Um dos principais objetivos da discussão de Merleau-Ponty sobre a liberdade é colocar esta questão da praxis e da relação da filosofia com a praxis. Vamos esboçar o seu argumento sobre a liberdade:
(1) Em primeiro lugar, pode argumentar-se que o sujeito não é uma coisa; logo, não é determinado por uma causalidade objetiva: “Para alguém ser determinado por algo do exterior, teria de ser ele próprio uma coisa” (Phénoménologie da la Perception, p. 496). Mas se não pode haver determinismo objetivo, então presumivelmente o sujeito é absolutamente livre: “Não se pode ser um pouco livre” (PP 497).
Mas como é que esta liberdade absoluta pode ser entendida? Não haverá obviamente obstáculos que limitam a minha liberdade? Aqui Merleau-Ponty retoma uma famosa análise sartriana.
Quero escalar uma montanha. Ao subir, deparo-me com um enorme rochedo que não consigo escalar, não será este um obstáculo à minha liberdade? Sartre responde: “Não.” O rochedo não é um obstáculo externo que limita a minha liberdade. Pelo contrário, o rochedo não escalável só o é no âmbito do meu projeto de escalada. Por si só, não é nem escalável nem inescalável.
Em outras palavras, é o meu próprio projeto livre que confere este significado à rocha, pelo que se trata de um obstáculo colocado pela própria liberdade. Assim, a liberdade, em vez de ser limitada por algo externo, permanece absoluta.
(2) Merleau-Ponty assume uma posição crítica em relação ao conceito de liberdade absoluta. Insiste que tal liberdade destrói a possibilidade de ação livre, uma vez que está “aquém” de toda a ação. Não se trata de uma liberdade que tem de ser exercida, mas que já está disposta antes de toda ação: “A liberdade estaria aquém de toda ação, e em nenhum caso poderia ser declarada: É aqui que surge a liberdade”. A razão é que a ação livre só se pode manifestar sobre um fundo de vida que não era livre ou que era menos livre. Pode-se insistir que a liberdade está em todo o lado; mas então também não está em lado nenhum” (PP 499).
O problema é então compreender como é que a liberdade pode ser limitada sem que haja uma espécie de determinismo causal. A Fenomenologia da Percepção forneceu um meio para essa compreensão. Vimos que o sujeito está primordialmente enraizado, ancorado, no mundo (natural e social) e que a existência pessoal do sujeito, e portanto os seus atos livres, estão sempre ligados (pressupõem) esta ancoragem anônima.
Assim, antes do meu ato livre, algo já está previsto, estabelecido, pressuposto. Existe sempre um certo campo dentro do qual a minha liberdade é exercida.
(3) Aplicação à análise de Sartre. De fato, o caráter de ser intransponível é conferido à rocha por uma presença humana. Só pode ser intransponível para um sujeito. No entanto, dado o projeto de escalada, uma rocha aparecerá como um obstáculo e outra como um meio — e isto não é determinado pelo meu projeto livre.
Ou seja, quando empreendo o meu projeto de escalada, torna-se possível, em geral, que as coisas sejam obstáculos ou meios. Mas o meu projeto não determina se uma dada rocha será um obstáculo ou um meio. Em vez disso, o meu projeto tem lugar no âmbito de um projeto anterior através do qual o mundo e as coisas já estão estruturados:
Há, de fato, uma distinção genuína entre as minhas intenções explícitas — por exemplo, o meu projeto atual de escalar estas montanhas — e as minhas intenções gerais, que medem a minha apropriação virtual ao que me rodeia…. Como sujeito pensante, posso situar-me à vontade em Sirius ou na superfície da terra, mas sob este sujeito há algo como um ego natural que não sai da sua situação terrestre e que delineia incessantemente valores absolutos…. Na medida em que tenho mãos, pés, um corpo, um mundo. Sou portador de intenções que não escolhi deliberadamente e que, por isso, conferem ao meu meio características que não escolhi. (PP 502)
Karl Marx said: “You cannot do away with philosophy without fulfilling it.” Accordingly. the fulfillment of philosophy is, in some sense, its destruction.
For Merleau-Ponty, who agrees here with Marx, this destruction takes a peculiar form: it is the destruction of philosophy as something isolated, cut loose from its existential roots. In “Marxism and Philosophy,” Merleau-Ponty says: “Philosophy fulfills itself by doing away with itself as isolated philosophy” (SN 133.236-37)· Or again: “Knowledge finds itself put back into the totality of human praxis and, as it were, given ballast by it” (SN 134,237)·
A principal aim of Merleau-Ponty’s discussion of freedom is to pose this question of praxis and of the relation of philosophy to praxis. Let us outline his argument regarding freedom:
(1) It might first be argued that the subject is not a thing; hence it is not determined by objective causality: “For one to be determined by something from the outside, one would have to be a thing oneself” (PP 434, 496). But if there can be no objective determinism, then presumably the subject is absolutely free: “One cannot be a little free’” (PP 435.497)·
Yet how could this absolute freedom be understood? Arc there not obviously obstacles limiting my freedom? Here Merleau-Ponty revisits a famous Sartrian analysis.
I want to climb a mountain. As I ascend, I come upon a huge rock 1 cannot scale, is this not an obstacle to my freedom? Sartre answers, “No.” The rock is not an external obstacle that limits my freedom. Instead, the unclimbable rock is unclimbahle only within the framework of my project of climbing. In itself it is neither climhable nor unclimbable.
In other words, it is my own free project which confers this meaning on the rock, hence it is an obstacle posited by freedom itself. So freedom, rather than being limited by something external, remains absolute.
(165) (2) Merleau-Ponty assumes a critical stance toward the concept of absolute freedom. He insists that such a freedom destroys the possibility of free action, since it is “on this side” of all action. It is not a freedom which has to be exercised but one which is already acquired prior to all action: “Freedom would be on this side of all action, and in no case could it be declared: This is where freedom emerges.” The reason is that free action can show itself only against a background of life which was not free or was less free. It can be insisted that freedom is everywhere; but then it is also nowhere” (PP 437,499).
The problem then is to understand how freedom can be limited without there being some kind of causal determinism. The Phenomenology of Perception has provided a means for such an understanding. We have seen that the subject is primordially rooted, anchored, in the (natural and social) world and that the subject’s personal existence, hence its free acts, are always linked to (presuppose) this anonymous anchorage.
So prior to my free act, something is already laid down, established, assumed. There is always already a certain field within which my freedom is exercised.
(3) Application to Sartre’s analysis. Indeed the character of being unclimbable is conferred on the rock by a human presence. It can be unclimbable only for a subject. Given the project of climbing, however, one rock will appear as an obstacle and another as a means—and this is not determined by my free project.
That is, when I undertake my project of climbing, it becomes possible in general for things to be obstacles or means. But my project docs not determine whether a given rock will be an obstacle or a means. Instead, my project takes place within the scope of a prior project through which the world and things are already structured:
There is indeed a genuine distinction between my explicit intentions—e.g., my current project of climbing these mountains—and my general intentions which gauge my virtual purchase on my surroundings…. As a thinking subject, I can at will situate myself on Sirius or on the surface of the earth, but beneath this subject there is something like a natural ego that does not leave its terrestrial situation and that ceaselessly delineates absolute values…. Inasmuch as I have hands, feet, a body, a world. I am the bearer of intentions which I have not deliberately chosen and which therefore endow my surroundings with characteristics I have not chosen. (PP 439-40, 502)
(4) Merleau-Ponty now extends the same conclusion to the subject’s relation to society and history. He considers the phenomenon of class-consciousness. How do I come to be conscious of myself as an exploited worker and hence become a revolutionary?
It is neither as a causal result of objective conditions (determinism) nor simply a conscious decision, judgment, suddenly made. Instead, I first exist as a worker in the sense of being caught up in a certain way of dealing with the (166) world and with others. Thus class is, first of all, something lived: “For class is neither simply observed nor peremptorily decreed; like the appointed order of the capitalistic apparatus, and like a revolution, class, before being thought, is first lived in the guise of an obsessive presence, a possibility, an enigma, a myth” (PP 446, 509-10).
Merleau-Ponty generalizes to all social-historical phenomena: “If I could in fact make myself a worker or a bourgeois through an absolute fiat, if, more generally, nothing solicited my freedom, then history would admit of no structure, we would see no events delineating themselves in it, and anything could arise out of anything else…. History would never be heading anywhere, and, even if we considered a very brief period of time, we could never say that events were plotting some result” (PP 449, 512).
So, for Merleau-Ponty, the individual subject is neither the object of history (history is no alien force, externally determining man) nor is the individual the subject of history, making those decisions (which determine history) from some point of view outside history, independently of history: “We do indeed confer on history its meaning, always provided history proposes that meaning to us. The Sinn-gebung is not only centrifugal, and that is why the historical subject is not simply the individual. There is an exchange between generalized existence and individual existence, each of them receives and each gives. . . . Freedom can modify the meaning of history only by appropriating, in such a way as to ‘case’ it in a new direction, the meaning history itself offers at any moment” (PP 450, 513).
(5) Therefore, in relation to both the world and history, what we find is a free act which takes up something already established. What we find is a freedom that is always situated: “We choose our world, and the world chooses us” (PP 454, 518). Furthermore, “we could not possibly delimit what is contributed by the situation and what is contributed by freedom” (PP 453, 517).
Because our freedom is situated, we are never absolutely free and “The choice we make of our life always takes place on the basis of certain givens” (PP 455, 519).
(6) These ideas are essential for understanding Merleau-Ponty’s political thought and his relation to Marxism.
In “Marxism and Philosophy,” Merleau-Ponty speaks of the idea of “a politics which is not created ex nihilo in the minds of individuals but is prepared and worked out in history” (SN 105, 184). That is, to engage in politics requires a certain response to what history offers at the moment. Merleau-Ponty says that history “rejects the men and the institutions that do not respond to existing problems” (SN 105, 184-85). Politics involves taking up and transforming what the historical situation offers. And in particular it does not involve simply applying ideas already thought out independently of the historical situation.
(167) That is, the transition from philosophy to praxis is not a mere application of abstract ideas to another sphere. It is this that Merleau-Ponty has in mind when he says a politics of consciousness is impossible.
(7) Finally, we can take this even further: likewise, a philosophy of consciousness is impossible. Philosophy, too, like political action, is exercised always from out of a situation. Philosophy too has its roots, its historical anchorage.
That is, the philosopher cannot take his stance above history, society, and the world. As we already quoted from In Praise of Philosophy; “Philosophy can not be a tête-à-tête of the philosopher with the truth. It cannot be a judgment given from on high regarding life, the world, history, as if the philosopher were not part of it.”
That means the philosopher does not disengage himself from his situation so as to formulate eternal abstract principles to be externally applied to concrete situations: “Should I make this promise? Should I risk my life for so little? Should I sacrifice my own freedom in order to save freedom itself? These questions cannot be answered at the level of theory” (PP 456, 520).
Philosophy does not place us beyond our situation and give us “once and for all” a means of dealing with situations. Rather, philosophy leads us to see the situation more clearly: it serves to recall us to our rootedness. Philosophy is the return to origins. According to Merleau-Ponty, in words we quoted very early on: “Whether it is a matter of things or historical situations, philosophy has no other function than to allow us to see these things and situations accurately, and so it is true that philosophy consummates itself by destroying itself—as isolated philosophy.”
Merleau-Ponty concludes: “But here we must fall silent, for only the hero lives, all the way to the end, his relations to human beings and to the world, and it is not proper for anyone else to speak in his name” (PP 456, 510).