The Sensible World and the World of Expression

Author(s): Maurice Merleau-Ponty; translated with introduction and notes by Bryan Smyth Year: 1953 (course delivered); 2011 (French publication); 2020 (English translation) Type: Course notes (personal lecture notes + working notes)

Merleau-Ponty's inaugural Thursday course at the Collège de France (1952-53) — chronologically the first of the Collège courses, predating the 1954-55 Institution and Passivity courses and the 1956-60 Nature courses. The course's thesis is that PhP's split between the sensible and the expressive was an "arbitrary abstraction": perception already presupposes the expressive function. The central conceptual innovation is a diacritical theory of perception modeled on Saussurean linguistics, in which meaning arises as divergence (écart) from implicit levels — levels that are constitutively imperceptible. This is where MP first uses the language of écart, introduces the concept of imperception, radically reworks the body-schema as a diacritical system parallel to language, and lays the groundwork for everything from the 1954-55 courses to The Visible and the Invisible.

Core Arguments

Claim: PhP's analysis "remained governed by classical concepts" and the nature/culture split made the problem of expression unsolvable. Because: Expression was located uniquely at the cultural level, making it a mysterious "fulguration." Returning to perception and disclosing its inherent expressivity is the corrective. Against: PhP's own framework; Hyppolite's 1946 objection that there is "no cohesion between description of perception and conception of 'the being of sense'" 18.
Claim: Expression is "the property that a phenomenon has through its internal arrangement to disclose another that is not or even never was given" 28 — a structural property of perception, not a cultural add-on. Because: The perceived world expresses man by expressing things. "Man is this relation between expression and expressed" [28]. Against: Any view treating expression as linguistic or intellectual in origin.
Claim: Consciousness is "by definition cross-eyed" 22 — structurally inverted. Awareness of the figure entails non-awareness of the ground. "Consciousness is, if you like, synonymous with imperception" 211. Because: The figure-ground structure is universal: it applies to perception, psychoanalysis (jealousy), ideology (Marx: "truth is not behind ideologies but in their internal movement" [35]). "Consciousness of ambiguity is the opposite of ambivalence" [35]. Against: Cartesian self-transparency; Freud's unconscious as separate hidden content; vulgar Marxism.
Claim: Perception operates diacritically — meaning arises as divergence from implicit levels, not as possession of content. "Sensory fields are diacritical systems with use values" 86. Because: Like phonemes, perceptual elements are "diverse realizations of a single power of variation, whose existence is less separate than oppositional and diacritical" [86]. "Language expresses not significations but differences of significations. Likewise the body" 112. Against: Both the sign-signification model (meaning as correlation of data with ideas) and Gestalt objectivism (organization as quasi-physical causation).
Claim: Space is established through bodily inhabiting, not given objectively or constructed intellectually. "Place is a relation of self and the world through my body, not a relation between parts of the world. Place is first of all situation" 43. Because: Neither content (Stratton shows orientation isn't in the stimulus) nor form (intellectualism can't explain why adaptation takes time). The body "settles into" a level for "optimal functioning" through engrenage (gearing together) with the world 44. Against: Empiricism and intellectualism on spatial orientation.
Claim: Movement is not change of location but "disclosure of being, a result of its internal configuration" 70 — a "figural moment." "The apprehension of meaning and the apprehension of movement are the same thing" 72. Because: Wertheimer: "When I look at my pencil shifting laterally, I see it in movement exactly to the extent to which I do not see the successive positions" 66. Michotte's auto-locomotion: shape-change produces self-propelled movement without external cause. Against: Objective account (Zeno's paradoxes); intellectualist synthesis.
Claim: "The miracle of perception: it makes us see meaning rather than seeing on the basis of meaning" 72. The relation between figural conditions and meaning is motivation, not causality: "meaning preserves and goes beyond the objective conditions, recognizes them as coming from it, but only appears as their completion" 76. Against: Both Gestalt objectivism and intellectualist Sinngebung simultaneously.
Claim: The body-schema is NOT perceived — "It is the norm or privileged position in contrast to which the perceived body is defined. It is prior to explicit perception" 112. It is a "'natural' idea," "a thinking given to itself," "a knowledge that we have solely because we are" 101. Because: The body schema is a diacritical system: "language expresses not significations but differences of significations. Likewise the body" [112]. It is "the background against which our motor projects stand out" [106], prospective not just retrospective — "the body schema and the body are situated not where they are objectively but where we are preparing to put them" 107. Against: Both empiricist (opaque body) and intellectualist (body known through concepts) accounts.
Claim: Praxis is constitutive, not derivative: "the elaboration of the conditions themselves, preadaptations, initial projection of internal conditions of equilibrium, a priori of the organism" 37. Distinguished from Bergsonian "action" (where problems are given biologically). Because: One cannot "constitute praxia on the basis of gnosia" [37]. Invoking symbolic thinking would be "a return to the philosophy of consciousness." Apraxia reveals the body's constitutive role. Against: Bergson's pragmatism; Cassirer's Darstellungsfunktion.
Claim: "To be able to move in the human sense and to be conscious are the same thing" 125. Apraxia/agnosia/aphasia are three "poles" of a single function, not separable faculties. Because: "Impossible to answer in a causal sense: for mobility would only be the cause of consciousness by containing it already" [125].
Claim: "Consciousness is always articulation, precise divergence, and thereby opening to... Not possession of representation" 131. Sleep demonstrates this: "the simultaneous disintegration of the body schema and the phonemic system" 207v.
Claim: Self-critique of PhP's motivation concept: "The notion of motivation that I used to account for the conditioning of consciousness (Phenomenology of Perception) is not satisfying in the sense that it's through a retrospective illusion that the meaning of the decision is projected into the motive" 175v.

Key Findings

Earliest attestation of écart: The concept of divergence as the diacritical structure of perception appears here for the first time in MP's work — "the circle = mode of divergence" 27 — predating the 1954-55 Passivity course the wiki previously cited as earliest.
The diacritical thesis applied to the body: Perception, the body schema, and language share the same structure — all are "diacritical systems" where meaning arises from differences, not positive terms 86, 112. This 1953 formulation anticipates Signs's (1960) theory of indirect language by seven years.
"Perceptual meaning as coherent deformation" 172: The earliest application of coherent-deformation to perception itself. The wiki dates this concept to Malraux via Signs (1960); the 1953 course is the missing middle term in the genealogy.
Four conceptions of movement 176v: (1) relative/in-itself = canceled; (2) consciousness = Bergson's psychologism; (3) accident of a thing = intellectualism; (4) "pure movement = movement of a subject engaged in being through a body. Movement = expression" — the course's fundamental thesis at maximum clarity.
Encroachment (empiètement) as proto-chiasm 74: "Feedback from the end of the process on the beginning" and "encroachment of the beginning on the rest" — the 1953 ancestor of V&I's central ontological category.

Methodology

The course has four parts of unequal length:

General Introduction (Lectures 1-3): Self-critique of PhP; definition of expression as structural property of perception; consciousness as "cross-eyed"; applications to Freud and Marx.
Space and Movement (Lectures 4-10): Phenomenological analyses of spatial orientation, depth perception, and movement as "figural moment" — the central and most extensively developed section. Uses Gestalt-psychological experiments (Stratton, Wertheimer, Michotte, Duncker, Ternus, Zietz-Werner) as "residual phenomena" with "disclosive value," retaining descriptions while rejecting causal-realist explanations.
Body Schema (Lectures 11-13): Reworks the body schema from PhP as expressive praxis — not perceived, but the norm against which perception is defined. Heavily based on Schilder (Image and Appearance of the Human Body), with pathological cases as "definite intelligible modifications of normal existence" (Goldstein's postulate).
Nonlinguistic Cultural Expression (Lecture 14): Rushed transition to painting (Rodin, Cézanne, Géricault), cinema, and language. Originally planned as six lectures, compressed into one.

Concepts Developed

imperception — The thesis that consciousness is constitutively non-conscious of its own grounds. "Consciousness is, if you like, synonymous with imperception" [211]. The levels/backgrounds that make perception possible are never themselves given in perception.
ecart — First use in MP's work. Divergence as the diacritical structure of perception. "The circle = mode of divergence" [27]. Meaning arises as deviation from implicit levels.
body-schema (radical reworking) — No longer just "situational not positional" (PhP) but a diacritical system parallel to language, a "natural idea," the norm against which perception is defined, "not perceived" but constitutive.
coherent-deformation (earliest perceptual application) — "Perceptual meaning as coherent deformation" [172]. The concept's genealogy runs Malraux → 1953 perception → 1960 Signs.
motivation-mp (self-critique) — "The notion of motivation... is not satisfying" [175v]. The same "retrospective illusion" charge that will ground the 1959 retraction of the tacit cogito.

Concepts Referenced

perceptual-faith — the 1953 course's "originary opinion" / "imperception" is a variant
retrograde-movement-of-the-true — "the relation of expression = regressive movement of the true" [53] — 1953 attestation
sedimentation — the trace as "the beginning of sedimentation"
institution — "there are infrastructures and standpoints that are not acts but institutions" [WN]
reversibility / chiasm — encroachment (empiètement) as 1953 proto-form
good-ambiguity — expression involves "good" ambiguity rather than "bad"
motor-intentionality — extended into praxis as constitutive ground
operative-intentionality — the body's "I can" is a doctrine of operative intentionality applied to motor praxis
tacit-cogito — the 1953 self-critique of PhP's "classical concepts" is a step toward the 1959 retraction
phenomenal-field — reworked through the concept of levels/imperception

Key Passages

"deepen the analysis of the perceived world by showing that it already presupposes the expressive function" 17

"Expression or expressivity = the property that a phenomenon has to disclose, through its internal arrangement, another that is not and was never even actually given" 28

"Consciousness is by definition cross-eyed (Freud — and Marx as well): the fact that one is conscious of this means that there is also that which is unspoken" 22

"no numerical distinction between philosophy and psychology and sociology, because there is no formal a priori. A hermeneutics of facticity can't be without facts" [17 marginal note]

"Place is a relation of self and the world through my body, not a relation between parts of the world. Place is first of all situation." 43

"movement here = disclosure of being, a result of its internal configuration, and clearly something different than change of location" 70

"The miracle of perception: it makes us see meaning rather than seeing on the basis of meaning. Hence it is not the act of a Subjekt." 72

"meaning preserves and goes beyond the objective conditions, recognizes them as coming from it, but only appears as their completion" 76

"Symbols aren't signs, they convey their meaning themselves... they appeal to us to give it to them definitively, i.e., they speak to a power of signification already surrounded by them, to a sort of prepersonal thought." 77

"Movement is to the trace what breath is to the sound, and is read in it just like breath is read in the sound." 87

"Sensory fields are diacritical systems with use values, systems of characteristic equivalence and substitution that no more rest on an explicit logic than language use rests on a scientific knowledge of language" 86

"The body schema is not perceived — It is the norm or privileged position in contrast to which the perceived body is defined. It is prior to explicit perception." 112

"language expresses not significations but differences of significations. Likewise the body [is not] perceived things, but the index of our pre-thetic relations with the space in which it establishes us." 112

"To be able to move in the human sense and to be conscious are the same thing." 125

"Consciousness is always articulation, precise divergence, and thereby opening to... Not possession of representation." 131

"Man wakes up and man speaks" 131

"It's the artist who is truthful, while it's photography that lies: for, in reality, time doesn't stop." 132, quoting Rodin

"Intellectual or frontal synthesis: the one who makes it is not of it. Existential synthesis: the one who makes it is of it." 54

"Consciousness is, if you like, synonymous with imperception. Consciousness of a figure is consciousness without knowledge of the background" 211

"Perceptual meaning as coherent deformation" 172

"The notion of motivation that I used to account for the conditioning of consciousness (Phenomenology of Perception) is not satisfying in the sense that it's through a retrospective illusion that the meaning of the decision is projected into the motive" 175v

"Signs are diacritical, i.e., each marks a significative difference and not a signification, and language ends up signifying by means of registering significative differences without ever bearing any that are positive" 174v

What's Not Obvious

The course is MP's response to Hyppolite's 1946 objection — that there was "no cohesion" between PhP's phenomenology and its metaphysics. MP's answer is not to shore up the phenomenology of phenomenology but to return to perception itself and show it was already expressive. This makes the course a corrective to PhP, not a supplement — and it explains why Lecture 14 was rushed: the corrective to the phenomenology turned out to require far more work than the planned transition from it. The official course summary, Smyth notes, "deftly conceals through a retrospective illusion this aspect of how the course took shape" — an ironic application of MP's own concept. (Translator's Introduction, pp. xviii-xix; [17]-[18])
The 1953 self-critique of PhP's motivation concept is philosophically significant because motivation-mp is presented in the wiki as a stable achievement of PhP. The Working Note [175v] shows MP already saw its limitations within a year of arriving at the Collège: the "retrospective illusion" charge is structurally identical to the one that will ground the 1959 retraction of the tacit-cogito. Both diagnose the same error — projecting a constituted meaning back onto its conditions — which means the auto-correction of PhP begins here in 1953, not in 1959.
"Perceptual meaning as coherent deformation" [172] reveals that the concept's genealogy is more complex than the wiki records. The current coherent-deformation page traces: Malraux (art criticism) → MP in Signs 1960 (universal form of expression). But the 1953 Working Notes already apply "coherent deformation" to perception itself — making the genealogy: Malraux → 1953 (perceptual meaning) → 1960 (universal expression). The 1953 course is the missing middle term, and its absence from the genealogy obscures the thesis that expression is already perceptual, not just cultural.

Critique / Limitations

Lecture 14 is underdeveloped: MP planned six lectures on nonlinguistic and linguistic expression but compressed them into one. The Fundierung relation between movement and expression is asserted rather than demonstrated. The painting/cinema discussion gestures toward the thesis without establishing it with the rigor of Lectures 4-10.
Uncritical borrowing from Gestalt experiments: MP extensively borrows lab results from Wertheimer, Michotte, Duncker, Ternus, etc., without questioning whether experimental setups produce artifacts. He retains the descriptions while rejecting the explanations, but the descriptions are themselves theory-laden.
The "imperception" thesis risks circularity: If consciousness is constitutively non-conscious of its grounds, how does phenomenology access them? MP's answer — through pathological cases, experimental situations, and artistic expression — is methodologically suggestive but not systematically defended here.
Status as personal notes: These are fragmentary, telegraphic lecture notes, not published prose. Interpretive caution is warranted throughout. Smyth's translation adds extensive disambiguating insertions (indicated by square brackets) that are philosophically informed but represent translational choices.

Connections

builds on merleau-ponty-1945-phenomenology-of-perception — the entire course is a self-critical reworking of PhP's analysis, retaining the phenomenological method while correcting the nature/culture abstraction and the theory of consciousness
extends merleau-ponty-1945-phenomenology-of-perception — the body schema, spatial orientation, depth perception, and Schneider analyses all reappear but are reframed through the concept of expression
prepares merleau-ponty-2010-institution-and-passivity — the concepts of levels, sedimentation, encroachment, and the diacritical structure of perception directly anticipate the 1954-55 courses; institution is already nascent in the Working Notes
anticipates merleau-ponty-1968-visible-and-invisible — écart, encroachment (empiètement), imperception, the critique of "frontal synthesis," and the laterality of perception all foreshadow the late ontology
anticipates merleau-ponty-1964-signs — the diacritical theory of perception is the foundation for the theory of indirect language; "coherent deformation" is already applied to perception
critiques merleau-ponty-1945-phenomenology-of-perception — explicitly: PhP "remained governed by classical concepts"; the motivation concept is "not satisfying"; consciousness was conceived too classically