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7 Behold “The Speaking Word”: The Expressive Life of Language These considerations enable us to restore to the act of speaking its true physiognomy. —Merleau-Ponty1 Without language, thought is a vague, uncharted nebula. There are no preexisting ideas, and nothing is distinct before the appearance of language. —Ferdinand de Saussure2 1. An Introduction to Merleau-Ponty’s Philosophy of Language So far in this book we have seen central elements of Merleau-Ponty’s perceptual ontology: his phenomenology of living perception as our synergistic opening to the transcendent world (l’ouverture au monde), his important accounts of embodied subjectivity and intersubjectivity, and his later rearticulations of these phenomena in terms of flesh, écart, and reversibility. In the previous chapter we turned our attention from these ontological themes— what Merleau-Ponty calls “the visible”—toward “the invisible,” that is, toward his account of the life of the mind as the expressive transformation of already acquired ideas (or perceptions) into powerful new forms. At the heart of this account of expressive cognition is a distinction between (1) expressive, creative, spontaneous thinking, and (2) already acquired, sedimented thinking. Further , Merleau-Ponty argues that these two types of thinking are in a strange, elusive relationship. For on one hand, expressive thinking is the source (Ursprung ) of our conceptual acquisitions and sedimented thoughts; expression is the process by which new breakthrough thoughts are acquired. Nonetheless , the organizing, clarifying, relieving power of the breakthrough obscures the originating process, and the derivative acquisition appears always to have been true. This is a strange dynamic, Merleau-Ponty suggests, but such is the life of the mind: acquired results obscure the expressive process, that is, the representation disguises the expressive coming-to-presentation of our ideas. As we saw in chapter 6, in Phenomenology of Perception Merleau-Ponty refers to this complex dynamic (in which representation displaces and supplants expression ) as the Fundierung relation; and he calls this relation an “ultimate” 172 Merleau-Ponty’s Philosophy fact of our cognitive life (PP 394). I myself would prefer a less obscure name than Fundierung, perhaps “the expression relation.” Whatever we call it, we saw that this weird dynamic is the source of transcendental illusions about mathematical objects and the self—illusions which, once dispelled, return those ideas to their place within culture, history, and nature. Expression: again, this is Merleau-Ponty’s master term for a creative, productive cognitive power—a power that is rooted in the excess of embodied perceptual life. For him, expression is absolutely central for mathematics, science , and art. While these truth-seeking domains are distinct in many respects , they all proceed and historically unfold through expression. MerleauPonty also holds that this power is central to language, and that any theory of language which overlooks its expressive life will be dramatically inadequate. It is often said among philosophers that the twentieth century is the time of “the linguistic turn,” the time in philosophical history when language passes from being largely unremarkable to being treated as a preeminent concern. It is also well-known that important claims and arguments to this effect have been offered by thinkers such as Wittgenstein, Heidegger, Quine, Derrida, and Rorty. As this chapter unfolds it will become clear that Merleau-Ponty’s philosophy of language dovetails with the work of these thinkers in many respects. However , I also believe that Merleau-Ponty’s view, which uncovers and emphasizes language’s expressive character, offers singular and indispensable insights for understanding language. For one thing, his expressive theory of language explains the complex continuity between language and our natural life in a most compelling way. That is, it shows how language, for all its transcendent character, is still an outgrowth of our living embodiment and perception. But also, in uncovering the expressive life of language (what he calls “the speaking word”) beneath and beyond its representational function, Merleau-Ponty is able to offer a clear, compelling account of the intimate, internal relationship between language and thought. Finally, I believe that his account shows a way to leave behind, once and for all, the two main, deeply problematic theories of language that still shape much contemporary thinking about it: representationalism and structuralism. The task, then, in this final chapter is to make good on these claims: to begin to establish Merleau-Ponty’s expressive theory of language as a major contribution to the field, one that offers extraordinary resources for perhaps fulfilling the promise of “the linguistic turn” in philosophy. Having said that, I...

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