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| How Do Painting and Writing Access the Meaning of World? Merleau-Ponty’s Strategy of Generalizing Phenomenological Spirit |
| Shen Yubin |
| School of Oriental Languages and Philosophy / Institute for Mutual Learning of East-West Civilizations, Zhejiang Gongshang University, Hangzhou 310018, China |
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Abstract How do painting and writing access the meaning of world? This is an important question in Merleau-Ponty’s strategy to generalize phenomenological spirit. Writing, as a system of signs, constitutes a crucial dimension of conceptual expression, while painting forms the essential element of non-conceptual expression. In the expression of the meaning of world by writers and painters through real time and the real world, time serves as a foundational element that integrates both writing and painting into the realm of art. Through art, humans can continually invoke the eternal, making it present. Merleau-Ponty deepens the essential relationship between the body perceiving and the world through his analysis of painting. In the phase of phenomenology of the corporeal (time), exemplified by Cézanne’s Doubt, Merleau-Ponty primarily constructs the perceptual world around the (bodily) perceptual spatio-temporality structure, with his analysis of painting also focusing on the body perceiving. In the phase of phenomenology of the natural (time), represented by Eye and Mind, he further generalizes the body perceiving around the (natural) topological spatio-temporality structure, even using the concept of flesh to describe the subject-object relational structure after the generalization of perception. In this sense, the perceived world evolves into the flesh of world. Based on this, Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenological spirit opens up a new possibility for grasping the real world through the art of painting.Meanwhile, literature is also an art form; through signs, it persistently touches the boundaries of time. Merleau-Ponty argues that Marcel Proust’s literary works have touched upon certain deep ontological relations or structural schemas. The descriptive time in literature and the conceptual time in philosophy constitute different types of intuition and essence in the phenomenological sense. Under the revelation of real time in literary expression, the writer Proust and the philosopher Merleau-Ponty achieve a theoretical alignment in their orientation toward the meaning of world through the phenomenological spirit. In this sense, the work of both writers and painters is inherently part of the activity of revealing that eternal. The ultimate direction of the literarization and artisticization of (Continental) philosophy in the post-phenomenological era may well be this eternal, which Deleuze defines as primordial time and absolute time.The reason painting and writing can be regarded as art lies in their expressive properties, which, in Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenology of language, are transformed into a multi-layered fusion of meaning and truth through the present operation of temporality. The signification of thought can often be abstractly grasped and conveyed through written signs, but its meaning remains rooted in the original present field from which it arises. This means that painting and writing, as forms of linguistic expression, depend on a certain temporal thickness of existence. Fundamentally, Merleau-Ponty’s philosophy of language is built upon his philosophy of perception, and both language and perception further share the spatio-temporal elements inherent in the present dimension within the phenomenological horizon of time. Whether it is the perceptual acts of the body or the functions of speech, both reside within the flesh of time. Therefore, real time constitutes a kind of foundation for the real world, the lifeworld, and even the meaning of world. Within the dual domains of phenomenology of language and phenomenology of art, it can be understood as the interweaving of the present and the eternal. This profoundly echoes the sublimation of the perceived world into the flesh of world triggered by Merleau-Ponty’s strategy of generalizing the phenomenological spirit in the transformation from the bodily perceptual spatio-temporality structure to the natural topological spatio-temporality structure.In summary, Merleau-Ponty breaks the traditional binding of formalization and conceptualization to thought and truth, liberating meaning from its conventional linear fate. If painting and writing are placed within the expressive function of generalizing phenomenological spirit, then the painter’s pursuit of the real world and the writer’s description of the real time can both be understood as meaning-generating activities focused on the present lifeworld.
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Received: 25 March 2024
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2025, Vol. 55 
