From the Individual to the World
After establishing the body as the ground of perception, Merleau-Ponty turns to the broader question: how does my embodied being connect me to others and to a shared world of meaning? If the body is my way of being in the world, then it must also be my way of being with others. Perception is never solitary. It is already oriented toward intersubjectivity—the mutual recognition of embodied beings inhabiting the same field of existence.
This is not a matter of inferring that others have minds, as Descartes once worried. I do not reason my way to the existence of the other. I encounter the other directly through their gestures, expressions, and presence. A smile, a raised eyebrow, the tilt of a head—these are not signs I must decode but forms of meaning that my body immediately understands.
The Silent Language of Gestures
Merleau-Ponty gives priority to this pre-verbal communication. Before language, there is the dialogue of bodies. A mother and infant exchange looks and touches that already establish a world of meaning. A dancer’s movement or an actor’s posture can express more than a paragraph of words.
This insight helps us understand intersubjectivity without reducing it either to biological reflexes or abstract reasoning. We are open to others because we inhabit the same “flesh of the world,” and our bodies are attuned to the gestures of others as meaningful.
Language as Embodied Expression
From this starting point, Merleau-Ponty develops his rich philosophy of language. He resists the temptation to treat language as a neutral code or a transparent tool for transmitting ideas. Words are not just labels attached to ready-made thoughts. Language is a form of expression that brings meaning into being.
When a poet finds the right word, it is not a simple act of attaching language to a pre-existing idea. The idea itself crystallizes through the word. Similarly, when we struggle to articulate a feeling, we do not merely translate from inner sensation to outer sound—we discover what the feeling is by giving it form in speech.
Merleau-Ponty describes this as the difference between spoken speech (language already sedimented into conventions) and speaking speech (the living act of expression). In speaking speech, language is not a vessel but a creative force.
Art as the Revelation of Perception
It is no surprise, then, that Merleau-Ponty was drawn to the arts, especially painting. He wrote extensively on Cézanne, whom he admired for showing the world not as a finished object but as it comes into being through vision. For Merleau-Ponty, a painting is not an imitation of reality but a revelation of perception’s structure. The brushstroke discloses the way the eye dwells in color and form.
Art exemplifies the intertwining of perception and expression. Just as language makes thought manifest, painting makes visible the invisible act of seeing. This explains why artworks can strike us as more “true” than a photograph: they express the very way the world is given to us, rather than a mere reproduction of surfaces.
The Social Body and Political Expression
Merleau-Ponty’s philosophy also extends into the political sphere. If our very capacity to share a world depends on embodied intersubjectivity, then social life is rooted in the body as well. Politics is not simply a matter of institutions and laws but of how bodies encounter one another in public space, how voices are heard or silenced, how gestures of solidarity or exclusion shape the fabric of community.
This explains why he was drawn to Marxism in his early years—not because he accepted determinist doctrine, but because he sought a philosophy that could honor the lived, bodily reality of oppression and struggle. Later, as he distanced himself from dogma, he still maintained that politics must be understood as a field of embodied meaning, not as a chessboard of abstract forces.
Expression as Ontology
At this stage of his thought, Merleau-Ponty sees expression not as a secondary activity layered onto a silent world but as the very way the world becomes meaningful. Gestures, words, paintings, and political acts are all forms of expression that disclose reality. The world is not a mute background but an inexhaustible field that calls for articulation.
Why This Matters
Merleau-Ponty’s account of intersubjectivity and expression offers a way to think about communication, art, and politics without falling into dualisms. It helps explain why miscommunication is so painful: it is not simply a failure of codes but a fracture in the shared world. It clarifies why art can transform perception itself, not just reflect it. And it grounds the idea that social justice is not only about resources or rules but about recognition—whether bodies are seen, heard, and allowed to express themselves.
