Key Arguments

• After summarizing Schneider’s lack of concrete freedom, Merleau-Ponty posits 'a more fundamental function': '“a vector moving in every direction, like a searchlight, by which we can orient ourselves toward anything, in ourselves or outside of ourselves, and by which we can have a behavior with regard to this object.”94'
• He immediately corrects the 'searchlight' image because it presupposes given objects: 'the comparison to a searchlight is not a good one, since it takes for granted the given objects upon which intelligence projects its light, whereas the core function we are speaking of here – prior to making us see or know objects – first more secretly brings them into existence for us.'
• He therefore introduces the notion of an 'intentional arc': 'the life of consciousness – epistemic life, the life of desire, or perceptual life – is underpinned by an “intentional arc” that projects around us our past, our future, our human milieu, our physical situation, our ideological situation, and our moral situation, or rather, that ensures that we are situated within all of these relationships.'
• This intentional arc 'creates the unity of the senses, the unity of the senses with intelligence, and the unity of sensitivity and motricity. And this is what “goes limp” in the disorder.', explicitly linking Schneider’s multiple deficits to a single existential structure.
• The articulation of the intentional arc 'has thus allowed us to catch sight of a new mode of analysis – existential analysis – that goes beyond the classical alternatives between empiricism and intellectualism, or between explanation and reflection.'
• Against empiricism: 'If consciousness were a sum of psychic facts, then each disturbance should be elective.' But Schneider’s disorder is non-elective and global.
• Against intellectualism: 'If consciousness were a “representation function” or a pure power of signifying, then it could exist or not exist (and everything else along with it), but it could not cease to exist after having existed, nor could it become ill, that is, it could not be altered.' The very possibility of partial illness refutes a purely formal, all-or-nothing function.
• By contrast, if 'consciousness is an activity of projection, which deposits objects around itself like traces of its own acts, but which relies upon them in order to move on to new acts of spontaneity,' we can see how 'every deficiency of “contents” has an effect upon the whole of experience and begins its disintegration' while still attacking consciousness 'from a certain “side”', preserving both globality and regional specificity of symptoms.
• Thus the intentional arc both grounds the unity of experience and explains how it can be regionally damaged, framing Schneider’s case as an exemplary disruption of this arc rather than of isolated functions.

Source Quotes

Schneider is “bound” to the actual, and he “lacks freedom,”93 he lacks the concrete freedom that consists in the general power of placing oneself in a situation. We discover beneath intelligence and beneath perception a more fundamental function: “a vector moving in every direction, like a searchlight, by which we can orient ourselves toward anything, in ourselves or outside of ourselves, and by which we can have a behavior with regard to this object.”94 But again, the comparison to a searchlight is not a good one, since it takes for granted the given objects upon which intelligence projects its light, whereas the core function we are speaking of here – prior to making us see or know objects – first more secretly brings them into existence for us. So let us say instead, by borrowing a term from another work,95 that the life of consciousness – epistemic life, the life of desire, or perceptual life – is underpinned by an “intentional arc” that projects around us our past, our future, our human milieu, our physical situation, our ideological situation, and our moral situation, or rather, that ensures that we are situated within all of these relationships.

We discover beneath intelligence and beneath perception a more fundamental function: “a vector moving in every direction, like a searchlight, by which we can orient ourselves toward anything, in ourselves or outside of ourselves, and by which we can have a behavior with regard to this object.”94 But again, the comparison to a searchlight is not a good one, since it takes for granted the given objects upon which intelligence projects its light, whereas the core function we are speaking of here – prior to making us see or know objects – first more secretly brings them into existence for us. So let us say instead, by borrowing a term from another work,95 that the life of consciousness – epistemic life, the life of desire, or perceptual life – is underpinned by an “intentional arc” that projects around us our past, our future, our human milieu, our physical situation, our ideological situation, and our moral situation, or rather, that ensures that we are situated within all of these relationships. This intentional arc creates the unity of the senses, the unity of the senses with intelligence, and the unity of sensitivity and motricity.

So let us say instead, by borrowing a term from another work,95 that the life of consciousness – epistemic life, the life of desire, or perceptual life – is underpinned by an “intentional arc” that projects around us our past, our future, our human milieu, our physical situation, our ideological situation, and our moral situation, or rather, that ensures that we are situated within all of these relationships. This intentional arc creates the unity of the senses, the unity of the senses with intelligence, and the unity of sensitivity and motricity. And this is what “goes limp” in the disorder. The study of a pathological case has thus allowed us to catch sight of a new mode of analysis – existential analysis – that goes beyond the classical alternatives between empiricism and intellectualism, or between explanation and reflection.

And this is what “goes limp” in the disorder. The study of a pathological case has thus allowed us to catch sight of a new mode of analysis – existential analysis – that goes beyond the classical alternatives between empiricism and intellectualism, or between explanation and reflection. If consciousness were a sum of psychic facts, then each disturbance should be elective.

The study of a pathological case has thus allowed us to catch sight of a new mode of analysis – existential analysis – that goes beyond the classical alternatives between empiricism and intellectualism, or between explanation and reflection. If consciousness were a sum of psychic facts, then each disturbance should be elective. If consciousness were a “representation function” or a pure power of signifying, then it could exist or not exist (and everything else along with it), but it could not cease to exist after having existed, nor could it become ill, that is, it could not be altered.

If consciousness were a sum of psychic facts, then each disturbance should be elective. If consciousness were a “representation function” or a pure power of signifying, then it could exist or not exist (and everything else along with it), but it could not cease to exist after having existed, nor could it become ill, that is, it could not be altered. Finally, if consciousness is an activity of projection, which deposits objects around itself like traces of its own acts, but which relies upon them in order to move on to new acts of spontaneity, then we understand simultaneously that every deficiency of “contents” has an effect upon the whole of experience and begins its disintegration, that every pathological weakening has to do with all of consciousness – and that, nevertheless, the disorder each time attacks consciousness from a certain “side,” that in each case certain symptoms are predominant in the clinical picture of the illness, and finally that consciousness is vulnerable and that consciousness itself can suffer the illness.

If consciousness were a “representation function” or a pure power of signifying, then it could exist or not exist (and everything else along with it), but it could not cease to exist after having existed, nor could it become ill, that is, it could not be altered. Finally, if consciousness is an activity of projection, which deposits objects around itself like traces of its own acts, but which relies upon them in order to move on to new acts of spontaneity, then we understand simultaneously that every deficiency of “contents” has an effect upon the whole of experience and begins its disintegration, that every pathological weakening has to do with all of consciousness – and that, nevertheless, the disorder each time attacks consciousness from a certain “side,” that in each case certain symptoms are predominant in the clinical picture of the illness, and finally that consciousness is vulnerable and that consciousness itself can suffer the illness. By attacking the “visual sphere,” the illness is not limited to destroying certain conscious contents, namely, “visual representations” or vision in the literal sense; rather, it attacks vision in a figurative sense, of which the former is but the model or the emblem – the power of “surveying” or “dominating” (überschauen)96 simultaneous multiplicities and a certain manner of positing the object or of being conscious.

Key Concepts

• We discover beneath intelligence and beneath perception a more fundamental function: “a vector moving in every direction, like a searchlight, by which we can orient ourselves toward anything, in ourselves or outside of ourselves, and by which we can have a behavior with regard to this object.”94
• the core function we are speaking of here – prior to making us see or know objects – first more secretly brings them into existence for us.
• the life of consciousness – epistemic life, the life of desire, or perceptual life – is underpinned by an “intentional arc” that projects around us our past, our future, our human milieu, our physical situation, our ideological situation, and our moral situation, or rather, that ensures that we are situated within all of these relationships.
• This intentional arc creates the unity of the senses, the unity of the senses with intelligence, and the unity of sensitivity and motricity. And this is what “goes limp” in the disorder.
• The study of a pathological case has thus allowed us to catch sight of a new mode of analysis – existential analysis – that goes beyond the classical alternatives between empiricism and intellectualism, or between explanation and reflection.
• If consciousness were a sum of psychic facts, then each disturbance should be elective.
• If consciousness were a “representation function” or a pure power of signifying, then it could exist or not exist (and everything else along with it), but it could not cease to exist after having existed, nor could it become ill, that is, it could not be altered.
• if consciousness is an activity of projection, which deposits objects around itself like traces of its own acts, but which relies upon them in order to move on to new acts of spontaneity, then we understand simultaneously that every deficiency of “contents” has an effect upon the whole of experience and begins its disintegration, that every pathological weakening has to do with all of consciousness – and that, nevertheless, the disorder each time attacks consciousness from a certain “side,”

Context

Transition subsection titled '[j. The “intentional arc.”]', where Merleau-Ponty synthesizes the Schneider material into a positive phenomenological concept of the 'intentional arc' and explicitly positions existential analysis against empiricist and intellectualist models of consciousness and illness.