Duquesne University Duquesne Scholarship Collection Electronic Theses and Dissertations Spring 2010 Sensation Rebuilt: Carnal Ontology in Levinas and Merleau-Ponty Tom Sparrow Follow this and additional works at: https://dsc.duq.edu/etd Recommended Citation Sparrow, T. (2010). Sensation Rebuilt: Carnal Ontology in Levinas and Merleau-Ponty (Doctoral dissertation, Duquesne University). Retrieved from https://dsc.duq.edu/etd/1228 This Immediate Access is brought to you for free and open access by Duquesne Scholarship Collection. It has been accepted for inclusion in Electronic Theses and Dissertations by an authorized administrator of Duquesne Scholarship Collection. For more information, please contact [email protected]. SENSATION REBUILT: CARNAL ONTOLOGY IN LEVINAS AND MERLEAU-PONTY A Dissertation Submitted to the McAnulty College and Graduate School of Liberal Arts Duquesne University In partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy By Tom Sparrow May 2010 Copyright by Tom Sparrow 2010 SENSATION REBUILT: CARNAL ONTOLOGY IN LEVINAS AND MERLEAU-PONTY By Tom Sparrow Approved November 19, 2009 ________________________________ _______________________________ Fred Evans Daniel Selcer Professor of Philosophy Associate Professor of Philosophy (Committee Chair) (Committee Member) ________________________________ _______________________________ George Yancy Silvia Benso Associate Professor of Philosophy Professor of Philosophy (Committee Member) (Committee Member) ________________________________ _______________________________ Christopher M. Duncan James Swindal Dean, McAnulty College and Graduate Chair, Department of Philosophy School of Liberal Arts Associate Professor of Philosophy Professor of Political Science iii ABSTRACT SENSATION REBUILT: CARNAL ONTOLOGY IN LEVINAS AND MERLEAU-PONTY By Tom Sparrow May 2010 Dissertation supervised by Fred Evans The phenomenological approaches to embodiment presented by Levinas and Merleau-Ponty cannot provide an adequate account of bodily identity because their methodological commitments forbid them from admitting the central role that sensation plays in the constitution of experience. This neglect is symptomatic of their tradition’s suspicion toward sensation as an explanatory concept, a suspicion stemming from Kant’s critique of empiricist metaphysics and Husserl’s critique of psychologism and objectivism. By contrast, I suggest that only with a robust theory of sensation can the integrity of the body and its relations be fully captured. I therefore develop—contra Kant and Husserl’s idealism—a realist conception of sensation that is at once materialist and phenomenological. The phenomenologists distort the nature of intercorporeal relations and their most iv significant insights prove to be non-phenomenological. I find this useful for rebuilding the concept of sensation on materialist grounds. Merleau-Ponty grants too much control to the lived body, and thereby neglects its passive aspects. His view that relations between bodies are reversible is thus inadequate. Levinas endows the body with a substantial passivity, to the point that the susceptibility of the body becomes its defining feature. I defend a more balanced position that features the body’s plasticity—its capacity to give form to its environment while receiving form from that same environment. My theory synthesizes the phenomenologists with other historical figures, from Spinoza to Deleuze, as well as critical race, feminist, and embodied cognition theorists. To conclude, I suggest that only the plastic body adequately describes the subject’s aesthetic relations, and can therefore serve as the basis for an immanent ethics of embodiment. v DEDICATION For my parents, Susan and Joseph, who never once asked me to defend the practicality of philosophy. vi ACKNOWLEDGEMENT The Duquesne University community has been nothing but supportive. Over the past several years, I have been blessed with a number of allies among faculty, staff, and students. Without these friendships (for that is truly what they are) I would not have thrived academically, personally, or philosophically at Duquesne. Fred Evans, my director, advised and guided me through all of my years as a doctoral student. He graciously and patiently considered several dissertation topics and saw the current project through from beginning to end. Without Dan Selcer I would never have come to see the importance of method in philosophical study, and I would now have a much more routine grasp of the history of philosophy. George Yancy offered nothing but encouraging words and careful attention, even when I contacted him without warning at home. I am indebted to Silvia Benso of the Rochester Institute of Technology for agreeing to review my work on Levinas; her responses, even when critical, are always enthusiastic. Graham Harman has also played a crucial role in the formation of my own philosophical position. His generous e-mail correspondence from Cairo is much appreciated. Each of these individuals has left their mark on the present work. Among the Duquesne graduate students, I must single out Pat Craig, John Fritz, Jacob Graham, Adam Hutchinson, Keith Martel, Ryan Pfahl, and Chris Rawls, all of whom contributed their insight into my project and helped me think through its basic problems. My department chair, Jim Swindal, continues to be a vigilant advocate for me and every one of the graduate students. His letters of support helped me win a dissertation fellowship from the McAnulty College and Graduate School of Liberal Arts, which vii partially funded the completion of this dissertation. I must also thank the Center for Interpretive and Qualitative Research. Their fellowship for the 2007–8 academic year helped get my research off the ground. Since my arrival at Duquesne, the director of the Simon Silverman Phenomenology Center, first Dan Martino and now Jeff McCurry, has supported and promoted my work. The Silverman Center is an indispensable resource and a lovely place to conduct research. I must acknowledge my grandparents, without whom I would never have come up with enough money to apply to graduate school. And finally, I am especially grateful to my wife, Rachel Shandor, who entered this endeavor in medias res and every day cares for me in ways that cannot be paraphrased. viii TABLE OF CONTENTS Page Abstract…………………………………………………………………………………...iv Dedication ………………………………………………………………………………..vi Acknowledgement……………………………………………………………………….vii Introduction: The Site of Sensation and Nondualist Ontology...……………………….…x Chapter 1: Perceptual Primacy and Synchrony of the Lived Body…………………….…1 Chapter 2: Sensing, Reversibility, and the Problem of Violence………………………..49 Chapter 3: Transcendental Aesthetics and the Susceptibility of the Body………………85 Chapter 4: On Corporeal Plasticity……………………………………………………..120 Conclusion: The Integrity of Aesthetics: Toward an Ethics of Embodiment…………..163 Works Cited…………………………………………………………………………….171 ix INTRODUCTION THE SITE OF SENSATION AND NONDUALIST ONTOLOGY Like a clever thief hidden inside a house, breathing quietly, waiting until everyone’s asleep. I have looked deep inside myself, trying to detect something that might be there. But just as our consciousness is a maze, so too is our body. Everywhere you turn there’s darkness, and a blind spot. Everywhere you find silent hints, everywhere a surprise is waiting for you. – Murakami, What I Talk About When I Talk About Running PROBLEM AND METHOD Daily most of us experience our bodies as supported and resisted by the features of their environments. Occasionally we are given over to the realization that the spaces we move through possess the power to overwhelm or destroy our bodies. Certain bodily transformations never present themselves phenomenally, however: most obviously, the death of our bodies. As Epicurus says: “Death is nothing to us, for that which is dissolved is without sensation; and that which lacks sensation is nothing to us.”1 The present work is about the prospects and limits of phenomenology as a means of theorizing the identity of the body. In it I ask what constitutes the body’s integrity and of what the body is capable. This is accomplished through a critical engagement with the work of Merleau- Ponty and Levinas, both of whom I see as offering directives beyond the body of phenomenology, specifically in their analyses of sensation. Since sensation is not often featured in phenomenological discussions, and because I see sensation as necessary for conceiving the activity and passivity of the body, I take it as my focus. The turn to sensation in Merleau-Ponty and Levinas marks a significant departure from the latent idealism of phenomenology. The revitalization of sensation has ontological and practical 1 Epicurus, “Principal Doctrines,” II, in The Extant Remains, trans. Cyril Bailey (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1926), 95. x consequences that are nascent in phenomenology, but which cannot be fully captured by phenomenological analyses. Therefore, I will attempt to move beyond Merleau-Ponty and Levinas in my treatment of the body, its identity, and its ethical significance. How we should conduct ourselves and treat other entities has always been an issue for moral philosophy. Apart from ethical questions, the problem of how we as individuals actually relate to other individuals, or how it is possible for one person to interact with, act upon, or know another individual raises altogether different questions. These questions are of an epistemological or