By Mikel van Dyken
Section 1: Quietism
We must do away with all explanation, and description alone must take its place.[1]
I consider this sentiment, expressed by Ludwig Wittgenstein in his Philosophical Investigations, to be an acute summation of the position one must take up as a quietist. For reasons which will become clear, I am hesitant to call quietism a ‘position’ and am even less inclined to use the word ‘theory’ as both terms indicate an endorsement of some positive thesis; as I interpret it, it is a philosophical process of critique.[2] Negatively described, quietism is opposed to various strands of realism. This often leads to its depiction as an anti-realist philosophy, but this too is a somewhat mistaken categorisation given that it is also equally opposed to forms of anti-realism. In line with John McDowell’s reading of quietism that aims to be faithful to its Wittgensteinian roots, I use the term ‘process’ to point towards a type of philosophical ‘therapy’ wherein one avoids giving one or another argument for a given philosophical problem, but instead carefully considers if the question itself is genuine and, in doing so, dissolves it.[3] In practice, this often results in the withholding of providing any positive theory about the ontological ‘state of things,’ as a realist might be inclined to do; “whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent.”[4]
I will expand upon these thoughts later in this essay; for now, this picture of quietism is sufficient to raise the central question of this paper: what sort of productive philosophy is possible following a quietist critique?[5] One of the common claims employed in the defence of scientific realism is that it continually produces effective results and, while the ‘miraculous’ nature of scientific results is not sufficient evidence for its objective validity, there is a relevant worry here that in adopting quietism we give up on a very useful worldview.[6] While quietism itself is not a position, that is, it does not assert positive conceptual foundations from which theory can rely on, I recognise that, as philosophers, we want to be able to endorse some sort of position in order to conduct productive theoretical work. As such, in this essay I argue that a phenomenological philosophical position that seeks to describe the world as it appears to us satisfies both the quietist critique and our desire for a productive philosophy. Using McDowell, I will argue that Immanuel Kant’s transcendental idealism almost avoids the quietist critique, but that his assertion of the existence of the ‘thing-in-itself’ is a claim that cannot be substantiated. Following this, I will argue that Edmund Husserl improves upon Kant in this respect but still asserts something unfounded when he posits the existence of universal essences. Finally, I will offer Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenology as a philosophy that both avoids the quietist critique and captures the strength of Wittgenstein’s quietism. In taking perception as it is, without making any positive assertions about its objective ontological status, we manage to describe the world in its ‘how’ without an explanation of the ‘what.’[7]
To elucidate further what quietism aims to do, I think it best to first detail the primary object of its critique, the most prominent positive theory: realism. To hold a metaphysical position of realism, in a general sense, is to assert the real existence of some single external world.[8] Most realists will also accept an additional claim, following from common sense, that subjects each share perception of this world and can affect, receive experience from, and learn about this world.[9] The primary belief motivating these two claims is what McDowell calls ‘The Myth of the Given’: “the space of reasons, the space of justifications or warrants, extends more widely than the conceptual sphere.”[10] In other words, the world exists separate to our mind and is ‘given’ to us in such a way that we can make claims about it with truth or falsity conditions dependent on certain observer-independent referents in that world.[11] Scientific realism then, is the belief that science, and the claims generated by its method, has the capacity to generate some truth about the external world.[12] While realism in general underpins the majority of metaphysical theories, scientific realism has become overwhelmingly dominant in both academic and non-academic discourses as an accepted truth.
Quietism criticises the realist practice of making baseless knowledge claims about objective states of affairs. The reasons supporting this critique are enmeshed in Wittgenstein’s critique of language, and his concept of ‘language games.’[13] To use an example from On Certainty, consider the statement, ‘I am here,’ used in response to some question about my whereabouts.[14] This statement means something; others can grasp what I am intending to say when I express it.[15] Now consider the statement, ‘I know I am here.’[16] The addition of ‘I know’ in this statement points to something very strange about language; it is not clear what is meant by these words in the context we raised. This addition cannot be related to certainty, considering that, in its respective context, my certainty of my location was already captured and understood by my interlocutor in the first case.[17] The additional ‘I know’ is superfluous here except for making some claim about knowledge of the world in excess of my original statement; a knowledge which cannot be substantiated any further than my original expression can.[18] However, the latter statement can have meaning if the context is different; if someone were to cast doubt on my original claim, it may make sense to follow with this amendment.[19] The problem with the second statement in the original context is that it takes the meaning of ‘I know’ in a specialised use of the phrase, as shown in the changed context, and tries to apply it to the original context. The result is a non-sense assertion; the ‘I know’ renders the logical content impossible to analyse. On a grammatical level, it looks like a meaningful statement, but it is actually expressing no meaning at all.
There are some important and related points to draw from this discussion. Firstly, what we see in this example is that the meaning of given words or phrases in language depend on the context they take part in. This is what Wittgenstein calls ‘language games:’ we all follow certain context-dependent rules in any given context and, by following the rules of whatever language game we’re playing, we find some shared sense of meaning.[20] Importantly however, the meaning made by any given expression in one language game may not follow in another, nor can any universal and objective definition be given to it since its meaning is only expressed in context.[21] Metaphysics, and philosophy as a whole, has largely treated language like this; as rules that can be given descriptions and then applied to alternative contexts while retaining the same meaning.[22] However, and this is Wittgenstein’s point of departure from these previous theorists of language, language does not have meaning through some explanation of the state of affairs, but it instead points towards meaning: “what can be shown cannot be said.”[23] Consider that in describing to someone the colour of some object, one can meaningfully say, ‘this is red,’ but not, ‘red is x.”[24] Trying to positively describe ‘red,’ beyond simply pointing to it, requires you posit some abstraction from reality, making some non-sense statement. In bringing attention to this Wittgenstein identifies a distinction between form, which is language, and content, which are the ‘objects’ to which language points.[25] To attempt to give a universal definition to some phrase is to mistake form for content, treating the language as the latter, and, given that the meaning of language is in this ‘pointing,’ it fails to produce any meaningful sentiment.[26] This mixing of language games is the philosophical mistake that the quietists critique; “human life, our natural way of being, is already shaped by meaning,” so we need not apply descriptions to already-meaningful signs.[27]
The picture of quietism as therapy that I presented in the beginning of this essay may now be made clear. When one poses the philosophical question, ‘is the outside world real?’ the realist may say ‘yes,’ the sceptic may say ‘no,’ but both accept this question as sensible.[28] This framework proposed by Wittgenstein allows us to realise that this question uses concepts of ‘realness’ which, if at all, are only meaningful in specific language games and takes the form of the term, turns it into an object, and applies it to a completely different language game, creating a nonsense question.[29] It may now be clear why I did not classify quietism as an anti-realist position. The quietist, through this process of therapy, ‘dissolves’ philosophical questions rather than answering them, finding that “the deepest problems are really no problems.”[30] The philosopher’s role is not to propose any new knowledge, but to clarify what one already knows, reminding them of some meaning they already had access to as someone versed in the relevant language games.[31] Any philosophical claims must therefore only be descriptions of experience, which are meaningful in the context of ‘ordinary life,’ but not explanations, which attempt to go outside it.[32]
Section 2: Phenomenology
While therapeutic quietism, as I have presented it, may give us what not to say, restricting philosophy to only a practice of ‘reminding’ and ‘describing’ threatens to leave the discipline as little more than this negative practice. Indeed, this is the criticism levied against quietists, that the practice rejects all positive theses in philosophy.[33] My aim in the next section of this essay is to elucidate the matter of a purely descriptive philosophy which still offers us useful and productive positive claims about the world as it is experienced by us. Such an endeavour is a difficult undertaking, with a continual risk of depending on explanatory claims, but I find that a careful phenomenology succeeds where other traditions have failed.[34]
Our foray into this investigation begins with Kant, and with McDowell’s use of his transcendental philosophy. I raise Kant, and later Husserl and Merleau-Ponty, because the three thinkers are situated within a philosophical tradition concerned with similar aims as Wittgenstein, working to proceed from what we can know, without affirming speculation of what we cannot. For the sake of brevity, I do not intend to go into incredible detail about any of the three thinker’s projects here, but I will summarise the relevant points. Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason is positioned against a long-standing philosophical debate between the rationalists and the empiricists.[35] The former claim that ‘true’ knowledge—which, for them, is a priori knowledge—can only be obtained through the use of pure reason, while the latter advocate that a posteriori knowledge, given through experience, is the only authentic knowledge. Kant instead cuts across both positions with his transcendental critique. He argues that through studying the necessary and universal conditions for experience and cognition, we can reason to synthetic a priori knowledge which describes the world as we can receive it.[36] This is not to say that this knowledge gives us some picture of the objective external world, but only “a reality that is precisely not outside the sphere of thinkable content.”[37] Kant leaves us with a philosophy that carefully examines one’s experience of the world and describes its features without need for explanation.
There are some relevant concerns with Kant’s theory to address here. The first is that by directing philosophical attention towards our experience, transcendental idealism could be positing some sort of private language view which would reassert the same Cartesian dualism he, and Wittgenstein, are attempting to move beyond.[38] In other words, is the analysis of ‘inner sense’ a reaffirmation of the distance between mind and world and, as such, the Myth of the Given?[39] McDowell argues that such a commitment is not necessary.[40] For outer sense, he writes, the myth is “the idea… that the Given mediates between the experiencing subject and an independent outer reality, of which the subject is aware through this mediation.”[41] The Given can then be rejected if we deny the distance between mind and world, and consider that when sense, of either kind, is presented to us, it already possesses meaning.[42] Self-ascriptions need not be ‘about’ independent states of affairs, so long as we acknowledge that meaning only occurs in the context of language games.[43] With this, the distinction between outer and inner sense is dissolved, as all sense is received in the same manner. We can therefore speak of ‘inner’ sense descriptively, as we would ‘outer’ sense; this will be pertinent going forward.
Unfortunately, Kant does not tread this line with sufficient care. While a transcendental idealism could consider both inner and outer sense as not referring to some state of affairs, his particular project does fail to avoid the quietist critique when he asserts the existence of the ‘thing-in-itself.’ Between publishing the first and second editions of the Critique, Kant found himself accused of arguing for a “form of idealism like Berkeley’s.”[44] In response, he includes his infamous “Refutation of Idealism” in the second edition, in which he presupposes the necessity of an ontologically distinct “supersensible reality” containing “objects in space outside myself.”[45] This, of course, extends further than pure-description and into an explanatory account of states of things outside the bounds of ordinary life.
Where Kant fails by providing a “transcendental argument… [which] yields a metaphysical resolution,” Husserl opts for a “transcendental description… with nothing more metaphysically substantial than the resolving descriptions and the descriptive practices themselves.”[46] With his phenomenology, Husserl aims to return to “the things themselves… questioning them as they are themselves given.”[47] The ‘things themselves’ here are those objects received to us by experience, separated from our constructed (often scientific) ideas about them: describing experience only as it is without positing an objective[48] ontologically distinct realm of things to which they relate.[49] His method is positioned partially as a critique of, and alternative to, scientific realism.[50] While the scientific realist may claim that, upon seeing a chair, one simply sees (which is itself actually just a process of light hitting retina and so forth) a collection of atoms in a given structure, phenomenology holds that the chair’s status as ‘something to be sat on’ has significance which is inherent to understanding what the chair is, and this cannot be abstracted away through some scientific framework. Husserl advocates for a process of “phenomenological reduction” wherein one ‘brackets away’ their presuppositions about the natural state of things and is left with only the “pure essence” of a thing: its ‘originary’ perceptual appearance.[51] In undertaking this process, the phenomenologist has “his eye fixed on what we do, and not on what we ought to do or must be presumed to do,” approaching philosophy as “a describer rather than an explainer.”[52] In line with Wittgenstein, Husserl critiques the “grammatical hypostasizing” that leads to “metaphysical hypostasizing” rampant among theories of knowledge; for example, he argues that we can simply use mathematical concepts without some theoretical claim about its objective existence.[53] Through his use of phenomenological description, he offers “a science of essences” rather than “a science of facts.”[54]
While Husserl’s ‘science’ may at first seem compatible with quietism, and indeed philosopher Paul Davies argues this, I find that one minor aspect of his theory prevents it from truly being a purely descriptive philosophy.[55] In an abstract sense, his use of the concept of essences to critique dogmatic theories of knowledge is justified; to describe the world as we receive it is not to “say… more than we know.”[56] However, I believe that, like Kant, Husserl does cross the line of explanation when he states that “the same thing that holds for one individual experience holds for the entire stream of experience.”[57] For him, if every person were to successfully bracket out their contingent ideas related to some single object, the essence we would be left with would be commonly accessible by each person’s perception.[58] In other words, it must be “absolutely valid for all men and for all times.”[59] This claim, of course, could not be substantiated within the field of one’s own experience as it requires an assertion about all possible perceptions, beyond any single context or language game. This is not a simple clarification of what people already know but an explanatory theory about some transcendent world.[60] To use the words of Albert Camus, “after having denied the integrating power of human reason, [Husserl] leaps by this expedient to eternal Reason,” and as such, his view “is still realism.”[61] While a weak conception of phenomenology may be compatible with quietism, Husserl’s stringent requirement for universality of essences does not avoid their critique.
Section 3: A Phenomenology of Perception
To conclude this essay, I would like to propose Merleau-Ponty as a phenomenologist who resolves the errors made by the previously discussed thinkers. Like Husserl, he considers that knowledge of the world can only be given through our perception of it, from a standpoint of cultural and historical embodiment, and not outside of it.[62] However, while Kant and Husserl’s philosophy assume some ability to reach beyond that standpoint, severing their connection to the historical and cultural context, Merleau-Ponty conceives of the self as being inseparable from the world and necessarily “condemned to meaning.”[63] His phenomenology facilitates such a conception through his concept of embodiment. Contrary to the Myth of the Given, Merleau-Ponty argues that our body’s perception of the world, prior to active consciousness of it, gives us a ‘schema’ of the “logic of the world to which my body in its entirety conforms, and through which things of intersensory experience become possible [and meaningful] for us.”[64] I find this to be comparable to Wittgenstein’s discussion of a child learning the rules of a language game prior to playing within it, and without having those rules made explicit.[65] Our positioning in the world forms the background to our perceptions, and it is only through this positionality that we find meaning.[66] Furthermore, it is impossible to even conceive of an object truly ‘in-itself’ without the background given in perception.[67] The relevant allegorical feature in Wittgenstein’s philosophy would be the “hinges” by which we find ‘certainty’ in our use of other propositions.[68] It is through the rules of our language games, or the cultural positioning prior to perception, that we can receive a bouquet from someone we hold dear and immediately understand that “loveis in the flowers… it is impossible to say what in them signifies love… but to the beholder they say what they mean.”[69] This is not some objective fact about existent flowers, neither is it some universal truth that transcends our cultural and historical context, but an experience of a subjective world that holds contingent value in its contextual appearance.
Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenology is one which “offers an account of space, time and the world as we ‘live’ them. It tries to give a direct description of our experience as it is, without taking account of its psychological origin and… causal explanations.”[70] He does not claim any knowledge of the world outside one’s experience and as such, his phenomenology does not require the same universality that Husserl asserts. This phenomenological method is thus one that anyone could undertake; it seeks only to remind one of knowledge they already have access to. I consider such a philosophy to be compatible with Wittgensteinian quietism. Through Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenology, scientific and metaphysical questions are reconstituted in reference to our perception of the already-meaningful world. While some of these are shown to be meaningless, like the attempt to posit a world distinct from any perceiver, we can still productively theorise about others so long as we acknowledge that theory cannot be explanatory, since it cannot precede perception.[71] What Merleau-Ponty offers is, therefore, a descriptive philosophy that allows us to make productive claims about the phenomenal world without dogmatically asserting objective truth or mixing language games.
Both Wittgenstein and Merleau-Ponty are philosophers who refuse to unquestioningly accept the assumptions of their respective analytic and continental traditions, and I consider that it is in their synthesis that we can identify a truly robust philosophy of sense (in both definitions of the word). The former writer offers a prudent critique of metaphysics and of Western philosophy as a whole. Wittgenstein’s discussion of language games and the creation of meaning through pointing cuts to the heart of the problematic acceptance of realism in this discipline. To posit any theory, that is both positive and useful, following this quietist critique becomes a daunting task indeed. While Kant and Husserl offer initially promising theories to fulfill such a requirement, it is in Merleau-Ponty’s Phenomenology of Perception that I believe we can trace a purely descriptive and productive philosophy.
The world, far from being the mere sign of objects and meanings, inhabits things and is the vehicle of meanings. Thus speech, in the speaker, does not translate ready-made thought, but accomplishes it.[72]
Mikel is a Bachelor of Advanced Humanities student who has recently completed his honours in philosophy at the University of Queensland. His philosophical interests include disability studies, queer theory, phenomenology, and existentialism. They are also quite fond of kookaburras.
Featured image: Conversation by Edvard Munch (1917).
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[1] Ludwig Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations, trans. G. E. M. Anscombe (Basil Blackwell, 1968), §109.
[2] Thomas J. Spiegel, “What Is Philosophical Quietism (Wittgensteinian and Otherwise)?” in Quietism, Agnosticism and Mysticism, ed. Krishna Mani Pathak (Springer, 2021), 20, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-16-3223-5_1.
[3] John McDowell, “Wittgensteinian ‘Quietism,’” Common Knowledge (New York, N.Y.) 15, no. 3: 365, 371, https://doi.org/10.1215/0961754X-2009-018; Spiegel, “What Is Philosophical Quietism,” 20; Ludwig Wittgenstein, Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, trans. C. K. Ogden (Routledge, 2005), 4.003.
[4] Wittgenstein, Tractatus, 7; Spiegel, “What Is Philosophical Quietism,” 18, 29.
[5] Spiegel, “What Is Philosophical Quietism,” 18.
[6] Peter Godfrey-Smith, Theory and Reality: An Introduction to the Philosophy of Science, (University of Chicago Press, 2003), 175; Spiegel, “What Is Philosophical Quietism,” 18-19.
[7] Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations, §109; Wittgenstein, Tractatus, 3.221.
[8] Godfrey-Smith, Theory and Reality, 174.
[9] Godfrey-Smith, Theory and Reality, 174; Simon Blackburn, “Realism: Deconstructing the Debate,” Ratio (Oxford) 15, no. 2, (2002): 111-112, https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-9329.00180.
[10] John McDowell, Mind and World (Harvard University Press, 1996), 7, 21.
[11] Blackburn, “Realism,” 112.
[12] Godfrey-Smith, Theory and Reality, 174-175.
[13] In my discussion of Wittgenstein’s quietism, I will be using quotations from Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus in addition to Philosophical Investigations and On Certainty. I am aware that, as his earlier work, he argues certain positions in this book in a positive manner, which is contrary to his stated quietist perspective in these later works. However, many of his quietist views are common among these texts and are expressed most clearly in Tractatus (perhaps because of its positive nature), so I use them here for greater clarity. I will not include any quotations that I find to contradict Wittgenstein’s later positions; McDowell, Mind and World, 22-23.
[14] Ludwig Wittgenstein, On Certainty, trans. Denis Paul and G. E. M. Anscombe (Basil Blackwell, 1969), 10.
[15] Wittgenstein, On Certainty, 7, 9.
[16] Wittgenstein, On Certainty, 4, 10.
[17] Wittgenstein, On Certainty, 7.
[18] Wittgenstein, On Certainty, 12.
[19] Wittgenstein, On Certainty, 8.
[20] Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations, §7; Georg Henrik Von Wright, Wittgenstein (Basil Blackwell, 1982), 179.
[21] Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations, §79.
[22] Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations, §116; Wittgenstein, Tractatus, 4.003.
[23] Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations, §34; Wittgenstein, Tractatus, 3.144, 4.1212.
[24] Wittgenstein, Tractatus, 2.0251.
[25] Wittgenstein, Tractatus, 2.025, 3.3, 3.31, 4.12.
[26] McDowell, “Wittgensteinian ‘Quietism,’” 368; Wittgenstein, Tractatus, 4.121.
[27] McDowell, Mind and World, 95; McDowell, “Wittgensteinian ‘Quietism,’” 368.
[28] Wittgenstein, On Certainty, 37.
[29] McDowell, “Wittgensteinian ‘Quietism,’” 371; Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations, §50; Wittgenstein, On Certainty, 35.
[30] Wittgenstein, Tractatus, 4.003.
[31] Wittgenstein, Tractatus, 4.112; McDowell, “Wittgensteinian ‘Quietism,’” 365-366.
[32] Kevin M. Cahill, “Quietism or Description? McDowell in Dispute with Dreyfus,” The Review of Metaphysics, 68, no. 2 (2014): 398; Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations, §50, 109; Paul Davies, “From Constructive Philosophy to Philosophical Quietism,” JBSP. Journal of the British Society for Phenomenology, 31, no. 3 (2002): 315, https://doi.org/10.1080/00071773.2000.11007310.
[33] Spiegel, “What Is Philosophical Quietism,” 18.
[34] Davies, “From Constructive Philosophy to Philosophical Quietism,” 315; Cahill, “Quietism or Description?” 398.
[35] Immanuel Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, trans. Marcus Weigelt (Germany. Penguin Books, 2007), A87|B119, A89|B121, A465|B493-A468|B496.
[36] Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, B166-167.
[37] McDowell, Mind and World, 39, 41.
[38] R. A. Noë, “Did Kant Anticipate Wittgenstein’s Private Language. Argument?” Kant-Studien, 82, no. 3 (1991), 271-272, https://doi.org/10.1515/kant.1991.82.3.270.
[39] McDowell, Mind and World, 21.
[40] McDowell, Mind and World, 21.
[41] McDowell, Mind and World, 21.
[42] McDowell, Mind and World, 21-22.
[43] McDowell, Mind and World, 22.
[44] Dina Emundts, “The Refutation of Idealism and the Distinction between Phenomena and Noumena,” in The Cambridge Companion to Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason, ed. Paul Guyer (Cambridge University Press, 2010), 169-170, https://doi.org/10.1017/CCOL9780521883863.008.
[45] Emundts, “Distinction between Phenomena and Noumena,” 168, 169; McDowell, Mind and World, 95-96; Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, B275.
[46] Davies, “From Constructive Philosophy to Philosophical Quietism,” 324.
[47] Edmund Husserl, Ideas for a Pure Phenomenology and Phenomenological Philosophy: First Book. General Introduction to Pure Phenomenology, trans. Daniel O. Dahlstrom (Hackett, 2014), 35.
[48] Husserl does argue that we posit an external world of referents, but only insofar as it is useful to do so in the way we navigate the ordinary world, and not in some objective sense. I find this comparable to the discussion of ordinary language use in Wittgenstein; Husserl, Ideas for a Pure Phenomenology and Phenomenological Philosophy, 16, 52.
[49] Davies, “From Constructive Philosophy to Philosophical Quietism,” 322; Husserl, Ideas for a Pure Phenomenology and Phenomenological Philosophy, 16, 32.
[50] Husserl, Ideas for a Pure Phenomenology and Phenomenological Philosophy, 35, 37.
[51] Husserl, Ideas for a Pure Phenomenology and Phenomenological Philosophy, 3-4, 11-12, 56.
[52] Iris Murdoch, Sartre: Romantic Rationalist (Yale University Press, 1967), x.
[53] Husserl, Ideas for a Pure Phenomenology and Phenomenological Philosophy, 42, 43-44; Wittgenstein, On Certainty,10.
[54] Husserl, Ideas for a Pure Phenomenology and Phenomenological Philosophy, 4.
[55] Husserl, Ideas for a Pure Phenomenology and Phenomenological Philosophy, 1; Davies, “From Constructive Philosophy to Philosophical Quietism,” 328.
[56] Ludwig Wittgenstein, The Blue and Brown Books: Preliminary Studies for the ‘Philosophical Investigations’ (Harper & Row, 1965), 45.
[57] Husserl, Ideas for a Pure Phenomenology and Phenomenological Philosophy, 245.
[58] Husserl, Ideas for a Pure Phenomenology and Phenomenological Philosophy, 163, 242-245; Albert Camus, The Myth of Sisyphus, trans. Justin O’Brien (Penguin Books, 2013), 35.
[59] Quentin Lauer, “Introduction,” in Phenomenology and the Crisis of Philosophy, Edmund Husserl (Harper & Row, 1965), 5.
[60] Husserl, Ideas for a Pure Phenomenology and Phenomenological Philosophy, 76.
[61] Camus, Sisyphus, 34, 35.
[62] Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Phenomenology of Perception, trans. Colin Smith (Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1978), 320, 347.
[63] Ronald L. Hall, “Freedom: Merleau-Ponty’s Critique of Sartre,” in The Debate Between Sartre and Merleau-Ponty, ed. John Stewart (Northwestern University Press, 1998), 193; Komarine Romdenh-Romluc, Wittgenstein and Merleau-Ponty (Routledge, 2017), 10, https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315754840.
[64] Merleau-Ponty, Phenomenology of Perception, 254, 326.
[65] Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations, §5, 9.
[66] Merleau-Ponty, Phenomenology of Perception, 323, 347.
[67] Merleau-Ponty, Phenomenology of Perception, 320.
[68] Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations, 341; Romdenh-Romluc, Wittgenstein and Merleau-Ponty, 5.
[69] Merleau-Ponty, Phenomenology of Perception, 321.
[70] Merleau-Ponty, Phenomenology of Perception, vii.
[71] Merleau-Ponty, Phenomenology of Perception, viii–ix.
[72] Merleau-Ponty, Phenomenology of Perception, 178.
EXORDIUM 