Argues that symbolism is an important and unique element of MerleauPontys phenomenology.MerleauPonty says in his Institution and Passivity lectures that he wants to ampampquotconsider criticism itself as a symbolic formampampquot instead of doing ampampquota philosophy of symbolic form.ampampquot This invites the possibility of an unconventional thought If critical philosophy is a symbolic form it cannot disclose its own limits and is in fact uncritical. Furthermore the symbolic form can never itself be thought according to the terms of the criticism it produces but is always only constellated and matrixed within thema symbolic form within both reflection and what it reflects on within consciousness and the world. Thus as Rajiv Kaushik argues the symbolic form is another name for what MerleauPonty calls ontological divergence.