Merleau-ponty's thesis of the ambiguity of time is used to criticize husserl's and hume's views of the self. the thesis states that 1) the experience of present and past time depend on one another for intelligibility, and 2) the "objective" is past experience frozen in time; the "subjective" is present experience. adequate accounts of the self (and, generally, adequate philosophical explanation) will respect the ambiguity of time and discuss the interaction between subjective and objective facets of experience.