E-Journal of Philosophy of Education:
International Yearbook of the Philosophy of Education Society of Japan, Vol. 9, 2024

The Learning Experience in Merleau-Ponty’s Theory:
The Connection with German Idealism
Shimpei TSUNEFUKA
Keio University
Abstract
This paper aims to show that Merleau-Ponty’s theory of embodiment has a wide range of potentialities
to explain learning experiences that require the abstract operation of symbols, such as mathematics,
by focusing on his acceptance of Kant and German idealism. Many studies in the realm of thephilosophy of education seem to assume that Merleau-Ponty criticized objective thought into whichscience tends to fall and regarded German idealism as its origin. Contrary to what many commentators
suppose, this paper examines Merleau-Ponty’s texts (mainly Phenomenology of Perception andNature) to elucidate a different link to German idealism. Merleau-Ponty does not directly criticize
Kant, but the intellectualistic interpretation by neo-Kantians in France (e.g., Lachièze-Rey). He
follows the same path as the German idealism of Schelling and Hegel, who interpreted and extended
Kant’s theory. Merleau-Ponty appreciates Schelling and Hegel for expanding the concept of Nature
by taking on “intellectual intuition” and “intuitive understanding,” which Kant himself neverdeveloped. According to Merleau-Ponty, Nature is not just something filled with physical causality
but also latent and perceivable with the meaning inherent in culture and history. It is worth noting,however, that Merleau-Ponty speaks of “intellectual intuition” or “intuitive understanding” as “bodily
intentionality,” based neither on transcendental consciousness nor the Nature with its primordial
identity, but on the body. According to his theory, Nature is perceived by the body before theexperience of judgment, and simultaneously this perception creates in Nature a space that motivates
new perceptions. Through this learning model, he argues that the learning experience in mathematics
is also body-based.
Key words: Merleau-Ponty · Kant · German idealism · Learning experience · Body intentionality ·NatureCorrespondence:
Shimpei TSUNEFUKA, Keio University. Email: tsuneshim@gmail.com

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Introduction
This paper clarifies the range of Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s theory of embodiment within
the context of educational philosophy, focusing on his acceptance of Kant and German
idealism.
What many Merleau-Ponty studies on educational philosophy have revealed is that
concrete bodily movements play a certain role in learning. These studies include thosethat focus on teacher-student interactions in the classroom and learning experiences inmaster-apprentice relationships in traditional performing arts, such as Buyo.1 However,
his theory of embodiment has rarely been used to discuss learning experiences in higherorder disciplines, such as mathematics and natural sciences.2 Various circumstances canbe considered the background for this. For instance, Merleau-Ponty criticizes the“objective thought” that science tends to fall into. The perspective of objective thought
treats the world as something fully constituted in homogeneous time and space; that is,something that can be exhausted in a determinate manner. Many Merleau-Ponty studies
have argued that this perspective originated in Kant or transcendental German idealism.3
In other words, Merleau-Ponty has been assumed to have rejected Kant and Hegel assubjectivists. Therefore, there have been few attempts to apply his theory of embodiment
to the analysis of learning experiences in disciplines such as mathematics and the natural
Within the context of the philosophy of education, see Fujita (2003) for a reconsideration of Merleau-Ponty’s
developmental concepts from his pedagogy lectures. See Nishioka (2005) for an application of Merleau-Ponty’s
pedagogy lectures to the analysis of adult-child relationships in the classroom, and Okui (2015) for theirapplication to the analysis of the transmission of knowledge in master-apprentice relationships in traditional
performing arts, such as Buyo. In phenomenological theoretical studies, Howell (2015) compares Merleau-Ponty’s
theory of learning experiences with Husserl’s in terms of the temporal structure of habits.
2
Okui (2013) suggests a link between physical experience and abstract intellectual work in Merleau-Ponty’s
theory. However, in doing so, he does not draw from Merleau-Ponty’s texts but from the American philosopher oflanguage, Mark Johnson’s. In addition, he does not detail how physical experience and abstract intellectual work
are linked. In this paper, I present the link between the two and how they work together by intrinsically interpreting
Merleau-Ponty's reception of German idealism.
3
In Merleau-Ponty studies, some scholars trace the origins of such objective thought (as subjectivist) he criticizes
to as Descartes or Kant (Carman 2008: 12, Morris 2012: 15), while others trace them to Kant and early Husserl,
who conceived transcendental idealism (Romdenh-Romluc 2010: 20). This tendency can also be seen in German
studies of the philosophy of education, where the achievements of Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenology are described
as if they arose from a different context than Kant’s philosophy (Ehrenspeck 1996: 219-220). Contrary to this,recent Merleau-Ponty studies have increasingly attempted to show that Merleau-Ponty has some affinity with
Kantian philosophy and to clarify what aspects he has inherited/not inherited from Kant (cf. Antich 2019; Landes
2015; Matherne 2014, 2016). The background to this trend is that in recent years, after the publication of influential
studies such as Allison (2004), the interpretation that Kant’s text itself can be read in a non-conceptualist way isgaining significant acceptance (cf. Allais 2016). I will offer the interpretation that Merleau-Ponty incorporated
Kant’s “intellectual intuition” and “intuitive enlightenment” by recombining them with body intentionality.
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sciences, which require the abstract operation of symbols. His account also seems to havebeen seen as alien to the tradition of the Bildungstheorie that has developed in the linewith German idealism since Kant.
Contrary to what many commentators suppose, I show how Merleau-Ponty reads
Kant as well as Schelling and Hegel to explain the learning experience. This analysis will
reveal that his theory of embodiment has a wide range of applications and can explain
the learning experience and its theoretical development in disciplines that require abstract
symbolic operations, such as mathematics.
In this paper, I draw on Phenomenology of Perception 4 as the main source ofMerleau-Ponty’s interpretation of Kant, supplemented by his lectures on Nature5 from
1956–1960, in which he adds many commentaries on Kant. In this paper, I proceed asfollows: First, I provide an overview of how the subjectivist interpretation of Kant is
criticized in Phenomenology of Perception (Section 1). Then, I confirm that MerleauPonty recognizes the significance of Schelling’s and Hegel’s interpretation of Kant andits extension (Section 2). In the final section, I argue that with his expanding interpretationof Kant’s schematism—by making imagination (rather than the capacity of
consciousness) based on the body as part of Nature—Merleau-Ponty offers a theory of
embodiment that can also explain the learning experience in disciplines that require theabstract operation of symbols (Section 3).

1 A critique of the subjectivist interpretation of Kant
Merleau-Ponty did not dismiss all of Kant’s arguments. For example, in the preface toPhenomenology of Perception, he agrees with Kant’s stance in the Critique of Judgment,6
which posits that “there exists a unity of the imagination and the understanding and aunity of subjects before the object” (PhP xii). What, then, does Merleau-Ponty attributeto Kant’s argument in his criticism? In the preface to the same book, he criticizes Kant’s
Critique of Pure Reason7 for having ended up analyzing the experience of consciousness
in which a predicative unity is formed (cf. PhP xiii). In other words, Kant is only

Henceforth cited as PhP and the page number in the text.
In this paper, “Nature” is capitalized with the following special connotation, as described by Merleau-Ponty andGerman idealists: Nature refers to something that includes not only physical causality but also the historical andcultural meanings of human beings; henceforth cited as N and the page number in the text.
6
Henceforth cited as KU and the page number in the text.
7
Henceforth cited as A (1781) and/or B (1787) edition and the page number in the text.
4
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concerned with analyzing experiences with propositional content established after
perceptual experience; i.e., experiences that appear in the form of judgments andinferences.8 It should be noted here that Merleau-Ponty does not directly criticize Kant’s
analysis of experience in the form of judgments and inferences; rather, he criticizes Kant
for considering this experience to constitute all of experience. In this section, I begin bydescribing the Kantian interpretation criticized by Merleau-Ponty. Next, I specify
Merleau-Ponty’s matter in question as the conditions on the part of the subject that makeperceptual experience possible.
1.1 The Critique of Pure Reason according to Merleau-Ponty
Merleau-Ponty’s Phenomenology of Perception seems to premise the model of theformation of experience in Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason as follows: In “sensibility,” “agiven multiple [of stimuli]” is passively received as intuition; then, in “understanding,”
its highest principle, synthetic apperception, spontaneously “peruses it [i.e., the given
multiple] and completely penetrates it” (cf. PhP 279). Next, I summarize the differences
between the description of “transcendental deduction” in the A and B editions of the
Critique of Pure Reason and draw a picture of Kant, whom Merleau-Ponty criticized asa subjectivist.
According to Kant, when we consider the formation of human experience, there
are two independent and incommensurable capacities of human cognition. On the one
hand, there is sensibility, which is the act of intuition that receives an object; on the other
hand, there is understanding, which is the act of inference and judgment about that object.
Recognition is achieved through the union of these two completely different moments.
Possibly following Heidegger’s interpretation in Kant and the Problem of Metaphysics,
Merleau-Ponty seems to suppose that the A and B editions have very different accountsof how these moments come together.9
Edition A reads as follows: “The principle of the necessary unity of the pure(productive) synthesis of the imagination prior to apperception is thus the ground of thepossibility of all cognition, especially that of experience” (A 118). Imagination was also
considered “a common but to us unknown root”(A 15=B 29) that makes both sensibility
and understanding possible—i.e., this fundamental and mediational capacity connects
Antich (2019) argues that there is no conflict between Kant and Merleau-Ponty, but rather a difference in phase;in Kant, the term “experience” refers to empirical judgment, while in Merleau-Ponty, this term refers to perceptual
experience.
9
In PhP, there are two passages where Section 33 of Kant and the Problem of Metaphysics is cited.
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them. In other words, in edition A, Kant asserts that it is the “imagination” that plays therole of mediating between sensibility and understanding to bring them into union. This iswhy, as I mentioned in the Introduction, Merleau-Ponty favorably receives Kant’s
description of the imagination in the Critique of Judgment and is expected to generally
agree with the assertion of the edition A.10
However, edition B explains that experience, which is supposed to be the
combination of sensibility and understanding, is established when transcendental
apperception (i.e., the capacity of understanding) penetrates sensibility, thus upsetting thebalance of the importance of sensibility and understanding. For example, according toedition B, “all combination [...] is an action of the understanding” (B 130). The supreme
principle of this combination in understanding is transcendental apperception (cf. B 136).
This transcendental apperception is the function of “I think...” that can accompany all our
representations, namely, the content of our experience (cf. B 131). Then, imagination,
which was said to be prior to the synthesis on the part of understanding, is positioned as“the transcendental synthesis of the imagination, which is an effect of the understanding
on sensibility” (B 152). Even though it is said that “Synthesis in general is [...] the mereeffect of the imagination, of a blind though indispensable function of the soul” (A 78=B103), in edition B, imagination appears to be reduced to one of the acts of understanding.
Thus, intuition, which has been considered on the side of sensibility, is ultimately subject
to the conditions of transcendental apperception—the highest principle of understanding.
To summarize, in edition B, there is no need to assume the imagination thatmediates sensibility and understanding for experience to appear with objective content.
Instead, for experience to be made up, all that is required is the work of apperception on
the part of understanding,11 which means that the spontaneity of understanding mustcompletely pervade sensibility. In fact, Merleau-Ponty, in the introduction to
Phenomenology of Perception, says the following about Kantian interpretation in a
subjectivist manner.
The general function of connection, which Kantianism finally attributes to it[understanding], is now common to the whole of intentional life […]. (PhP 65)

Contrary to my interpretation, Landes, who is also the English translator of PhP, believes that Merleau-Ponty
was harsh in his assessment of both the A and B editions (cf. Landes 2015).
11
These days, however, there appear to be only a few scholars who interpret apperception as the unlimited
spontaneity of consciousness. Instead, one of the most popular contemporary interpretations of apperception today
is that of Henrich, who sees a two-step proof structure in edition B Transcendental Deduction (cf. Henrich 1973:
93–94).
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The Kantian and subjectivist position Merleau-Ponty criticizes here is the following: thecapacity of the spontaneity of understanding, which permeates all over sensibility, andthe possession of propositional content of experience, are the conditions for all experience
to be possible.
1.2 The subjectivist interpretation of Kant and the “paradox of inquiry”
According to Merleau-Ponty, while in Critique of Pure Reason Kant confines himself tothe analysis of experience as it appears in the form of judgments and inferences, neoKantians in France apply Kant’s framework to all forms of human experience.
In order to clarify what is at stake here, I feature the description in Phenomenologyof Perception, where Merleau-Ponty criticizes the interpretation of Kant by the French
neo-Kantian Pierre Lachièze-Rey. 12 Merleau-Ponty focuses on the passage that
Lachièze-Rey cites and considers what is called the “paradox of inquiry” or “paradox oflearning” in Plato’s Meno (cf. PhP 425). On the one hand, this “paradox of inquiry”
means that if one does not know the object of inquiry at all, one does not know how toinquire about it, and even if one encounters the object, one cannot know whether it is theobject one is inquiring about. On the other hand, if one knows the object of one’s inquiry,
there is no need to inquire about it.
In Lachièze-Rey’s (1932/1950) interpretation of Kant, this paradox can be resolved
by presuming that humans are beings with the following two characteristics: On the one
hand, humans have a sensible way of being that is constrained by the side of the object
they experience; in other words, they are dependent on time and space. In this respect,humans have a finite way of being. We can have an “aspiration” or “Amour” for God orothers—i.e., a receptive and passive experience of consciousness (cf. Lachièze-Rey
1932/1950: 58). In this sense, there is room for humans to inquire about things that are
unknown. On the other hand, humans have an understanding that allows them to actively
construct meaning for an experienced object, and this is partially independent of specifictime and space. It is precisely because of this that humans can access matters that are true
beyond time and space (e.g., the sum of the interior angles of a triangle is 180 °) andcreate new knowledge (cf. Lachièze-Rey 1932/1950: 34–39). Here, we can recognize theMerleau-Ponty, for example, describes the subjectivist’s view of experience as “the classical idea of experience
about the world as the pure action of constitutive consciousness” (PhP 281). To this is added a note: “Here I mean
the Kantian concept [of intentionality], such as that of Pierre Lachièze-Rey or that of Husserl in the second period(of the Ideen period)” (ibid.). See also Jitsukawa (2000) in terms of Merleau-Ponty’s reading of Lachièze-Rey.
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possibility of knowing the object of one’s inquiry, that is, the ability to expand one’s own
understanding (intellect).
Merleau-Ponty calls these thoughts the “eternal interpretation of the Cogito” andrejects them. According to Merleau-Ponty, if we interpret Kant and analyze experience,as Lachièze-Rey does, we end up reaching the following conclusion: For humanexperience to be possible, humans must first possess a capacity of understanding that can
act beyond time, as well as act accordingly. However, in this case, it is possible to assume
that the human subjects are constructors of meaning that exert their intellectual action
without limit—that is, without the constraints of the object or others (cf. PhP 428).
According to Merleau-Ponty, this position fails to assume the other 13 or ensure
constraints and solicitations on the content of experience from the part of the object (theways the world solicits to learn). In other words, in the subjectivist position, the love forthe other and the adoration of God that Lachièze-Rey tried to secure ultimately become
only constructs of the consciousness of the human subject.
In light of this, Merleau-Ponty criticizes the neo-Kantian interpretation of Kant inFrance, such as that of Lachièze-Rey. He sees the problem with this interpretation in its
failure to describe the conditions on the part of the object that make it possible to know
the object of inquiry.

2 “Nature” making the learning experience possible
As seen in Section 1, Merleau-Ponty takes issue with the neo-Kantian interpretation ofKant in France, which considers judgment and inference to be essential for all ofexperience. If we adopt this interpretation, we cannot adequately explain the learning
experience. Against this interpretation, he tries to explain that even before judgment, thehuman subject can already receive the limitation or solicitation of cultural meanings on
the part of the object. There are two strategies in his philosophical project. The first is thereformulation of the concept of object, Nature, and the second is the reformulation of theconcept of human subject, their understanding or body. In this section, I discuss the former.
The next section focuses on the latter.
In this section, I take as an additional source Merleau-Ponty’s lecture notes(published under the title Nature), in which he examines German idealism in detail.
According to him, Kant’s idea of Nature, which we can experience, is only “the sum total
13

See Sakai (2020) for the concept of the “other” in Merleau-Ponty.

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of all objects of sense” (KU XVII). In Merleau-Ponty’s view, however, Schelling andHegel reformulate the concept of Nature. In other words, while Merleau-Ponty dismisses
the neo-Kantian interpretation of Kant in France, he tries to follow the same path ofdeepening and developing Kant that Schelling and Hegel had followed. In this section, I
show how Merleau-Ponty posits the way of being the object that makes the learning
experience possible as he retraces the tradition of German idealism.
Merleau-Ponty positively assesses Schelling’s attitude, which is mainly found in
System of Transcendental Idealism. In Schelling’s view, Nature, the object of experience,is not only what Kant calls “the sum total of all objects of sense” (KU XVII), governedby mere physical causality. It is also what provides a human with the possibility toperceive cultural meaning, even though it was external to experience.14 Merleau-Ponty
argues that this view of Nature was also valid for Hegel15 and both Schelling and Hegel
merged in the following view of art.16
There is a terrain where the two philosophies encounter: the terrain of poetry. […]A poetic consciousness recognizes that it does not fully possess its object, that it can
only understand it through genuine creation, and that it creates clarity through an
operation that is not deductive but creative. The poetic consciousness overcome byits object must be recaptured but never separable from its own history. There is an
act of faith in the encounter of passivity and spontaneity, of which the effort of art isthe best “document.” This is the search for a Reason that is not prose, for a poetrythat is not irrational. (N 76–77)
According to Merleau-Ponty, Schelling and Hegel believe that in poetry the union of
spontaneity and passivity is realized. On the one hand, the created work represents human
Ehrenspeck (2008) believes that Schiller found a “mixed Nature” between nature filled with physical causality
and nature with human cultural meaning. According to her, Schelling and Merleau-Ponty would merge to thisSchillerian conception of “Nature.” Merleau-Ponty, however, would not say that a human finds beauty from natureby some power of consciousness. Instead, he would say that the consciousness capable of finding beauty arises
from the body, which is part of Nature.
15
Here, Merleau-Ponty’s support for Hegel is limited to the period of Phenomenology of Spirit.
16
Kakuni explains that Merleau-Ponty rejected Hegel’s ideas and adopted Schelling’s ideas (cf. Kakuni 2002:
128-129). Based on this, Ikeda argues that Merleau-Ponty’s theory “turns back the idea of subject-object identity
found in the previous modern philosophy (e.g., Schelling’s conception of the identity philosophy) on a theoreticallevel” (Ikeda 2015: 186). However, it should be worth noting that Merleau-Ponty does not merely agree with
Schelling, but also gives a positive assessment of Hegel. So, I consider the following. Merleau-Ponty does not justadopt Schelling’s view of “Nature,” which can include physical causality and human cultural-historical meanings,
but also adopts Hegel’s view of “Nature,” which includes differences and contradictions at the root and gives rise
to dialectical processes. For Merleau-Ponty, it is the role of the body to manifest these differences.
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spontaneity in the sense that the artist’s consciousness actively creates it. On the other
hand, the created work is guided by the object in the outside world or the history of theart expression—it is constrained by Nature—and represents the passivity of humanbeings. In other words, an artwork, such as a poem, is an example of an objective form
in which the opposing moments of sensibility and understanding merge with an equal
status. Insofar as this, the Nature that solicited the creation of artworks must be considered
as more than just “the sum total of all objects of sense” (KU XVII) since it also includes
human culture, which is “never separable from its own history.”
Merleau-Ponty views the process through which Schelling reaches these ideas asa deepening development of Kant (cf. N 71). In other words, Schelling deepened thepossibility of “intellectual intuition” (cf. N 62, 362, 363) or “intuitive understanding” (cf.
N 46), which Kant had already discovered in the Critique of Judgment Section 7617 but
never developed. Merleau-Ponty summarizes Schelling’s ideas as follows.
What Schelling wants to say is that we rediscover Nature in our perceptual
experience before reflection. […] Also, in order to refind the meaning of external
nature, we must make an effort to rediscover our own nature in the indivisible state
where we are exercising our perceptions. (N 63)
He also quotes a passage from Schelling’s System of Transcendental Idealism, after
which he explains the following:
In order to refind oneself in this reflection of intellectual intuition, the Ego must havealready recognized itself in this primordial identity, the result of the organization of aprimordial and unconscious Ego. There has to be in things a preparation for what will
eventually be explicit meaning [for a human], for the liberation of meaning captivein the natural thing. (N 67)
As we see in these passages, Merleau-Ponty, relying on Schelling, believes that
following; we already grasp not only the causality of external Nature but also thehistorical and cultural (intellectual) meanings latent in Nature before we become awareof them, that is, in our perceptual experience.
In his resume for this lecture, Merleau-Ponty states that if we are to analyze our experience, although Kant only
indicated this possibility, we must consider “non-discursive understanding (entendement non discursif)” (N 361).
In fact, this “non-discursive understanding” seems to be considered as equal to Schelling’s “intellectual intuition”
or Hegel’s “intuitive understanding.”
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Merleau-Ponty attributes the fundamental reason for the subjectivist considerationthat judgment and inference are all objective experiences to a narrow understanding of
Nature, which we can experience. Based on this consideration, subjectivists fail to grasp
Nature as something that makes the learning experience possible. Merleau-Ponty
supports Schelling and Hegel against them and takes over the idea of “intellectual
intuition” or “intuitive understanding,” which Kant never developed. In inheriting thisidea, Merleau-Ponty suggests that the object of our experience (Nature) is not merely
something filled with physical causality but that it has a latent and perceivable meaning
inherent in culture and history.

3 The body making the learning experience possible
As I have shown in the previous Section, Merleau-Ponty supposes Nature, the perceptual
object, as something that has latent meaning in human culture and history in addition tophysical causality. Here, the following question arises: How is it possible for humans toperceive such Nature and continue to explore it? In this section, I present MerleauPonty’s reformulation of the concept of the subject (the concepts of understanding andbody). Then, I hope to demonstrate the process of learning experience through thisreformulation. By doing so, I will answer the previous question.
3.1 The body schema as a transcendental schema
As mentioned in the Introduction, Merleau-Ponty favorably received Kant’s descriptionof imagination in Critique of Judgment. In the first section of this paper, I highlighted that
Merleau-Ponty supports Kant’s view of imagination as the fundamental capacity thatmakes sensibility and understanding mediate, as seen in the edition A. In other words,
Merleau-Ponty is interested in the function of the primordial capacity that gives rise tosensibility and understanding, or the mechanism of a mixture of the two, which Kant did
not fully develop. What, then, is this remarkable idea that, according to Merleau-Ponty
that Kant was on the verge of developing? I suggest that this is the schematic function.18
Kant introduces the schema as the third term for sensibility and understanding. He
states that this schema is, on the one hand, like understanding and, on the other, like
Matherne (2016) argues that Merleau-Ponty transforms Kant’s schematism into a body schema throughLachièze-Rey’s interpretation. I also rely on her interpretation and will adopt the framework in which MerleauPonty considers schematizing the activity of imagination as a bodily activity.
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sensibility (cf. A 138=B 177). Then, he defines the conscious capacity that drives thisschema’s function as imagination (cf. A 140=B 179). At least in edition A, imagination
thus is a function of consciousness that is independent of sensibility and understanding,
although it mediates between them, exhibiting features of both.
In contrast, Merleau-Ponty did not think of imagination as a function of
consciousness independent of sensibility and understanding. Rather, he seems to consider
imagination an undifferentiated state of sensibility and understanding. In addition, he issupposed to attempt to postulate the primordial field from which this imagination arises.
In doing so, however, we should not admit the subjectivist interpretation that the highest
principle of understanding (apperception) is the “common root.” This is because
understanding must also be subject to constraints from the side of the object, including
spatio-temporal constraints. Here, Merleau-Ponty focuses on the body as the condition or
field from which imagination arises, where sensibility and understanding are
undifferentiated.
Behind this world, there is a more original mode, prior to all activity, a “world before
any thesis”: this is the perceived world. Whereas the former [universe of theory] isgiven as a world constituted [by consciousness], the latter [perceived world] is givenin flesh and bone, in Leibhaft. (N 105)
In brief, the field that guarantees the primordial identity of sensibility and understandingis the body, which belongs to the world. If we understand the world to be Nature in thesense I explained in the previous section, then the body is both a component of the Nature
we perceive and an internal part of this Nature. In fact, Merleau-Ponty states:[T]he anger or pain I read [...] on a face, the religion whose essence I grasp [...] inhesitation or reticence, the city whose structure I recognize [...] in the attitude of acity policeman or the style of a monument. (PhP 32)
Namely, before having human experience through judgment and inference, we haveperceptual experiences through our bodies, which have latent human historical andcultural constraints (meanings) in addition to spatio-temporal constraints.
Thus, the famous “body schema” Merleau-Ponty offers can be understood as basedon Kant’s argument. What is noteworthy about Merleau-Ponty is that the body, as a partof Nature, with its spatiotemporal location and historical and cultural content, is theprimordial field from which sensibility and understanding arise, rather than imagination
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as the power of consciousness, as was proposed by Kant and the subjectivists.
3.2 Body-based learning experiences
How, then, does the body, as indicated in the previous section, resolve the “paradox ofinquiry” to make the learning experience possible? In other words, how does the body
both know the object of inquiry and create what is to be explored? To conclude, thefollowing two things are doubly occurring in the body. First, a specific body posture (i.e.,body intentionality) is established, prompted by “Nature,” which has both physicalcausality and historical/cultural meaning. Second, something is created andcommunicated that is neither a representation nor a concept of the perceptual object but
something that promotes a further bodily posture toward the perceptual object.
According to Merleau-Ponty, “To say that I imagine Peter is to say that I procure a
pseudo-presence of Peter by provoking ‘the behavior about Peter’” (PhP 210); when one
perceives an individual concrete object, a body intentionality corresponding to that object
is generated. In addition, “A movement is learned when the body has understood it[...and] To move one’s body is to aim toward things through it [body], [or] to let it respondto their solicitations, which are exerted on it without any representation” (PhP 161); theperceptions from the body naturally become articulated and then contribute to contextappropriate behaviors and thoughts.
Regarding such body-based learning, let us first consider the case in which one
perceives a particular dog, Fido, in front of her. She takes Fido-specific intentionality, i.e.,a specific body posture toward Fido. From this Fido-specific intentionality, we canrecognize that the dog is Fido without thought or inference. The Fido-specificintentionality here is prompted not only by the optical stimulus on the retina, but also by
the experiential meaning of the dog Fido that we know and the cultural meaning of loving
the dog. Moreover, only when this intentionality is generated, is it possible to judge that“it is Fido there,” or approach the dog to check “is it Fido there?” and then to make body
movements appropriate to this context, such as “I will pat him on the head.”Henceforth, we move from our own Fido-specific body posture (intentionality) toan articulation of the content of that posture, that is, to thoughts and judgments. For
example, it becomes clear that this body posture includes the dog’s appearance, such as
bushy fur, coloring, and four legs, or the notion of a particular dog (Fido), which one has
seen in the past. Furthermore, after one perceives the operability toward the symbol ofFido, one can compare it with the dog “Bingo,” which provokes a similar body posture,and think, “Which breed does Fido belong to?” In other words, Fido-specific
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intentionality motivates further perception, inquiry, and thought (the operability ofsymbols), starting with the perceptual object Fido.19
Given this trajectory, one can go from perceiving individual objects to thinking
about more detailed meanings. However, this is not limited to the perception of mere
physical objects. In Phenomenology of Perception, Merleau-Ponty considers
mathematics (geometry) to be one of various human symbolic operations and uses
examples of learning about geometric objects. According to Merleau-Ponty, when one
perceives a triangle in front of her, she can enact operations such as adding parallel lines
by adopting a particular body posture to it, leading to a theorem such as the sum of theinterior angles of a triangle being 180 ° (cf. PhP 440–443). After describing the perceptual
processes involved in constructing the triangle, he adds the following.
Just as the localization of objects in space, according to Kant himself, [it] is not justa spiritual operation but one that utilizes the motricity of the body […]. (PhP 443)
It is precisely here that Merleau-Ponty continues Kant’s schematism by placing the roleof the body at the center. Even when dealing with what are thought of as universal
properties, such as those found in geometry, he argues that one does not approach suchproperties with a mental capacity that has no location in time and space, but rather one
captures the characteristics of a particular triangle by means of the body intentionality.20
Furthermore, after the body posture for a given triangle generates the implicationthat the sum of the internal angles is 180 °, one can take a similar body posture for any
triangle without inference (cf. Merleau-Ponty 1969/1992: 141). In other words, one isable to perceive the property that the sum of triangles’ interior angles of a triangle is 180 °.
From there, one can perceive operability that reveals further properties of triangles, suchas the inscribed angle theorem, and can go on to new thoughts. For example, theestablishment of the body intentionality for triangles in Euclidean geometry allows one
to perceive the possibility of extending such a definition by motivating one to ask, “Whynot take up triangles on the surface of the ellipsoid?”. Thus, one can learn to discover theproperties of triangles in non-Euclidean geometry (e.g., elliptic geometry), where the sumof the interior angles of a triangle on a sphere is greater than 180 °.
At this point, Merleau-Ponty’s interpretation of “intellectual intuition” andSee also Tamura (2018) for an analysis of the concept of “motivation” in Merleau-Ponty’s theory of perception.
Merleau-Ponty, to be sure, does not consider geometric objects as being mere constructs of mental action.
Instead, he assumes the existence of some object that gives rise to a certain intentionality, if such an intentionality
provokes (cf. PhP 429).
19
20

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S. TSUNEFUKA“intuitive understanding,” as featured by Schelling and Hegel, becomes clear. First,
understanding, as a function of thought, arises in the body, which is subject to spatiotemporal and cultural-historical limitations each time. Also, according to him, bodyintentionality does not arise merely from physical causality. To say body-based learning
experiences are not merely bodily perceptual experiences. According to Merleau-Ponty,
when a certain body posture is generated in a person, the possibility of a new body posturearises in her consciousness, as a background. Then, through the fulfillment of thispossibility, she can recognize the unknown object of inquiry, as the figure. In other words,
if body intentionality is extended through some new expression, whether academic or
artistic, that extended body intentionality is enacted in a condensed repetition of the bodyintentionality manifested by an existing theory or expression. In sum, what MerleauPonty refers to as body posture, or body intentionality itself, is a historical and culturalone, namely, an intuition with intellectual content (intellectual intuition) or an intuitively
generated intellect (intuitive understanding).
Based on these considerations, what is to be explored and what is to becommunicated to others, even though it is non-conceptual, is how one is motivated by aperceptual object. For example, as in the case of the development of geometry mentioned
above, academic inquiries can be developed by several scholars because of the incidental
transmission of pre-propositional, non-conceptual things through body intentionality as
well as the conceptual content manifested in the form of propositions. The reason a matterthat cannot be conceptualized well can be conveyed to the receiver or can beconceptualized later is that the body posture toward the matter (which remained nonconceptual prior to the proposition) can be captured first. In other words, the bodyintentionality incidentally conveys the motivation to “take a closer look at” or “take inhands” a distant object, or to “operate the symbol” or “rewrite the rules of use of thesymbol” in response to an academic problem, as in mathematics. In this way, “intellectual
intuition” or “intuitive understanding” is communicated through the body, accompanied
by rationality.
Above all, Merleau-Ponty attempts to solve the “paradox of inquiry” byreformulating the concepts of object and subject, respectively, and presenting thefollowing process. The body, which has already received some constraints andsolicitations from the object before judgment or inference, experiences a change in theway the world appears (a new object of inquiry appears). Through this change, then, thebody is motivated in the way it relates to the world (i.e., how it comes to know the objectof inquiry) in response to these solicitations. According to Merleau-Ponty, such
dynamism occurs in the learning experience. Thus, the body can bear meanings that are
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not yet propositional, but that will eventually become clear in perceptual experiences
prior to judgment. This is because the body generates chained manifestations of the worldthat motivate new perceptions. For example, a mathematician may somehow (intuitively)
see a formula for a solution, or her hands may move naturally toward such an operation.
A painter may also intuitively find a suitable motif, concept, or technique (e.g., abrushstroke). Such “intuitive” acts may lead to the discovery or invention of new theories
and expressions. According to Merleau-Ponty, the intuition of a mathematician or artist,or what appears to be a mere gesture, is a latent expression of the cumulative knowledgeof that expression. In other words, what is described above is the same process in whichthose who are familiar with “Fido” would naturally adopt a behavior that fits the context
of Fido based on their previous experience, starting from their body, without inference or
thought. Thus, according to Merleau-Ponty, both the discovery or invention ofmathematics and pictorial expressions result from the perceptual experience of the body,the same as the learning process that the perception of Fido motivates further thought.

Conclusion
I have explored how Merleau-Ponty’s theory of embodiment explains the learning
experience, including abstract intellectual activity, by focusing on his reception ofGerman idealism.
Merleau-Ponty does not criticize Kant directly but rather the subjectivist
interpretation of Kant by neo-Kantians in France. According to him, this interpretation
fails to describe the conditions on the part of the object because they assume that the
spontaneity of understanding, which pervades all over the sensibility and has the content
of experience like a propositional statement, is the condition for all experience to bepossible. In other words, they overlook the terms of the object, which make it possible toknow the object of inquiry.
Instead, Merleau-Ponty appreciates Schelling and Hegel, who extended theconcept of Nature by taking on “intellectual intuition” and “intuitive understanding,”
which Kant never developed. In other words, in Merleau-Ponty’s view, they paved theway to consider Nature, the object of our experience, not only as something filled withphysical causality but also as something that has latent and perceivable with meanings
inherent in culture and history.
According to Merleau-Ponty, such Nature is perceived by the body before theexperience of judgment. Simultaneously this perception creates in Nature a space that
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S. TSUNEFUKA

motivates new perceptions. In this sense, Merleau-Ponty’s theory deepens and develops
German idealism. Under this interpretation, the following significance of MerleauPonty’s account becomes clearer. He speaks of “intellectual intuition” or “intuitive
understanding” as “bodily intentionality,” based neither on transcendental consciousness
nor the Nature with its primordial identity, but on the body. Here, I should highlight two
points: First, by means of Merleau-Ponty’s concept of Nature, it is possible to show theexistence of a mixture of intuition and intellect (understanding) with historical andcultural meaning, which Schelling and Hegel were trying to show. Second, by means of
his concept of “body intentionality,” it is also possible to understand how the body allows
the learning experience and the creative process of learning and expression.
Thus, the theory of body-based learning experience derived from Merleau-Ponty
can be described as an experience that consists of a back-and-forth process between the
body and Nature, a mixture of physical causality and human historical and cultural
meaning. It is also clear that the pedagogical significance of his theory of embodiment is
not limited to the clarification of the effects of reading aloud or using the body to express
oneself in some way. In other words, his theory of embodiment has a broader scope that
explains the learning experience in mathematics, which at first glance appears to require
the abstract operation of symbols. This can legitimately be merged into the context ofBildungstheorie, both theoretically and in the history of philosophy, and it also seems tohighlight the uniqueness of his theory of the learning experience.

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