From Intentionality to Differentiation: Expression as a Genealogical Matrix and its Ambiguous Ontological Use by Merleau-Ponty

Abstract

The objective of this article is to present and discuss the different uses of the notion of expression by Merleau-Ponty. If originally this notion was aimed at explaining how meaning perceived in the solitude of the body’s sensible life becomes shared meaning in intersubjective communication, over the years it came to be applied in another way, namely, as a genealogy, in which meaning is no longer described as the experience of an intentional subjectivity inserted in the world, but as a system of differentiations shared in a generic way. Expressiveness became a formal operator that would rival the notion of intentionality, even though Merleau-Ponty did not definitively achieve this result. This leads me to reinterpret the status of the notion of Brute Being, addressed in his unfinished project of writing an expressive ontology. To reach this objective, I propose a review of the three main matrices from which Merleau-Ponty thought – critically – about the notion of expression, specifically, Politzer’s narrative theory, Saussure’s semiology and Leibniz’s ontotheology.