The Parent-Infant Relation as a Philosophical Basis for an Originary Peace between Self and Other

The Parent-Infant Relation as a Philosophical Basis for an Originary Peace between Self and Other Abstract: Philosophers in the Cartesian tradition (Descartes, Kant, Husserl) implicitly presuppose the adult as their starting point for describing the self and the self s relation to the other. In these accounts that prioritize self-consciousness and autonomy over embodiment, the other is primarily represented by a cogito, and thus understood as an alter ego, another me. While accounts of intersubjectivity by Hegel, Heidegger, and Sartre have attempted to escape this intellectualist tradition, they still retain the assumption of adulthood; thus, the self-other relation is generally conceived in negative terms a battle to the death, an inauthentic mode of being, and a negation of my freedom. Drawing on Levinas and Merleau-Ponty, in this paper I argue that a phenomenological analysis of the parent-infant relation both (1) decenters the autonomous, self-reflective, Cartesian self and (2) preserves the alterity of the other while establishing an originary self-other relation that is peaceful, creative, and dynamic. Word Count: 5000 words (not including abstract, notes, or works cited) Philosophers in the Cartesian tradition implicitly presuppose the mature adult as their starting point for describing subjectivity and the self s relation to the other. In these accounts that prioritize self-consciousness and autonomy over embodiment, the cogito represents the other as an alter ego, another me. While the accounts of intersubjectivity by Hegel, Heidegger, and Sartre attempt to escape this intellectualist tradition, they still begin with the assumption of an adult, self-reflective subject; thus, the self-other relation is generally conceived in negative terms a battle to the death, an inauthentic mode of being, and a negation of my freedom. Drawing on Emmanuel Levinas and Maurice Merleau-Ponty, in this paper I argue that a phenomenological analysis of the parent-infant relation both (1) decenters the autonomous, self-reflective, Cartesian self and (2) establishes an originary self-other relation that is peaceful, creative, and dynamic. In part one, I briefly recount the intellectualist account of the cogito set forth by Descartes and Kant wherein a rational, self-reflective self stands as the center of knowledge, giving mind priority over embodiment and interpersonal experience. Second, I review the ways in which Hegel, Heidegger, and Sartre offer improvements to the Cartesian analysis of the self 1

but then continue to prioritize knowledge or individual freedom as the basis of the self-encounter relation, thereby concluding that the other provides no positive contribution to the identity of the self. Third and finally, I offer an account of the subject that begins with childhood, which has far-reaching implications for how we understand the significance of the self-other relation. 1. The Cogito in Descartes and Kant Descartes famously not only sets forth a mind-body dualism that relegates embodiment to an ancillary role in subjectivity but also establishes the cogito as the foundation for epistemological certainty. Cogito ergo sum and even more profound, he states: I am therefore precisely nothing but a thinking thing. 1 The res cogitans is fundamentally opposed to the res extensa. Neither the imagination nor the body, the latter of which is like a machine and even described as nothingness, 2 play a role in my essential selfhood or in my understanding of the world. Rather the mind alone processes input much like a computer in order to generate representations and judgments about external objects. 3 Kant acknowledges the importance of space and time as necessary conditions for the possibility of experience and knowledge; however, like Descartes, the I think, which stands at the heart of his account of subjectivity and provides the necessary unity to all experience, remains representative of an autonomous, free, and self-reflective subject that encounters objects 1 Descartes, Meditations on First Philosophy, 65, cf. 79, 97. 2 Descartes, Discourse on Method, 32; Meditations on First Philosophy, 82. Merleau-Ponty is correct that for Descartes the finite has nothing positive about it (51). 3 Bodies are not, properly speaking, perceived by the senses or by the faculty of imagination, but by the intellect alone (Descartes, Meditations on First Philosophy, 69). My essence consists entirely in my being a thinking thing.... It is certain that I am really distinct from my body, and can exist without it (97). For more on Descartes s cognitivism and how it continues to shape discourse in cognitive neuroscience and philosophy of mind, see Evans, The Multivoiced Body, 95-109, 320n46; Rowlands, The New Science of the Mind, 21-22. 2

on the basis of rational thought. As in Descartes, in Kant all thinking begins in selfconsciousness, all representations of objects proceed out a representation of myself. 4 The upshot of both Descartes s and Kant s projects is a transcendental subject detached from any context, capable of understanding the world from an objective viewpoint a view from everywhere and nowhere (PP x, 72/iv, 75) through pure reason. This isolated subject (BT 368), as Heidegger points out, has no sense of being-in-the-world or presupposes a world without recognizing it (128, 368). For Descartes and Kant, the work of representation establishes a wall between the self-reflective self and the world (see PP 38-39) and fails to acknowledge that all thinking is a thinking of something, that all reflection bears upon an unreflective experience, as Merleau-Ponty writes (x-xi/iv; cf. BT 368). The Cartesian tradition results in damaging implications for the place of the body and of other persons. The rationalist, disembodied account of knowledge in Descartes and Kant suggests that the I is capable of presenting an object or another person to its self without remainder (PP 72): the object as representation is reduced to a pure present and without mystery (TI 124; cf. 125; CPP 157-58). The other is reduced to the same, and still further, the other plays absolutely no role in the constitution of self and development of knowledge. 5 In short, the other is understood as a problem How can I know with certainty that that piece of 4 For the role of the I think in Kant s transcendental unity of apperception, see especially Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, B131-37, A341/B400. Levinas, critical of Kant s account, writes, Representation is pure spontaneity.... The fact that in representation the same defines the other without being determined by the other justifies the Kantian conception according to which the unity of transcendental apperception remains an empty form in the midst of its synthetic work.... The I think is the pulsation of rational thought. The identity of the same unaltered and unalterable in its relations with the other is in fact the I of representation (TI 125-26). 5 For this reason, Levinas readily suggests that modern epistemologies get no further than Plato s account of recollection, which suggests that knowledge is gained not by any external aid but simply by looking inside oneself (TI 126, 207). For his part, Merleau-Ponty is similarly critical of the Cartesian tradition and Platonic recollection when he denies the view that other people are nothing but the projection of what one knows of oneself or that my words simply give other people a chance to remember what they already know (CAL 3, 4). Elsewhere, Merleau- Ponty writes that language is not a closed system, for it would follow from this that language can teach us nothing, and that it can at the most arouse in us new combinations of those meanings already possessed by us. But this is just what the experience of language refutes (PP 452/446; italics mine; cf. 413/407; VI 13/29). 3

self-propelled flesh over there is really another cogito like me and not a mannequin? or the question of the other is not entertained at all since the other, like the physical world, is not central to the obtainment of knowledge. 6 2. Self and Other in Hegel, Heidegger, and Sartre Hegel, Heidegger, and Sartre have offered some of the most influential accounts of intersubjectivity in their attempts to critique the isolated Cartesian subject. In Hegel, my selfconsciousness is dependent on the other s existence, and ultimately, on my recognition of the other as another human being (BN 320, 321). However, in Hegel s account the self s encounter with the other is still on the basis of knowledge, no distinction is initially made between other subjects and objects in the world (322), and the priority remains the self s pursuit of freedom as an autonomous Self-Consciousness. 7 Heidegger criticizes Descartes s so-called problem of other minds and Husserl s account of empathy, both of which begin with an isolated subject and treat the other as a mere projection of oneself (BT 154, 162). Heidegger s account of the ontological structure Mitsein (being-with) stresses that since I am always already in-the-world with others, and not closed off, the presence of others is already constitutive for one s own Dasein. (154). The problem of other minds is not a problem at all, for I already live in a world that includes interaction with others. Rather than an account of intersubjectivity based in knowledge, others are first those 6 Husserl could also be included in this Cartesian tradition. For Husserl the problem of other minds is still a problem because he begins with separate, solipsistic minds and then attempts to know the other ego through theoretical reflection (S 93-94/117). Husserl s argument cannot get off the ground, because he starts with the stream of my pure consciousness and with a sharp distinction between pure others and man in the world (Husserl, Cartesian Meditations, 89, 107). By making the transcendental sphere of peculiar ownness his starting point (93), Husserl must assume the very idea (e.g., the other) that he is trying to describe. Husserl cannot account for the alterity of the other that stands before me in this unique bit of flesh and bone. See also Hass, Merleau-Ponty s Philosophy, 222n11. 7 Ibid., 15, 13. See Hegel, Phenomenology of Spirit, 190, 191. Like Kant, Hegel s ethical theory is based on the value of freedom or rational selfhood (Wood, Hegel s Ethical Thought, 31; cf. 28, 36, 43). 4

from whom, for the most part, one does not distinguish oneself (154). I do not need a representational model to prove the other is a person, for I can see it in his or her actions. Yet Heidegger seems to prioritize the ontological structure of Mitsein to the point of disregarding ontic, everyday encounters with others. While he offers some practical examples of encountering others, Mitsein reduces interpersonal encounters to a social generality, and thus, renders impossible any concrete connection between my being and a particular Other (BN 335). 8 Sartre deepens Heidegger s emphasis on being-in-the-world and goes beyond Hegel and Descartes by stressing that the other not an object reduced by my representations and is encountered neither as a constitutive factor of our knowledge of the world nor as a constitutive factor of our knowledge of the self (BN 339). Sartre presents an embodied and affective subject that encounters the other, one that realizes the other through uneasiness (367). Yet while Sartre undercuts the priority of the Cartesian cogito by granting primacy to the pre-reflective consciousness and acknowledges the factical givens of my social and cultural context (xi, 13, 659, 668), he maintains the Cartesian and Kantian emphasis of a consciousness that is radically free, a pure spontaneity, and a self-creation (16, 19, 20). For Sartre, consciousness is selfdetermined and not hindered by any historical given; rather, one s facticity, motivations, and emotions are only made meaningful through consciousness s free intentional acts. 9 Thus, Sartre offers no account of passivity whereby the other plays a positive role in the self s constitution. 8 Heidegger is not really concerned about ontic beings but with Being, not with anthropology or psychology but with fundamental ontology (BT 10). In his Lettre á Jean Wahl (1937), Heidegger writes unequivocally, The question that preoccupies me is not the existence of man; it is being as such (UH 9n13). Cf. Heidegger, Letter on Humanism, 193; Rockmore, Heidegger and French Philosophy, xvii. Levinas writes, The relationship with the Other is indeed posed by Heidegger as a structure of Dasein, but practically it plays no role in the drama of being (TO 40/18). Similarly, Merleau-Ponty suggests Heidegger lacks... an affirmation of the individual (SNS 69/120). 9 see BN xiv, 15-16, 19, 508, 564, 571, 708-09; Sartre, Existentialism is a Humanism, 295, 306, 309; Compton, Sartre, Merleau-Ponty, and Human Freedom, 178, 182, 189; Davenport, Levinas s Agapeistic Metaphysics of Morals, 337, 348-49; Catalano, A Commentary on Jean-Paul Sartre s Being and Nothingness, 42; Solomon, Sartre on Emotions, 212; Hall, Freedom: Merleau-Ponty s Critique of Sartre, 193. 5

Hegel, Heidegger, and Sartre offer improvements yet retain certain elements of the Cartesian tradition. They recognize the problems in Descartes s account of subjectivity, which makes embodiment and intersubjectivity secondary to the establishment of the autonomous, selfreflective self. However, and further troubling, their solutions generally result in a negative or indifferent account of intersubjectivity. In Hegel s account of recognition, particularly on Kojève s reading, Self-Consciousness arises when the human transcends itself and seeks Desire. The self is willing to risk his or her own life and fight to the death for the sake of the Desire of the other, that is, to be recognized as valuable by the other person. 10 Although this desire for recognition requires an intrinsic dependence on the other for validation, it remains focused on the self and grounded in violence, competition, and fear of the other. My desire for the other is a desire to negate, to assimilate, to make its own, to subjugate, the other Desire as Desire. 11 The master-slave dialectic involves a fight to the death for pure prestige. 12 To the master, Man is human only to the extent that he wants to impose himself on another man ; to the slave, all work is coerced and stimulated by fear of death. 13 Hegel revitalizes a Hobbesian view that the human is principally motivated by competition and the desire for glory. 14 While Heidegger does discuss solicitude and leaping ahead of the other as positive modes of intersubjectivity, which make the I and the other authentically bound together (BT 158, 159), these discussions are brief. Heidegger is hardly concerned with these themes, stating that to discuss positive solicitude would take us beyond the limits of this investigation (159). 10 Kojève, Introduction to the Reading of Hegel, 6, 7. Cf. Hegel, Phenomenology of Spirit, 187. If this sounds strangely similar to Lacan, it is likely because he was a student of Kojève for a number of his courses. 11 Kojève, Introduction to the Reading of Hegel, 40. 12 Ibid., 7; cf., 45. 13 Kojève, Introduction to the Reading of Hegel, 13, 25-26; cf. 56. 14 Hobbes, Leviathan, I.13; cf. Devlin, Alexandre Kojève and the Outcome of Modern Thought, 16-35. For more on Hegel s originary violence, see Hegel, Phenomenology of Spirit, 187; Kojève, Introduction to the Reading of Hegel, 6-7, 13, 25-26, 38, 56, 212-15n15, 215, 215n16; TI 199/TeI 174; CPP 94/HH 45; ChPsP 83, 235/Ppe 108, 295; S 170/215; PP 407/402; SNS 68/118; Wood, Hegel s Ethical Thought, 27, 88, 93, 117, 119; Schroeder, Altared Ground, 169n23. 6

By and large, encounters with others are deficient or indifferent modes if existing; thus, Dasein finds authenticity on its own: the kind of knowing-oneself which is essential and closest, demands that one become acquainted with oneself (161). Further, in the second half of Being and Time where Heidegger discusses Dasein s path to authenticity, the other all but disappears except for the average, inauthentic mode of interaction the self must overcome (150-63). The authentic Dasein is ultimately alone, a solitary subject (EE 98), and Dasein lives thinking it has no need of others and can get along without them (BT 160). 15 This is observed especially in Heidegger s account of being-toward-death. 16 With death, Heidegger states repeatedly, Dasein stands before itself in its ownmost potentiality-for-being.... Death reveals itself as that possibility which is one s ownmost, which is non-relational (294; cf. 296, 299). As Levinas puts it, for Heidegger one dies alone (EI 58/59). Although Sartre s entire corpus provides a more nuanced account of the self-other relation, it seems his account of original freedom in Being and Nothingness leaves little room for a positive encounter with the other. According to Sartre, the arrival of the other in the look is felt like an imposition, a failure, and an enslavement of the freedom of the subject (BN 358). Sartre ultimately claims that I must objectify the other in order to acknowledge the other as a subject, and that the shame induced by the gaze leaves me feeling vulnerable and reduced to an object (301-02, 344-45, 350, 358, 361). 17 With an account of the subject in which no limits to my freedom can be found except freedom itself (567), the encounter with the other results in alienation and the hidden death of my possibilities (352, 354). Sartre thus maintains Western ontology by beginning with the free Cartesian cogito and then defining the other along the self s 15 Cf. EE 98; EI 58; SNS 70, 186/121, 330; S 175/221; BN 331; King, A Guide to Heidegger s Being and Time, 188, 190; Wahl, Philosophies of Existence, 73; Perpich, The Ethics of Emmanuel Levinas, 132. 16 Jean-Luc Nancy states it well: Dasein s being-toward-death was never radically implicated in its being-with in Mitsein and that it is this implication that remains to be thought (Nancy, The Inoperative Community, 14). 17 See Catalano, A Commentary on Jean-Paul Sartre s Being and Nothingness, 152, 165. 7

terms. This modality of unity and fusion, as Levinas calls it, amounts to a reduction of the other to the categories of the same (DEL 17). 18 3. The Parent-Child Relation as Originary Ground for Subjectivity and Peaceful Relations Emmanuel Levinas and Maurice Merleau-Ponty follow Heidegger (and Sartre s) emphasis on the pretheoretical or preintentional modes of encountering others, if only to heighten it by studying how embodied subject encounters others and the world. For Merleau-Ponty, this results in an emphasis on perception and embodiment; Levinas, in contrast, focuses on my ethical relation to the other. Despite the unique differences of their respective projects, they both acknowledge that the parent-child relation has been entirely ignored by the philosophical tradition. Whereas Heidegger rightly criticized Descartes and Kant for tacitly assuming the existence of a worldhood or context wherein the subject does its work, what Levinas and Merleau-Ponty emphasize is that my world and even my very subjectivity gains significance to me precisely because of those around me who have given it meaning throughout the earliest stages of my natal development. The genetic facts of our childhood and early development, Merleau-Ponty writes, cannot be simply ignored by philosophy.... Thought cannot ignore its apparent history... it must put to itself the problem of the genesis of its own meaning (VI 11-12/27-28). And summarizing Levinas s project, Diane Perpich adds, Being in a world presupposes an other who has opened that world to me and with me. 19 18 Thus, while Sartre claims the subject feels an immense weight because he is responsible for the world (BN 707), he ultimately offers little evidence for the possibility that the other plays a role in my responsibilities or that others might help me bear these burdens. For more on Sartre s negative account of the other, see BN 343, 366; Sartre, Notebooks for an Ethics, 381-404, 461-74; Sartre, Critique of Dialectical Reason, 362, 350n2; Sartre, Anti-Semite and Jew, 66-67, 68, 85, 91; Compton, Sartre, Merleau-Ponty, and Human Freedom, 176. 19 Perpich, The Ethics of Emmanuel Levinas, 132. 8

The parent-child relation provides the basis for phenomenological analyses of passivity and sensibility that decenter the autonomous, self-reflective cogito and stands in contrast to the predominant accounts of intersubjectivity that are grounded in self-interest, indifference, or shame. In the second half of this essay, I offer a developmental phenomenology of the parentchild relation that draws from Merleau-Ponty s and Levinas s unique contributions. In the space constraints of this essay, I will focus on a couple aspects of birth and the early development of the child, but it is imperative that we also consider how the advent of parenting and the presence of the newborn radically alters the life and mind of the adult as well. A. The Birth of the Self At birth, the self is not from the start a self-reflective subject in control of its epistemic representations or existential destiny. Indeed, there is debate as to when we can properly speak of the presence of an I in the child, but even this debate ignores how these early pretheoretical or prereflective experiences remain with an individual throughout one s entire life. My birth, and the neonatal forming of my body in the womb of my mother, suggests that passivity lies at the base of my subjectivity and that my freedom is a gift bestowed upon me by others. Born from my mother s womb, I am not causa sui (OB 105/AE 133). Maternity reminds me that the oneself cannot form itself; it is already formed with absolute passivity (104/132-33). Before I can be being-for-itself, I am a subject born from the other. Before I can reflect on whether the other is another thinking thing like me, before I can choose to care for the other, I am already committed to and deeply intertwined with the other. 20 In this way, Levinas will speak of a 20 Levinas s insight here is that the very power to make significant choices... cannot originate form a Sartrean inner nothingness that is essentially neutral, but only from a being-already-committed, a built-in fundamental identification or nonneutral orientation that is, nevertheless, not as determinate as an organic telos.... By contrast, Sartre s conception of consciousness as ecstasis as standing above one s given circumstances and material 9

responsibility prior to freedom (CPP 132). The infant born in all of its fragility and dependence is not first a subject emboldened by a freedom that would render it master of things but is a preoriginary susceptibility (132). My participation in the life-blood and even birth pangs of my mother, who provides the limit and justification of my freedom, reveals to me that I am a responsibility before being an intentionality (133). Thus, contrary to Sartre s famous mantra, I am not condemned to freedom, but rather, invested as freedom, elected to utilize my freedom on behalf of the other (TI 84-85). 21 This brief reflection of the child in the maternal womb offers a critique of both the Cartesian subject and the violent accounts of intersubjectivity. First, the infant originally encounters the world from a predominately affective, sensory, and fully embodied point of view rather than an abstract representational stance. However, we must be careful not to conclude that the infant is devoid of cognitive activity or has no capacity to differentiate itself from its surroundings. The child s capacity for abstract thought is certainly underdeveloped at this time, but all the current research suggests that newborns are actively engaged and interacting with their environments. We must speak of the infant then, as Stern does, as having an emergent self that begins at birth, for infants are predesigned to be aware of self-organizing processes. They never experience a period of total self/other undifferentiation.... They are also predesigned to be selectively responsive to external social events. 22 The point, however, is to stress how inadequate the representational models of knowledge that have been established within the Cartesian tradition are in explaining how infants learn about the world. On Descartes s dependencies led him to conclude that consciousness can have no law or motivation it does not give itself (Davenport, Levinas s Agapeistic Metaphysics of Morals. 348). 21 Cf. BN 567; Sartre, Existentialism is a Humanism, 295. 22 Stern, The Interpersonal World of the Infant, 10. The infant is actively forming a sense of an emergent self. It is a sense of organization in the process of formation (38). Stern emphasizes that this emergent self from 0-2 months should not be considered a discrete stage but as a domain (32; cf. ChPsP 381/Ppe 475). 10

representational account, when I encounter another mind, if I am to arrive at the judgment that the other is, indeed, another ego, I must (a) begin with a self-reflective understanding of my own subjectivity, (b) have a mental image of my own body, (c) visualize the body (and mind) of the other that I see, and then (d) transfer the thoughts and images I have of myself as a thinking thing and as a body onto the other (CRO 114/RAE 20). Such an analogical approach is simply impossible for an infant, simply by the sheer fact that infants cannot recognize their own body when they see it in a mirror until about 10-12 months. It is more likely, following Merleau- Ponty, that an infant s cognitive and affective capacities work together in acknowledging the parent through shared behaviors and by creating a meaningful world: they make faces at each other, play games, imitate gestures, listen, and observe a constant give-and-take that shapes the world of both parent and child. Gornik, Meltzoff, and Kuhl state it well: It seems to most of us that the Other Minds problem really is about others. While we must infer the thoughts of other people, we at least know for certain what we think ourselves. In fact, Descartes argued that the only thing we really know for certain is what we think ourselves; I think, therefore I am. Children, however, they continue, don t seem to understand their own minds any better than they understand the minds of the people around them. It may seem that we learn about other people by comparing them with ourselves. But, in fact, the research suggests that we also learn about our own minds by observing other people. 23 We are not first autonomous subjects, but rather, we understand ourselves through our relations and contact with others. More strongly, we need others to tell us who we are and to help us establish significance in the world. Second, this early orientation toward the other is predominately positive. In maternity, the encounter with the other does not lead to the death of my possibilities; rather it is precisely the means by which my freedom has meaning. Whereas in Sartre passivity undermines my 23 Gornik, Meltzoff, and Kuhl, The Scientist in the Crib, 47. 11

freedom and is, therefore, violent, in the case of the child, I am radically exposed to an other that does not lead to objectification but is non-violence itself (CPP 135). My life, my skin, and my blood are connected to and even formed by another. Indeed, I am exposed to an other that is equally exposed: The mother makes her own body a safe home for the other, and it is precisely through her physical self-sacrifice that I exist. The early perceptual interactions between infant and caregiver not only point to a new understanding of epistemology but suggest a basis for ethics. As the newborn partakes in early mimetic behaviors and imitates the facial expressions of the parent, it demonstrates a sense of sympathy toward the other that is a primordial and irreducible phenomenon (CRO 145/RAE 50). Sympathy rises up for the other due to the fact that I live in the facial expressions of the other, as I feel him living in mine (146/51). Thus, the relationship between the parent and child is not centered around overpowering the other, but in a positive, life-giving reciprocity. The parent-child relation exists on a level above conflict (ChPsP 83/Ppe 108); it is a reciprocal envelopment and not a rivalry (235/295). 24 B. Early Interactions between Infant and Caregiver While Heidegger and Sartre emphasize the pretheoretical social context in which the subject performs its abstract thought, they both generally see it as something that must overcome. Heidegger famously speaks of Dasein s past as facticity, of its having been thrown into the world, and of its present as falling where he locates Dasein s social interactions. But for Heidegger, the past and social surroundings generally carry a negative connotation by limiting 24 Such primordial sympathy is displayed in infants when they experience distress or cry at the sound of another child s crying, which has been shown not to be a confusion between self and other. See Reddy, How Infants Know Minds, 124; Hoffman, Interaction of Affect and Cognition, 104. While there is debate as to whether infants are innately altruistic or predisposed toward aggression, Hay concludes, in the early months of life infants seem remarkably forbearing vis-à-vis their companions (Hay, The Beginnings of Aggression in Infancy, 111). 12

the subject s possibilities. Dasein achieves authentic existing not through appreciating its past or discussing it within an interpersonal context; rather it gains a heritage by and for itself (BT 435). Even more telling, Heidegger provides no temporal account of authenticity for the present, which seems forever lost to mundane and superficial encounters with the They. Sartre readily acknowledges that the self is born into a context that is not of one s own making including one s language, family, culture, socio-economic background, history, and the body. The subject discovers a world which is given to him as already looked-at, furrowed, explored, worked over in all its meanings (BN 666). Indeed, nausea comes from the fact that the self cannot choose not to exist (xx). 25 By this, Sartre undercuts the priority of the Cartesian cogito by granting primacy to the pre-reflective consciousness (xi, 13). Reflection is a secondary act, and thus, being-for-self (my self-reflective self) is never completely one with being-in-itself. However for Sartre the emphasis lies on my radical freedom to transcend my past. Sartre steadfastly maintains that nothing categorically modifies, passively affects, or hinders consciousness (BN 19). Even emotions, passions, and desires are only made meaningful through consciousness s free intentional acts and within consciousness s future projects (131). 26 Emotional states have meaning only as consciousness of emotion. 27 We are what we do. On this basis, consciousness is depicted as radically free, pure spontaneity, a self-creation, and thus, fully responsible for itself (15-16, 19, 20). Consciousness is not governed by anything except itself (15, 130-31). 25 Cf. Sartre, Nausea, 19-20. Sartre also suggests that this bare or anonymous existence in which the self finds itself is not a state of passivity but is neither passivity nor activity (BN 27; cf. 16). Being simply is. 26 Solomon, Sartre on Emotions, 212; Hall, Freedom: Merleau-Ponty s Critique of Sartre, 189; Catalano, A Commentary on Jean-Paul Sartre s Being and Nothingness, 43. 27 Sartre similarly channel s Husserl when he writes in response to Heidegger s lack of discussion of consciousness, Understanding has meaning only if it is consciousness of understanding (BN 134; cf. 23). 13

These accounts fail to adequately account for the role of passivity in the constitution of the subject. 28 Our biology, upbringing, and culture not only narrow our possibilities but also make our lives meaningful for us prior to freely taking ourselves up as a consciousness. Whereas for Sartre original freedom precedes the meaning I make out of my circumstances, for Merleau- Ponty the world is always already meaningful to me without being deterministic. I originally encounter the world simultaneously as a social, anonymous self, wherein my life [has] a significance which I do not constitute as well as a singular individual who uniquely appropriates objects and ideas for my own purposes (PP 521/512). My culture, family, and body bestow meaning upon me in ways that become sedimented and habituated into my way of being in the world (169/172, 513/504). 29 The institutional and cultural meanings imposed upon me, as well as the choices I make, establish habits that are not likely to be altered. 30 However, I am never completely constituted by my context (527/517). Meaning, thus, is a co-operative project, as I begin my existence co-inhabiting the world with others (IP 131; PP 413, 528/407, 519). Self, world, and others are primordially interconnected. Choice does not always consist in being made from scratch (IP 192); rather I creatively personalize my life and project myself toward projects out of the meaningful context in which I already reside. My possibilities are narrowed through the early years of instruction and care by my caregivers. I am clothed with certain colors, bathed, touched, spoken to, taught when to sleep, 28 For Merleau-Ponty s many references to this in his critique of Sartre, see SNS 77/133; IP xxiv, 119-21, 131, 135, 139-44; PP 505, 507, 513, 521/497, 499, 504, 512; AD 107, 113; VI 70. 29 Compton, Sartre, Merleau-Ponty, and Human Freedom, 178-80; Hall, Freedom: Merleau-Ponty s Critique of Sartre, 191-92. 30 Having built our life upon an inferiority complex which has been operative for twenty years, it is not probable that we shall change (PP 513/504). Sartre may respond that such an attitude is either living in bad faith and a refusal to acknowledge my possibilities or say that these habituations are still a project that I choose to embody and make meaning for myself. 14

and so on, all of which become meaningful, cultural activities before I am a self-reflective ego. 31 I bear in my own body the lives, gestures, comportment, and influences of those who have raised me. No matter how novel I try to be, I am always indebted to those who have come before me. However, I then incorporate what I have learned from others into my own way of being in the world. Through the traditions imparted to me, past lives are habituated into my own. Tradition provides me with a sense of meaning and objectivity within time and history, and as each present act invokes the past, it imposes a sense of obligation to the other, an implicit promise and a vow to the community (S 59, 75, 95-97, 159-60/75, 93-94, 117-21, 201-02; IPP 183-85). Most importantly, these institutions, traditions, and habits that have been cultivated within me suggest that my first encounter with others is neither a battle in which I attempt to take my stand against others (Hegel) nor an encounter that results in feelings of shame and objectification (Sartre). Rather than being alienated, I first encounter the other through mutual dialogue within the context of a meaningful world. I experience a common relation that establishes the possibility of discourse before I experience it severed (PP 413, 420, 521/407, 414, 512). Before I encounter the other in a position of rivalry (AD 98), Merleau-Ponty suggests that the child-parent relation is first a living bond and communication (SNS 72/125). 32 We do not initially begin our lives trying to make a claim of absolute originality in relation to the other or as one individual over against another ; rather, we are first intertwined and 31 Here Merleau-Ponty locates a dimension of responsibility within the passivity of the newborn that precedes the willful choices of Sartre s free subject: When I awake to life, I find I am responsible for a variety of things I did not do but for which I take responsibility by living (AD 193). I may be born into a situation where I am thrust into caring for elderly parents with dementia, being a steward of a substantial inheritance, or loving a sibling with a chronic illness. I should also add that Sartre later came to appreciate the critiques of his account of freedom. In 1980, Sartre states explicitly that Being and Nothingness left the individual too independent (Sartre and Lévy, Hope Now, 71-72). Sartre now claims that an ethical, interpersonal dimension is a central component of subjectivity. Like Levinas, he describes this ethical modality as an obligation or requisition from the other. Every subject acts out of an inner constraint that stems from a primordial relation to the other (59). But more in line with Merleau- Ponty s account, instead of depicting the subject as an isolated cogito, Sartre speaks of a subject who simultaneously establishes itself and ethically offers itself to the other (69-71). 32 With the master-slave dialectic in mind, Merleau-Ponty also writes, We cannot be aware of the conflict unless we are aware of our reciprocal relationship and our common humanity (SNS 68/118). 15

interconnected to others and even largely unaware of ourselves as having a unique stance upon the world (CRO 119/RAE 25). This visage institutes no death struggle of consciousness (170/215), for it is neither autonomous nor absolute. Rather, it is more dispossession than possession, for my thoughts of the other are incomplete and I am indebted to those who have shaped me to be who I am (170/215). It is important to emphasize how this account unsettles the Cartesian tradition. First, rather than beginning as a self-reflective cogito, the perception of others begins in a state of precommunication (CRO 119/RAE 25), which is prior to fixed stances on the world. The self encounters others prior to the intentionality of act and the advent of the cogito, in a precognitive state. Prior to self-consciousness, I am born into the world, and have a body and a natural world, [and] I can find in that world other patterns of behavior with which my own interweave (PP 416/410). It is precisely through the behaviors and communication of others that I learn about others and objects in the world. Second, contra Descartes, I am decentered by my encounter with the other. I do not experience myself as the ground of epistemological certainty, and yet this decentering is not perceived to have a violent connotation. As Merleau-Ponty puts it, the other can have the power to decenter me without being a scourge (VI 82/114). Indeed, for the child, the gaze of the other and the authority of its caregivers is an extremely positive experience. The vantage point our caregivers have on the world the words they use to name things, the traditions they choose to celebrate, the cultural objects strewn around the house, and even their emotional responses to events are taken up by the child as the world. Thus, in the first several months of life, the other s look encourages the child (CRO 152/RAE 57). The infant originally interprets the look from the caregiver, sibling, or parent as a source of aid, joy, and even an expansion of its possibilities. 16

Consider the following scenario with my daughter: At nine months, Olivia has become an avid stair climber. We place a baby gate at the foot of the stairs to prevent her from going up, but she is already smart enough to know how to slide the gate between the steel poles of the railing. Quietly and stealthily, she begins her ascent to explore the forbidden objects upstairs her brother s Legos or the night light in the electrical socket. The silence in the house suddenly registers and alerts me that Olivia is up to something. I run over to the stairs to find her halfway up the flight of steps not because she is slow moving, but because she is actually waiting for someone to find her. Perhaps, she is conscientious that she s supposed to only go upstairs if someone is with her, but given that she does not appear to recognize the danger of falling down the stairs, it is more likely an invitation to play a game. Caught in the act of doing what she s not supposed to do is precisely where she wants to be. I look at her and say in a quasi-chastising voice, Olivia! What are you doing up there? She squeals in delight and then proceeds to make an all-out sprint-crawl up the rest of the stairs. I imagine her thinking to herself, How many stairs can I get up this time before I m caught? Sometimes, I just follow her and let her go the rest of the way; other times, I simply pick her up and take her downstairs. This element of unpredictability in our relationship contributes to the playfulness of the encounter and makes it such an enticing game. I bring her back downstairs and a few moments later, Olivia repeats it all: climb half way, stop, maybe call out to get attention, and wait to be caught. Regardless of what other motivations may be behind the act, the pause halfway up the stairs represents an invitation into a shared world. I am not another object in the world, nor is she felt objectified by my gaze; rather, the game draws us to consider one another in a chiasmic (yet asymmetrical) interplay and celebration of life. Going upstairs and into her brother s room is simply far more dynamic if the 17

journey is shared with someone else. My look does not limit her possibilities but affirms them. Even when I pick Olivia up and bring her downstairs, which might be an instance of limiting her freedom, she delightfully squeals as if it were simply an intriguing facet to her world. C. Conclusions From this brief phenomenological description it should be clear that if there is to be for the adult one single intersubjective world (PP 414/408), as Merleau-Ponty writes, the world of the child must be taken into account. The development of the child calls into question the Cartesian autonomous self and reminds me that I am dependent on others for my own identity. As a result, rather than a representational knowledge of the world that might equip such selfreflective subjects to become masters and possessors of nature, 33 the world and others are inexhaustible to me as it is what I live through rather than possess (xviii-xix/xii). Yet in this account the other is not a privation of knowledge (EI 66/69) but is understood as a positive force, a surplus who enhances my possibilities (TI 197/TeI 172). 34 Further, a return to our beginnings illuminates how, before any Hegelian battle to the death can ensue between self-consciousnesses, there first exists a common ground that originates from a peaceful co-existence in the world of childhood (PP 414/408). No one s authentic actions and possibilities come about as a self-sufficient subject without the aid of others. And while who my parents are or where I was born do not resign me to a predetermined fate, I can never fully outgrow my childhood and the effects of my upbringing (see 473/466). Each gesture, each smile, each accent in my voice, or each tradition I keep bear witness to the lives of others who have made me who I am. These very words I speak, this very presentation I 33 Descartes, Discourse on Method, 35. 34 Cf. Dalton, Longing for the Other, 225. 18

give, bears echoes and traces of the many people who have shaped me to be who I am. I am not because I alone think or because I think alone. I am because of others. I am because we are. Works Cited Catalano, Joseph S. A Commentary on Jean-Paul Sartre s Being and Nothingness. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1974. Compton, John J. Sartre, Merleau-Ponty, and Human Freedom. In Stewart, ed., The Debate between Sartre and Merleau-Ponty, 175-86. Davenport, John J. Levinas s Agapeistic Metaphysics of Morals: Absolute Passivity and the Other as Eschatological Hierophany. The Journal of Religious Ethics 26, no. 2 (Fall 1998): 331-66. Descartes, Rene. Discourse on Method and Meditations on First Philosophy. Trans. Donald A. Cress. Indianapolis: Hackett, 1993. Evans, Fred. The Multivoiced Body: Society and Communication in the Age of Diversity. New York: Columbia University Press, 2009. Hay, Dale F. The Beginnings of Aggression in Infancy. Developmental Origins of Aggression. Eds. Richard E Tremblay, Willard Hartup, and John Archer, 107-32. New York: Guilford Press, 2005. Gopnik, Alison, Andrew N. Meltzoff, and Patricia K. Kuhl. The Scientist in the Crib: What Early Learning Tells Us about the Mind. New York: Perennial, 1999. Hall, Ronald L. Freedom: Merleau-Ponty s Critique of Sartre, in Steward, ed., The Debate between Sartre and Merleau-Ponty, 187-96. Hass, Lawrence. Merleau-Ponty s Philosophy. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. 2008. Hegel, G. W. F. Phenomenology of Spirit. Trans. A. V. Miller. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1977. Heidegger, Martin. Being and Time. Trans. John Macquarrie and Edward Robinson. New York: Harper & Row, 1962. Abbreviation: BT.. Letter on Humanism In Basic Writings. Ed. David F. Krell. New York: Harper Collins, 1977. Hobbes, Thomas. Leviathan. New York: Penguin. 1982. 19

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