differentiation between subjects. The self-mediation--the folding--of Flesh subtends a contact between subjects which does not eliminate difference. ;Merleau-Ponty's final account advances over his earlier views in two related ways: by eliminating the polarity between prereflective experience and reflection, and by reconceiving the role of negation. Merleau-Ponty's earlier position attempts to mediate between pre-theoretical life and reflective understanding using Husserl's relation of Fundierung and the "tacit cogito" inspired by Sartre. The fundamental bipolarity introduced by these models of mediation belies Merleau-Ponty's own analyses of dialogue between the prereflective and reflection, and between other and self. Merleau-Ponty's final position moves beyond the earlier antitheses by locating negation in the self-mediation of Flesh, the paradigm instantiation of which is the reflexivity of a body touching itself. On the basis of this corporeal self-reflexivity, subjects can form a "chiasm:" homologous with visual synopsis, perspectives merge without the loss of individuation or difference. The dissertation concludes by arguing that a viable account of intersubjective experience can be founded on the relation of "chiasm."