DE Weekly: Merleau-Ponty, Phenomenology, & Being-in-the-World
Below is an archived email originally sent on January 19, 2026.
Merleau-Ponty, Phenomenology, & Being-in-the-World
One could raise a valid critique that the most glaring weakness of existentialism is that it is too abstract; it could be said that it deals too much in theory, is too complicated, and not grounded enough to be useful in everyday life. However, not every existentialist thought the same way. Some even challenged that same abstractness, including one Maurice Merleau-Ponty.
Merleau-Ponty was a twentieth-century French philosopher who is often grouped with his contemporaries––especially Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir, whom he studied alongside at the École Normale Supérieure––as an existentialist. Being strongly influenced by Edmund Husserl and Martin Heidegger helps bolster this notion.
However, he is better known for his contributions to the school of Phenomenology, thanks to his seminal work Phenomenology of Perception.
In this work, Merleau-Ponty argues that the starting point for understanding human existence is our “embodied perception.”
What this means is that we each have an embodied subjectivity in approaching the world; instead of embracing Cartesian dualism (which separates the mind and body), he proposes the “body-subject,” emphasizing the importance of our bodies as the very means through which we experience the world.
In other words, where René Descartes would say, “I think, therefore I am,” Merleau-Ponty would say “I’m here, therefore I am.” I have a body, I recognize that I have a body, I sense things with my body… I exist.
Phenomenology of Perception was and is a major text in existentialism; its influence cannot be understated. But, like I said earlier, it is significant in that it departs from and actively challenges some of the “existential truths” held by other existential philosophers (namely, Sartre).
The first major concept Merleau-Ponty discussed in this regard is his idea of “Being-in-the-World.” For Merleau-Ponty, we exist in the world not through our intellect first, but first through our bodies. There can be no detached intellectual understanding of the world because we are embedded physically in our bodies.
This is why, for him, perception of the world is a subjective experience despite being the foundational background against which all ideas are formed.
This is because we cannot separate from our bodies. The way you perceive something is entirely different from how I might, because my Being-in-the-World is fundamentally different from yours.
In essence, Merleau-Ponty viewed human beings as we exist not as mind separated from body, but as mind and body––as a body-soul composite.
I believe it important to mention that such a view likely came from Merleau-Ponty’s upbringing in the Roman Catholic Church.
The Catholic view of mind and body is just that––we are a body-soul composite––and you are uniquely created as yourself because you experience the world subjectively through your mind and body.
Although he ended up leaving the Catholic Church due to what he viewed as incompatible social and political views, it’s hard not to see the impact of its doctrine on his philosophy.
Another example lies in his rejection of empiricist and rationalist views of the world, suggesting instead we have a deep, bodily connection with all the world and enjoy an active perception of the world which constitutes our meaning.
This sounds a lot like Merleau-Ponty is embracing the idea that we come not from nothing (à la Sartre), but out of nothing; ex nihilo.
He even has hints of panpsychism in his writing, in later work developing a concept he would call “La Chair du Monde,” (The Flesh of the World). This concept proposed a universal reversibility, wherein the seer and the seen, the self and the world, the mind and the body, are all interwoven and part of the same being.
You can see, then, how massively Merleau-Ponty differs from his contemporaries, albeit influenced by many of the same thinkers.
This is why I think he is such an interesting philosopher to study. He embodies some of the tenets of existentialism while rejecting and building upon others. It shows us that you do not need to be a rigid thinker to fit in in any one place.
For example, Merleau-Ponty acknowledges human freedom, but rejects the level of “radical freedom” proposed by Sartre, citing worldly limits to our possibilities and our “situatedness” that restricts our choices.
He acknowledged the importance of science and rational thought in philosophy, but believed them secondary to the immediate, physical world that we inhabit and experience through our bodies.
He was heavily influenced by Husserl and Heidegger, yet departed from them more markedly than did Sartre. He rejected that we are an isolated consciousness and fought instead for the idea of our embodied existence as a body-soul composite.
In short, what Merleau-Ponty did is this: he moved existential ideas out of the abstract and into the physical world.
He suggested that our consciousness is less about intellect and abstract thought and more about our real lives and experience, about our Being-in-the-World.
There was a lot Merleau-Ponty had in common with the existentialists, but a lot at the same time that made him different. This makes him a fascinating, distinct voice in existential literature.
Thanks for reading.
Sincerely,
Brandon J. Seltenrich
P.S.––
I hyperlinked a lot of past newsletters in this one. It made me feel good to realize I had written about so many different things already, and how they are all connected in some way. If you want a better idea of the whole, it’s a good idea to go and study the parts.
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