Merleau‐Ponty on painting and the problem of reflection

The challenge of “catching experience in the act” is commonly recognized as a problem for phenomenological reflection. After tracing this “problem of reflection” to its origin in Natorp's Allgemeine Psychologie and discussing Husserl's critical response, I argue that Merleau‐Ponty recognizes that a version of it poses a genuine problem for phenomenology in the form of what he calls “objective thought.” Seen in light of his concern for the distortion of objective thought, his attention to indeterminacy and distortion in the portraits and still lifes of Cézanne takes on philosophical significance. I analyze how Merleau‐Ponty sees phenomenological concepts such as style, horizons, and coherent deformation at work in a number of paintings and suggest how such features remedy objective thought by resisting the tendency for reflection on ordinary perception to mistake objective properties of objects for properties of the experience in which they are given.