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

egins by rejecting the Cartesian conception of them as meremachines; instead, drawing on the work of the Gestalt psychologistWolfgang Köhler, he briefly sketches the way inwhich one might try to show how an animal ‘gives shape’ to itsworld. Merleau-Ponty had discussed this subject at greaterlength in The Structure of Behavior, and he shows there how hisexistential phenomenology, with its emphasis on preobjectiveperception and organised behaviour, can readily accommodateanimal experience alongside that of human beings. 23 But heends his lecture here by noting a different way in which animalsplay a part in the spectrum of experiences he has beenconcerned to revive, through the symbolic role that animalsoften play in childish, primitive, and even religious thought.Lecture 5: Man Seen from the OutsideMerleau-Ponty continues his exploration of the perceivedworld by turning to our understanding of other people. Thiswas already a theme of the previous lecture; but what he is hereconcerned to discuss is the way in which we can integrate ourunderstanding of others with our understanding of ourselves.He begins, as ever, with Descartes, who famously held that weunderstand ourselves best when, in self-conscious reflection,we grasp ourselves as just a stream of consciousness that is25