{"id":1469,"date":"2014-06-16T16:17:11","date_gmt":"2014-06-16T23:17:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/phenomenologyblog.com\/?p=1469"},"modified":"2014-07-24T09:24:58","modified_gmt":"2014-07-24T16:24:58","slug":"ferrarello-on-sexuality-and-metaphysics","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/phenomenologyblog.com\/?p=1469","title":{"rendered":"Ferrarello on Sexuality and Metaphysics"},"content":{"rendered":"<\/fb:like><\/span>

\u201cNo one is saved and no one is totally lost.\u201d (171) With these words Merleau-Ponty closes the section of his Phenomenology of Perception<\/em> dedicated to the Body in its Sexual Being<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Why should we feel lost or safe in relation to sexuality? And what does sexuality have to do with metaphysics?<\/p>\n

Merleau-Ponty and Husserl explain the relationship between the subject and the world from the same beginning point: our perceptual life. For example, I know the shape of this tree because I can perceive it.\"folded<\/a><\/p>\n

Any perception involves at least two poles: the object and me. The problem is that each pole is double: on the one hand there is me as I am and on the other there is me as an object. I can perceive the tree and I can be an object, like the tree is. The same happens with the object, the tree can be the tree as it is in itself and it can be the tree as we mean it. Of course the challenge, as phenomenologist, is being able to unpack the meaning that the object has in itself for us, which means:\u00a0 Can we describe how the tree is in itself? Or can we describe how the body is in itself as an object?<\/p>\n

Sexuality can be the key to answer these questions. In fact it can help us to gain an access to describe the body in all its \u2018ambiguity\u2019 or \u2018anonymity\u2019. Since, the body is an object, somehow independent from my knowledge, with a halo of unknown, I can listen to it and describe its meaning when it \u2018speaks\u2019 to me in its sexual being. \u00a0Its ambiguous meaning as object of my perceptual experience and as instrument of my perceptual life can be described by the observation of its sexual being.<\/p>\n

Sun and rain, to use an example from Merleau-Ponty, are neither happy nor sad. They are emotionally neutral, it is we who give them a meaning for us. Lived sexual phenomena are like the sun and the rain. We, in our bodies, are objective entities that are in the world and at the same time embodied sexual phenomena have a meaning for us.<\/p>\n

For Merleau-Ponty sexuality seems to be the way in which we can reflect on our being meaningfully embodied since he interprets sexual life as a specific form of intentionality.<\/p>\n

In fact, our body is a mystery that relates to us via a kind of intentionality\u00a0 \u201cwhich is not pure awareness of something\u201d but it is a pure \u201cfollowing the general flow of existence and yields to its movements\u201d (p. 157).\u00a0 Sexuality is this flow of existence.<\/p>\n

\"feet\"<\/a>\u201cThe problem of the world, and, (\u2026) that of one\u2019s own body consists in the fact that it is all there. (\u2026) The experience of one\u2019s own body runs counter to the reflective procedure\u201d (p. 198) that characterizes phenomenological research. To know the meaning our embodied life has for us, we need to reflect on our lived-experiences, but to know what we are, we must first live spontaneously, prereflectively. Sexuality represents this prereflective, spontaneous \u2018intentional arc\u2019 that cannot be completely seized or unpacked by reflection without the loss of the fullness of the lived experience itself.<\/p>\n

So then why metaphysics and sexuality? How to combine spontaneous intentionality and the science of being?<\/p>\n

Merleau-Ponty wrote \u201cMetaphysics in not localized at the level of knowledge: it begins with the opening upon \u2018another\u2019 and is to be found everywhere, and already, in the specific development of sexuality\u201d (168)<\/p>\n

For Merleau-Ponty metaphysics since Kant has signified the science that inquiries into the condition of the possibility of knowledge–not knowledge itself. In order for something to be known, it needs first to be in the world, to be chair<\/em> or a body. As Hegel remarked, criticizing Kant, I cannot learn to swim if I don\u2019t swim first<\/em>. There is no \u201clearning to swim\u201d absent the lived experience of swimming. The beginning of metaphysics is our openness to the world as body that coexists with other bodies. Metaphysics does not begin with knowledge but with that perception through which we feel our \u2018openness upon the other\u2019, by being-here. For Merleau-Ponty \u201cthe body in its sexual being,\u201d an almost a tautological expression, is our opening to metaphysics. Body is \u2018being\u2019 and its being consists of its sexual life. Sexuality is the way in which our body is thrown in the world. The body can express itself as a sexual being and it can be sexual because it is embodied. From Merleau-Ponty\u2019s perspective, sexuality is the ambiguity of the body expressed in its being. In this sense it is the beginning of metaphysics because it throws the body into its being-there.<\/p>\n

Merleau-Ponty describes the cases of those patients who lose their ability to speak. Speech, which he views as \u201cthe body of the thought\u201d (p. 182) is lost in a way similar to how we can lose memory. This does not mean that the patient ceases to speak but that there is a real loss of a part of her corporeity, because there is a refusal from her to coexist with herself as a body and with others as a meaning for her in the world. The patient is not able to recognize herself as a body in the world nor as a body that has meaning for her. In the context of sexuality Merleau-Ponty writes that \u201cfrigidity is scarcely bound up with anatomical or physiological conditions, but it expresses in most cases a refusal of orgasm, of femininity or of sexuality\u201d (158). Once again, when patient recovers the will to coexist as flesh, she can discover that her body has a new meaning for her, perhaps a meaning that is completely new and until that moment \u201cunnamed\u201d (165).<\/p>\n

Sexuality is for Merleau-Ponty \u201ca manner of being toward the world\u201d (158) because it allows the unnamed to be while it is living. \u201cSexuality is the process by which facts are drawn up\u201d and it should not be regarded as a fortuitous content of our experience. It is that form of intentionality that follows the arc of the body in its expression of its own ambiguity and self-concealment.<\/p>\n

\u201cI am condemned to being\u201d (166) as unnamed. \u201cNo one is lost and no one is saved\u201d means that everyone is condemned to begin to be as unnamed meaning and to become meaning as sexual being. In sexuality \u201cexistence realizes itself in the body\u201d (166) as incarnate significance, as beginning of the ambiguity of the being, i.e. as beginning of metaphysics. In finality, sexuality represents that incarnate meaning from which we can begin the exploration of the body as a unit that \u201cthere is for us and in itself\u201d (71).<\/p>\n

-Susi Ferrarello, PhD<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

References<\/span><\/p>\n

Merleau-Ponty, M. (1996). Phenomenology of Perception<\/em> (C. Smith, Trans.). New York: Routledge.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Credits<\/span><\/p>\n

Folded hands:\u00a0photo credit: Victor Bezrukov<\/a> via photopin<\/a> cc<\/a>
\nFeet:\u00a0photo credit: Theen …<\/a> via photopin<\/a> cc<\/a><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n<\/fb:like><\/span>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u201cNo one is saved and no one is totally lost.\u201d (171) With these words Merleau-Ponty closes the section of his Phenomenology of Perception dedicated to the Body in its Sexual Being. Why should we feel lost or safe in relation to sexuality? And what does sexuality have to do with metaphysics? Merleau-Ponty and Husserl explain

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