Merleau-Ponty, Space, Motility

According to Merleau-Ponty, the transition from Sensation to Perception originates both the temporalization and the spatialization of lived experience. In the subjective dimension of experience, Sensation is the Past, the transition is the Present, and the completed Perception is the Future. On the objective side, what begins as an indeterminate sensory manifold gets resolved into a focal object, centered with respect to two horizons--not merely the background of standard Gestalt structuring, but a foreground limit, i. e. the body, as well. Hence, since the transition is effected by the subject of experience, spatialization is ultimately a function of temporalization, according to Merleau-Ponty, which aligns him with not only Heidegger and Sartre, but Kant, as well, in this systematization of time and space. However, his derivation of space compromises his commitment to the essential corporeal motility of the experiential subject. For, as has been previously argued here, motility, or, more precisely, locomotility, is intrinsically Spatial, i. e. it entails both a Here and an indeterminate Elsewhere, preceding any individuation of a specific There. Therefore, the body is essentially the center of its locomotile Space. So, Merleau-Ponty's concept of Perception either ignores the intrinsic Spatiality of corporeality, or, at, minimum, misattributes it to Perception, in either case compromising his own thesis of the irreducible corporeality of lived experience. If he were to derive Space directly from motility, as does Formaterialism, he might likewise arrive at the alternative conclusion that the contribution of Perception to Spatiality is its specification of a location, i. e. its determination of a specific There, within Space, which is precisely, but no more, what he describes the focusing by Perception of accomplishing, anyhow. On the other hand, such a modification of his analysis might significantly compromise the status of his thesis of the experiential primacy of Perception.