Subjectivity, Temporality, and the Passive Synthesis of Time in Merleau-Ponty’s Phenomenology of Perception

Abstract

The aim of this paper is to explain how Merleau-Ponty conceives, through the notion of “passive synthesis”, discussed in the chapter on temporality in the book Phenomenology of Perception, subjectivity as temporality itself, while also examining how the author makes this identification between subject and time without rendering the subject a timeless being and without reducing time to a mere product of the subject’s consciousness, that is, by demonstrating how the French philosopher establishes a relationship between the two terms that is never external in nature.