Maurice Merleau-Ponty: The World of Perception - Timothy R. Quigley

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The preceding lectures have tried to bring the world ofperception back to life, this world hidden from usbeneath all the sediment of knowledge and social living. In sodoing, we have often had recourse to painting because paintingthrusts us once again into the presence of the world oflived experience. In the work of Cézanne, Juan Gris, Braqueand Picasso, in different ways, we encounter objects – lemons,mandolins, bunches of grapes, pouches of tobacco – that donot pass quickly before our eyes in the guise of objects we‘know well’ but, on the contrary, hold our gaze, ask questionsof it, convey to it in a bizarre fashion the very secret of theirsubstance, the very mode of their material existence and which,so to speak, stand ‘bleeding’ before us. This was how paintingled us back to a vision of things themselves. Reciprocally, aphilosophy of perception which aspires to learn to see the93
world once more, as if in an exchange of services rendered, willrestore painting and the arts in general to their rightful place,will allow them to recover their dignity and will incline us toaccept them in their purity.What then have we learned from our examination of theworld of perception? We have discovered that it is impossible,in this world, to separate things from their way of appearing.Of course, when I give a dictionary definition of a table – ahorizontal flat surface supported by three or four legs, whichcan be used for eating off, reading a book on, and so forth –I may feel that I have got, as it were, to the essence of the table;I withdraw my interest from all the accidental properties whichmay accompany that essence, such as the shape of the feet, thestyle of the moulding and so on. In this example, however, Iam not perceiving but rather defining. By contrast, when Iperceive a table, I do not withdraw my interest from the particularway it has of performing its function as a table: how isthe top supported, for this is different with every table? Whatinterests me is the unique movement from the feet to the tabletop with which it resists gravity; this is what makes each tabledifferent from the next. No detail is insignificant: the grain,the shape of the feet, the colour and age of the wood, as wellas the scratches or graffiti which show that age. The meaning,‘table’, will only interest me insofar as it arises out of all theart and the world of perception
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First published in French as Causer
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ForewordThe seven lectures collecte
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are preceded by a number. We have e
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draws and the anxieties which he ar
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shortly before the war. This second
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After his death Merleau-Ponty’s r
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empiricism is not of this kind. Thi
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The central theme of Merleau-Ponty
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acknowledgement of its special stat
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world of perception can be dismisse
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When Merleau-Ponty says that scienc
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Florentine Renaissance, or, in a Fr
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photograph in which the feet look a
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intrinsic properties which explain
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which our own life has been disturb
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only contingently connected to a ph
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imagining that our dependence upon
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Merleau-Ponty now extends this aest
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etter conception of reason (e.g. di
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The World of Perception
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The world of perception, or in othe
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Page 54 and 55: provide all the answers at a time w
Page 56: exercise of a pure and unsituated i
Page 60 and 61: It has often been said that modern
Page 62 and 63: which effect certain changes in the
Page 64 and 65: along lines running from the painte
Page 66 and 67: In the footsteps of science and pai
Page 68: LECTURE 3Exploring the World of Per
Page 71 and 72: worlds of sight, smell, touch and s
Page 73 and 74: touch. 2 To say that honey is visco
Page 75 and 76: complexes. This is what Cézanne me
Page 77 and 78: us and above all in the found objec
Page 80 and 81: In the first three lectures, we arg
Page 82 and 83: children and the sick was held back
Page 84 and 85: person must remain open to these ab
Page 86 and 87: flow from the centre of the ‘body
Page 88: delegation to identify this monumen
Page 92 and 93: Thus far we have tried to look at s
Page 94 and 95: haunts a body and we seem to see a
Page 96 and 97: ack to the real experience of anger
Page 98 and 99: we have received from without and w
Page 100 and 101: which makes us crave their assent o
Page 102: LECTURE 6Art and the World of Perce
Page 107 and 108: that the painter takes hold of a fr
Page 109 and 110: do explain why, hitherto, there hav
Page 111 and 112: looks at the things themselves with
Page 114: LECTURE 7Classical World, Modern Wo
Page 117 and 118: In modernity, we have a representat
Page 119 and 120: Proust himself who raises them. As
Page 121 and 122: works of intellectuals, then to see
Page 123 and 124: with a feeling of completion or per
Page 126 and 127: NotesFOREWORD1 Merleau-Ponty’s te
Page 128 and 129: 20 Although Merleau-Ponty usually t
Page 130 and 131: 6 Sartre, ‘L’Homme et les Chose
Page 132: 5 Paul Valéry, passim. See, for ex
Page 135 and 136: freedom 27-8Freud 76Galileo 21geome
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Maurice Merleau-Ponty: The World of Perception - Timothy R. Quigley

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