Humanities 2021, 10, x. https://doi.org/10.3390/xxxxx www.mdpi.com/journal/humanities Article Merleau-Ponty’s Embodied Ontology and Literature: Gesture, Metaphor, Flesh, and Sensible Ideas Glen A. Mazis, Distinguished Professor of Philosophy and Humanities, Penn State Harrisburg Abstract: This essay traces out the importance of the poetic and creative use of language to Merleau- Ponty’s ontology. Why Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenology of embodiment inevitably had to turn to- wards a poetic use of language and to see the overlap between literature and philosophy in articu- lating an ontology is examined. The tie between a deeper sense of metaphor and the structure of the flesh of the world is explored. The attempt to articulate the latent background of perception leads to the essential role of what will be called the “physiognomic imagination,” which is a different use of imagination than “make-believe” and is key to the unfolding of the depths of perceptual sense. Understanding the efficacy of the literary use of language to the manifestation of further sense also requires an understanding of the temporality of the institution and the ongoing becoming of the real in Merleau-Ponty’s ontology. This essay argues that Merleau-Ponty’s turn to poetic language was both a source of his insights for ontology and the way that he came to express his own philosophy as a necessary outcome of fidelity to the phenomenology of perception. Given the parallel structure of the flesh of the world and metaphor, the dialogical nature of the perceptual encounter with the “voices of silence”, and the increasing importance of physiognomic imagination, the temporality of institution and “sensible ideas” to his indirect ontology, the literary and poetic use of language had to assume a central role in the articulation of the flesh ontology as well as to the further manifesta- tion of sense. This assertion is meant to rectify the reading and commentaries that fail to see this necessity and instead interpret Merleau-Ponty’s increasing use of poetic language as merely a resi- due of his evolving writing style and not as the necessary outcome of his ontological insights. This essay is also meant to address phenomenologists who fail to turn to literature and the poetic expres- sion of embodied ontology as failing to carry forth Merleau-Ponty’s revisioning of philosophy and centrality of perception and embodiment. Keywords: Merleau-Ponty and Literature; metaphor and flesh; physiognomic imagination; Mer- leau-Ponty and poetic language; embodiment and literature; indirect ontology 1. Introduction The role of poetic language in expressing the depths of sense in perceptual life, alt- hough present in Merleau-Ponty’s earliest phenomenology, becomes increasingly more central as he develops the ontology of the flesh. His promise after finishing the Phenome- nology of Perception to explore to a greater degree the phenomenology of imagination and its key role in perception also leads to a greater overlap between his “indirect” ontology and literature. Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenology of embodiment (which takes our percep- tual experience as our access to the real) leads Merleau-Ponty to several conclusions that are at odds with much of the traditional from which his insights emerged: (1) the philo- sophical articulation of our embodied enmeshment can only proceed by using another language, a language not of abstract concepts, but of metaphors and other devices of po- etic language allied with the endeavors of literature and its use of creative language; (2) metaphor has been misunderstood and must be seen in a differing way that is linked to an embodied ontology; (3) this other sense of metaphor is at the heart of the world’s Citation: Mazis, Glen A. 2022. Merleau-Ponty’s Embodied Ontology and Literature: Gesture, Metaphor, Flesh, and Sensible Ideas. Humanities 10: x. https://doi.org/10.3390/xxxxx Academic Editor(s): Received: 17 October 2021 Accepted: 27 January 2022 Published: date Publisher’s Note: MDPI stays neu- tral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institu- tional affiliations. Copyright: © 2022 by the authors. Submitted for possible open access publication under the terms and con- ditions of the Creative Commons At- tribution (CC BY) license (https://cre- ativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).