Natural Symbolism

Nature itself operates symbolically, and human symbols are a "second physis" that repeats natural symbolics rather than imposing external meaning. Knight argues that Merleau-Ponty's late philosophy, read through Schelling's Naturphilosophie, discovers a natural symbolism prior to and more fundamental than both conventional signs and Romantic allegory. The body is the site where this natural symbolism first becomes manifest — but it originates in nature itself.

Key Points

Direct primary-text attestation (1959-60): MP himself uses the phrase "the human body as a natural symbolism" in his course summary "Nature and Logos: The Human Body" — "The preceding leads to the idea of the human body as a natural symbolism; an idea, rather than being final, announced, on the contrary, a sequel" (Course 12, p. 204). An earlier formulation appears in the 1957-58 course: "all corporeality is already symbolism" (Course 9, p. 171). The concept is not Knight's reconstruction but MP's own late vocabulary; Knight's contribution is to trace the Schellingian lineage that MP himself did not make explicit.
Tautegory (Schelling's term, from Coleridge): the symbol says the same (tauto-) rather than saying another (allo- as in allegory). Theogonies are not allegories for natural processes; they are real theogonic events — the succession of gods in mythology is "symbolic replication," not coding of hidden concepts (Knight, Ch. 5, section 1)
The symbol does not point beyond itself to a meaning elsewhere; it invites participation in a meaning that is fully present within it. The difference between symbol and sign is not degree but kind: signs are arbitrary, symbols are motivated by the very thing they express
Language is a "second physis": it does not transcend nature but continues nature's own symbolic operation at a new level. Speech is not a tool wielded by a subject but a natural process in which the body's expressive capacity crystallizes into shared meaning
The body is a "natural symbolism" that contrasts with the "conventional symbolism" of language — but this contrast is not absolute. Merleau-Ponty corrects himself (Knight, Ch. 5, section 2): symbolism is "not representation" but "expressive of another — perception and movement symbolise." The body's gestures are already symbolic, and language inherits this symbolic character rather than inventing it
Symbol is a Naturphilosophie concept because its dynamism is the dynamism of physis itself — the productive self-manifestation of nature through differentiation. Knight: the symbol's capacity to say-the-same through difference is the very logic by which nature generates form

Details

Schelling's Philosophy of Mythology

Schelling's late philosophy of mythology (which Merleau-Ponty encountered through Jaspers and S. Jankelevitch's translations) provides the framework. For Schelling, myths are not primitive attempts at science or veiled philosophy — they are real theogonic events: the succession of polytheistic gods is the real process by which the absolute manifests itself through progressive self-differentiation. Each mythological figure is a tautegory — it says what it is, and is what it says.

Knight reads Merleau-Ponty's concept of "fundamental thought" in art and literature as a secularized version of Schelling's thesis (Ch. 5, section 1): when Klee paints genesis rather than copying visible appearances, he participates in the same tautegorical operation that Schelling attributes to mythological consciousness. The artist does not represent nature; the artist continues nature's own symbolic work.

Body Schema and Symbolic Operation

Merleau-Ponty's early concept of the body schema (from Phenomenology of Perception) already contains the seeds of natural symbolism: the body is not a collection of parts coordinated by a central command but a system of equivalences in which each gesture implicitly refers to every other. The phantom limb, synaesthesia, and motor intentionality all testify to the body's capacity to substitute, transpose, and symbolize — capacities that language later inherits and extends.

Knight argues that the late ontology radicalizes this: the body does not merely have symbolic capacities; the body is a natural symbol — a tautegorical manifestation of the flesh's self-differentiation (Ch. 5, section 2). The body symbolizes in the same sense that water mirrors: not by creating a copy but by folding the sensed back into the sensing.

Against Allegorical Reading

The natural symbolism thesis directly opposes two traditions (Ch. 5, section 3): (1) Freudian dream interpretation, which treats symbols as allegories for repressed desires — the dream image stands for something other than what it presents; (2) Paul de Man's critique of the Romantic symbol, which argues that all claims to tautegorical immediacy are covert allegory, dependent on temporal deferral. Knight's counter: the tautegorical symbol does not claim immediacy — it operates through the ecart, through non-coincidence — but the non-coincidence is internal to the symbol, not a relation between the symbol and something else.

The distinction between tautegory and allegory is not epistemological (how we interpret symbols) but ontological (how symbols work). An allegory means something other than what it says; a tautegory is what it says, but what it says exceeds any single formulation. The tautegorical symbol is inexhaustible not because it hides a deeper meaning but because its meaning is the very event of its self-presentation.

Language as Second Physis

Merleau-Ponty's claim that language is a "second physis" follows from natural symbolism (Knight, Ch. 6, section 1). If nature operates symbolically — if the body's gestures, perception's structures, and the flesh's self-reversibility are all modes of symbolic operation — then language does not introduce symbolism into a previously non-symbolic world. Language continues at a new level the symbolism that is already operative in nature. The passage from gesture to speech, from bodily expression to linguistic meaning, is not a leap from nature to culture but a deepening of nature's own expressive power.

This has consequences for the philosophy of language: words are not arbitrary signs attached to pre-given meanings (Saussure's arbitrariness thesis is reinterpreted). Words are motivated by the bodily, perceptual, elemental ground from which they emerge. The phonetic shape of a word, its rhythm and sonority, participates in its meaning — not through onomatopoeia (a naive form of motivation) but through the same tautegorical logic that operates in natural symbolism.

Animal Symbolism

Knight extends natural symbolism beyond the human by invoking Konrad Lorenz's ethological research (Ch. 3, section 2). Animal instinct operates symbolically: the stickleback's red belly triggers the rival's aggressive response not as a mechanical stimulus-response but as a symbol — the red belly "means" rival-presence for the perceiving fish. Merleau-Ponty draws on this to argue that symbolism is not an exclusively human capacity: it is rooted in the body schema, which animals share. The extension to animals challenges Cassirer's restriction of the symbolic function to homo symbolicus and supports the thesis that symbolism is a natural rather than cultural phenomenon.

The primary text for animal symbolism is now available in full in the *Nature* course notes, Course 2 (1957–58), Ch. 2, which develops Uexküll, Portmann, and Lorenz across pp. 167–199. Three passages are load-bearing for natural symbolism:

"There is a beginning of culture. The architecture of symbols that the animal brings from its side thus defines within Nature a species of preculture. The Umwelt is less and less oriented toward a goal and more and more toward the interpretation of symbols. But there is not a break between the planned animal, the animal that plans, and the animal without plan." (Course 2, p. 176)

"The unfurling of an Umwelt as a melody that is singing itself... the melody sings in us much more than we sing it; it goes down the throat of the singer, as Proust says... In a melody, a reciprocal influence between the first and the last note takes place, and we have to say that the first note is possible only because of the last, and vice versa. It is in this way that things happen in the construction of a living being. There is no priority of effect over cause... From a center of physical matter surges an ensemble of principles of discernment at a given moment, which means that in this region of the world, there will be a vital event." (Course 2, pp. 173–174, on Uexküll)

"Instinct is a primordial activity 'without object,' objektlos... it is not accomplished in view of an end, it is an activity for pleasure... The outlined act easily becomes signification... In brief, we can speak in a valid way of an animal culture." (Course 2, pp. 190, 196–197, on Lorenz)

The structural claim of these passages is that animal Umwelten already involve a symbolic operation in the strict sense: the stickleback's display, the cuckoo's parasitism, the duck's ceremonial drinking, the jackdaw's companion-fixation — all involve Merkzeichen and Wirkzeichen, sign and response, which together constitute a "compared philology of triggers" (Course 2, p. 198, Lorenz's phrase). The melody figure generalizes this: the temporality of the living is retroactive, the end conditioning the beginning, in a way that has exactly the structure of a tautegorical symbol (a meaning whose parts are intelligible only in relation to the whole they constitute).

Biosemiotics and Portmann's Selbstdarstellung

Dufourcq (2019, in alloa-chouraqui-kaushik-2019-contemporary-philosophy) extends natural symbolism into biosemiotics via Portmann's concept of Selbstdarstellung (self-presentation). Animal appearances are "authentic phenomena" — consistent visible wholes resulting from cooperation between diverse organic processes, always situated on the outer surface, and displaying structured, eye-catching patterns. Portmann's most radical hypothesis: appearing is autotelic — "a basic property of life." Animal meaning is oneiric (dreamlike, archetypal) rather than coded — signs evolve through interspecific interaction and individual interpretation, forming what Maran calls "ecological codes" based on analogies and correspondences rather than strict regulations.

The 1959–60 Formulation: Body as Symbolism, Language as Savage Mind

Course 3 of the Nature courses (1959–60) develops the body-as-symbolism thesis in MP's own hand. The decisive move is the refusal of the distinction between "natural symbolism" and "conventional symbolism":

"We clarify this enigma by saying that our body is symbolism (and reciprocally we clarify language by saying that it is a second body, and an open body). Symbolism: A term taken as representative of another, Auffassung als → We refer then to the mind, carrier of the als, to intentionality, to meaning — but then: symbolism is surveyed; there is no longer a body. By saying that the body is symbolism, we mean that without a preliminary Auffassung of the signifier and the signified supposed as separated, the body would pass in the world and the world in the body." (Course 3, p. 227)

"There is a logos of the natural aesthetic world, on which the logos of language relies... Language fuses in the human body not as a positive causality of the mind, but between the words like a savage mind, before sedimenting in the positive objects of culture. It is certainly other than nature in the sense of positive entelechy, but it is natural to man and overcoming laterally, not frontally." (Course 3, p. 243)

The "savage mind" (esprit sauvage) in language is a striking phrase: Merleau-Ponty's own answer to the implied question "how can language be both natural and conventional?" His answer: not by being a hybrid, but by hosting within itself the same anonymous, pre-personal symbolic operation that is already at work in the body. Language is not the addition of convention to a natural substrate; it is a second body, where the same tautegorical logic that operates between gesture and perception now operates "between the words." The indirect-language doctrine of *Signs* — meaning as lateral difference — is the same thesis framed from the language side.

Connections

is the operation that chiasm performs — the chiasm crosses sensing and sensed tautegorically, saying the same through mutual encroachment
is grounded in barbarian-principle — the irreducible wild ground is what the symbol expresses without exhausting; the barbarian principle is the symbol's inexhaustible depth
flesh-as-element is "concrete emblem" (= symbol) — the flesh as element is itself a tautegorical symbol, not an allegory for the body-world relation
applies ecart within symbolic operation — the symbol's non-coincidence with itself is what makes it productive rather than merely repetitive
contrasts with de Man's critique of the Romantic symbol — de Man reads all symbolism as covert allegory; natural symbolism insists that tautegory is irreducible
is exemplified by fundamental-thought-in-art — art, especially painting, enacts natural symbolism by continuing physis rather than representing it

Open Questions

Does the concept of natural symbolism imply panpsychism, or can it be maintained without attributing mentality to nature?
How does Merleau-Ponty's natural symbolism relate to Cassirer's philosophy of symbolic forms — agreement or critique? Cassirer restricts symbolism to the human; natural symbolism extends it to nature.
Can tautegory survive the challenge of the linguistic turn, or does it remain a Romantic relic?
If language is a "second physis," what is the relationship between natural languages and the natural symbolism they continue? Are some languages more tautegorical than others?
How does animal symbolism (Lorenz, ethology) challenge or confirm the thesis that symbolism requires consciousness?

Key Quotes

"The preceding leads to the idea of the human body as a natural symbolism; an idea, rather than being final, announced, on the contrary, a sequel." (Merleau-Ponty, Course 12 "Nature and Logos: The Human Body", 1959-60, p. 204)

"It is only within the perceived world that we can understand that all corporeality is already symbolism." (Merleau-Ponty, Course 9 "The Concept of Nature II", 1957-58, p. 171)

"Symbolism is not representation but expressive of another — perception and movement symbolise." (Merleau-Ponty, cited Knight Ch. 5, section 2)

"The word, far from being the mere sign of objects and meanings, inhabits things and conveys meanings." (Merleau-Ponty, Phenomenology of Perception)

"Language is a second physis." (Merleau-Ponty, nature courses)

Sources

merleau-ponty-2003-nature — full primary text. Course 2 (1957–58), Ch. 1–2 (Uexküll, Portmann, Lorenz), pp. 167–199: the animal symbolism material, including the "architecture of symbols... preculture" passage (p. 176) and the "In brief, we can speak in a valid way of an animal culture" punchline (p. 197). Course 3 (1959–60), Sketches 2–3, pp. 226–243: the body-as-symbolism material, including the refusal of the natural/conventional symbolism distinction and the "savage mind... between the words" passage (p. 243). The Nature courses are the full underlying lecture text for the summaries preserved in merleau-ponty-1970-in-praise-of-philosophy
merleau-ponty-1970-in-praise-of-philosophy — Course 9 ("The Concept of Nature II", 1957-58, p. 171: "all corporeality is already symbolism"). Course 12 ("Nature and Logos: The Human Body", 1959-60, p. 204: "the human body as a natural symbolism"). These are MP's own published compressions of the Courses 2 and 3 material in merleau-ponty-2003-nature; the concept is not a Knight reconstruction but part of MP's published vocabulary
knight-2024-merleau-ponty-essence-of-nature — Ch. 5 sections 1-3 (Schelling's tautegory, body as symbolism, symbol vs. allegory); Ch. 6 section 1 (language as second physis); Ch. 3 section 2 (animal symbolism, Lorenz)
kee-2025-foreign-languages-phenomenology — connects the natural-symbolism doctrine to the linguistic case via PbP 199's "order of quasi-natural significations" (revisited in Nature III, 2003 pp. 226f.). The wiki tracks this as the dedicated quasi-natural-signification page; natural symbolism is its broader (cross-domain) parent. Kee's argument that there is no single specificity of language is consistent with — and in part underwritten by — the natural-symbolism doctrine: language continues nature's symbolic operation rather than constituting an alien cultural domain.