Key Arguments

• For each civilization we must "uncovering the Idea in the Hegelian sense, not something like a physico-mathematical law, accessible to objective thought, but rather the unique formula of behavior toward others, Nature, time, and death; that is, a certain manner of articulating the world that the historian must be able to take up and adopt."
• On this view "there is not a single word or human gesture – not even those habitual or distracted ones – that does not have a signification": even what we take to be mere fatigue or a platitude expresses a stance toward a situation.
• He illustrates micro-level sense: "I believed I was keeping quiet due to fatigue, or some politician believed he had merely uttered a platitude, and just like that my silence or his utterance take on a sense, because my weariness or his recourse to some ready-made formula are not accidental; they express a certain disinterest and thus are still a certain taking up of a position with regard to the situation."
• From the macro-historical perspective, "If we examine an event up close, then everything appears to happen by accident at the moment it is lived," but "Accidents cancel each other out, and that is how this myriad of facts comes together and sketches out a certain manner of taking a position toward the human condition, or an event whose contours are definite and of which one can speak."
• Questions such as whether history should be understood "through ideology, through politics, through religion, or through the economy" or whether a doctrine should be grasped "through its manifest content or through the psychology of the author and the events of his life" are resolved by insisting that "We must in fact understand in all of these ways at once; everything has a sense, and we uncover the same ontological structure beneath all of these relations."
• These diverse viewpoints are "All" true "so long as they are not isolated, so long as we go right to the very foundation of history, and so long as we meet up with the existential core of signification that is made explicit in each of these perspectives."
• With Marx he rejects one-sided head/feet metaphors: "As Marx said, history does not walk on its head; but neither does it think with its feet. Or better, it is not for us to worry about either its 'head' or its 'feet,' but rather its body," stressing the embodied, concrete totality of history.
• He affirms the legitimacy of economic and psychological explanations of doctrines, but only within an existential synthesis: "All economical and psychological explanations of a doctrine are true, since the thinker only ever thinks beginning from what he is. Reflection upon a doctrine will itself only be complete when it succeeds in connecting with the history of the doctrine and with external explanations, and in putting the causes and the sense of a doctrine back into an existential structure."
• Quoting Husserl, he notes there is a "'genesis of sense' (Sinngenesis)45 that alone teaches us, in the final analysis, what the doctrine 'means' [veut dire]," so critique must be "pursued on all levels" and cannot be satisfied with biographical accidents as refutations, since "the doctrine signifies beyond this life."

Source Quotes

Whether it is a question of a perceived thing, an historical event, or a doctrine, “to understand” is to grasp the total intention – not merely what these things are for representation, namely, the “properties” of the perceived thing, the myriad of “historical events,” and the “ideas” introduced by the doctrine – but rather the unique manner of existing expressed in the properties of the pebble, the glass, or the piece of wax, in all of the events of a revolution, and in all of the thoughts of a philosopher. For each civilization, it is a question of uncovering the Idea in the Hegelian sense, not something like a physico-mathematical law, accessible to objective thought, but rather the unique formula of behavior toward others, Nature, time, and death; that is, a certain manner of articulating the world that the historian must be able to take up and adopt. These are the dimensions of history.

These are the dimensions of history. And in relation to them, there is not a single word or human gesture – not even those habitual or distracted ones – that does not have a signification. I believed I was keeping quiet due to fatigue, or some politician believed he had merely uttered a platitude, and just like that my silence or his utterance take on a sense, because my weariness or his recourse to some ready-made formula are not accidental; they express a certain disinterest and thus are still a certain taking up of a position with regard to the situation.

And in relation to them, there is not a single word or human gesture – not even those habitual or distracted ones – that does not have a signification. I believed I was keeping quiet due to fatigue, or some politician believed he had merely uttered a platitude, and just like that my silence or his utterance take on a sense, because my weariness or his recourse to some ready-made formula are not accidental; they express a certain disinterest and thus are still a certain taking up of a position with regard to the situation. If we examine an event up close, then everything appears to happen by accident at the moment it is lived: that person’s ambition, some lucky encounter, or some isolated circumstance seems to have been decisive.

If we examine an event up close, then everything appears to happen by accident at the moment it is lived: that person’s ambition, some lucky encounter, or some isolated circumstance seems to have been decisive. But accidents cancel each other out, and that is how this myriad of facts comes together and sketches out a certain manner of taking a position toward the human condition, or an event whose contours are definite and of which one can speak. Must history be understood through ideology, through politics, through religion, or through the economy?

Must we understand a doctrine through its manifest content or through the psychology of the author and the events of his life? We must in fact understand in all of these ways at once; everything has a sense, and we uncover the same ontological structure beneath all of these relations. All of these views are true, so long as they are not isolated, so long as we go right to the very foundation of history, and so long as we meet up with the existential core of signification that is made explicit in each of these perspectives.

We must in fact understand in all of these ways at once; everything has a sense, and we uncover the same ontological structure beneath all of these relations. All of these views are true, so long as they are not isolated, so long as we go right to the very foundation of history, and so long as we meet up with the existential core of signification that is made explicit in each of these perspectives. As Marx said, history does not walk on its head; but neither does it think with its feet.

All of these views are true, so long as they are not isolated, so long as we go right to the very foundation of history, and so long as we meet up with the existential core of signification that is made explicit in each of these perspectives. As Marx said, history does not walk on its head; but neither does it think with its feet. Or better, it is not for us to worry about either its “head” or its “feet,” but rather its body. All economical and psychological explanations of a doctrine are true, since the thinker only ever thinks beginning from what he is.

All economical and psychological explanations of a doctrine are true, since the thinker only ever thinks beginning from what he is. Reflection upon a doctrine will itself only be complete when it succeeds in connecting with the history of the doctrine and with external explanations, and in putting the causes and the sense of a doctrine back into an existential structure. There is, says Husserl, a “genesis of sense” (Sinngenesis)45 that alone teaches us, in the final analysis, what the doctrine “means” [veut dire].

Reflection upon a doctrine will itself only be complete when it succeeds in connecting with the history of the doctrine and with external explanations, and in putting the causes and the sense of a doctrine back into an existential structure. There is, says Husserl, a “genesis of sense” (Sinngenesis)45 that alone teaches us, in the final analysis, what the doctrine “means” [veut dire]. Like understanding, critique too will have to be pursued on all levels.

Key Concepts

• For each civilization, it is a question of uncovering the Idea in the Hegelian sense, not something like a physico-mathematical law, accessible to objective thought, but rather the unique formula of behavior toward others, Nature, time, and death; that is, a certain manner of articulating the world that the historian must be able to take up and adopt.
• And in relation to them, there is not a single word or human gesture – not even those habitual or distracted ones – that does not have a signification.
• my silence or his utterance take on a sense, because my weariness or his recourse to some ready-made formula are not accidental; they express a certain disinterest and thus are still a certain taking up of a position with regard to the situation.
• Accidents cancel each other out, and that is how this myriad of facts comes together and sketches out a certain manner of taking a position toward the human condition, or an event whose contours are definite and of which one can speak.
• We must in fact understand in all of these ways at once; everything has a sense, and we uncover the same ontological structure beneath all of these relations.
• All of these views are true, so long as they are not isolated, so long as we go right to the very foundation of history, and so long as we meet up with the existential core of signification that is made explicit in each of these perspectives.
• As Marx said, history does not walk on its head; but neither does it think with its feet. Or better, it is not for us to worry about either its “head” or its “feet,” but rather its body.
• Reflection upon a doctrine will itself only be complete when it succeeds in connecting with the history of the doctrine and with external explanations, and in putting the causes and the sense of a doctrine back into an existential structure.
• There is, says Husserl, a “genesis of sense” (Sinngenesis)45 that alone teaches us, in the final analysis, what the doctrine “means” [veut dire].

Context

Middle of the passage, where Merleau-Ponty extends phenomenological 'understanding' to history and doctrines, arguing that every act and historical accident has sense as expression of a civilization’s existential orientation, and that economic, psychological, ideological, and other explanations must be integrated into an ontological account of the genesis of sense.