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As we enter the final part of the Phenomenology, it is useful to recall briefly the major points of Merleau-Ponty's phenomenological description so far. Already in the "Preface", we learned that Merleau-Ponty's basic endeavour in this work is to awaken us to an awareness of our existence as incarnate subjects inhering in the world. Reflection on our lived experience revealed that the body itself is not a system of externally related parts but rather, that it is a dynamic synthesis of mutually implicatory powers. As a comprehensive project of such internally related powers, the body itself already outlines the fundamental features of the world in which these powers continually find their realization. Neither the body nor the world towards which the former is a transcendence, can be comprehended in isolation. The body is only a body in so far as it is this transcendence towards a world and by the same token, the world is only a world insofar as it is this polarization of bodily powers. Nonetheless, neither term is reducible to the other, because transcendence — as surpassing towards — implies objectivity, while objectivity comes into being only for a subject polarized towards it, and that subject is most immediately the body as a "natural self".

DOI: 10.1007/978-1-349-19761-3_15

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