Key Arguments

• He argues that spatial predicates derive their sense from bodily orientation: 'what sense could the word “on” have for a subject who could not be situated by his body in front of the world? It implies a distinction between up and down, that is, an “oriented space.” When I say that an object is on a table, I always place myself (in thought) in the table or the object, and I apply a category to them that in principle fits the relation between my body and external objects.'
• Stripped of this anthropological, bodily contribution, spatial terms collapse into mere undifferentiated relations: 'Stripped of this anthropological contribution, the word on is no longer distinguished from the word “under” or the term “next to . . .”'
• He concedes that 'Even if the universal form of space is that without which there would be, for us, no bodily space, it is not that through which there is a bodily space. ... when it comes to bodily space the form is an insufficient means for this positing, and to this extent the bodily content remains, in relation to it, something opaque, accidental, and unintelligible.'
• He rejects the 'solution' of denying bodily spatiality any distinct meaning: 'The only solution in this direction would be to admit that the body’s spatiality has no meaning [sens]of its own distinct from objective spatiality, and this would erase the content as a phenomenon and thereby erase the problem of its relation to form.'
• Instead, he proposes a dialectical relation: 'The relations between the two spaces would thereby be the following: from the moment I want to thematize bodily space or to work out its sense, I find in it nothing but intelligible space. But at the same time, this intelligible space is not extricated from oriented space, it is in fact nothing but the making explicit of it, and, detached from this source, it has absolutely no sense.'
• He concludes succinctly: 'Homogeneous space can only express the sense of oriented space because it received this sense from oriented space. If the content can be truly subsumed under the form and can appear as the content of this form, this is because the form is only accessible through the content.'

Source Quotes

One might reply that the figure–background structure or the point– horizon structure themselves presuppose the notion of objective space, or that, in order to experience a skillful gesture as a figure on the solid background of the body, the hand must be united with the rest of the body through this relation of objective space and that, in this way, the figure–background structure again becomes one of the contingent contents of the universal form of space. But what sense could the word “on” have for a subject who could not be situated by his body in front of the world? It implies a distinction between up and down, that is, an “oriented space.”11 When I say that an object is on a table, I always place myself (in thought) in the table or the object, and I apply a category to them that in principle fits the relation between my body and external objects. Stripped of this anthropological contribution, the word on is no longer distinguished from the word “under” or the term “next to . . .”

It implies a distinction between up and down, that is, an “oriented space.”11 When I say that an object is on a table, I always place myself (in thought) in the table or the object, and I apply a category to them that in principle fits the relation between my body and external objects. Stripped of this anthropological contribution, the word on is no longer distinguished from the word “under” or the term “next to . . .” Even if the universal form of space is that without which there would be, for us, no bodily space, it is not that through which there is a bodily space.

Stripped of this anthropological contribution, the word on is no longer distinguished from the word “under” or the term “next to . . .” Even if the universal form of space is that without which there would be, for us, no bodily space, it is not that through which there is a bodily space. Even if the form is not the milieu in which but rather the means by which the content is posited, when it comes to bodily space the form is an insufficient means for this positing, and to this extent the bodily content remains, in relation to it, something opaque, accidental, and unintelligible.

Even if the form is not the milieu in which but rather the means by which the content is posited, when it comes to bodily space the form is an insufficient means for this positing, and to this extent the bodily content remains, in relation to it, something opaque, accidental, and unintelligible. The only solution in this direction would be to admit that the body’s spatiality has no meaning [sens]of its own distinct from objective spatiality, and this would erase the content as a phenomenon and thereby erase the problem of its relation to form. And yet, can we pretend not to find any distinct sense in the words “on,” “under,” and “next to . . .,” or in the dimensions of oriented space?

The relations between the two spaces would thereby be the following: from the moment I want to thematize bodily space or to work out its sense, I find in it nothing but intelligible space. But at the same time, this intelligible space is not extricated from oriented space, it is in fact nothing but the making explicit of it, and, detached from this source, it has absolutely no sense. Homogeneous space can only express the sense of oriented space because it received this sense from oriented space.

But at the same time, this intelligible space is not extricated from oriented space, it is in fact nothing but the making explicit of it, and, detached from this source, it has absolutely no sense. Homogeneous space can only express the sense of oriented space because it received this sense from oriented space. If the content can be truly subsumed under the form and can appear as the content of this form, this is because the form is only accessible through the content.

Homogeneous space can only express the sense of oriented space because it received this sense from oriented space. If the content can be truly subsumed under the form and can appear as the content of this form, this is because the form is only accessible through the content. Bodily space can only truly become a fragment of objective space if, within its singularity as bodily space, it contains the dialectical ferment that will transform it into universal space.

Key Concepts

• what sense could the word “on” have for a subject who could not be situated by his body in front of the world? It implies a distinction between up and down, that is, an “oriented space.”11
• Stripped of this anthropological contribution, the word on is no longer distinguished from the word “under” or the term “next to . . .”
• Even if the universal form of space is that without which there would be, for us, no bodily space, it is not that through which there is a bodily space.
• The only solution in this direction would be to admit that the body’s spatiality has no meaning [sens]of its own distinct from objective spatiality, and this would erase the content as a phenomenon and thereby erase the problem of its relation to form.
• this intelligible space is not extricated from oriented space, it is in fact nothing but the making explicit of it, and, detached from this source, it has absolutely no sense.
• Homogeneous space can only express the sense of oriented space because it received this sense from oriented space.
• this is because the form is only accessible through the content.

Context

Later in subsection [a.], where Merleau-Ponty confronts the objection that figure–background relations presuppose objective space, and responds by arguing that objective, homogeneous space derives its sense from and is only accessible through bodily oriented space.