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

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