Consciousness is a temporary fold in being, not separate from it

Evidence

For Merleau-Ponty, consciousness can never be a ‘nothingness’ radically divided from being, as Sartre had proposed in Being and Nothingness. He does not even see it as a ‘clearing’, like Heidegger. When he looks for his own metaphor to describe how he sees consciousness, he comes up with a beautiful one: consciousness, he suggests, is like a ‘fold’ in the world, as though someone had crumpled a piece of cloth to make a little nest or hollow. It stays for a while, before eventually being unfolded and smoothed away. — Sarah Bakewell, At the Existentialist Café, 739

Categorization

• DEFINE: Gives the essential contrasting metaphors of the three major phenomenologists — Sartre’s nothingness, Heidegger’s clearing, Merleau-Ponty’s fold.
• XREF: Directly situates Merleau-Ponty against Sartre’s Being and Nothingness and Heidegger, synthesizing the movement’s internal disagreements. — connects to: Consciousness introduces differentiation, meaning, and plurality into undifferentiated Being — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness: An Essay on…, 40; Consciousness and its affect are one indivisible being, not substance plus quality — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness: An Essay on…, 136; For consciousness, existence precedes and grounds any essence — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness: An Essay on…, 137 (+13 more)

Broader Connections

• Unconsciousness is the precondition for consciousness to emerge. #complicates (0.80)