1. Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Ph¨¦nom¨¦nologie de la perception (Paris: Gallimard, 1945); Phenomenology of Perception, trans. Colin Smith (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1962; reprint, with translation revisions by Forrest Williams, Atlantic Highlands, NJ: Humanities Press, 1976). Since the term “constitution” is translated a number of ways in the English edition, the research project upon which the present essay is based relies solely upon the French edition. However, references to this work will provide French/English page numbers throughout. Unattributed page numbers throughout this essay refer to this work.
2. Cf. Thomas M. Seebohm, “Intentionalität und passive Synthesis. Gedanken zu einer nichttranszendentalen Konzeption von Intentionalität,” in Husserl in Halle. Spurensuche im Anfang der Phänomenologie, ed. Hans-Martin Gerlach and Hans Rainer Sepp (Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang, 1994), 68–9, on extra-philosophical senses of “constitution” in political and medical contexts.
3. Merleau-Ponty’s periodization of Husserl’s work in terms of a trajectory moving from logicism to existentialism (317 n. 1/274 n. 1; cf. 61 n. 1/49 n. 1, 63 n. 1/51 n. 1, 281 n. 1/243 n. 1)¡ªalbeit to an existentialism marred by “throwbacks” to earlier periods (419 n. 1/365 n. 1)¡ªis structured by a narrative shape that expresses Merleau-Ponty’s own philosophical concerns in Ph¨¦nom¨¦nologie de la perception, and this narrative does not always hold up in light of subsequent scholarship on Husserl’s texts; for example, in the 1945 work, Merleau-Ponty was unable to take into account that the 1928 version of the time lectures, edited by Stein and Heidegger, mingles manuscripts from different periods (cf., e.g., 178 n. 1/152 n. 1).
4. Peter J. Hadreas, In Place of the Flawed Diamond: An Investigation of Merleau-Ponty’s Philosophy (New York: Peter Lang, 1986), 7.
5. See, e.g., Zahavi’s contribution to the present volume.