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Journal of the British Society for Phenomenology

ISSN: 0007-1773 (Print) 2332-0486 (Online) Journal homepage: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/rbsp20

The Concept of the Ecstasis

Cliff Engle Wirt

To cite this article: Cliff Engle Wirt (1983) The Concept of the Ecstasis, Journal of the BritishSociety for Phenomenology, 14:1, 79-90, DOI: 10.1080/00071773.1983.11007610

To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/00071773.1983.11007610

Published online: 21 Oct 2014.

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Journal of the British Society for Phenomenology, Vol. 14 No. l. January l'l!i3

THE CONCEPT OF THE ECST ASIS

CLIFF ENGLE WIRT

In the works of all the important existential phenomenologists, one finds descriptions of a very special kind of relationship obtaining between a human being and the world. For example, Merleau-Ponty claims that, as embodied, one goes outside of oneself to the object one is prepared to grasp. Heidegger claims that, as a field of ecstatic temporality, Dasein goes outside of itself towards the world and towards itself. Finally, Sartre claims that the "for-itself' 'transcends itself out toward the "in-itself." All these philosophers hold that there is a kind of dealing with objects which does not occur within the confines of a mind or psyche which is closed offfrom actual things in the world. One's relation to the 'object' is an 'ecstatical' one. We shall henceforth call this relation the 'ecstasis. ·

The existential phenomenologists present no direct, explicit argu­ments for the existence of the ecstasis. Instead, they rely on a global grasp of their philosophical positions as a whole in order to make the ecstasis plausible. Thus one is challenged to find some sort of explicit argument for the ecstasis. This paper is concerned with making such an argument, using concepts provided by Merleau-Ponty in his Phenomenology of Perception. Some guiding indications are necessary of the kind of argu­ment we are using, and of the way we intend to proceed with the argument.

In the first section of the paper, we will present two illustrations of phenomena which might be thought of as ecstatic. These illustrations will give the reader a vague and general handle on what an ecstasis is. In these examples, the ecstasis will show itself as a rather elusive phenomenon. Starting from the vague grasp one will then have of the ecstasis, we will attempt to find the appropriate categories for this phenomenon. These categories will offer a provisional answer to the following questions: what is the nature of the ecstasis? What sort of being is capable of engaging in an ecstatic relation with things? Having found these categories, we will make an initial stab at an explicit argument. This attempt to find the right categories and to provide a provisional argument will occupy the second section. The third section will make a second argument. This argument will make the existence of the ecstasis more convincing by relating it to a concrete phenomenon, namely, depth. Various problems which arise in the course of these two arguments will be discussed as we present them. In the fourth section, we will then discuss the philosophical importance of the ecstasis.

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Our procedure, then, is hermeneutical. Starting with a few glimmers of the phenomenon we are explicating, we return to that phenomenon again and again, until we have let it show itself in a concrete way. In so doing, we will remain within the horizon of the ordinary understanding of the comportment towards things. Those things will be taken just as they present themselves to that understanding and comportment. For example, we shall take it for granted that one's actual motion really is actual; similarly, we will take it for granted that doorknobs really are real when they show themselves that way, unless our phenomenological analysis requires us to see them in a different light. Inevitably, someone will charge us with "presupposing" that idealism is false. Such a charge would grossly misunderstand our aim and procedure. Remaining within the horizon of the ordinary understanding, we won't presuppose that idealism is false, since we won't even get to the question whether it is true, false, or neither. No absolutely certain, philosophical grounding of the ecstasis will be attempted. Instead, we will limit ourselves to showing that a reasonable person can believe that there is such a phenomenon as the ecstasis.

Our first example centers around emotions of a certain type. Suppose someone unexpectedly meets a person whom he loves. He does not first cognize the person, and then- or perhaps simultaneously­''look inward" and discover an emotion locked up in his psyche, present there as a "datum of consciousness." Rather, the emotion has an inten­tional character. Through the emotion, he finds all of his attention focussed on the loved person; all of his attention has, so the speak, gone out of him. It is as if the emotion surged out of him, carrying him to the loved person in such a way that he feels himself right there with him. He is 'carried away' by the emotion; it gives him to be 'beside himself.' The emotion might find its natural expression in a "rapturous" or "ecstatic" extension of the arms towards the loved person. When a person is directed towards the beloved through his emotion, the beloved appears in a very special light; one discovers him as worthy of love, as warm and gentle, and so on. All the while, none of the lover's attention is being directed inward toward what is occurring in his psyche; it is all directed outward toward the loved person.

Even now, one has a shred of an argument for the ecstasis. If the emotion of love were a purely "inner" event or condition locked up in a psyche. it would be hard to see how anyone could be so powerfully directed toward his beloved by means of it. What is more, the fact that the emotion lets the beloved appear in a certain light should provoke our suspicion: for how could a purely internal event affect how a person in the "external world'' appears, if it did not have some hand in the external appearance? One should consider, also, that if an emotion like love is h .::ked up in a psyche, then presumably any lack of awareness of what is

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going on in the psyche would entail a corresponding lack of awareness of the emotion of the psyche. In fact, however, the emotion is the more intensely felt the more it surges out of one and directs him to the beloved; the more one explicitly directs his attention inward and tries to apprehend the emotion as an internal process or event, the more likely is the emotion to be attenuated or to disappear altogether.

On the face of it, then, an emotion like love does not seem to be something locked up in a psyche; rather, it seems to carry a person outside of himself, directing him to people in the world. Of course, what seems is not necessarily what is. It is still possible that an emotion is a purely inward thing or psychical process which deceives a person into thinking that he is being carried outside of himself. Nonetheless, an emotion such as love makes something like an ecstasis seem more plaus­ible. Let's tum now to the second example.

Suppose that someone is about to reach for the doorknob as he is walking out of his apartment. He does not think: "Since I am such and such a distance away from the door, I should extend my arm out and grasp the doorknob in order to turn it and open the door." Rather, his being about to grasp the doorknob seems to issue out of the rhythm and momentum of his action as a whole. It is much as if, in the "swing" of his action, he found himself swung forward toward the doorknob, so opening up a line of possible motion towards it. It is as if he were being carried forward on a trapeze. This "trapeze effect" is so powerful that it is much as if one were already at the doorknob, grasping it. The fact that the doorknob lies ready for his grasp as if it were waiting for that grasp, and that it looks cold, hard, smooth, and so on, as if his hand were already there, feeling it, contributes to one's impression that he is already grasping the doorknob.

As Merleau-Ponty describes the phenomenon, the hand "haunts" the thing towards which it is raised.

In the action of the hand which is raised toward an object is contained a reference to the object, not as an object represented, but as that highly specific thing towards which we project ourselves, near which we are, in anticipation, and which we haunt .I

In reaching out for the doorknob, a person is near it in anticipation, since his actual grasping to it is something which will occur shortly in the future. Because he does not see his physical hand 'there' at the knob, it is as if his hand "haunted" the knob. One is reminded of the ghost which enjoys playing the piano, only here, the "keys"- graspable things in general­need not display any objective motion. In haunting the doorknob with the unseen presence of one's hand, it is as if a line were being thrown out toward it; one's hand "surges" toward the doorknob.

It is never our objective body that we move, but our phenomenal body, and there is no mystery in that, since our body, as the potentiality of this or that part of the world, surges toward objects to be grasped and perceives them. (P.P. p. 106.)

But what is really going on when the body swings out and surges toward an object? Is this simply a subjective appearance, or does the body

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actually go out to the object? Merleau-Ponty claims that the body actually does go out to the object.

The project towards motion is an act. which means that it traces out the spatial­temporal distance by actually covering it. (P.P. p. 387.)

Because the body is potentially grasping the object, the distance between one and the object has a futural, and therefore temporal, dimension as well as a spatial dimension. The distance is a spatial-temporal one. How does Merleau-Ponty argue for his claim that the motor project, which we have called the "trapeze effect," actually covers the spatial-temporal distance between a person and an object? It is difficult to pull out an argument from the immediate context of this claim; nonetheless, I think an argument can be constructed.

2

The trapeze metaphor originally suggested itself because the hand's motion was being considered from the perspective of the "swing" of one's action as a whole. Thus in searching for the right categories for the ecstasis, it would be useful to ask what it is about one's motion as a whole which gives rise to the trapeze effect, whether this effect is a purely psychological deception or not, Let us take a look, then, at what it means to talk about action as a whole.

Should "action as a whole" be taken to mean the sum total of positions which a person assumes as he moves through space? In order to test this idea, suppose that one clocks his movement and maps each position that his body assumes with a moment of time. But as one proceeds, he notices that there is nothing in each position per se which appears to swing him outside of himself toward the doorknob. For each position is restricted to the now-point it is being mapped onto (supposing that this is possible); thus it is not at all clear how it can foreshadow a possible action or open up a line of possible motion to the doorknob.

Since one cannot figure out this way how his hand at least seems to be grasping the knob, let's see whether this effect cannot be obtained by considering the hand's motion as a gestalt. Let's take a look at the way in which a 'gestalt' has been defined. One finds that the notion of a gestalt is always defined in terms of a field. The gestalt psychologist Koffka defines a field as the "distribution of strains and stresses in a given environment," taking that concept from modern physics.~ Koehler, another gestalt psychologist, defines a field as consisting of dynamic vectors which extend from an object into its environment.3 For him, a field is also the specific distribution of those vectors. For example, should one draw three angles in the manner illustrated in Fig. I, they tend to group

1\ Fig. I.

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themselves into a triangle. They have a significance as a triangle because they exist in a visual field which tends to pull them together, even though considered in terms of what is "actually on the page," namely, several lines composed of ink, they do not "add up" to a triangle. The "vectors of force" in the visual field fill in the gaps left in the triangle; and since each angle is, so to speak, alive with these vectors, the vectors extend from the actual marks on the paper into their environment. In this way, each actual part of the triangle points beyond itself in order to complete the triangle­figure. A gestalt, then, is a figure organized in terms of a dynamic field which gives the figure a particular significance as something.

Let's see, then, whether we can't identify a "dynamic vector" which runs through the "actual parts" of the hand's action, i.e .. the particular positions which the hand assumes in the course of its motion. If this vector turns out to be the 'trapeze effect,· we would have found a way to conceptualize that effect, i.e., put it under the appropriate categories. From the way in which we have defined a gestalt, we should look for two things in attempting to locate a dynamic vector running through and gestalting one's actual motion. First, the dynamic vector. in gestalting the hand's action, would give that action the particular significance it has as. say, being a reaching out for an object. Thus, if we found some aspect of the hand's action which gave it the significance of a reaching out. we would strongly suspect that we are on the right track. Second. we know that the dynamic vectors of the triangle "gestalt" the three angles by virtue of being "potential lines" of the triangle. Thus we should try to see whether that which gives the hand's action its significance as a reaching is itself a potential reaching out. Because the 'potential lines· of the triangle extend out, as 'dynamic vectors,' from the actual lines of the triangle, we should not be surprised to discover that any 'dynamic vector' we may find in the hand's action extends out from the hand's "actual motion" into the environment of the hand.

The 'trapeze effect' fulfills the first criterion we have mentioned, since it gives the hand's motion the particular significance it has as an action, as can be shown by the following. In reaching for a doorknob, the agent has a sense for where the doorknob is and at the same time a sense of where his hand is and its motion. If he did not have such a feel for the things outside his hand, but only a feel for the hand, its location, and its actual motion, then the hand's motion would not be experienced as a reaching out. Without a sense of the space outside his hand, he would be without a sense of the freedom to move. It is hard to think what a motion lacking such freedom would be like, but one can think of cases where that freedom and the corresponding sense of space outside his body is curtailed, even if they are not wholly lacking. For example, in shoving a heavy object, the hand's freedom to move is curtailed by the object, and the sense of space outside the hand has a tendency to be focussed on the location of the object. Thus a motion which involved no sense of space outside one's hand would be analogous to a shoving; and since nothing is

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being shoved, it would perhaps be like shoving back space. That motion would not be experienced as a reaching out toward the object, even if by some miracle the "actual motion" of the hand, as a sum of positions in space, happened to mimic such a reaching out. But if anything estab­lished a sense of the space beyond one's hand, the trapeze effect would, since through it one seems to be going beyond himself to the object. Thus that effect gives the hand's "actual motion" the significance of reaching for an object.

The trapeze effect fulfills the second criterion as well. Through it, one "seems" to be going outside of oneself toward the object. Because this 'going out' is not an actual motion, it can only be a 'potential motion.' In this motion, one surges out of oneself in a potential grasping of the object. But what grasps the object is the hand. One throws himself toward the doorknob not as a disembodied angel or spirit, but as a being who is capable of grasping the doorknob. The potential motion of reaching out is therefore the potential motion of the hand, or of the body in general. It is a potentiality of the hand's motion in the same way that the dynamic vectors of the lines composing the triangle are potentialities of those lines: both are "extensions" of that of which they are potentialities. Because the trapeze effect gives the hand's actual motion its significance as a reaching out, it gestalts that motion. The trapeze effect, then, fulfills our two criteria for deciding whether something is a dynamic vector.

We now have some indication of what the ecstasis is. Even if that phenomenon turns out to be a purely psychological deception, we know that it is a motor field which directs a person to things. At the same time, we have some indication of what sort of being can be related to objects in this way. This being cannot be regarded in all respects as a third person object, since it is intentionally directed to things through its motor projects. Nor is it a purely psychic, disembodied entity, since its motor project is also a field or potentiality of an "in itself' thing, namely, the hand.

The fact that the 'trapeze effect' or motor project is a field lets us give a provisional argument for the thesis that this project is not locked up in a psyche which is detached and closed off from the world. This argument rests on the fact that what is in a field is, in some sense, an integral part of that field. For example, there is no real distinction to be made between the 'dynamic vectors' which create the Mueller-Lyer illusion, (see Fig. 2),

< > Fig. 2.

and the lines which are gestalted by those vectors. The bottom line itself has the 'dynamic quality' which gives it to 'extend out;' similarly, the top line itself has the quality which gives it to be 'compressed inward.'

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Because the 'trapeze effect' is a dynamic vector gestalting the hand's actual motion, that motion is an integral part of the field set up by that vector. One may object that the motor project may not be similar in all objects to the field set up by the Mueller-Lyer illusion. Thus one cannot automatically argue from the one to the other. However, there is no reason to suppose that the hand's actual motion is not an integral part of the field set up by the motor project. For if the hand's motion were not an integral part of the field, it would be difficult to see how that field could "inform" the motion in such a way as to give it a particular significance. Thus if that field were locked up in a psyche, then the hand's actual motion would be locked up in a psyche as well. However, one ordinarily thinks of his actual motion as being actual. Evidently, then, the body's motor field is not locked up in a psyche which is detached from the world. If the motor project is subjective, then everything is subjective.

To this argument, one can make six objections. As it will turn out, only the sixth will really be worth taking seriously. First, it can be objected that we are presupposing the reality of the world; without argument, we assert that idealism is wrong in thinking that one's actual motion is locked up in a psyche which is closed off from the world. Insofar as we have not "refuted idealism," we have not given an absolutely certain, philosophical grounding of the ecstasis. Nor do we intend to give such a grounding. Instead, we aim to convince the reasonable person that there is such a "thing" as an ecstasis. Because reasonable people do believe that there are actual things in the world which actually do move, we should be able to achieve our goal, all things being equal.

The second objection runs something like this: "The triangle gestalt and one's directedness to a thing are two altogether different pheno­mena. As a result, calling the latter a 'dynamic field' can only be based on a mere analogy. You cannot base any actual argument on such an analogy." Let's turn the question around, however, and ask why the motor project is not to be conceived of as a 'dynamic vector.' Both the dynamic vectors of the triangle gestalt and of the hand's motion are potentialities of actual things. With apologies to Gertrude Stein, we may say that a potentiality of a thing is a potentiality of a thing is a potentiality of a thing. It is not clear how the motor project is different from the dynamical vectors of the triangle gestalt in such a way that the motor project cannot be conceived as a dynamic vector gestalting the hand's motion. True, one is directed to things through the motor project. But it also remains true that this project directs one to things through the potential motion of an "in itself' thing, namely, the body. It appears, then, that one really can conceive of the motor project as a dynamic vector. We are not making a mere analogy in claiming that the motor project is a dynamic vector.

"Suppose that I just fail to see dynamic vectors anyplace, either in the hand or in the three angles? In fact, I don't even know what a dynamic vector is. Thus you have hardly made your argument." The notion of a

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field and a gestalt is really not so obscure. Nonetheless, there is an extent to which a field is hidden from one, since one never encounters it as a thing lying before him. A field is not a thing or a thing-like process. Thus objections like the one just mentioned are perhaps inevitable. If the notion of a gestalt does not prove illuminating to someone, there is little which we can do, except, perhaps, trace his inability to understand back to a particular philosophical ideology.

A fourth objection can be stated this way. "I am not able to experi­ence your motor project in the way you experience it. That project must therefore be contained in a psyche which is closed off from the world." It is, however, fairly easy to dispose of this objection. We have already seen that a person lives through his body in its potential motion. One is his body, at least insofar as he is directed to things through his motor project. He is where-ver his body is; he is situated with respect to it by virtue of being it. Because things appear differently to one according to the way he is situated with respect to them, it should not be too surprising that, in some respects, his body appears differently to him than it does to another. The fact that a thing appears differently from different "points of view" does not automatically entail that it is locked up in a psyche. Thus we are not forced to the conclusion that one's motor project is locked up in a psyche which is detached from the world.

Still, however, one may be troubled by a certain analogy or metaphor. This metaphor leads to the fifth objection. One might visualize the motor project as a kind of ray issuing out of one. If so, then it must seem as if my ray must cut through yours if I look across your line of sight. However, one does not have to rely on the ray image in order to understand the motor project. As we have already noted, a dynamic vector is not a thing or thing-like process. Thus one does not have to dread the possibility that his "rays" might clash with another's.

Finally, one can object in this way: "I will grant you that I in some sense do extend out of myself toward things. Yet I still don't quite know what the 'dynamic vector' is which does this. Could you not relate it to something more concrete, so as to allow one to gain a better grasp of it?" If one is really going outside of oneself, he is doing so in depth, since that is the spatial dimension through which one reaches for an object. Thus an analysis of depth should prove helpful in grasping what a bodily ecstasis is. Such an analysis would make our argument more convincing. What is more, it will let us make a second argument for the ecstasis.

3

Depth, as a dimension of space, is a kind of distance. In turn, a distance is a difference between two positions. Often one falls into the habit of thinking of distance in general from the point of view of a single instance of distance, namely, breadth. Breadth is constituted by the difference between the positions of two objects facing one. Both posi­tions are essentially of the same kind, being positions of things which one

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does not live through, but which are "there before" one. Usually one just has a sense of the distance between two objects facing him; and perhaps this sense is constituted by a sense of what it would take, say, to jump across the span separating two roofs he sees in front of him. But one can also stretch a marked cord between the two roofs and transform the distance between them into a multiplicity of units arrayed before one. Any breadth is potentially transformable into such a multiplicity.

Is depth just another form of breadth, or somehow reducible to breadth? I think not. For one, the positions which define depth are qualitatively different from one another, while those which define breadth are, as we have just seen, qualitatively the same. One's body as he lives through it establishes one of the positions defining depth; the object before him establishes the other position. Living through his body, one is 'located here;' the object is located 'there' before him. Because of the qualitative difference between these two positions, it would require a vast confusion to treat those two positions as essentially ofthe same kind. Thus one would be doing a great violence to phenomena by treating depth as a kind of breadth. Depth is constituted by a person confronting an object; it is not a succession of units lying next to one another in breadth.

It is all too easy, however, to level down depth to another kind of breadth. One's body is for other people "another object;" thus, insofar as one interprets himself as being "just one of the others," i.e., as being essentially no different from this or that other person he sees, it is easy for him to ignore the essential difference which obtains between the positions which define depth, since he is interpreting himself as another thing in the world. It is thus all too easy to ignore the essential difference existing between depth and breadth.

If depth is not a kind of breadth, then how should it be described? Suppose that one imagines a marked, transparent cord stretched from him to the object in front of him. He is able to "see," i.e., posit imaginatively, the end of the cord. Also, he is able to "see" several units of the cord lying beyond the end. In a two-dimensional projection, these would appear as smaller circles lying within the larger circles represented by the end of the cord. In order to establish a sense of depth, one somehow has to "go beyond" the end of the cord; and we think that the unprejudiced person has the sense of himself going out beyond the end of the cord when he imagines the further units of the cord as existing in depth. That one should have this sense of depth should not seem surpris­ing. We have just shown that, in one's motor projects, he extends out of himself as he swings out toward this or that thing. Through one's motor project, then, he is able to 'penetrate' the end of the cord and sense the circles as lying beyond that end. Depth is, so to speak, charged by the body's potential motion. One's sense of depth is thus his sense of what it would take to reach this or that object. The more it takes to reach an object, the further away is the object from one. The less it takes to reach

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the object, the closer the object is toward one. Thus a person's sense of the different degrees of depth is constituted by modifications of his motor-project. Like breadth, depth presents itself first as a single stretch of distance before it can be divided up into units.

In going out through the imaginary end of the cord, one does not place an imaginary homunculus at each position of the cord. Rather, as has already been suggested, he himself goes out through the cord in a lived, potential action of his body. One does not imaginatively posit before him the different positions of the cord lying beyond the end; rather, he assumes them in potentiality. One's sense of depth, then, is not established by a detached beholder. It is rather established by one's involvement with things, the sort of involvement exemplified by his swinging himself out to doorknobs. Thus depth is not to be accounted for by any kind of detached, judgemental activity.

If one did not swing out of himself, what he sees would not appear to him as in depth. It is hard to imagine how things would appear to one in this state. Perhaps they would seem like a wall pressed against one's face, since one would be unable to establish any sort of distance between oneself and what one sees. But depth just is a distance which separates a position here from a position there. Without the motor project, depth itself would not exist. Thus the motor project does not just establish a sense of depth; it establishes depth itself.

To this assertion, the following objections can be made. "For an observer looking at one and the object, there is a difference in positions between them. Thus even if one lost his sense of depth, there would still exist a difference between the position at which one is located, and the object. Thus depth would still exist even without one's sense of it, as common sense informs us." There is a sense, however, in which the position which the other sees me occupying is not the same position I am assuming. From my 'point of view,' the positions are different. For from that point of view, the position is a 'here,' while for the other, it is a position 'there.' Of course, it would be easy to make too much of this fact. In a certain sense, the position the other sees me occupying really is the position I am occupying even for myself, since even for myself I exist as an object in the world, that is , as an object which can be encountered as located 'there.' However, qua located here, the position I am assuming is not the same as the position the other sees me as assuming. Because depth is constituted partly by a position here, depth would not exist, qua depth, without the motor project. This fact does not make depth something "subjective" in the sense of locking it up in a psyche. All it means is that depth is essentially constituted by the point of view one has on his body by virtue of being that body, and by the point of view one has on things by virtue of facing or confronting them. One is therefore justified in saying that the motor project establishes depth at the same time that it estab­lishes the sense of depth. There is no distinction to be made here between "subject" and "object."

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If depth is real, then the motor project or ecstasis which establishes that depth must be at least equally as real. If someone asks in what sense that motor project is "real," we are able to answer him. The motor project- and depth- have the reality of a field, instead of the reality of an object standing out against that field. Of course, one may think that just this kind of reality is highly suspect. As we have already suggested, it is always possible that one cannot bring himself to see 'dynamic vectors' pulling together several lines into a triangle, try as hard as he may. All that he is able to ''see'' may be just the actual lines of the paper. But when one considers depth, there is no equivalent to actual lines on paper. All there is is just the body's potential motion. Thus either motor fields have a reality of their own, or depth has no reality. And if depth has no reality, but is wholly subjective, then everything is wholly subjective, since what one encounters as things in his ordinary dealings with them exist in depth. Assuming then, that one accepts the reality of depth, he has to accept the notion of a dynamic vector opening up depth.

4

By now, the philosophical significance of the ecstasis should be patent. We may focus on two particular issues on the basis of what has been said so far about the ecstasis.

The first issue revolves around the way in which a person's relation to the world is conceived. The tradition conceives of that relation in terms of the following model. I am standing 'right here,' gaping at the object at point blank range. A distance separates me from the object. I am thus detached from the object. Similarly, I may regard with the mind's eye something which I posit before myself. In neither case am I 'there,' involved in the things before me. The tradition takes this sensuous and theoretical cognition to be basic for all of a person's comportment toward things. The ecstasis, however, lets us see that this kind of relation toward things is not the only one possible. Practical behavior such as grasping doorknobs is ecstatically involved with things. Through his motor skills, a person is engaged in the world.

The second issue concerns a person's directedness toward and contact with the world. The modern tradition stemming from Descartes has made this directedness practically unintelligible. So long as one conceives of perception and practical contact with objects as having to 'occur' inside a subject which is closed off from the world, his contact with that world can only seem puzzling. It must seem as if each person is locked into his own world of "experience." The ecstasis, on the other hand, lets us understand how one might be able to comport oneself to an actual, concrete, tangible and public world. Our original starting point has thus been put in a stronger position. It will be remembered that we started from the fact that things present themselves as actual. What is more, we have done so without leaving the horizon of the common, everyday understanding. We have not attempted, for example, to "understand"

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this fact in terms of the meaning-giving activity of a detached, trans­cendental consciousness. As of yet, nothing has forced us to assume the idealist position. The ecstasis, then, supports some version of the realist thesis. As a phenomenon, the ecstasis· remains strange and elusive. However, who ever said that realism could only by defended by "realists," i.e., by the sort of thinkers for whom the concept of the ecstasis can only remain unintelligible?

Chicago

1. Maurice Merleau-Ponty, The Phenomenology of Perception (Routledge and Kegan Paul, London, 1962), p.l38; henceforth P.P.

2. K. Koffka, Principles of Gestalt Psychology (Harcourt, Brace and World, Inc., New York, 1935), p.p.41-42.

3. Wolfgang Koehler, TheP/aceofValueinaWor/dofFacts, (Liveright,NewYork, 1966), p.254.

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