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

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In this, the last lecture, I would like to assess the developmentof modern thought as I have characterised it, more orless well, in the preceding ones. Could the return to the worldof perception – which we have observed in the work ofpainters and writers alike, as well as that of certain philosophersand the pioneers of modern physics – when comparedwith the ambitions of classical science, art and philosophy, beseen as evidence of decline? On the one hand we have theself-assurance of a system of thought which is unfailinglyconvinced of its mission both to know nature through andthrough and to purge its knowledge of man of all mystery. Inmodernity, on the other hand, this rational universe which isopen in principle to human endeavours to know it and actwithin it, is replaced by a kind of knowledge and art that ischaracterised by difficulty and reserve, one full of restrictions.105
In modernity, we have a representation of the world whichexcludes neither fissures nor lacunae, a form of action which isunsure of itself, or, at any rate, no longer blithely assumes itcan obtain universal assent.We must indeed acknowledge that, in the modern world(and I have already apologised once and for all for the degreeof vagueness which this sort of expression entails), we lack thedogmatism and self-assurance of the classical world-view,whether in art, knowledge or action. Modern thought displaysthe dual characteristics of being unfinished andambiguous: this allows us, should we be so inclined, to speakof decline and decadence. We think of all scientific work asprovisional and approximate, whereas Descartes believed hecould deduce, once and for all time, the laws governing thecollision of bodies from the divine attributes. 1 Museums arefull of works to which it seems that nothing could be added,whereas our painters display works to the public which sometimesseem to be no more than preparatory sketches. Andthese are the very works that get subjected to interminableanalysis because their meaning is not univocal. Look at thenumber of studies of Rimbaud’s silence after publishing theone and only book that he personally was to offer to his contemporaries.By contrast, how few problems seem to arise fromRacine’s silence after Phèdre! It seems as though today’s artistsclassical world, modern world
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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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explain the illusions of long- and
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provide all the answers at a time w
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exercise of a pure and unsituated i
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It has often been said that modern
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which effect certain changes in the
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Page 68: LECTURE 3Exploring the World of Per
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Page 73 and 74: touch. 2 To say that honey is visco
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Page 102: LECTURE 6Art and the World of Perce
Page 105 and 106: world once more, as if in an exchan
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Page 114: LECTURE 7Classical World, Modern Wo
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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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