Contents

1. From qualia to behavioral fields: Merleau-Ponty’s reframing of appearance
2. Portmann’s study of animal appearance
3. Expressivity of bodies in the visible world
4. Towards an ontology of appearances

This essay examines how the visibility of animal form – its expressive appearance – reveals a deeper ontological dynamic between life and world. The 20^th century zoologist Adolf Portmann and philosopher Maurice Merleau-Ponty both hone in on the significance of what appears for our understanding of life. Merleau-Ponty has under his purview appearances of all kinds – from things in the world, to other people, to one’s own body, to language and ideas. Portmann focuses in particular on the appearance of animal bodies. Think of the vibrant plumage of a peacock, the marvelous designs on butterfly wings, or the flushed cheeks of someone embarrassed. Portmann’s biology-centered approach to the appearance of animals makes him a valuable source of inspiration for Merleau-Ponty, who dedicated a sub-chapter of his Nature course (1995/2003, pp. 186-190) to discussing Portmann’s Die Tiergestalt (1948, translated as Animal Forms and Patterns: A Study of the Appearance of Animals, 1967). In this journal entry, I distill from these sources the most important insights regarding animal appearance for my own dissertation. My main goals were to (a) summarize my take-aways of Portmann’s study, (b) embed his findings in Merleau-Ponty’s philosophical approach, and (c) draw on their combined inquiry to take some steps towards further articulating my thesis.^[1] My thesis, as formulated in this outline, is that “mind and brain are a co-dependent or entangled structuration, manifested through the dialectic of perception”. The first section sets the stage by outlining Merleau-Ponty’s reconception of appearances. The second section summarizes Portmann’s study. The third section brings the two thinkers into dialogue through the idea of expression, which is central to both. In the final section, I turn to some key ideas in Merleau-Ponty’s ontology, especially those found in his Nature course and its commentary on Portmann’s work, to develop the ontological horizon of my thesis.

I. From qualia to behavioral fields: Merleau-Ponty’s reframing of appearance

To begin, let us try to characterize the field where appearances take form. As for what “appearances” are, for now this term is only an index for those formations of color, shape etc. which are present to us in experience.^[2] Both Portmann and Merleau-Ponty focus mainly on visual appearances. For instance, when speaking of the appearance of the full moon, we refer to the circular white entity that is present in experience.

In classical modern ontologies, this domain of appearances has been understood as an internal and subjective domain, relating the appearances to a mind or consciousness for which they appear. This interiority stands opposed to the external and objective domain where the world exists in itself. The view which is currently popular amongst the scientifically-minded is that the subjective appearances, and the sphere of mindedness to which they belong, emerge from an underlying objective substratum of material processes, namely those in the nervous system. In Merleau-Ponty’s work, we see that this classical conception undergoes a profound change. In a sense, his entire work is one of challenging and reconceiving this domain so that the traditional impasses, resulting from the dualistic split of subject and object, may be overcome (such as the relationship between mind and matter, self and other, activity and passivity). But let us not get ahead of ourselves. In his first major work, La structure du comportement (1942, translated as The Structure of Behavior,1963), Merleau-Ponty introduces the angle from which this conceptual shift may commence.

There is a temptation, particularly within certain strands of analytic philosophy of mind^[3] This strand is most clearly exemplified by later analytic thinkers such as Thomas Nagel, Frank Jackson, and David Chalmers., to conceive of appearances as ephemeral phenomena, composed of ineffable “qualia” (e.g., the redness of red). Accordingly, the consciousness for which they are supposed to appear is tacitly treated as the stage of a private theater, where a transient play of inner forms unfolds. For Merleau-Ponty, this conception misses the mark. The appearances which primarily engross us in life are perceptual appearances – which must be taken as their prime exemplar – and not abstract composites of qualia, or the relatively amorphous apparitions of thought and reverie. If we examine perceptual appearances, it is evident that they are no fleeting patterns of sensation, but integral components of behavior. Behavioral activities such as feeding, grooming, and exploring all play out in the field of appearances, directed towards its phenomena. Moreover, the behaving animal itself appears in this field as one of its members. The animal moves through the field, engaging with the beings that appear therein. The field of appearances is therefore not a disembodied stage, but a behavioral field, coiled around an animal body.

Whereas the analytic tradition often frames appearances as given to a consciousness defined by its cognitive-representational function, it becomes paramount for Merleau-Ponty to underscore how consciousness^[4]After finishing his seminal book Phenomenology of Perception (1945/2012), Merleau-Ponty begins to feel that the notion of consciousness cannot express what he means to say. It presupposes a … Continue reading is embodied – enacted through the body. Correlatively, the appearances are teeming with motoric and behavioral indices. The shape of the cup already informs my hand on how to grasp it; the size of the building adjusts my posture; the green of the forest opens my demeanor. “[E]ach so-called quality – red, blue, color, sound – is inserted into a certain behavior” (Merleau-Ponty, 1945/2012, p. 216). In this manner, the form and order of a perceptual appearance concern the integration of some object of the environment into the body’s grasp. The appearances are the overt signs of how the perceiving animal is “geared into” the perceived world (Merleau-Ponty, 2012, p. 262). By understanding the field of appearances as behavioral milieu, we subvert the traditional opposition of a world-in-itself and a world-for-consciousness. Behavior unfurls in a space between these two poles, neither “in my mind” nor in a world “out there”, but in the bodily commerce with the world itself. The visual appearance of a book is not floating freely in my consciousness, but situated in a definite position in the field of behavior, soliciting certain actions, open to tactile manipulation, correlated with the gaze. To use a term borrowed from the German biologist Uexküll^[5] Merleau-Ponty discusses both Uexküll’s and Portmann’s ideas in the chapter “Animality: The Study of Animal Behavior” of his Nature course (2003, pp. 167-199)., the field of appearances is the Umwelt of the animal, that is, the “aspect of the world in itself to which the animal addresses itself, which exists for the behavior of the animal” (Merleau-Ponty, 2003, p. 167). Everything points to the fact that, in perceptual experience, the physiological circuit of the animal is closed by the world itself, so that the animal forms a system with its environment. For this reason, the appearance of a thing is not a superficial projection, but the concretion of an embodied relationship with the depth of the real.

II. Portmann’s study of animal appearance

What appears in perception are not just things (like books or cups), but also bodies – those of others and of oneself. When speaking of “animal forms”, we refer to the outward appearance of animal bodies. Generally speaking, biology devotes little attention to the exterior of the organism, and when it does, it is mainly with respect to the usual aim of functional analysis, resting on a theory of evolution by natural selection. Thus, the skin regulates body temperature, the eyebrows prevent sweat from dripping into the ocular openings, etc. The exterior appearance may be an item of subjective marvel, but without much relevance to our understanding of life. This approach is in line with the general attitude of the sciences, which considers appearances as superficial, hiding the true depth of reality: we must penetrate through them with experimentation and analysis in order to reach a true understanding. But when it comes to understanding the phenomenon of life, appearances are not an obstacle: they compose the world in which life dwells. Social behavior clearly demonstrates the eminent role of the outward appearance of the animal: in enabling a member of a species to recognize its conspecifics, in communicating moods and intentions, etc. Drawing on examples such as these and more, Portmann argues that the exterior of the animal is not only biologically relevant because it may be adorned with evolutionary adaptations; it is relevant as appearance. He advances the thesis that the outward appearance of animals is “designed in a very special way to meet the eye of the beholder” – that is, it is “a device to be ‘looked at’” (Portmann, 1967, p. 25)^[6] Unless otherwise indicated, all subsequent references in this section are to Portmann’s Animal Forms and Patterns (1967)..

To better understand his thesis, consider the comparison with the digestive system (p. 112). Here we have a system of organs – teeth, tongue, oesophagus, stomach, etc. – which fulfil their biological function only by integrating items of nutrition from the environment. The bodily organs of digestion thus form a system with the external presence of food. Or consider the respiratory system and oxygen. The embryo’s lungs begin to develop long before there is air to breathe, anticipating their eventual communion (Merleau-Ponty, 2003, p. 187). So too the outward appearance develops before there is anyone to see it, but it already contains a reference toward this fated completion. Portmann argues that the outward appearance of the animal forms a system with the capacity to look. The significance of animal form can only be understood in relation to its being-seen – that is, to a beholding eye and its extension into a central nervous system. In short, the form of the animal and the faculty of vision together constitute a functional unit (p. 113).

The animal form is therefore subject to different laws, to a different mode of construction, than the hidden parts of the animal – its internal organs. If this hypothesis were true, we would expect the visible exterior to reveal characteristics that are manifestly different from the hidden interior. Portmann cites two key characteristics. Firstly, the visible exterior exhibits symmetry, whereas the internal organs display a predominant asymmetry (p. 31). Secondly, for many species, the internal organs look exceedingly similar and monotonous, such that we could hardly identify the species from a glance at their viscera; in contrast, the visible form displays striking and easily identifiable features unique to the species. In this manner, the degree of species-typical differentiation is expressed far more clearly by the animal’s visible exterior than by its interior. As a result of these two traits – symmetry and differentiation – the visible form impresses itself relatively easily upon our memory, whereas this is far more cumbersome for the viscera (p. 35). These observations begin to lend credibility to Portmann’s thesis that the outward form of the animal is an optical device.

But not all animals are equally visually equipped, not all of them lead a life of sight. Then how could it be that the animal form is a device to be looked at? Portmann distinguishes between the animals that see each other, and those that don’t – and with these two classes, he identifies two different stages in the “intensity of living” (p. 108). Thus, many snails lack a strong visual sense, and so their outward form will not be shaped as significantly by a relationship to vision. For most mammals, on the other hand, vision is integral to life, and so the outward form is more strongly connected to their being seen.

With this distinction in place, let us consider some more animal forms to flesh out Portmann’s thesis. Consider the kite swallowtail butterfly, whose wings, like many of its kind, display striking designs. Portmann notes how the design on the upper wings and the lower wings, which develop separately, form a single total pattern – a fact which is obscured by how butterflies are pinned up in galleries, but which can easily be noticed in their natural position (see figure above; p. 110). To use Merleau-Ponty’s (2003) analogy, it is as if the animal form were painted by a single brush stroke (p. 187). Or consider the shimmering pattern on the plumage of a starling (see figure below). If we would look at a single feather on the wing, we would notice a tip of pale white, with a section just below in glossy green, a middle part with a purplish hue, and an inner part, closest to the skin, in matte black or brown. Zooming out to the whole animal, we see that the tips of all feathers align to form a constellation of white speckles across the body, the sections below compose a glimmering band of green, the middle parts blend into a wash of violet, while the inconspicuous innermost parts remain hidden. This gestalt is entirely lost to someone who examines a feather in isolation. Or consider the stripes on a tiger (see figure below). The shape and direction of the stripes are such that they accentuate the form of its body, highlighting in particular its head and other significant parts (p. 75). In each of these cases, the optical forms spread over the entire animal, across distant parts of the body. This indicates that they result from a delicately coordinated and global orchestration of developmental processes. There is just as much biological planning involved in the construction of the outward appearance as there is for constructing the vital organs. For this reason, Portmann considers the optical structures of animal form as an organ (p. 122), which functions in relation to a beholding eye. The optical forms contain a reference to a vision that witnesses the total appearance of the animal.

An animal is not only seen by others of its own species, but by species of all kinds, some of which may be its predator, others which may be its symbiotic partner (p. 111). Thus, the vision in relation to which animal form is shaped is not only the vision of the species in question, but the vision of all those who have an interest in seeing the animal. While Portmann never puts it in these terms, we may say that an animal’s being-seen, by all those who have a stake in seeing it, is a major evolutionary pressure that shapes animal form.

Portmann distinguishes two classes of purposes that the visible designs on an animal’s exterior may have (p. 117). Sematic patterns are those which are designed to stand out and signal something to an onlooking animal – for example, the bold black and white stripes of a skunk, which serve as a warning to potential predators. On the other hand, cryptic patterns are those which are designed to dissimulate the animal, to make it disappear into its surroundings – for example, the spots on a leopard’s skin, which make it harder to detect in the dappled light of the woodland. Moreover, sometimes a cryptic pattern is only effective if it is aided by behavior, revealing a profoundly holistic relationship between animal form, being-seen and behavior (p. 110). For example, the looper caterpillar resembles a twig, but only when it adopts a twig-like posture, which it instinctively does when feeling threatened (see figure below).

These examples, and many more like them, may give us the impression that the significance of animal form is purely functional. But Portmann repeatedly warns us against this conclusion. While it is important not to neglect the role of functional adaptations, Portmann underscores how this utilitarian view of animal form derives from a narrow consideration of the plethora of forms (p. 123). If we focus exclusively on cases such as the polar bear’s white fur against the snow, where a function is evident, then we are tempted to conclude that animal form is some kind of evolutionary adaptation. But Portmann argues that there are many realizations of animal form without clear purpose. Purposiveness is only the “lowest condition” (p. 182) of animal form production. Beyond this, there is a vast realm where the “free production of organic form” (p. 182) proliferates. For Portmann, this is one of the most important, albeit often forgotten, laws of nature: “the constant production in the course of the earth’s history of new variants, of new organic forms, and the incessant alteration of organic life – the coming and the going of various animal and plant forms” (p. 203). Beyond functional adaptation, the outward appearance belongs to the self-expression of life in its free production of forms. Portmann cites the tremendous variety of leaf shapes, which defy functional explanations, and the magnificent variety of flowers (pp. 123-124). The latter is partially explained by the symbiosis between flowers and pollinating insects, but, he argues, the selection by insects only takes place upon already existing blossoms, and does not explain the initial flowering of the plant’s unique aesthetic. As for the animal kingdom, he cites the luxuriant antlers of a deer, the lush mane of a lion – if life were governed by a purely economic principle of functional viability, such forms would have no reason to be selected. The majestic antlers of a deer communicate in the language of visibility that the animal has reached the highest stage of maturity (p. 201). These ornamental features are sematic – they signal by accentuating the animal’s appearance – not for adaptive reasons but expressive ones (p. 181).

Now, there is a popular explanation in evolutionary theory which reconciles such forms with adaptationist logic, known as the “handicap principle” (Zahavi & Zahavi, 1999). It states that exuberant, non-functional traits, such as a peacock’s tail, function as honest signals of fitness precisely because they are costly. A weaker animal couldn’t afford to carry such a burden, so a large, ornate tail signals that the animal is so robust it can survive despite this handicap. Such ornamental features are a show of surplus, a display that communicates to potential mates that the animal can afford to expend energy. Regardless of whether this hypothesis is correct, Portmann would argue that, at best, it provides a partial explanation of these exuberant forms, and does not account for their “peculiar shape and position” (p. 86), their unique aesthetic, their variety. The handicap principle belongs to the lowest condition of purposiveness, which does not exhaust the reality of animal form. The remainder left by the functional conception is, for Portmann, explained by the self-expressiveness of life through its form. Ornamental features such as the lion’s mane express the animal’s degree of differentiation – whether it is a “high-” or “low-ranking” animal – which he also calls the intrinsic worth of the animal. They are optical forms “through which a high-ranking organism expresses its intrinsic worth” (p. 182).

What are we to make of this claim that the outward appearance of life expresses its intrinsic worth? It suggests a value hierarchy of living creatures based on their appearance – a stance I found difficult to accept, feeling that it could entail dubious ethical consequences. I want to suggest a different interpretation that emerges when taking the gestalt of the book into account. Portmann’s inquiry is sparked by his overwhelming marvel towards the fantastical diversity of animal forms. It baffles him that life adopts such bizarre, beautiful, and terrifying appearances. His exposition throughout the book demonstrates that these appearances participate significantly in the life process, that the visible body is an organ, an optical device, made to be witnessed. Portmann poses more of a question than providing an answer: he maintains that there is a mystery which is apparent in the forms of life, that life seems to express itself through its form to the one who observes it. He intuits that this principle of visibility plays some pivotal role in biology, one which is as yet poorly understood, because it subverts the scientific assumption that appearances are peripheral to reality. He is awestruck by this principle, and invites us to share in wonder, hoping that it may open new avenues for our understanding of life.^[7]“A feeling of the uncanny grandeur of what happens in Nature, and the recognition that the sphere of what is clear to us about the problems of life is very narrowly limited – these two … Continue reading The tiger, the reindeer — their appearance conveys a unified, majestic being. This visible expressiveness of the animal’s fullness and dignity is what Portmann calls their intrinsic worth.

Let us summarize Portmann’s study. His main thesis is that for many animals – especially those endowed with sight – animal form is an optical device: it is made to be looked at. This is supported by the finding that the visible parts of the animal, and not its hidden parts, display “optical form productions”: patterns and designs that impress themselves easily and powerfully upon the faculty of vision. Their symmetry, wholeness, and differentiation strongly contribute to evoking a visual effect, which seems to be the special function of the animal form. The development of optical forms involves a coordinated effort comparable to the planning of the vital organs, which is why Portmann considers the animal form as an organ. It constitutes a functional unit with the faculty of vision. The beholding eye can be that of allies or enemies (or the animal itself), and the optical form can serve to signal something or to conceal the animal, which can be facilitated by a behavioural performance. Beyond its functional aspect, which is its lowest condition, the form expresses the existential value of the animal.

III. Expressivity of bodies in the visible world

A wonder toward the visible appearance of being also captivates Merleau-Ponty. He feels that both philosophy and science, in their effort to transcend appearances, have failed to appreciate that the world they seek to understand is woven by their strange aesthetic power. For him, the question takes on an ontological value: “what is there” is the perceptual world, with its own logic and style of unfolding. His philosophical impetus is to understand this world on its own terms.

In his Nature course (2003), Merleau-Ponty writes that Portmann’s investigations align well with his own view on the nature of appearances (p. 189). According to him, perception reveals a profound intertwining between the perceiving body and the perceived world: the seer and the visible form a system together. Portmann’s work essentially demonstrates this intertwining for a particular class of visibles – namely, animal bodies. Merleau-Ponty devotes considerable attention to this theme – the intertwining of the seer and visible bodies – which teaches us that life is not a process of individual organisms, but a wave of inter-animality (Merleau-Ponty, 2003, p. 189). According to him, each sensory quality is inserted into a behavior. Portmann, then, shows how the ensemble of sensory qualities composing the animal body serves to evoke specific behaviours in onlookers. And beyond this purposive aspect, he argues that it expresses the existential value of the animal. Let us turn more closely to what both thinkers have to say about expression.

For Merleau-Ponty, through the body’s openness, there emerges a field of appearances which express the world. In a lecture centered around the theme of expression, Merleau-Ponty defines “expression or expressivity as the property that a phenomenon has through its internal arrangement to disclose another [phenomenon] that is not or even never was given” (Merleau-Ponty, 2011/2020, p. 11). The appearance of the table is not the table itself – it varies with the body’s point of view – and through this it expresses, to my living and moving body, the presence of the table itself. The intertwining at the heart of perception makes it so that the perspectives we adopt upon things through the senses, which makes them appear to us, are not merely useful illusions, but an openness upon the real. In the manuscript for his posthumously published book, he describes this relationship with the notion of transparency: “The effective, present, ultimate and primary being, the thing itself, are in principle apprehended in transparency through their perspectives…” (Merleau-Ponty, 1964/1968, p. 101; emphasis added). It is the table itself that I see, and not some illusory simulacrum of the table – that is, the perceptual appearance is transparent and lets the depth and reality of the thing itself shine through. The original and primary comprehension of things is how they present themselves in perceptual experience, in the flesh, entangled with a perceiving body, open to its gaze and touch. If we apply these reflections to Portmann’s examination of bodily expression, some interesting insights may follow.

Portmann examines how animals communicate through overt changes in their form. In the case of human expression, this includes phenomena such as the smile, frown, or blush. These changes manifest in the field of appearances. Portmann notes a general law: “[the] means [of human expression] have evolved from organs concerned with elementary functions” (Portmann, 1967, p. 194). The blush, for example, makes use of the blood vessel innervation of the face, which initially served only to supply essential molecules. Or consider the phenomenon of turning pale, which may express fear, or a dilation of the pupils, expressing some kind of arousal. Now, the expression is spontaneous: one does not choose to blush. The higher animal, says Portmann, does not simulate its moods outwardly; rather, “its actual moods are infallibly reproduced in its appearance” (Portmann, 1967, p. 197). To put it differently, it is as if the animal form, in the process of expression, makes itself transparent, articulating the reality of what the animal is living. Expressive animals are transparent to one another, seeing not only each other’s outer shell, but outwardly showing their inner world, penetrating, through visible form, into each other’s lives. Whereas above we spoke of the transparency of external things to the perceiving body, through Portmann, we have pointed out the transparency of the animal through its own exterior. This transparent expressivity is bidirectional: it is not only the reality of the world that is visible to the animal, but the reality of the animal that is visible in the world.

Here we may integrate two threads of our discourse. We spoke earlier of different intensities of living, based on whether or not the animals of the species see one another, and now of expressive transparency, where the inner life of the animal becomes visible on its exterior. It is in fact only the animals of a higher intensity of living (where they see one another) that exhibit expressive transparency. The mollusk, for example, which is without (or with poor) eyesight, inhabits a relatively low intensity of life. Correlatively, the spiraled shell of a mollusk, beautiful in form, does not provide any window into its life; it is the result of a local developmental process. In contrast, in higher animals, “the appearance is more sober, but the expressive capacity is greater: the body is entirely a manner of expression” (Merleau-Ponty, 2003, p. 187).

IV. Towards an ontology of appearances

The visible world immerses us in reality, the visible form of a person expresses their invisible life –  but evidently there is much that remains hidden. Moreover, one could misread the apparent signs and take, for example, a shiny pebble for a coin if viewed from afar, or mistake a frown for disapproval instead of surprise. Appearances can mislead – cryptic animal forms rely on this possibility – and in any case they hide the real at the same time as revealing it: when one profile of the table is visible to me, the rest of its mass is concealed behind it. How can we speak of transparent expressivity, where being itself is articulated through appearances? Clearly, this transparency is counterpoised by an opacity; our contact with being by a distance from it… With “transparency”, we do not mean to say that there is an absolute contact with the things themselves; rather, we express that the perceiving body is an openness upon the world, and that it accomplishes a contact through distance. This distance is evident, since only a slice of the density of things is made explicit, and this manifestation is only realized through the density of the whole body. But this “thickness” between perceiver and perceived is no obstacle; it is the flesh through which they communicate (Merleau-Ponty, 1968, p. 135). The appearance is the surface of this depth (Merleau-Ponty, 1968, p. 136). Comparing the perceived thing with the fractured and rippled image of floor tiles at the bottom of a swimming pool, Merleau-Ponty says that one does not perceive a false image:

“When through the water’s thickness I see the tiled bottom of the pool, I do not see it despite the water and the reflections; I see it through them and because of them. If there were no distortions, no ripples of sunlight, if it were without that flesh that I saw the geometry of the tiles, then I would cease to see it as it is and where it is” (Merleau-Ponty, 1961/1964, p. 182).

Merleau-Ponty’s ontological position is that the perceptual world is the self-expression of Being. This world unravels in the mode of question and response as the senses interrogate it, propelled by the body’s motricity, making errors and corrections as it moves along. This pulsating fleshy world, carried by a fragile mass of appearances, is the flowering of Being through perceiving bodies. Being does not hide behind appearances; it manifests itself through them. This is a long way from the perspective, popular with the sciences, that appearances are superficial, subjective phenomena. The “hollow” nature of appearances is opposed to the supposedly solid nature of the real, objective being, which is physically and mathematically defined. So understanding – say, a living being – involves going beyond appearances through the labor of science, into the concealed depths of its physical processes: the functioning of its internal organs, its cells. Portmann argues that this is an unwarranted prejudice of the sciences: the visible exterior of the animal is just as important as its interior (Merleau-Ponty, 2003, p. 186). The exterior appearance is grasped as a gestalt, a unified entity – it is a macrophenomenon (Merleau-Ponty, 2003, p. 216). And just like a song, a scenery, or a looming threat, it is only at the macro-level that we sense the significance of the animal, not at the level of its constituent parts (Merleau-Ponty, 2003, p. 187). This macrophenomenon is a perceptual phenomenon, forming in the field of behavior. But Merleau-Ponty takes things a step further. He notes how it is not just the animal’s exterior that is visible; rather, the entire body is incarnate in visible flesh. The organs which lay concealed in the body’s interior are but “more of the visible” (Merleau-Ponty, 1968, p. 138). The heart is a visible, tangible entity, with weight and texture, lodged in the chest that the animal can see and touch. But the difference between the internal organs – visible in principle but concealed by the skin – and the animal form – which is visible in fact – is that the latter is specially designed to be seen, to evoke typical behaviors in onlookers, to communicate with the bodily grasp of beholding animals.

Portmann’s thesis, through the eyes of Merleau-Ponty, is elaborated by an ontology of the visible. It is not just that the outward appearance of animals is as significant as their internal organic machinery. It is that, ontologically speaking, these two domains are not opposed as subjective to objective. Rather, they both belong to a singular tissue: that of perceived being. There is no subject and object, no mind and body in this equation. There is only a visibility which engulfs the whole world, including the eyes of the seer. Merleau-Ponty says: to see is to be visible – not just for someone else, but for oneself (Merleau-Ponty, 1968, p. 154). Perception clasps the body that perceives and makes its own mass appear as a visible thing. Flesh is the visible seer, the tangible toucher, who is undivided from the world. This world which we live, which pivots about a body at the zero-point of its axes, is not “in my head” or “in me”; it encompasses my body, other bodies and all things. It is Visibility in itself (Merleau-Ponty, 1968, p. 139). It is out here that animals encounter each other and struggle for life. It is an intra-world because it is not defined from without, objectively, as by an absolute knower, but by those who inhabit the world: it forms by passing through bodies and setting them in motion, weaving them into commerce. And so, we don’t just inhabit the world, we inhabit one another, as the things inhabit our flesh by partaking in its circuit (Merleau-Ponty, 2003, p. 223).

What are we to make of the biological correlates of experience? Science has revealed intimate relations of dependence between the perceptual world and certain biological processes. And whereas these processes are empirically verifiable, physical events, the perceived seems fallible and elusive. The popular scientific conclusion is that perception is an epiphenomenon of objective micro-processes. The “non-solidity” of the perceived, relative to “solid” physical processes, is taken as evidence for the ontological primacy of matter over mind. But Merleau-Ponty would be quick to note that these physical processes are only articulated to us through perception. For him, the relations between mind and body express the intertwining of the perceiver with their own perceived body. Where in the body can we localize the perceiver? Not anywhere in the body, but not elsewhere either (Merleau-Ponty, 2003, p. 224). We have tracked down the dwelling of the perceiver to the nervous system and its bio-electric orchestra, but all this gives us no perceiver. If we inspect the body from up close, all we find is physicochemistry. But just as life emerges from physicochemistry, flesh emerges from life (Merleau-Ponty, 2003, p. 217). Portmann compares the living being to a theater, where the show is made possible by all the hidden machinery, stage props, actors and behind-the-scenes preparations (Portmann, 1967, pp. 161-162). Someone may know that the play results from the concerted action of all these elements, but by focusing on them, one misses the spectacle. To grasp the significance and gist of the play, one must look at the whole. Likewise the significance of the animal can easily get lost in the details of physical analysis, but comes into view when attuning to its global form. We mustn’t conclude from the hollow nature of perception that it is an epiphenomenon. It is a macrophenomenon – a conspiracy of the whole – where the perceiving body is entangled with the world (Merleau-Ponty, 2003, pp. 207, 218).^[8]“[A]n organism is, in a sense, only physicochemistry. As soon as we want to specify what happens in it, there is an abstraction made from our global view, at such a point and at such a moment that … Continue reading Visible being is hollow, and not a solid corpuscular substance, because it is articulated in conjunction with an openness upon being. With the evolution of the perceiving body, Being has gathered itself into a new configuration, where beings emerge into visibility and new rules come into play.^[9]Portmann concludes his book to the same effect: “Based particularly on this work, the view is gaining ground that the properties of life are the characteristics of specially constructed systems, of … Continue reading Thus, Merleau-Ponty says, the reality of the animal is not behind the appearances, in some hidden biological depth; it is in front of them, facing the appearances, engaging with others and with the world through them (Merleau-Ponty, 2003, p. 225).

We spoke earlier of a bidirectional transparency, where the world is visible to the perceiver and the perceiver is visible in the world. After stepping into Merleau-Ponty’s perspective, we may conclude that these two concern the same transparency: that of the invisible through the visible. Whether it is the appearance of things that expresses their reality to the perceiver, or whether the reality of the perceiver is expressed through their visible body, in both cases, it is a question of reality speaking through appearance. In this manner, the logic of perception is comparable to a language (Merleau-Ponty, 2003, p. 188): the appearances form a whole, and together they articulate something. One might wonder, then, what it all means exactly. For Merleau-Ponty, the logos of perception is not like a formal language where each word has a clear meaning. In fact, language itself is not like that, but expresses meaning through the “thickness” of the whole – which includes not only the many sedimented meanings that a word may have, but also the global meaning of the sentence, the affective atmosphere of the situation, the social and cultural horizons of the speaker etc. Because of this ambiguous and tangled mode of expression, without any clearly defined purpose, Merleau-Ponty compares the perceptual world to the “oneiric life” of our dreams. Reflecting on Portmann, he says that “[t]he form of the animal is not the manifestation of a finality, but rather of an existential value of manifestation, of presentation. What the animal shows is not utility; rather, its appearance manifests something that resembles our oneiric life” (Merleau-Ponty, 2003, p. 188). When looking at an animal, we do not make an objective determination of their being; we let their being participate in ours, we make ourselves the resonator of their form. It seems that the intertwining of seeing and being-seen acts as a structural axis, around which the very form of animal bodies is organized. That is how life appears to itself. The leading clue that emerges from this research is that “[t]he identity of that which sees and that which it sees appears to be an ingredient of animality” (Merleau-Ponty, 2003, p. 190).

References

Merleau-Ponty, M. (1963). The structure of behavior (F. L. Alden, Trans.; Original work published 1942). Beacon Press.

Merleau-Ponty, M. (1964). Eye and mind (C. Dallery, Trans.; Original work published 1961). In J. M. Edie (Ed.), The primacy of perception (pp. 159–190). Northwestern University Press.

Merleau-Ponty, M. (1968). The visible and the invisible: Followed by working notes (C. Lefort, Ed.; A. Lingis, Trans.; originally published 1964). Northwestern University Press.

Merleau-Ponty, M. (2003). Nature: Course notes from the Collège de France (R. Vallier, Trans.; originally published 1995). Northwestern University Press.

Merleau-Ponty, M. (2012). Phenomenology of perception (D. A. Landes, Trans.; Original work published 1945). Routledge.

Merleau-Ponty, M. (2020). The sensible world and the world of expression: Course notes from the Collège de France, 1953 (B. A. Smyth, Trans.; originally published 2011). Northwestern University Press.

Portmann, A. (1967). Animal Forms and Patterns: A Study of the Appearance of Animals (H. Czech, Trans.; originally published 1948). Schocken Books.

Zahavi, A., & Zahavi, A. (1999). The handicap principle: A missing piece of Darwin’s puzzle. Oxford University Press.