Abstract

This chapter aims to give insight into meaning as an inherently temporal phenomenon. It does so to shed light on Merleau-Ponty’s later concept of institution, which names an event that generates meaning without, however, being an act of constitution anchored in an already given subject or concepts. Institution thus undoes any full presence behind meaning. It does so precisely by conceptualizing meaning in temporal terms, as in Merleau-Ponty’s formula that institution designates “those events in an experience which endow the experience with durable dimensions, in relation to which a whole series of other experiences will make sense.” (IP 124) The chapter clarifies these issues by tracing the linkage between temporality and meaning across Merleau-Ponty’s philosophy, to show how meaning eventuates in a peculiar gap between the present and past, in which the past is not present but is nonetheless operative as orienting or weighing down the present so as to enable meaning. The chapter’s strategy is synthetic: it digs behind oft-cited terms and moments across Merleau-Ponty’s philosophy so as to gradually lay bare the concepts and lines of argument that bind them together in relation to temporality and meaning. In Merleau-Ponty’s philosophy there is no simple, linear development from the descriptive to ontological claim about meaning’s temporality: even though the latter is more emphatic in his later philosophy, it percolates behind the Phenomenology’s constant engagement with temporality and we will see that The Structure of Behaviour already anticipates it. Nonetheless, for clarity, this chapter generally moves from the descriptive to the ontological.