Key Arguments

• He generalizes: 'Thus understood as an ambiguous atmosphere, sexuality is coextensive with life. In other words, ambiguity is essential to human existence, and everything that we live or think always has several senses.'
• A 'style of life – such as an evasive attitude and a need for solitude – is perhaps a generalized expression of a certain state of sexuality. By bringing itself into existence in this way, sexuality is charged with such a general signification that the sexual theme was able to be, for the subject, the opportunity for taking true and accurate notice of so many things in themselves and of so many rationally based decisions,' so that sexuality becomes saturated with non-sexual meanings.
• Because sexuality diffuses into existence and vice versa, 'it has become so weighed down along the way that it is impossible to seek the explanation for the form of existence in the form of sexuality.' Yet 'The fact remains that this existence is the taking up and the making explicit of a sexual situation, and that it therefore always has at least a double sense.'
• He formulates this interpenetration explicitly: 'There is osmosis between sexuality and existence, that is, if existence diffuses throughout sexuality, sexuality reciprocally diffuses throughout existence, such that it is impossible to identify the contribution of sexual motivation and the contribution of other motivations for a given decision or action, and it is impossible to characterize a decision or an action as “sexual” or as “nonsexual.”'
• From this he infers a structural indeterminacy: 'In human existence, then, there is a principle of indetermination, and this indetermination does not merely exist for us, it does not result from some imperfection in our knowledge, and we must not hold that a God might sound out our hearts and minds and determine what comes from nature and what comes from freedom.'
• Rather, 'Existence is indeterminate in itself because of its fundamental structure: insofar as existence is the very operation by which something that had no sense takes', indicating that the process of sense-formation is inherently open and not decomposable into cleanly separable causal components.

Source Quotes

Similarly, sexuality can motivate privileged forms of my experience without being the object of an explicit act of consciousness. Thus understood as an ambiguous atmosphere, sexuality is coextensive with life. In other words, ambiguity is essential to human existence, and everything that we live or think always has several senses. A style of life – such as an evasive attitude and a need for solitude – is perhaps a generalized expression of a certain state of sexuality.

In other words, ambiguity is essential to human existence, and everything that we live or think always has several senses. A style of life – such as an evasive attitude and a need for solitude – is perhaps a generalized expression of a certain state of sexuality. By bringing itself into existence in this way, sexuality is charged with such a general signification that the sexual theme was able to be, for the subject, the opportunity for taking true and accurate notice of so many things in themselves and of so many rationally based decisions, and it has become so weighed down along the way that it is impossible to seek the explanation for the form of existence in the form of sexuality.

A style of life – such as an evasive attitude and a need for solitude – is perhaps a generalized expression of a certain state of sexuality. By bringing itself into existence in this way, sexuality is charged with such a general signification that the sexual theme was able to be, for the subject, the opportunity for taking true and accurate notice of so many things in themselves and of so many rationally based decisions, and it has become so weighed down along the way that it is impossible to seek the explanation for the form of existence in the form of sexuality. The fact remains that this existence is the taking up and the making explicit of a sexual situation, and that it therefore always has at least a double sense.

The fact remains that this existence is the taking up and the making explicit of a sexual situation, and that it therefore always has at least a double sense. There is osmosis between sexuality and existence, that is, if existence diffuses throughout sexuality, sexuality reciprocally diffuses throughout existence, such that it is impossible to identify the contribution of sexual motivation and the contribution of other motivations for a given decision or action, and it is impossible to characterize a decision or an action as “sexual” or as “nonsexual.” In human existence, then, there is a principle of indetermination, and this indetermination does not merely exist for us, it does not result from some imperfection in our knowledge, and we must not hold that a God might sound out our hearts and minds and determine what comes from nature and what comes from freedom.

There is osmosis between sexuality and existence, that is, if existence diffuses throughout sexuality, sexuality reciprocally diffuses throughout existence, such that it is impossible to identify the contribution of sexual motivation and the contribution of other motivations for a given decision or action, and it is impossible to characterize a decision or an action as “sexual” or as “nonsexual.” In human existence, then, there is a principle of indetermination, and this indetermination does not merely exist for us, it does not result from some imperfection in our knowledge, and we must not hold that a God might sound out our hearts and minds and determine what comes from nature and what comes from freedom. Existence is indeterminate in itself because of its fundamental structure: insofar as existence is the very operation by which something that had no sense takes

In human existence, then, there is a principle of indetermination, and this indetermination does not merely exist for us, it does not result from some imperfection in our knowledge, and we must not hold that a God might sound out our hearts and minds and determine what comes from nature and what comes from freedom. Existence is indeterminate in itself because of its fundamental structure: insofar as existence is the very operation by which something that had no sense takes

Key Concepts

• Thus understood as an ambiguous atmosphere, sexuality is coextensive with life. In other words, ambiguity is essential to human existence, and everything that we live or think always has several senses.
• A style of life – such as an evasive attitude and a need for solitude – is perhaps a generalized expression of a certain state of sexuality.
• it is impossible to seek the explanation for the form of existence in the form of sexuality.
• There is osmosis between sexuality and existence, that is, if existence diffuses throughout sexuality, sexuality reciprocally diffuses throughout existence, such that it is impossible to identify the contribution of sexual motivation and the contribution of other motivations for a given decision or action, and it is impossible to characterize a decision or an action as “sexual” or as “nonsexual.”
• In human existence, then, there is a principle of indetermination, and this indetermination does not merely exist for us, it does not result from some imperfection in our knowledge, and we must not hold that a God might sound out our hearts and minds and determine what comes from nature and what comes from freedom.
• Existence is indeterminate in itself because of its fundamental structure: insofar as existence is the very operation by which something that had no sense takes

Context

Later part of subsection [g. Sexuality cannot be “transcended.”], where Merleau-Ponty develops the idea of sexuality as an ambiguous atmosphere that permeates all existence, introduces the notion of 'osmosis' between sexuality and existence, and concludes with a metaphysical claim about the intrinsic indeterminacy of human existence.