phainomena

PHAINOMENA XXV/98-99
THE HORIZONS OF EMBODIMENT
of forms realized by life: adaptation is not the canon of life, but a particular realization
in the tide of natural production” (Merleau-Ponty 1995: 184). Animal bodies have
a spectacle-attitude: animal bodies are seen, animal bodies are made to be seen.
However, denying the ideology of utility and accepting this form of expressivity
within the living world does not abolish physical and biological laws:
“At the origin, magic is concentrated in the architecture of the body,
then is extracted from the original trace of forms. But it always remains
a power that in no way pulls the living beings away from the strict
conditioning of events. On the one hand there is a frenzied freedom of
life, and on the other, an economy of life. (Merleau-Ponty 1995: 186)“
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Freedom and economy, exception and law, finalism and determinism: all
these elements can co-exist in the living world.
Merleau-Ponty questions the prejudice based on the hegemony of the inner
over the external: appearances do not hide truth – there are no misleading
appearances. This is an important consequence of Adolf Portmann’s work:
“The consideration of appearance, of animal form (gestalt), is not at all
uninteresting. The laws of the interior and exterior are not of the same
order: “The interior gives the impression of a machine, the exterior gives
the impression of a product of art” (Merleau-Ponty 1995: 186–187). Body’s
appearance is a language: the animal is its own behavior, its own body, and its
own history. The animal is further also an expression, an expressive value that
is completely free and aesthetic in nature: “We must grasp the mystery of life
in the way that animals show themselves to each other” (Merleau-Ponty 1995:
188). The intrinsic visibility of the living being demonstrates that there is an
inherent relationality within nature (what Merleau-Ponty – using a Husserl’s
expression – calls Ineinander): “What exists are not separated animals, but an