Meaning on the Horizon: Merleau-Ponty's Intentional Significance and Deleuze's Differential Intention

by Corry Shores
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Meaning on the Horizon:
Merleau-Ponty's Intentional Significance
and Deleuze's Differential Intention

What does phenomenal meaning go to do with us?

We make sense of the world we perceive. This has a lot to do with how we relate the parts of our world. So the meaning of a part could be how it interrelates with all the others, because that is how we would make sense of that part. But now consider if we lived a life where everything related nicely with everything else. Would we not feel like something is missing from life? If there were a computer simulation for life, would it not be like this, because would not all the relations between things be perfectly coherent? If there were any mismatches, they would be pre-programmed. It would almost seem too perfect. And if we lived such a simulation where everything is coherent, we might after a while feel like life is meaningless. And our experiences would become less phenomenal.

Maybe instead what makes life meaningful are those moments when things are not falling together properly. These events are usually phenomenal. Discovering that a loved one has been cheating is a profoundly meaningful and phenomenal moment. Something new appears in our lives and it seems to change how we make sense of many other things. And what really appears to us is a difference: what we thought and what we discover are completely different and yet at the moment of discovery they coincide. This is why it is so shocking, we wonder how can it be that my faithful lover is cheating? This then opens many new roads for understanding the parts of our lives and the world around us, most of them unforeseen; they are just implicit tendencies for new development. So meaning might lie more in the differences and incoherence of the parts of our lives than would it be found in the way the parts fall together nicely.

Brief Summary:

When we perceive the part of something, we also perceive its integrated relations to a whole. We might not perceive the whole just yet, but it is implied in the part. In a way, the intended whole is on the horizon of our awareness, within the scope, looming nearby. The way the part expresses the whole and integrates with the other parts is its meaning or significance, for Merleau-Ponty.

Points Relative to Deleuze:

But for Deleuze, meaning might lie instead in the way the parts do not cohere. This is because phenomenal meaning for Deleuze might be found in the new paths for how the world changes when we notice something not fitting in place.




We will be talking about the meaning or significance of a perception, which for Merleau-Ponty is the coherence of its organization that constitutes the objects in the way we perceive them. He wants to dispute the idea that we have atomic impressions that simply fall together on account of contiguity and association.

Consider firstly how when we see something in particular, we see it as a figure standing out from a background. This means it has an edge at its boundary with the background. So the parts of the figure at the edges have a certain significance in the organization and constitution of the object. In fact, all the parts have their own significance, that is, their own role in constituting the qualities of the perceived thing. (Phenomenology of Perception 15 / fr.36)

So suppose we see a patch of red. We would not see it as a patch of red unless we also distinguished it already from its background. This means to the supposedly pure perception of red we have also integrated perceptions of form and outline, and also a sense for the background that the red stands-out from. So there is no such pure perception, no atomic perception that is. These other things that the red refers to are things that the red in a way represents. They are not a real part of the perception of red, but we still intend them, which means they are still in our awareness, although in this case they are on the horizon or we might say the periphery of our awareness. (15-16 / 36)

We will now consider the empiricist perspective, which Merleau-Ponty will dispute. He has us consider this diagram.

If we only had atomic impressions, we would only have impressions of A, B, and C. But somehow we need to put them together. We can only do this on the basis of already knowing that they make up a circular form, for otherwise we would not be able to arrange them in our mind like a circle, because all we begin with, supposedly, are the atomic parts. The empiricist perspective would say that the circularity of the parts associates with previous circles we see. And likewise, when we think the word circle, many circles we have seen before come to mind. But this reduces meaning, either perceptual or linguistic, to just a mechanical recollection or association.

Knowledge thus appears as a system of substitutions in which one impression announces others without ever justifying the announcement, in which words lead one to expect sensations as evening leads one to expect night. The significance of the percept is nothing but a cluster of images which begin to reappear without reason. The simplest images or sensations are, in the last analysis, all that there is to understand in words, concepts being a complicated way of designating them, and as they are themselves inexpressible impressions, understanding is a fraud or an illusion. (17d / fr.38)

Merleau-Ponty takes a different view. For him, the meaning precedes the association. We would not know to associate the parts to a circle if they did not already express the circularity of the form they together make-up. In other words, we would not know to recall other circular forms unless we already sensed something circular in our perception. Our original sensing of the circularity of the whole found in just one part is the meaning of the perception. The full circle is not there, but it is on the horizon of our perception and it is on the horizon of the perception's meaning.

Now the sensation and images which are supposed to be the beginning and end of all knowledge never make their appearance anywhere other than within a horizon of meaning, and the significance of the percept, far from resulting from an association, is in fact presupposed in all association, whether it concerns the conspectus of a figure before one, or the recollection of former experiences. (18ab / 38-39)

Now consider if we look out the window and see cars parked on the street. The black tires are the same color as the pavement. So why do we not include the cars as parts of the street? When one of the car starts and drives-off, its parts remain contiguous to each other, all while continuously differentiating from their background. An empiricist might say that this sort of temporal contiguity is involved in how we constitute objects. But Merleau-Ponty points-out that we still constitute objects that are not moving. Instead, we distinguish things from the spaces between them. So the parts of a thing are organized in our perception according to whether they form a part or a space between, and this is given to us with the significance of the perception of the part. He has us consider if for some reason we begin to see the space between as the figure, and everything else as the background. Consider for example the Rubin's Vase illusion.

Rubin's Vase


(layersmagazine.com. Thanks Jacob Cass)


Rubin's Vase


(Thanks wikipedia)

When we see the faces, we are looking at a picture where there are no candlesticks. But when we see the candlesticks, the picture no longer has people in it. In other words, depending on which we choose as the figure and background determines very different pictures.

Merleau-Ponty also refers to a puzzle where either a hunter or a rabbit is seen in a forest. It is not clear what this is or where it comes from (although we should try to find it.) He describes the puzzle, and also this general idea, in more detail in "The Film and the New Psychology"

A sick person contemplating the wallpaper in; his room will suddenly see it transformed if the pattern and figure become the ground while what is usually seen as ground becomes the figure. The idea we have of the world would be overturned if we could succeed in seeing the intervals between things (for example, the space between the trees on the boulevard) as objects and, inversely, if we saw the things themselves-the trees-as the ground. This is what happens in puzzles: we cannot see the rabbit or the hunter because the elements of these figures are dislocated and are integrated into other forms : for example, what is to be the rabbit's ear is still just the empty interval between two trees in the forest. The rabbit and the hunter become apparent through a new partition of the field, a new organization of the whole. (Sense and Non-Sense 48-49)

Returning to the Phenomenology of Perception, Merleau-Ponty says that these rearrangements are more then merely changing the ways we associate our impressions. Because the world is constituted by all these integrated relations, when we change them so drastically, we in fact change our entire world.

If we set ourselves to see as things the intervals between them, the appearance of the world would be just as strikingly altered as is that of the puzzle at the moment when I pick out ‘the rabbit’ or ‘the hunter’. There would not be simply the same elements differently related, the same sensations differently associated, the same text charged with a different sense, the same matter in another form, but in truth another world. (18c.d / fr. 39)

In reality, for pure description—and Gestalt theory claims to be a description—the contiguity and resemblance of stimuli do not precede the constitution of the whole. [...] The alleged conditions of perception precede perception itself only when, instead of describing the perceptual phenomenon as the first way of access to the object, we suppose round about it a setting in which all disclosure of the implicit and all cross-checking performed by analytic perception are included, and all the norms of actual perception vindicated—in short, a realm of truth, a world. (19c.d / fr 40)

Every perception of a thing's part implies the world it resides in. To know that B is a part of the circle is to know in the first place implicitly the whole of the circle and also implicitly the background against which the circle appears. The whole of the circle in a way is speaking itself through its parts, which is why we know immediate to arrange them in a circular form. This circularity is the meaning of our act of awareness of the part; the part in a way carries the meaning of a circle. And this is because our intentional act of being aware of the circle-part involves also our detecting the whole circle, which is an intention that lies on the horizon of our awareness. So when we perceive something, we don't just perceive that thing or part, we also perceive implicitly all its relational ties to everything around it, and the whole network of these ties makes up the coherence of the world.

But in the passage above, Merleau-Ponty suggests that our world can radically alter when the relations rearrange. So maybe he does not assume a pre-given coherence to the world. However, he seems to suggest that world is always given coherently when discussing instances when we originally do not discern something in our field of vision, but later realize there was something there all along, as if it were camouflaged.

If I walk along a shore towards a ship which has run aground, and the funnel or masts merge into the forest bordering on the sand dune, there will be a moment when these details suddenly become part of the ship, and indissolubly fused with it. As I approached, I did not perceive resemblances or proximity which finally came together to form a continuous picture of the upper part of the ship. I merely felt that the look of the object was on the point of altering, that something was imminent in this tension, as a storm is imminent in storm clouds. Suddenly the sight before me was recast in a manner satisfying to my vague expectation. Only afterwards did I recognize, as justifications for the change, the resemblance and contiguity of what I call 'stimuli' - namely the most determinate phenomena, seen at close quarters and with which I compose the 'true' world. 'How could I have failed to see that these pieces of wood were an integral part of the ship? For they were of the same colour as the ship, and fitted well enough into its superstructure.' But these reasons for correct perception were not given as reasons beforehand. The unity of the object is based on the foreshadowing of an imminent order which is about to spring upon us a reply to the questions merely latent in the landscape. It solves a problem set only in the form of a vague feeling of uneasiness, it organizes elements which up to that moment did not belong to the same universe and which, for that reason, as Kant said with profound insight, could not be associated. By placing them on the same footing, that of the unique object, synopsis makes continuity and resemblance between them possible. An impression can never by itself be associated with another impression. (20a-d / fr 40-41, boldface mine)

So at first, we were not explicitly aware that some of the trees we were seeing were actually ship masts. However, we implicitly felt as if something were not right. This is because we saw parts of the forest which did not fit holistically in with the way we were organizing our perception. We sensed that these parts of the forest had relations to the boat, even though those relations were not yet evident. Then, upon seeing more clues, we were able to properly constitute the boat and the forest in their distinction from one another.

From the perspective of a Deleuzean phenomenology, we fundamentally see all the differential variations given there in our field of vision. All these variations are differences. So we see a field of differences. This happens when all the differences making up the ship mast differentially relate to the forest. The phenomenon is not the mast or the trees but the shock of difference communicated between them. So let's draw a contrast with this idea of an 'intentional horizon' of our awareness. In Deleuezan phenomenology, our perceptions are made of infinitely small microperceptions. If we were looking at the boat on the beach, we would be fundamentally seeing just pure variations. It is only when sets of these variations differentiate with other sets that we discern different objects. So all the variations making up the ship mast and all those making up the trees were already from the beginning differentially relating to one another. It is only when those variations differentially relate on a higher order that something will stand out. So consider when we first lay eyes on the scene. We see just variations. But the forest stood apart from the sky and the boat hull. This is because under the conditions of the situation, the parts of the mast were differentially relating to the hull, because our attention was turned more toward the difference between the sky and the trees and between the trees and the hull.

For Merleau-Ponty, what makes something be on the horizon of our awareness is its being organically integrated with what is in the forefront of our attention. To see the circle's part is to also have the circle itself looming near our view. So when first seeing the forest, the boat mast did not appear, but the way we were looking at the forest already had us prepared to see the mast as not being a tree. This readiness-to-change in our perception results from us implicitly sensing that one of the trees does not belong with the rest.

For Deleuze, when we first see the forest, we already see the variations making up the mast as being different from the trees. But likewise, we already see the variations making any tree be different from another. What is the difference between distinguishing the mast from the trees and distinguishing one tree from another? The variations in our perception are always getting divided up in new and different ways, even when we are not mistaken about what we see. So in one sense, the differences between the mast and the tree do not exist, not even on the horizon, until they appear. But in another sense, they were already there at the foundation, because it is only on the basis of our world being made entirely of variations that it undergoes its continual rearrangements in our awareness. When we lift a glass of beer, we regard the beer and the glass to be differentially related from the table. When we drink from it, we regard the beer and the glass to be differentially related from one another. When we attempt to burp the gas from the beer, knowing its source, we regard the gass and the liquid of the beer to be differentially related. It is not that we were mistaken to think that the gas and the liquid were the same, and their difference was on the horizon. No, they appeared different under the circumstances of burping. Under other circumstances, other differences stand-out.

So in a way, for Deleuzean phenomenology, if there is any sort of pre-given structure to our consciousness, it is a sensitivity to difference. We are conscious fundamentally of differences. The less difference, the less that catches our attention, thus the less we are conscious of it. Consciousness diminishes as difference diminishes.

Merleau-Ponty has a different sort of pre-given structure of consciousness.

The relationships ‘figure’ and ‘background’, ‘thing’ and ‘nothing’, and the horizon of the past appear, then, to be structures of consciousness irreducible to the qualities which appear in them. (26b / fr. 46)

So in other words, for Merleau-Ponty, we cannot but see things in terms of figure and background. But this is based on his assumption that we sense the coherence of the figure against the background. And this coherence is based on each part implying its integrated relations with the others in the figure. But for Deleuze, the phenomenon would be the flashes of difference between parts of one and the parts of the other, not the belonging together of the parts of either. This is an important distinction, because the Deleuzean theory better explains why it is our world is continually cut up in various contradictory ways: what once was glued together a moment later can be thought totally apart.


Now let's wonder what a Deleuzean phenomenological theory of meaning would be like. In the first place, a phenomenon flashes to our awareness when there is a differential relation. If for example we notice something in the corner of our eye, the phenomenon is neither the thing nor its background. Rather, the phenomenon is the difference between them, the incompatibility between the two, the contra-holism of the scene we are seeing. Because the thing we notice does not fit in, it shatters the logic of what we are viewing. It introduces new data that calls into question what we were just seeing. So the phenomenon opens new paths for receiving the world and for making some sense of it. Depending on how phenomenal the event is, our world can become just about anything. The terrorist attacks of nine eleven had this effect. So at the moment of the phenomenal flash, the world cracks and breaks open. This means there are new avenues to make sense of things, that is, new meanings. So the Deleuzean phenomenal meaning are the all the different virtual ways things in the world can rearrange at a given moment. The more phenomenal the event, to more the world is cracked open to new ways, and thus the more phenomenal meaning the event has.




Merleau-Ponty, Maurice. Phenomenology of Perception. Transl. Colin Smith. London/New York: Routledge, 1958.

Merleau-Ponty, Maurice. Phénoménologie de la perception. Paris: Éditions Gallimard, 1945.

Merleau-Ponty, Maurice. Sense and Non-Sense. Transl. Hubert L. Dreyfus & Patricia Allen Dreyfus. Chicago: Northwestern University Press, 1964



Rubin's Vase 1
http://layersmagazine.com/negative-space.html
Thanks Jacob Cass

Rubin's Vase 2
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Rubin2.jpg