Time represents a fundamental concept for the ontological foundation of Marcel Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenology. Although he does not present an explicit theory of time, in his main works he is clearly looking for a conception that locates time as a phenomenon independently and autonomously between or outside of the subject and the world . In doing so, he opposes both the naturalism of Isaac Newton, who assigns time as an irreducible basic parameter of the world, and the transcendental idealism of Immanuel Kant, who locates time as an a priori form of knowledge in the inner sense and thus attributes it to the subject. In line with the Western tradition from Homer to Husserl and Heidegger, Merleau-Ponty nevertheless assumes that time is a unified phenomenal given that, although not objectifiable as such, can be questioned ontologically, i.e. illuminated from different perspectives.

Merleau-Ponty highlights the medial character of time in which the structural prerequisites are formed that enable objects, processes and events to unfold from presence (present) in the past and future. Corporality as a transcendental link between subject and world, in connection with original time, enables the phenomenal appearance of the world in the modal dimensions of unfolded time. From the subject’s perspective, time then appears as a connection and horizon of experience. What is crucial here is the mutual relationship between time and subject (Leib): time enables the subject’s context of experience and relationship to the world; the subject offers the opportunity for the unfolding of time into the modal dimensions of the phenomenal world.

Original time is time in statu nascendi, never closed and always open to new things. It can be experienced in its constant development without ever exhausting itself in its development. It can only be approached from the perspective of unfolded phenomena, but never fully viewed for what it originally is. It escapes objectification and can only be illuminated (questioned) by the subject in perspective.

Time and subjectivity are equally shaped by the distinction present/non-present (hb: present/absent). From a subjective perspective, the presence of something is only possible against the background or horizon of absent things, and from a temporal perspective, the presence of a moment is only possible against the background of simultaneous non-presence. The latter means at the same time that time is not constituted as a sum of present things strung together, but rather through the separation of what is present from what is not present. This structure makes it receptive to other things, able to relate to an outside world. Both subject and time are open to new thing

Literature:

Förster Yvonne, Time as a subject and the subject as time. On Merleau-Ponty’s concept of time (2009)

Further Reading:

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