Analytic and Transcendental Empiricism: Russell, Merleau-Ponty, and Deleuze

Jan 29, 03:57 AM

At the beginning of the twentieth century, Bertrand Russell put forward the concept of an "analytic empiricism," an approach which he held to "eliminate Pythagoreanism from the principles of mathematics, and to combine empiricism with an interest in the deductive parts of human knowledge,"1 thus overcoming the limitations of both empiricism and rationalism which he saw to be at the heart of philosophy. Taking its support from atomistic scientific approaches, such as reflex psychology, Russell's analytic empiricism attempted to present a fundamentally atomistic view of both ontology and epistemology. In contrast to this form of empiricism, which was grounded for Russell in a model of the nervous system derived from reflex psychology, Merleau-Ponty developed an ontology which had its foundations in the work of Gestalt psychology. Following on from this, Deleuze took Merleau-Ponty 's approach further, reintroducing an explicit empiricist theme which was already present, if covered over in Merleau-Ponty's work. The aim of this essay is show how, with the failure of the atomistic scientific models that supported Russell's analytic project, a move away from the modular, analytic ontology of Russell's empiricism becomes possible. Following this, Deleuze and Merleau-Ponty move from the atomistic approach to philosophy of Russell, where the world mirrors the structure of the proposition to a genetic transcendental approach to an empiricism built on a new conception of synthesis. I will conclude by showing how the empiricisms of Russell, MerleauPonty, and Deleuze are all in the end transcendental empiricisms in their different ways. Central to my approach will be the thesis put forward by Russell that "in a logically correct symbolism there will always be a fundamental identity of structure between a fact and a symbol,"2 or rather its more general correlate, that one's approach to the world must have some sort of commonality with the world itself. Russell's Analytic Empiricism

After a detailed survey of the precursors of his tradition, Bertrand Russell's History of Western Philosophy leads us to the position where philosophy, finally rid of the "mysticisms"3 of thinkers such as Bergson, is at last capable of producing theorems which, at least in its own domain, "resemble science."4 The lynch- pin of this new system is a reconfiguration of the role of mathematics within the system. According to Russell, previous empiricist systems grounded their account of rationality on the psychologistic principles of association and habit. If this is the case, however, mathematical analysis becomes problematic, as if mathematics rests on the psychological acts of the individual, mathematics itself then must find its justification in the synthetic acts of the subject, leading to the veracity of logic being doubted. The origin of Russell's supersession of this dilemma is "in the achievements of mathematicians who set to work to purge their subject of fallacies and slipshod reasoning."5 This involves the essential project of the reduction of mathematics to the field of logic. On Russell's interpretation, mathematics is an axiomatic- deductive system, and as such, sidesteps the limitations previously attributed to it by the empiricists as well as the pretensions of the rationalists. As Russell puts it, "mathematical knowledge, it is true, is not obtained by induction from experience. ... In this sense, mathematical knowledge is still not empirical. But it is also not a priori knowledge about the world. It is, in fact, merely verbal."6 It is important to note, however, that although philosophical problems may result from badly analyzed sentences, where a proper characterization of the underlying grammar would result in the solution of a problem, this is not an attempt to show the dissolution of problems under proper analytical circumstances. Hence Russell would say, in reference to the later Wittgenstein, "philosophers from Thales onwards have tried to understand the world ... I cannot feel that the new philosophy is carrying on this tradition."7 Thus the primary aim of Russell's analytical empiricism is the rejection of the limitations of traditional empiricism to allow logic and mathematics to provide a firm basis for the connections we draw between entities within the world, thus allowing philosophy to become a science.

In terms of physics, Russell provides several examples of advances in our analysis of philosophical concepts that have come to light through scientific discovery. For instance, quantum mechanics' analysis of the world in terms of quanta of energy allows a radical shift in our concept of continuity. The fact that quanta are seen as discrete means that we can conceive of "physical phenomena as possibly discontinuous."8 Russell, in The Philosophy of Mathematics, advances this thesis on logical grounds, particularly in order to respond to the paradoxes elaborated by Zeno. As he shows there, pure duration falls outside of the realm of mathematical analysis, and so Russell is forced to the position of conceiving of duration as an infinite series of points, and in this way removing the category of change absolutely from his metaphysics.9 In fact, if mathematics is to be able to describe the world, both must share this structure of discreteness. Thus advance of science provides a grounding for the analysis itself, in order to escape the Wittgensteinian dilemma of it not being "the world that we are to try to understand, but merely sentences."10

In fact, Russell characterizes the only two possible ways of describing the world as being either as a jelly, or alternatively as a bucket of shot. Thus, in talking of Hegel, he would say, "his universe was like a jelly in the fact that, if you touched any one part of it, the whole quivered; but it was unlike a jelly in the fact that it could not really be cut up into parts."" Whilst the foundations of mathematics had not been clarified, a move to mathematics as method was impossible, which explains Russell's early Hegelian tendencies, but the solid foundations given to the infinitesimal calculus by Weierstrass, and the solution of Leibniz's paradox by Cantor seemed to Russell to open up the possibility of a new method, which would allow the discrete analysis of the world. This allowed Russell to move from conceiving of the world essentially along the lines of a jelly to conceiving of it as a bucket of shot. As a bucket of shot, the universe could be examined phenomenon by phenomenon, the effect of the analysis of one particular area no longer cascading through and transforming the results already obtained.

It is this conception of the world as "a bucket of shot," as a series of discrete entities, which further characterizes Russell's conception of the project of philosophy in general. "British philosophy is more detailed and piecemeal than that of the Continent."12 The power of definite resolution of problems through mathematical analysis, combined with the atomic conception of the universe allows for the development of something akin to modern analytic philosophy, as, contra the system builders such as Leibniz, it is now possible to proceed within philosophy in an essentially serial manner. We are able to "tackle problems one at a time, instead of having to invent at one stroke a block theory of the whole universe."13 Each problem can be specified in ways which precisely delimit its scope and be dealt with without reference to other facets of existence. As each thesis is only externally related to the others, at rigidly determined points of interface, philosophical knowledge becomes effectively the set of unfalsified theses relating to the world. To the degree that "a flaw here or there can be rectified without total disaster"14 by the replacement of a faulty component within the system with another that has the same external interfaces to other philosophical theses, the structure of philosophical knowledge as a whole becomes irrefutable. This is the direct result of the combination of the theses of empiricism and mathematics, the first on its own being merely sceptical, the second, empty. As I have argued, the view which Russell puts forward rests both on the ability of mathematics to relate to the world, and the possibility of the world being understood in terms of discrete phenomena, which allows the understanding to adequately relate to its subject matter. I now wish to turn to reflex psychology, as one of the sciences supporting this atomistic conception of the world.

Reflex Physiology and Its Refutation

"While physics has been making matter less material, psychology has been making mind less mental."15 Just as physics moves us on from the concept of matter to the concept of the event, albeit still conceived of in terms of classical logic, reflex psychology begins to unravel some of the problems associated with both perception and the mind-body problem. Reflex psychology allows the basic processes of carrying out logical operations to be mapped onto the physical world, thus allowing the other substance, that of mind, to be reduced to the same level as the material. It also provides a theory of perception very conducive to an analytic treatment of phenomena.

Reflex psychology follows Russell's programmatic intentions in attempting to reduce all behavior on the part of the organism to the reception of specific stimuli, the transference of these stimuli as quantities of excitation along specific nerve fibers to the final moment of their excitation of pertinent motor centers, once again quantitatively, in order to generate an appropriate response on the part of the organism. Russell argues that the first requisite of perception is that "there are causal chains which are, to a greater or lesser extent, independent of the rest of the world."16 He goes on to say that "light waves travel from the sun to the Earth, and in doing so obey their own laws. . . . When they reach the human eye, all sorts of things happen which would not happen elsewhere, ending up with what we call 'seeing the sun.""7 It is this process of all sorts of things happening that reflex psychology is supposed to explain. For a basic explanation of this further process, we can turn to Merleau-Ponty's description of it in terms of tracking a moving light. Beginning from where Russell leaves us, the light wave hits my retina, "not considered as just any kind of screen, but rather as a receptor or rather as an ensemble of discontinuous receptors.'"8 Each of these receptors is conceived of as having "a determined 'spatial value,' that is, that it is united by pre- established nerve circuits to certain motor muscles so that light, in touching it, only has to release a mechanism which is ready to function."19 As the light passes across the retina, these reactions can be chained together to give the impression that my eyes are following the light. Thus, "the simplest nerve functioning is nothing other than the setting in motion of a large number of autonomous circuits."20 The cause of the action is a singular stimulus, affecting the boundary of the organism, a singularity that it retains through its movement along predefined pathways within the organism itself. The autonomy of these pathways allows the analytical method to reach into the heart of the organism itself, as all phenomena of unity, such as that of intentionality, are banished from the organism as epiphenomena. Russell uses this model to claim that "the sense-datum itself is located in the nervous system."21 The radicality of this reinterpretation is given by the phenomenon of the light wave itself, whose motion across the retina is not a singular event, but a series of events, defined in turn by the particular receptor to which it acts as a cause. An example from the work of Koffka,22 the Gestalt psychologist, points the way to the absurdities which result from this theory. Taking the following figure:

A^sub 1^ B^sub 1^

A B

Assume that one is looking at point A, the point A^sub 1^ holds a certain relation to point A at this moment. Now without moving one's head, assume that one focuses on point B. B and B^sub 1^ are now in precisely the same positions in regard to the retina as A and A^sub 1^ were a moment ago. Now, imagine in the first instance moving the focus of one's retina from point A to A^sub 1^, and repeating this movement from B to B^sub 1^. Whilst the stimulus in terms of the point on the retina remains constant, the movement differs between the two cases, as the muscles begin from a different position. The conclusion of this is that "the innervations of movements which the eye sockets undergo in movements are determined, not only by the positions of the retinal points which arouse the movement, but also by the pre-existing position of the eyes."23 From this it is clear that the receptors don't simply need one connection to the motor centers, but one for every possible position of the eye within the reflex model, multiplying nerve fibers to an impossible degree if the atomistic conception is to be preserved. This multiplication is the only way for the atomistic system to generate something approaching global behavior. The limited successes of reflex psychology emerged through laboratory studies where these global factors could be isolated, either by setting the organism to work on projects inherently lacking in meaning, or inflicting such pathological conditions that meaningful projects were no longer possible. Despite this, even in these cases, the idea of a reflex remained mythical, as nerve fibres respond to stimulus in multifarious and qualitative ways. The idea that these ways could be decomposed was an original posit, not a result of reflex psychology. Whilst notions such as inhibition allowed reflex psychologists to continue seeing the organism as governed by local, pre-established circuits of behavior, it became clear that these concepts were merely ad hoc additions intended to shore up the collapsing edifice against the growing pressure of logical and empirical evidence.

It is Gestalt psychology that attempted to provide a proper understanding of complex phenomena. The basic assumption was clarified by experiments involving homogenous fields, both those of the absence of stimulation, and stimulation generated by monochromic surfaces. The results of these experiments were that although "objectively speaking, there [was] a complete absence of stimulation, the subjects perceived figures against the uniform grounds, figures which either were generated somatically (heartbeat, breathing, etc.) or were illusions."24 This discovery led directly to Merleau-Ponty's fundamental assertion that "a figure on a background is the simplest sense-given available to us."25 On this model, not only does the concept of an atomic perception itself become meaningless, but, as we are now dealing with autochthonous structure, meaning is now inherent in perception. Thus, in regard to the earlier example of visual tracking, "the hypothesis is advanced that the specific pattern of the seen-object itself regulates the movements of the eye."26 The result of this for the theory of perception is that "the relation between a set of conditions and the process which takes place under these conditions is not as a rule such that we can divide the total process into a finite number of part-processes each of which will depend upon a certain part of those conditions,"27 thus denying the constant correlation of singular causes and effects.

When it comes to the foundations of Gestalt psychology itself, however, the attempt was made to ground its results in an isomorphism between the structures of Gestalt figures and those of quantum phenomena. Such an approach would essentially leave the body as a closed system by simply replacing atomic elements with molecular figures, leaving the underlying ontology essentially untouched. This attempt to found Gestalt psychology on the natural sciences, and therefore to retain what is essentially an underlying atomistic structure, opens the way for a phenomenological critique, as it is a reversal of the natural movement from perception to the world. This critique is also applicable to Russell, through his integration of physiology and sense-data. Gestalt psychology ignores the fact that it is perception itself that provides an opening onto the world. Also, the attempt to retain a traditional ontology underlying Gestalt psychology is in contradiction to the principles of Gestalt psychology itself. The comparison of the body to a closed physical system directly undermines the chief result of Gestalt theory itself, which is the recognition that a system must be essentially open. As well as this equivocation within the analysis of the body itself, there is a further problem in that isomorphism between physical and psychological processes itself cannot be sustained once processes and conditions no longer hold a one-to-one relation with one another. In conclusion, whilst Gestalt psychology seems to offer a move to a new conception of the world without a proper reworking of its underlying ontology, Gestalt psychology in fact straightforwardly replaces the concept of the atom with that of the Gestalt. Whereas the difficulty with reflex psychology was its empirical falsity, the problem with Gestalt psychology is instead that it breaks with the principle of isomorphism between the world and our description of the world which is central even to Russell. As such, it could not help but evolve into a philosophy where the method once again found equilibrium with the world itself.

Merleau-Ponty

Within the analytic paradigm, it is possible to conduct a survey of a field through a systematic process of addition. Russell's metaphor of the bucket of shot allows essentially two operations to be posited in regard to each problem: the positing of a solution, or the repudiation of a solution, combined with the positing of a replacement. In both cases, the object, and therefore the problem, stands before us complete in itself and without necessary ambiguity. Whilst Gestalt psychology tried to retain this paradigm by conceiving of the Gestalt as an essentially closed system, this approach ultimately led to equivocation. It is Merleau-Ponty who once again provides the impetus to move beyond this Russellian mode of analysis. Once we recognize that phenomena are defined in terms of reciprocal determination, that the figure requires a background in order to be perceived, we must further recognize the possibility that this background itself can be thematized as a foreground in terms of a background of its own that will once again displace the meaning of the original figure. Thus the object of analysis becomes fundamentally ambiguous, unless the totality of attributes can be dealt with simultaneously. This was the root of the Gestalt psychologists' desire to close the system. If the system is, however, open, then the method of philosophy must necessarily lead to a multiplication of simultaneous and mutually inter-defining lines of thought. The understanding of the system must mirror the nature of the system itself. As Merleau-Ponty writes, "should the starting point for the understanding of history be ideology, or politics, or religion, or economics? Should we try to understand a doctrine from its overt content, or from the psychological make-up and the biography of its author? We must seek an understanding from all these angles simultaneously, everything has meaning."28 Such a project marks the reinstatement of the isomorphism thesis held to by Russell. The analysis, however, is not made simply to multiply the facts relating to a problem, but rather to seek an underlying essence which, although open, and therefore never fully definable, is nonetheless able to be characterized even while it retains an objective ambiguity. Before returning finally to the question of Russell's own "superior" empiricism, we briefly need to explore Merleau-Ponty's own rejection of the empiricist project in the light of Deleuze's later advancement of a new form of empiricism. Merleau- Ponty's rejection of empiricism rests essentially on it tendency to talk of perception in terms of sense data, which share a structural form with the object itself. As such, perception becomes the representation of the object to a subject, instead of the manifesting of the object itself. Consciousness for empiricism now becomes locked into its own representations, and ultimately separated from the world.29 If the body is not to be regarded as a closed system, it becomes the case that perception becomes a function of the system as a whole, subject and object instead being merely abstractions. It is only when these perspectives on the object are multiplied by a subject "obsessed with being, and forgetful of the perspectivalism of my experience"30 that the object becomes constituted as a concrete totality. In positing the object, consciousness follows Kant in likewise positing a separate subject. "The whole life of consciousness is characterised by the tendency to posit objects, since it is consciousness . . . only insofar as it takes hold of itself and draws itself together in an identifiable object."31 Such a movement is first, the creation of "common sense," second, the death of experience, and third the beginning of classical empiricism. Once the object has been formed, empiricism has the sense-datum from which it begins its analysis. This limitation of a divide between the subject and the object also affects intellectualism, which posits a similar separation between the subject and object. In talking of a superior method for conducting analysis in The Structure of Behavior, Merleau-Ponty will write, "to do justice to our direct experience of things it would be necessary to maintain at the same time, against empiricism, that they are beyond their sensible manifestations and, against intellectualism, that they are not unities in the order of judgment, that they are embodied in their apparitions."32

Transcendental Empiricism

In fact, this early insight would become transformed through the course of his development. In the Visible and the Invisible, Merleau- Ponty writes, "the problems posed in [The Phenomenology of Perception] are insoluble because I start there from a consciousness- object distinction."33 The remnants of Merleau-Ponty's Husserlian terminology clearly show through in the above discussion of the improved method of enquiry put forward by Merleau-Ponty, as in spite of breaking down the subject-object duality in favor of a theory of perception which precedes either term of this duality, the crux of the analysis is still the object itself and the clarification of its nature. In spite of this, it is clear that Merleau-Ponty's notion of perception must be seen as pre-individual, to the extent that it is precisely the source of the individuated subject and object.

The limitations on empiricism put forward by Merleau-Ponty are in fact taken up by Deleuze in his attempt to reconfigure empiricism as a transcendental empiricism. In breaking with empiricism, Deleuze argues, in a move anticipated by Merleau-Ponty, that a double battle must be fought with the "objective to thwart all dogmatic confusion between event and essence, and also every empiricist confusion between event and accident."34 This is to argue that if we are to understand the genesis of the object, we must understand the object to have a certain virtuality which is neither merely present within the object as a property, as empiricism holds, for then the origin of the structure of perception would be sought within perception itself, nor within a Platonic conception of essence, which would both separate perception from its origin, and merely reinscribe the object's form at a transcendental level. As Deleuze states, "empiricism truly becomes transcendental. . . only when we apprehend directly in the sensible that which can only be sensed, the very being of the sensible."35 Thus empiricism for Deleuze becomes a superior empiricism by moving to a transcendental basis, but one fundamentally different from that put forward by Kant. For Kant, transcendental philosophy involves the pure repetition of the object at the transcendental level, thus on the one hand justifying representational thinking's grasp on the world, whilst on the other providing a mere theory of the conditioning of the object. As form exists throughout the whole system, the genesis of form cannot be explained. What is needed instead is "an essentially plastic principle that is not wider than what it conditions."36 With this rejection of the generality of the transcendental field, and the focus on experience itself, Deleuze claims to therefore be the true heir of the empiricist tradition.

Deleuze's concept of virtuality as being expressed through actual phenomena thus meets Merleau-Ponty's criteria of something which is both "beyond [its] sensible manifestation" and "embodied in [its] apparitions." In this way, it is only the solution and not the problem itself that cannot be resolved in MerleauPonty's early work, and already we find hints of a direction for a solution in terms of "a unique core of existentialist meaning which emerges in each perspective [of our analysis]."37 Here it is the body which provides this function leading to the worry that the locus of the transcendental field is still isomorphic with the phenomenal, but in his later work, this idea is freed from its Husserlian shackles, and we begin to see the conception of the flesh as that which "brings a style of being wherever there is a fragment of being"38 as an "incarnate principle." While there are clear differences in approach between the two thinkers (Merleau-Ponty will work out his theory of the genesis of form in terms of art, whereas in the final analysis the bulk of Deleuze's theory of the virtual has a mathematical inspiration), and in their origins (Deleuze wishes to use plastic principles to overcome identity, Merleau-Ponty understands that without a genesis of structure one cannot give an account of meaning), both essentially present a transcendental empiricist vision of the world. In Merleau-Ponty's critique of empiricism, it is the reduction of phenomena to representation with which he takes issue, and it is this problem which Deleuze remedies with his theory of the event.

"We find that perceived things . . . are not bounded entities whose laws of construction we possess a priori, but that they are open, inexhaustible systems which we recognize through a certain style of development, although we are never able, in principle, to explore them entirely, and even though they never give us more than profiles and external views of themselves."39 It is this notion of style that corresponds to the notion of the virtual in Deleuze's philosophy. In both cases, we have a general structure which can be actualized in a variety of situations, but which nevertheless differs in kind from its situation of actualization. For Deleuze, following his mathematical inspiration, this structure is exemplified by scientific examples such as the soap bubble and the crystal, which both instantiate the same inherent structure, although in very different contexts. Merleau-Ponty instead relies on notions borrowed from art, affirming Cezanne's statement that "one should be able to paint even odors."40 The implication being that underlying the specific phenomenon is an essence which itself is independent of and not isomorphic with its spatio-temporal actualization. For Merleau-Ponty, in the end, the locus of style is the body, leading to charges by Deleuze that he has not fully shaken himself free from the Kantian paradigm (if the locus of style is individuated, can we ever really talk of a pre-individual moment which would be the genesis of perception?).

The work of Merleau-Ponty and Deleuze therefore in the end takes a transcendental turn, in search of non-a priori principles which nevertheless characterize the genesis of perception itself. One of the defining features of the projects of these two thinkers is the objectively provisional nature of the enterprise, as given by the subject matter itself, and the necessity of good judgment in determining the nature of the problematic itself. As Deleuze will say, "the difference in the origin does not appear at the origin- except perhaps to a particularly practiced eye . . . the eye of the farsighted, the eye of the genealogist."41 In seeking the origin of the meaning given to us by particular actualized moments of perception, we need a method that is itself multiplication of methods, in order to show that we have truly captured the virtuality expressed in the totality. This recognition that the determination of the problematic is a transcendental function allows us to return to Russell's proposal for a superior empiricism once more. Returning to Russell's example of the universe as a bucket of shot, we can see that the metaphor applies to Russell's system on two levels. Clearly, Russell believes the universe itself to be atomistic, but moving beyond this, we can see that the nature of the philosophical problematic itself has an atomistic form. As we saw, for Russell, this isomorphism itself supports itself through mutual implication. The world as atomistic implies the atomistic nature of the problematic field. It is this which allows each problem to be solved serially. Given the collapse of the atomistic paradigm, we are now in a position to ask if there is indeed a transcendental principle at work in Russell's own system. That is, if there is some universal criterion which allows the structure of enquiry to proceed with certainty. The question of the individuation present in the problematic field can in fact be answered by reference to the structure of logic that guides Russell's analysis itself. Whilst he took logic to be essentially empty in regard to content, which allowed its unification with the empirical method, it is the very structure of the proposition that ultimately undercuts this methodology. Classical logic, whilst allowing the determination of relations between predicates and entities, cannot itself explain the process of individuation that generates entities entering into these relations. Thus individuation as such must simply be a given, transcendental fact of the nature of the world. The essential difference of this approach to that of Deleuze and Merleau-Ponty is that the burden of the philosophical method now rests on the solution of problematics, rather than their constitution ("The problem always has the solution it deserves in proportion to its own truth or falsity.")42 The only possibility for failure in terms of the development of the argument is mechanical error. To the degree to which classical logic plays the role of common sense (at the transcendental level), we can therefore follow Deleuze in describing this interpretation of error as "a kind of failure of good sense within the form of a common sense which remains integral and intact."43 This is to be contrasted with transcendental empiricism, where the necessarily open relationship to virtuality allows more complex forms of error to emerge, which adequately describe the failure to properly characterize the problematic, such as that of baseness of thought. In conclusion, we can therefore say that Russell's analytic empiricism is indeed a transcendental empiricism, but an empiricism built upon the analytic proposition. Its foundations in an atomistic view of the world are, however, not supportable, as is shown by its reliance on a particular form of psychology, reflex psychology, which ultimately gave way in the face of the inherently differential nature of the world. The collapse of analytic empiricism necessitates a movement away from the modular ontology proposed by Russell, where problems could be dealt with sequentially. Once we have recognized the reciprocally determining nature of the elements of our philosophy, it no longer becomes possible to conceive of the development of an ontology without recourse to aesthetics, mathematics, economics, history and so forth. For example, the idea of an aesthetics which does not call into question our fundamental understanding of the world, which maintains a merely parasitic relation to our understanding of the physical world, or a metaphysics which does not directly impinge on our ideas of art becomes impossible. In moving to a transcendental philosophy, Deleuze and Merleau-Ponty move beyond both of the archetypes of systems proposed by Russell, as the question to be dealt with is no longer the forms of the world, but rather the genesis of form itself. Philosophy now relies on synthesis, a mode of synthesis which, as differential, is preindividual; a synthesis which grounds the superior empiricist project.44

University of Warwick, Coventry CV4 7AL, United Kingdom

ENDNOTES

1. Bertrand Russell, History of Western Philosophy (London: Unwin University Books, 1946), 783.

2. Bertrand Russell, The Philosophy of Logical Atomism (London: Fontana Press 1972), 52.

3. Russell, History of Western Philosophy, 783.

4. Ibid., 788.

5. Ibid., 783.

6. Ibid., 786.

7. Ray Monk, "Was Russell an Analytic Philosopher?" in H.-J. Glock, ed., The Rise of Analytic Philosophy (Oxford: Blackwell, 1997), 37.

8. Russell, History of Western Philosophy, 786.

9. "Weierstrass ... has at last shown that we live in an unchanging world, and that the arrow, at every moment of its flight, is truly at rest." Bertrand Russell, The Principles of Mathematics (London: Allen and Unwin, 1937), 347

10. Monk, Was Russell an Analytic Philosopher? 37.

11. Ibid., 42.

12. Russell, History of Western Philosophy, 619.

13. Ibid., 788.

14. Ibid., 619.

15. Ibid., 787.

16. Ibid.

17. Ibid..

18. Maurice Merleau-Ponty. The Structure of Behavior, trans. Aldan Fisher (Boston: Beacon Press, 1963), 8.

19. Ibid.

20. Ibid., 9.

21. D. Pears, Bertrand Russell and the British Tradition in Philosophy (London: Fontana 1967), 33.

22. Karl Koffka, The Growth of the Mind, trans. R. Ogdon (London: Kegan Paul, 1928), 79.

23. Ibid.

24. M. C. Dillon, Merleau-Ponty's Ontology (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1988), 61.

25. Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Phenomenology of Perception, trans. Colin Smith (London: Routlege and KeganPaul, 1962), 4.

26. Koffka, Growth of the Mind, 82.

27. Ibid., 121.

28. Merleau-Ponty, Phenomenology of Perception, xix.

29. "Since the soul remains coextensive with nature, since the perceiving subject does not grasp himself as a microcosm into which messages of external events would make their way mediately and since his gaze extends over the things themselves, to act upon them is not for him to get outside of the self and provoke a local movement in a fragment of extension; it is to make an intention explode in the phenomenal field in a cycle of significative gestures" (MerleauPonty, Structure of Behavior, 189).

30. Merleau-Ponty, Phenomenology of Perception, 70.

31. Ibid., 71.

32. Merleau-Ponty, Structure of Behavior, 187.

33. Maurice Merleau-Ponty, The Visible and the Invisible, trans. Alphonso Lingis (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1968), 200.

34. Gilles Deleuze, Difference and Repetition, trans. Paul Patton (London: Athlone, 1994), 54.

35. Ibid., 57.

36. Gilles Deleuze, Nietzsche and Philosophy (London: Athlone, 1983), 50.

37. Merleau-Ponty, Phenomenology of Perception, xix.

38. Merleau-Ponty, The Visible and the Invisible, 139.

39. Maurice Merleau-Ponty, The Primacy of Perception and Other Essays, ed. James Edie (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1964), 7.

40. Ibid., 6.

41. Deleuze, Nietzsche and Philosophy, 5.

42. Deleuze, Difference and Repetition, 159.

43. Ibid., 149.

44. I would like to thank John Protevi for his insightful comments an an earlier verison of this essay.

Copyright DePaul University Winter 2007

(c) 2007 Philosophy Today. Provided by ProQuest Information and Learning. All rights Reserved. Analytic and Transcendental Empiricism: Russell, Merleau-Ponty, and Deleuze
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