In what is usually referred as Merleau-Ponty´s ”early philosophy” the concept of the primordial is of major significance in relation to his ambition to ground the philosophical reflection in human embodiment. The concept plays a key role in his understanding of the paradoxical nature of perception and thus in Merleau-Ponty's endeavor to overcome both the idealist and the realist conceptions of reality. The concept is also of great importance in the essay Cézannes Doubt, which Merleau-Ponty wrote during the same period he was working on Phenomenology of Perception. According to most interpreters this essay mirrors his early philosophy, and above all the phenomenological way of doing philosophy. In the essay Merleau-Ponty suggests that the essential importance of Cézanne's paintings lies in their ability to capture the world at a primordial level. Merleau-Ponty's interpretation has also been subjected to critique from Véronique M. Fóti and Michel Haar. A common characteristic of their critique is that it questions the relationship that Merleau-Ponty seeks to establish between a primordial experience of perception and Cézanne's paintings. From both Haar's and Fóti's point of view Merleau-Ponty's analysis is inadequate because he does not sufficiently take the autonomy of the painterly expression into consideration. This critique reflects a broader critique that has been launched against Merleau-Ponty's early philosophy which considers his understanding of the impact of culture and language as naïve in his use of concepts like primordial. Consequently, the critique raises the question how the concept of the primordial really is to be understood? A point of departure for understanding this concept lies in the paradox of perception, that is: the impossibility to conceive of a thing in itself since the existence of the perceived thing always presuppose a subject that perceives. This paradox can also be understood as a paradox between nature and human beings since natures path to disclosure goes through human expression. 

Accordingly, the aim of this essay is to explore how one is to conceive of Merleau-Ponty's interpretation of Cézanne's paintings as the expression of a primordial experience of perception in the essay Cézanne's Doubt. This will be done against the background of his early philosophy as expressed in The Structure of Behavior and Phenomenology of Perception and take as it departure how the concept of the primordial is related to the paradox between human beings and nature.