KnowledgeInSight
Phenomenology for Consciousness Studies
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Module 4 · Lesson 3

Flesh and Chiasm: Subject, World, and Nature

This lesson assesses what the ontology of flesh changes. Subject and world become differentiations of one fabric, and nature becomes a living whole rather than an object for a mind. You'll be able to explain Merleau-Ponty's lectures on nature, including his use of Uexküll's Umwelt, and assess the strengths of the flesh ontology and the main critiques of it. These ideas bear directly on current debates about the place of consciousness in nature and life.

What you will be able to do

  • Assess how the ontology of flesh reframes the relation among subject, world, and nature

0% of this lesson · 10 items · 1h 33m total · 1h 18m without the optional journal

Contents of this lesson10 items
  1. ReadingConsciousness in Nature: Life–Mind Continuity and Ecological Phenomenology3 min
  2. ReadingMerleau-Ponty's Nature Lectures and Uexküll's Umwelt4 min
  3. ReadingThe Flesh of the World: Subject, World, and Nature as One Fabric4 min
  4. ReadingCritiques of the Flesh Ontology: Irigaray, Levinas, and the Charge of Vagueness4 min
  5. ReadingWeighing the Flesh Ontology: Strengths, Responses, and Ecological and Enactive Uptake4 min
  6. Guided ReadingGuided Close Reading: Uexküll and Behavior as Melody in Merleau-Ponty's Nature Lectures7 min
  7. Guided ConversationAssess the Flesh Ontology12 min
  8. Journal · optionalJournal Entry on Flesh and Nature15 min
  9. Knowledge CheckSubject, World, and Nature10 min
  10. Graded QuizLate Merleau-Ponty: Flesh and Chiasm30 min

Reading 3 min

Consciousness in Nature: Life–Mind Continuity and Ecological Phenomenology

Where consciousness fits in nature depends on what nature is taken to be. If nature is only matter in motion, as modern physics describes it, then consciousness looks out of place. It's hard to see how experience could arise from, or belong to, a world with no experience in it. The problem is familiar from philosophy of mind: once nature is defined as what has no inside, minds become anomalies to be explained away or added on.

But that definition of nature is a choice, not a finding. It was made for good reasons: it let science measure and predict. It also left out much of what we meet in the living world. Animals move toward food and away from danger. Plants turn toward light. Organisms maintain themselves against their surroundings. None of this is consciousness in the human sense. All of it looks like something other than matter in motion.

Several research programs now start from this observation. Enactive approaches to mind hold that there is a deep continuity between life and mind. On Evan Thompson's account, the organizational features that make something alive, such as self-maintenance and a meaningful relation to its surroundings, are already the basic features of mind in a simpler form (Thompson 2007). On this view, consciousness isn't an anomaly in nature. It's a development of something life already has.

Ecological phenomenology makes a related claim from a different direction. David Abram argues that human perception and language arose within a living, sensuous world, and that modern thought has lost touch with this by treating nature as inert material (Abram 1996). The question, for Abram, isn't only how consciousness fits in nature. It's how we came to think it doesn't.

Maurice Merleau-Ponty's late work is a source for both programs. In his lectures on nature at the Collège de France (Merleau-Ponty [1995] 2003), and in his ontology of "flesh" (Merleau-Ponty [1964] 1968, ch. 4), he tried to describe nature as neither a pure object nor a product of mind. He drew on biology, including the study of how animals live in their surroundings, to argue that meaning is already present in living nature.

For a researcher, this gives you a question to ask of any theory of consciousness: what view of nature does it assume? A theory that begins with nature as meaningless matter will face a different problem from one that begins with nature as already alive and meaningful. Naming that assumption lets you see which problems a theory has created for itself, and whether they're the right ones to have.

References

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Reading 4 min

Merleau-Ponty's Nature Lectures and Uexküll's Umwelt

Introduction

Alongside his work on The Visible and the Invisible, Merleau-Ponty lectured on nature at the Collège de France. The lectures show his late ontology meeting the life sciences.

This reading gives an overview of the lectures and explains Jakob von Uexküll's concept of the Umwelt, which Merleau-Ponty took up. The lectures survive as course notes without a stable section numbering, so citations give the work's dates only.

The Lectures at Overview

Merleau-Ponty gave three courses on nature at the Collège de France between 1956 and 1960 (Merleau-Ponty [1995] 2003). They survive as his own notes and students' notes, compiled by Dominique Séglard and published in 1995.

The courses move in three stages.

  1. The concept of nature. The first course traces how Western philosophy has conceived nature, from Descartes and Kant to Schelling, Bergson, Husserl, and Whitehead (Descartes [1641] 2017; Kant [1781/1787] 1998; Bergson [1907] 1911; Husserl [1952] 1989). Merleau-Ponty is critical of the view that nature is pure object, mechanical and meaningless. He finds resources in Schelling, for whom nature is productive (Schelling [1799] 2004), and in Whitehead, who criticized the split between nature as science measures it and nature as experienced (Whitehead 1920).
  2. Animality. The second course turns to biology and animal behavior, including the work of Uexküll.
  3. The human body. The third course turns to the human body and its relation to animal life and to culture.

A thread runs through all three. Merleau-Ponty describes nature as what has a meaning without that meaning being posited by a thought. Nature, in this sense, is the whole of what exists and produces itself, including living beings, understood as having a meaning of its own rather than receiving it from a mind. It's neither a pure object for a mind nor a product of one.

Uexküll's Umwelt

The biologist Jakob von Uexküll offered Merleau-Ponty a way to make this concrete. Uexküll's key concept is the Umwelt (German, "surrounding world"): in Uexküll, the meaningful surroundings of an animal, made up of the features that matter to it through its perception and action (Uexküll [1934] 2010).

An animal's Umwelt isn't its physical environment, the sum of everything around it. It's the part of that environment that has meaning for the animal: what it can perceive and act on. Different animals in the same meadow live in different Umwelten.

Uexküll's most famous example is the tick. The table renders it.

Sign in the tick's UmweltThe tick's response
The smell of butyric acid, given off by mammals' skinIt drops from its perch
WarmthIt knows it has landed on a warm-blooded body
The touch of hair and skinIt moves to find bare skin and bites

Everything else in the forest is absent from the tick's world. Its Umwelt consists of a few signs, each linked to an action. What's in the Umwelt is defined by what the animal does. Uexküll calls this a functional circle: in Uexküll, the linking of perception and action, in which a perceived sign triggers an action that changes what is perceived next.

Behavior as Melody

Uexküll also described an animal and its Umwelt with a musical image. Behavior as melody is Uexküll's image, taken up by Merleau-Ponty, for an animal's behavior and surroundings as one whole, each part of which has its meaning from the whole, as each note does in a melody. Merleau-Ponty developed it: an animal's behavior and its surroundings form one theme, and the theme is present in each of its parts.

Conclusion

In three courses between 1956 and 1960, Merleau-Ponty examined the concept of nature, animal life, and the human body. He described nature as having a meaning not posited by a thought. Uexküll's Umwelt, the meaningful surroundings defined by an animal's perception and action, gave him an example: the tick lives in a world of a few signs, and behavior forms a whole like a melody.

Key Terms

  • Nature: In Merleau-Ponty's lectures, the whole of what exists and produces itself, including living beings, understood as having a meaning of its own rather than receiving it from a mind.
  • Umwelt: In Uexküll, the meaningful surroundings of an animal, made up of the features that matter to it through its perception and action.
  • Functional circle: In Uexküll, the linking of perception and action, in which a perceived sign triggers an action that changes what is perceived next.
  • Behavior as melody: Uexküll's image, taken up by Merleau-Ponty, for an animal's behavior and surroundings as one whole, each part of which has its meaning from the whole, as each note does in a melody.

References

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Reading 4 min

The Flesh of the World: Subject, World, and Nature as One Fabric

Introduction

The Nature lectures and the ontology of flesh were developed side by side. Together, they propose a different picture of how subject, world, and nature relate.

This reading explains nature as neither pure object nor product of mind, the flesh of the world, and the idea that subject and world are differentiations of one fabric. Citations give each work's dates only.

Nature: Neither Object Nor Product of Mind

Merleau-Ponty's lectures criticize two views of nature (Merleau-Ponty [1995] 2003).

  1. Nature as pure object. On this view, nature is matter in motion, fully described by physics, with no meaning of its own. Living beings are complicated machines. This is the view that makes consciousness look out of place.
  2. Nature as product of mind. On this view, which Merleau-Ponty finds in some idealist philosophy, nature's order is supplied by the mind that knows it. Nature has meaning only because a subject gives it one.

Both views set nature over against a subject. Merleau-Ponty's alternative is a third conception. Nature, in Merleau-Ponty's lectures, is the whole of what exists and produces itself, including living beings, understood as having a meaning of its own rather than receiving it from a mind.

The first view puts all meaning on the side of the subject and none in nature. The second makes nature depend on the subject. Merleau-Ponty rejects both. Nature has a meaning that no one gave it, as the tick's Umwelt has a structure that no mind imposed.

The Flesh of the World

The late ontology supplies the concept that holds this view together. Flesh (chair), in Merleau-Ponty's late ontology, is what the perceiving body and the perceived world share, neither matter nor mind nor substance, but the general visibility and tangibility in which both take part (Merleau-Ponty [1964] 1968, ch. 4).

Merleau-Ponty speaks of the flesh of the body and of the flesh of the world: in Merleau-Ponty, the world's own perceptibility and articulation, of the same kind as the perceiving body's, which makes the world able to be perceived and to be meaningful without a mind supplying its meaning. The world isn't inert material. It's already visible, tangible, and structured, and the body belongs to it.

Differentiation, Not Separation

This changes how subject and world relate. They aren't two things that must be connected. Each is a differentiation: in Merleau-Ponty's late ontology, a distinct but related articulation of one fabric, as the two surfaces of a folded cloth are distinct parts of one material.

The subject, on this view, is a place where the flesh of the world folds back on itself, so that the world is perceived from within. A perceiving animal is such a fold. So is a human perceiver. The shift here is from a subject facing a world to a world that includes its perceivers as parts of itself.

That's why the Nature lectures and the flesh ontology fit together. If nature has its own meaning, and if perceivers are differentiations within it, then consciousness isn't an anomaly in nature. It's one of nature's articulations, continuous with animal life.

"Eye and Mind" Revisited

Merleau-Ponty's last essay, "Eye and Mind," gives an example (Merleau-Ponty [1961] 1993). The painter, he argues there, doesn't copy the world from outside. The painter's vision is a place where the visible becomes aware of itself. Painters have reported feeling that the things they paint look at them. Merleau-Ponty reads this as a sign of the entanglement flesh names: the seer and the seen are differentiations of one visible world.

Conclusion

Merleau-Ponty rejects nature as pure object and as product of mind. The flesh of the world is the world's own perceptibility and articulation. Subject and world are differentiations of one fabric, not two things to connect, and consciousness is one of nature's articulations.

Key Terms

  • Flesh (chair): In Merleau-Ponty's late ontology, what the perceiving body and the perceived world share, neither matter nor mind nor substance, but the general visibility and tangibility in which both take part.
  • Flesh of the world: In Merleau-Ponty, the world's own perceptibility and articulation, of the same kind as the perceiving body's, which makes the world able to be perceived and to be meaningful without a mind supplying its meaning.
  • Differentiation: In Merleau-Ponty's late ontology, a distinct but related articulation of one fabric, as the two surfaces of a folded cloth are distinct parts of one material.
  • Nature: In Merleau-Ponty's lectures, the whole of what exists and produces itself, including living beings, understood as having a meaning of its own rather than receiving it from a mind.

References

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Reading 4 min

Critiques of the Flesh Ontology: Irigaray, Levinas, and the Charge of Vagueness

Introduction

The flesh ontology has been influential, and it has drawn sustained criticism. Three critiques have shaped how it's read: Luce Irigaray's, Emmanuel Levinas's, and a more general charge that "flesh" is too vague to do theoretical work.

This reading explains each critique. Citations give each work's dates only.

Irigaray: Sexual Difference and the Flesh

Luce Irigaray's essay "The Invisible of the Flesh" is a close reading of "The Intertwining—The Chiasm" (Irigaray [1984] 1993; Merleau-Ponty [1964] 1968, ch. 4). She takes Merleau-Ponty's account seriously and argues that it leaves something out.

Her central claim concerns reversibility: in Merleau-Ponty, the relation by which touching and touched, or seeing and seen, can exchange roles, a relation always imminent but never fully realized. Merleau-Ponty's model is one hand touching another hand of the same body, or a seer who is also visible. On Irigaray's reading, this model describes a closed circuit: a body relating to itself, or to what is like itself. It can't register a relation to an other who is genuinely different, and in particular it can't register sexual difference. Sexual difference, in Irigaray, is the difference between the sexes understood as irreducible, so that neither can be taken as the measure or norm of the other.

Irigaray also argues that Merleau-Ponty's account privileges vision and forgets an earlier, tactile life, including the prenatal life in the mother's body, which comes before any seer and is never visible to it. The "invisible" of the flesh, on her reading, includes what the ontology can't see about its own origins. Her critique holds that the flesh ontology, for all its claims to overcome the subject, still takes one kind of body as its model.

Levinas: Otherness and Reversibility

Emmanuel Levinas's criticism comes from ethics. In a short essay on Merleau-Ponty, he examines the claim that the relation to another person has the same structure as the reversibility of touching hands, as in a handshake (Levinas [1987] 1994).

Levinas objects that this assimilates the other to the self. If my relation to another is modeled on my hand touching my own hand, the other becomes a variation of me. For Levinas, the relation to the other person is asymmetrical. The other comes to me from beyond my world and makes an ethical demand that I can't reverse or return. Alterity, in Levinas, is the radical otherness of the other person, which can't be reduced to a variation of the self or included within a shared whole. Reversibility, on this view, is exactly what the ethical relation isn't.

The Charge of Vagueness

The third critique is less attached to one author. The charge of vagueness is the criticism that Merleau-Ponty uses "flesh" so widely, and so metaphorically, that it can't distinguish anything or be assessed as a concept. Merleau-Ponty uses "flesh" for the body, the world, the relation between them, language, and ideas. Critics argue that a term used this widely risks meaning nothing in particular. If everything is flesh, the concept doesn't distinguish anything from anything else.

The charge draws support from the text's state. The Visible and the Invisible is unfinished, and many of its formulations are compressed or metaphorical. Critics ask whether "flesh" is a concept at all, or an evocative image that can't be tested.

What the Critiques Share

The three critiques come from different directions but press on one point. Each asks whether the flesh ontology does what it claims. Irigaray and Levinas argue that reversibility, the ontology's central structure, can't account for real difference: between the sexes, and between self and other. The charge of vagueness asks whether the ontology has a structure precise enough to be assessed at all.

Conclusion

Irigaray argues that the flesh ontology models relation on a body relating to itself and so can't register sexual difference, and that it forgets its tactile origins. Levinas argues that modeling the relation to others on reversibility reduces the other's alterity. The charge of vagueness holds that "flesh" is used too widely to do theoretical work.

Key Terms

  • Sexual difference: In Irigaray, the difference between the sexes understood as irreducible, so that neither can be taken as the measure or norm of the other.
  • Alterity: In Levinas, the radical otherness of the other person, which can't be reduced to a variation of the self or included within a shared whole.
  • Reversibility: In Merleau-Ponty, the relation by which touching and touched, or seeing and seen, can exchange roles, a relation always imminent but never fully realized.
  • Charge of vagueness: The criticism that Merleau-Ponty uses "flesh" so widely, and so metaphorically, that it can't distinguish anything or be assessed as a concept.

References

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Reading 4 min

Weighing the Flesh Ontology: Strengths, Responses, and Ecological and Enactive Uptake

Introduction

An ontology left unfinished at its author's death can't be assessed as a complete system. It can be assessed by what it makes possible and by how well it answers its critics.

This reading sets out the flesh ontology's strengths, weighs its claims against the objections, and notes its uptake in ecological phenomenology and enactive approaches to mind. Citations give each work's dates.

Strengths

Two strengths are widely recognized.

  1. It overcomes subject–object dualism at the level of starting point. The flesh ontology doesn't begin with a subject facing an object. It begins with a shared fabric in which perceiver and perceived are differentiations. That answers the problem Merleau-Ponty found in his own earlier work (Merleau-Ponty [1964] 1968, Working Notes, July 1959).
  2. It grounds continuity between mind and life. If nature has a meaning of its own (Merleau-Ponty [1995] 2003), and perceivers are articulations within it, consciousness needn't be an anomaly in nature. It can be understood as continuous with the meaningful behavior of living things.

Claims, Objections, and Responses

The table weighs the ontology's main claims against the objections and against responses defenders have offered.

ClaimObjectionPossible response
Perceiver and perceived are reversible within one fleshIrigaray: reversibility models relation on a body relating to itself, and can't register sexual difference (Irigaray [1984] 1993)Reversibility is never complete. The gap (écart) keeps difference in play, though whether it's enough for sexual difference is disputed
The relation to others has the structure of the chiasmLevinas: modeling the other on reversibility reduces the other's alterity (Levinas [1987] 1994)The chiasm includes divergence, so the other is never coincident with me. Critics reply that divergence isn't asymmetry
"Flesh" names a general way of beingThe charge of vagueness: the term is used too widely to do theoretical work"Flesh" is specified by reversibility and divergence, which can be described in cases
Nature has a meaning not posited by a thoughtRisk of reading this as the claim that nature is consciousMeaning in nature is structure in behavior, like the tick's Umwelt, not consciousness everywhere

None of the responses settles the debate. They show that each objection can be met by pointing to parts of the ontology, especially divergence, and that whether those parts are enough remains open.

Uptake

The ontology's influence is clearest in two fields.

Eco-phenomenology is the application of phenomenology to the relation between human beings and the natural world, often drawing on Merleau-Ponty's flesh to describe perception as participation in a living world. David Abram's The Spell of the Sensuous is a well-known example. Abram argues that perception is a reciprocal exchange between a sensing body and a sensuous world, and that human language grew out of that exchange (Abram 1996).

Enactive approaches to mind draw on the continuity of life and mind. Evan Thompson's Mind in Life argues that the organization that makes something alive, its self-maintenance and its meaningful relation to its surroundings, is continuous with the organization of mind (Thompson 2007). Thompson draws on Merleau-Ponty and on the biology Merleau-Ponty read, and his account can be seen as developing the Nature lectures' claim that meaning is already present in life.

Core Terms at a Glance

TermDefinition
NatureIn Merleau-Ponty's lectures, the whole of what exists and produces itself, including living beings, understood as having a meaning of its own rather than receiving it from a mind.
UmweltIn Uexküll, the meaningful surroundings of an animal, made up of the features that matter to it through its perception and action.
Flesh of the worldIn Merleau-Ponty, the world's own perceptibility and articulation, of the same kind as the perceiving body's, which makes the world able to be perceived and to be meaningful without a mind supplying its meaning.
DifferentiationIn Merleau-Ponty's late ontology, a distinct but related articulation of one fabric, as the two surfaces of a folded cloth are distinct parts of one material.
Eco-phenomenologyThe application of phenomenology to the relation between human beings and the natural world, often drawing on Merleau-Ponty's flesh to describe perception as participation in a living world.

Conclusion

The flesh ontology overcomes dualism at the level of starting point and grounds continuity between mind and life. Each major objection can be met by pointing to divergence and to the ontology's structure, but whether those responses suffice is still debated. The ontology's clearest uptake is in eco-phenomenology and in enactive approaches to life and mind.

Key Terms

  • Eco-phenomenology: The application of phenomenology to the relation between human beings and the natural world, often drawing on Merleau-Ponty's flesh to describe perception as participation in a living world.
  • Nature: In Merleau-Ponty's lectures, the whole of what exists and produces itself, including living beings, understood as having a meaning of its own rather than receiving it from a mind.
  • Umwelt: In Uexküll, the meaningful surroundings of an animal, made up of the features that matter to it through its perception and action.
  • Flesh of the world: In Merleau-Ponty, the world's own perceptibility and articulation, of the same kind as the perceiving body's, which makes the world able to be perceived and to be meaningful without a mind supplying its meaning.
  • Differentiation: In Merleau-Ponty's late ontology, a distinct but related articulation of one fabric, as the two surfaces of a folded cloth are distinct parts of one material.

References

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Guided Reading 7 min

Guided Close Reading: Uexküll and Behavior as Melody in Merleau-Ponty's Nature Lectures

Introduction

In his lectures on animality, Merleau-Ponty spends many pages on the biologist Jakob von Uexküll. The discussion turns on one image: an animal's behavior is like a melody. This reading works through the passage in three moves, notes how it anticipates later ideas of sense-making, flags a common misreading, and ends with a model paraphrase and its link to the flesh ontology.

Locating the Passage

The passage is in the second course on nature, on animality, in the section devoted to Uexküll (Merleau-Ponty [1995] 2003). The course notes have no stable section numbering, so find the passage by its subject: the discussion of the Umwelt and the melody.

No free version of the lectures is available, and no free encyclopedia entry covers them in depth. Key phrases below are paraphrased, with German and French terms where they matter.

Before you start, note the setting. Merleau-Ponty has criticized the view of nature as pure object. He now looks to biology for a description of living beings that is neither mechanical nor dependent on a mind.

Walking Through the Argument

Step 1: The Umwelt is not a set of stimuli

Merleau-Ponty begins with Uexküll's concept of the Umwelt: the meaningful surroundings of an animal, made up of the features that matter to it through its perception and action (Uexküll [1934] 2010).

Notice what this rules out. A mechanistic biology treats an animal's surroundings as a set of stimuli, each causing a response. On that view, the tick responds to butyric acid as a machine responds to a switch. Uexküll, as Merleau-Ponty reads him, describes something different. The tick's surroundings aren't a collection of separate stimuli. They form a world, organized by what matters to the tick. The butyric acid is a sign within that world, not a physical cause acting on it from outside.

Step 2: The animal's behavior and its world form one theme

The second move connects the animal and its world. Uexküll's functional circle links perception and action: a perceived sign triggers an action, and the action changes what's perceived next. Merleau-Ponty draws the consequence. The animal and its Umwelt aren't two things, an organism and an environment, that interact. They form one whole, which he describes as a theme.

The shift here is from organism and environment to organism-in-its-world. The Umwelt exists only through the animal's behavior, and the behavior has meaning only within the Umwelt. Neither can be described without the other.

Step 3: The melody image shows the whole in each part

The third move takes up the image. Uexküll compares behavior to a melody. Merleau-Ponty develops the comparison: the Umwelt is like a melody that sings itself.

What does the image capture? In a melody, each note has its meaning from the whole. The first note already anticipates the last, and the last note completes what the first began. The melody isn't assembled from notes one by one. It's present as a whole in each of its parts. Animal behavior has the same structure. Each action belongs to a whole pattern of life, and the pattern is present in each action. And a melody that sings itself needs no composer standing outside it. The meaning of animal behavior isn't imposed by a mind. It's in the behavior.

How This Anticipates Sense-Making

The passage anticipates an idea now central to enactive approaches to mind. Evan Thompson and others describe living beings as engaged in sense-making: an organism's bringing forth of a meaningful world through its self-maintaining activity, so that things show up as relevant or irrelevant, good or bad, for it (Thompson 2007).

The connection is direct. Uexküll's Umwelt is a world of meanings defined by what the animal does. Thompson's sense-making describes the same thing from the organism's side: the activity through which a world of meaning comes to exist for it. Merleau-Ponty's reading of Uexküll sits between them, showing how a phenomenologist can treat biology as describing meaning rather than only mechanism.

Key Considerations

Terms and translations.

TermLanguageWhat it names
UmweltGermanThe animal's meaningful surroundings
UmgebungGermanThe physical environment, as an observer would describe it
FunktionskreisGermanThe functional circle linking perception and action
mélodieFrenchThe image of behavior as a whole present in each part

A common misreading. The most common misreading takes the melody image as a claim that animals are conscious in a human way: that the tick hears its own melody, or has an inner life like ours.

  • The image concerns structure, not experience. A melody's whole is present in each note whether or not anyone is listening.
  • Merleau-Ponty avoids both extremes. He rejects the tick as a machine, and he doesn't attribute human consciousness to it.
  • Meaning isn't the same as awareness. Behavior can be meaningful, organized by what matters to the animal, without the animal reflecting on that meaning.

Summary

The passage moves from the Umwelt as a world rather than a set of stimuli, through the animal and its world as one theme, to the melody image, in which the whole is present in each part. Here is a model paraphrase of the argument to check your reading against:

An animal's surroundings aren't a collection of stimuli acting on it. They form an Umwelt, a world of what matters to the animal, defined by what it perceives and does. The animal and its Umwelt form one whole, like a theme, since neither can be described without the other. Uexküll's image of a melody captures this: each note has its meaning from the whole, and the whole is present in each note. The Umwelt is a melody that sings itself, so its meaning isn't imposed by a mind outside it. This describes structure, not human-like consciousness (Merleau-Ponty [1995] 2003).

The link to the flesh ontology follows. If animal behavior has a meaning that no mind gave it, then nature isn't pure object. And if the animal and its world are one whole, they are differentiations of one fabric, not two things to be connected. The melody and the flesh make the same point in different registers: meaning and perceiving belong to the world itself.

References

  • Merleau-Ponty, Maurice. (1995) 2003. Nature: Course Notes from the Collège de France. Compiled by Dominique Séglard. Translated by Robert Vallier. Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press.
  • Thompson, Evan. 2007. Mind in Life: Biology, Phenomenology, and the Sciences of Mind. Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press.
  • Uexküll, Jakob von. (1934) 2010. A Foray into the Worlds of Animals and Humans, with A Theory of Meaning. Translated by Joseph D. O'Neil. Posthumanities 12. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.

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Guided Conversation 12 min

Assess the Flesh Ontology

This conversation asks you to state what the flesh ontology changes, evaluate one critique, describe an animal's Umwelt, and consider what the ontology means for a science of consciousness. It ends by planning a journal entry on that question.

You'll have this conversation with Claude, using your own Claude account. The link opens a new chat with the prompt already filled in; press send to start. If the chat opens empty, copy the prompt below and paste it in.

Run this conversation in whichever assistant you already use:

Open in ClaudeOpen in ChatGPT
Claude desktop app

To use another LLM, simply copy and paste the prompt into its chat window.

Show the full prompt (it lists misreadings to watch for, so skip it if you would rather come to the conversation fresh) 
Hands-on Activity: Assess the Flesh Ontology (about 12 minutes)

Note to the learner: press send to start. Everything below is facilitator guidance for Claude. It lists misreadings to watch for, so skip it if you'd rather come to the conversation fresh.

Claude, please facilitate a reflective dialogue with me. I'm a graduate-level learner studying Merleau-Ponty's ontology of flesh and his account of nature. Follow this guidance for the whole conversation.

GOAL
Help me assess how the ontology of flesh reframes the relation among subject, world, and nature by weighing its claims and critiques and applying them to an animal's Umwelt.

HOW TO RUN THE CONVERSATION
- Ask one question at a time, then wait for my reply. Keep each of your turns under about 120 words.
- Don't lecture. Explain a point only when I need it to continue, then return to my own assessment and example.
- Be patient, curious, and collegial. Encourage me to take and defend a position. Define terms of art briefly on first use.
- Plain conversation only: no web search, files, or artifacts.
- Aim for about 12 minutes. If I can't think of an animal, suggest a pet, a bird at a feeder, or an insect. If I seem uncertain, shorten the conversation to 5-7 minutes. Always reach topic 4.
- Start now. Open with one or two warm sentences: this is an exploratory conversation, not a test; there's no settled answer here, and my own assessment is what matters. Then ask the first question.

TOPICS, IN ORDER
1. What changes. Ask what, in my own words, the flesh ontology changes about the relation between me and the world. Help me state that subject and world become differentiations of one fabric, rather than two things to connect. Introduce the flesh of the world, and nature as neither pure object nor product of mind.
2. One critique. Ask me to choose one critique (Irigaray, Levinas, or the charge of vagueness) and say how strong it is. Help me state the critique accurately and weigh it. Introduce the responses that appeal to divergence (écart), and note that whether they suffice is debated.
3. An animal's Umwelt. Ask me to pick an animal I've observed and say how Merleau-Ponty would describe its Umwelt. Help me identify the few features that matter to the animal and link each to an action. Introduce Uexküll's tick and the melody image, in which behavior and world form one whole.
4. Closing reflection. Ask whether the flesh ontology helps or hinders a science of consciousness, and have me note my view for a journal entry. Help me give a reason. Either view is acceptable.

POSITIONS TO KEEP ACCURATE
- In the Nature lectures, nature is neither a pure object nor a product of mind. It has a meaning not posited by a thought.
- Uexküll's Umwelt is an animal's meaningful surroundings, defined by its perception and action. Behavior is like a melody, with the whole present in each part.
- The flesh of the world is the world's own perceptibility and articulation. Subject and world are differentiations of one fabric.
- Irigaray argues that reversibility can't register sexual difference. Levinas argues that it reduces the other's alterity. Critics charge that "flesh" is too vague.
- The ontology's uptake includes eco-phenomenology and enactive approaches to life and mind.

MISREADINGS TO CORRECT GENTLY
Keep every point tied to my own assessment and example.
- The flesh ontology as panpsychism. Meaning in nature is structure in behavior, not consciousness everywhere.
- The melody image as a claim that animals think as we do. It concerns the structure of behavior, not human-like awareness.
- The Umwelt as the animal's physical environment. It's the part of the environment that matters to the animal.
- The critiques as refutations. They're live objections, and responses exist.
- Flesh as the body's tissue. Flesh is shared by body and world.

TO FINISH
After I state my view, close in one short turn:
- Affirm one precise observation I made, in my own words where possible.
- Suggest one or two next steps that fit how the conversation went. Possible steps: write the journal entry; compare Merleau-Ponty's reading of Uexküll with current work on sense-making; weigh a second critique against the first; review what the flesh of the world means and paraphrase it in my own words; review the terms nature, Umwelt, and the flesh of the world; retry the conversation with a pet or a bird as the example.
- Restate my view and its reason on its own line, labeled "Journal note," so I can copy it as the focus for a journal entry.

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Journal 15 minOptional

Journal Entry on Flesh and Nature

Overview

You'll write a 300–500 word entry and keep it in your journal. This activity is optional. The entry assesses the flesh ontology's reframing of subject, world, and nature.

If you've written earlier entries on the self-critique or on reversibility, you can draw on any of them.

Writing Prompt

In 300–500 words, explain how the ontology of flesh reframes the relation among subject, world, and nature; evaluate one critique of it; and state one implication for how consciousness fits into nature.

Steps

  1. Explain how flesh reframes subject, world, and nature. Say what changes when subject and world are differentiations of one fabric.
  2. Evaluate one critique. Name it, state it, and weigh it.
  3. State an implication for how consciousness fits in nature. Make it specific.

Self-Check

Before you finish, check that your entry:

  • Explains the reframing of subject, world, and nature accurately
  • Evaluates one named critique, with a reason
  • States a specific implication for the place of consciousness in nature

Nothing is uploaded. Write in your own notebook or document and keep it.

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Knowledge Check 10 min

Subject, World, and Nature

This ungraded knowledge check assesses your understanding of how the ontology of flesh reframes subject, world, and nature. You'll be asked about the Nature lectures, Uexküll's Umwelt, the flesh of the world, and the major critiques of the flesh ontology.

Note: Use this to test yourself, review the feedback on any questions you miss, and retry until you feel confident before moving forward.

5 questions · ungraded · retry as often as you like

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Graded Quiz 30 min

Late Merleau-Ponty: Flesh and Chiasm

This graded quiz assesses your understanding of Merleau-Ponty's late philosophy. You'll be asked about his self-critique, flesh, reversibility, and the chiasm, and the reframing of subject, world, and nature.

Note: Aim for a score of 80 percent or higher. If you score lower, use the feedback to review the topics you missed, then retake the quiz.

10 questions · target score 80% · 3 forms, rotated on each attempt

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