The Incomplete Reduction

Merleau-Ponty famously states in the Preface that phenomenology’s greatest insight is that the phenomenological reduction cannot be completed. This is due to the upsurge of the world and its constant and ongoing interception of consciousness. Merleau-Ponty’s early work is often compared to his later work by stressing an increasing reliance on Heidegger’s ontology. But, according to Merleau-Ponty’s articulations of the reduction and the upsurge of the world, the Preface in fact indicates an ontology distinct from Heidegger’s, what Merleau-Ponty will later call the “indirect ontology.” If the reduction cannot be completed, it is because of an existence that likewise cannot be complete and is irreducible. Rather than suggesting the possibility of a “Being of beings” (as in Heidegger), the incompletion, both of the reduction and of the existence, already moves in the direction of Merleau-Ponty’s later terminology, for example, “écart,” “fragmentation,” “dehiscence,” “explosion,” or “promiscuity.” This is not an ontology that demands to be completed but the ontology of a being that can never be directly acquired.