Key Arguments

• He explicitly denies that the body is simply 'in' space or time: 'Thus, we must not say that our body is in space, nor for that matter in time. It inhabits space and time.'
• The final position of a moving hand is not computed by summing displacements; each change is immediately given with its relations to what has preceded: 'If my hand executes a complicated movement in the air, I do not have to add together all the movements in one direction and subtract the movements in the other in order to know its final position. “Every recognizable change enters into consciousness already charged with its relations to something that has gone before, just as on a taximeter the distance is presented to us as already transformed into shillings and pence.”102'
• He argues this bodily grasp of position cannot be reduced to visual or motor 'memory', because one would otherwise be sent 'from memory to memory' without ever attaining a present perception: 'as for “motor memory,” it clearly could not determine the present position of the hand if the perception of where it was born had not itself included an absolute consciousness of the “here,” without which one would be sent from memory to memory and would never have a present perception.'
• Bodily existence is essentially present and cannot become past, even though explicit 'living memory' of earlier bodily states may be absent: 'Just as it is necessarily “here,” the body necessarily exists “now”; it can never become “past.” Even if we cannot preserve the living memory of the illness when we are healthy, nor the living memory of our body as a child when we have become an adult, these “gaps in memory” do nothing but express the temporal structure of our body.'
• He describes each phase of a movement as enveloping the whole trajectory: 'At each moment in a movement, the preceding instant is not forgotten, but rather is somehow fit into the present, and, in short, the present perception consists in taking up the series of previous positions that envelop each other by relying upon the current position. But the imminent position is itself enveloped in the present, and through it so too are all of those positions that will occur throughout the movement. Each moment of the movement embraces its entire expanse.'
• This bodily synthesis of space–time is pre-reflective and constitutive: 'Insofar as I have a body and insofar as I act in the world through it, space and time are not for me a mere summation of juxtaposed points, and no more are they, for that matter, an infinity of relations synthesized by my consciousness in which my body would be implicated. I am not in space and in time, nor do I think space and time; rather, I am of space and of time;103 my body fits itself to them and embraces them.'
• Nevertheless, this hold is finite and horizonal: 'The scope of this hold measures the scope of my existence; however, it can never in any case be total. The space and time that I inhabit are always surrounded by indeterminate horizons that contain other points of view. The synthesis of time, like that of space, is always to be started over again.'

Source Quotes

Cases of pure apraxia, where the perception of space is intact, where even the “intellectual notion of the gesture to be performed” does not seem confused, and where nevertheless the patient does not know how to reproduce a triangle,100 or cases of constructive apraxia, where the subject exhibits no gnosic disorder, except that which has to do with the localization of stimuli upon the body, and yet is not capable of reproducing a cross, a v, or an o101 – all of these cases show clearly that the body has its world and that objects or space can be present to our knowledge without being present to our body. [l. The body is not in space, it inhabits space.] Thus, we must not say that our body is in space, nor for that matter in time. It inhabits space and time. If my hand executes a complicated movement in the air, I do not have to add together all the movements in one direction and subtract the movements in the other in order to know its final position.

It inhabits space and time. If my hand executes a complicated movement in the air, I do not have to add together all the movements in one direction and subtract the movements in the other in order to know its final position. “Every recognizable change enters into consciousness already charged with its relations to something that has gone before, just as on a taximeter the distance is presented to us as already transformed into shillings and pence.”102 At each moment, previous postures and movements constantly provide a standard of measure.

“Every recognizable change enters into consciousness already charged with its relations to something that has gone before, just as on a taximeter the distance is presented to us as already transformed into shillings and pence.”102 At each moment, previous postures and movements constantly provide a standard of measure. This has nothing to do with the visual or motor “memory” of the hand’s starting point: cerebral lesions can leave the visual memory intact while suppressing the consciousness of movement and, as for “motor memory,” it clearly could not determine the present position of the hand if the perception of where it was born had not itself included an absolute consciousness of the “here,” without which one would be sent from memory to memory and would never have a present perception. Just as it is necessarily “here,” the body necessarily exists “now”; it can never become “past.”

This has nothing to do with the visual or motor “memory” of the hand’s starting point: cerebral lesions can leave the visual memory intact while suppressing the consciousness of movement and, as for “motor memory,” it clearly could not determine the present position of the hand if the perception of where it was born had not itself included an absolute consciousness of the “here,” without which one would be sent from memory to memory and would never have a present perception. Just as it is necessarily “here,” the body necessarily exists “now”; it can never become “past.” Even if we cannot preserve the living memory of the illness when we are healthy, nor the living memory of our body as a child when we have become an adult, these “gaps in memory” do nothing but express the temporal structure of our body.

Insofar as I have a body and insofar as I act in the world through it, space and time are not for me a mere summation of juxtaposed points, and no more are they, for that matter, an infinity of relations synthesized by my consciousness in which my body would be implicated. I am not in space and in time, nor do I think space and time; rather, I am of space and of time;103 my body fits itself to them and embraces them. The scope of this hold measures the scope of my existence; however, it can never in any case be total.

Key Concepts

• Thus, we must not say that our body is in space, nor for that matter in time. It inhabits space and time.
• If my hand executes a complicated movement in the air, I do not have to add together all the movements in one direction and subtract the movements in the other in order to know its final position.
• as for “motor memory,” it clearly could not determine the present position of the hand if the perception of where it was born had not itself included an absolute consciousness of the “here,” without which one would be sent from memory to memory and would never have a present perception.
• Just as it is necessarily “here,” the body necessarily exists “now”; it can never become “past.”
• I am not in space and in time, nor do I think space and time; rather, I am of space and of time;103 my body fits itself to them and embraces them.

Context

Central paragraphs of this passage under the subsection '[l. The body is not in space, it inhabits space.]', where Merleau-Ponty generalizes from bodily movement to an ontological claim about the body’s inhabitation of space and time and the horizonal, ever-renewed synthesis they require.