MA Defence: Donncha Coyle, Philosophy

Primary and Secondary Expression in Merleau-Ponty and Lived Experience

Donncha Coyle

Supervisor: David Morris

ABSTRACT: In Phenomenology of Perception and subsequent writings, Maurice Merleau-Ponty makes a distinction between primary expression, “speaking speech,” and secondary expression, “spoken speech.” My novel approach to the distinction separates two senses of secondary expression that were not clearly separated by Merleau-Ponty, but that fit within the two major aims of Phenomenology of Perception. Phenomenology of Perception aims to 1) expose and criticize the bias of “objective thought” and 2) describe the appearance of phenomena through embodiment. Secondary expressions can be interpreted within the first project as the products of the expressive process that are taken as given in advance by “objective thought.” Alternatively in the second project, secondary expression corresponds to the habituated ways of sense-making that are familiar to the body. I call this second use the habitude interpretation of secondary expression, and I argue that it is necessary to understand Merleau-Ponty’s descriptions of expressive phenomena, his early engagement with de Saussure, and his interpretation of the case of Schneider.