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

only contingently connected to a physical body located inphysical space (in reading Merleau-Ponty’s discussion of this,it is important to note that the translation here uses the twowords ‘mind’ and ‘spirit’ to translate the single French word‘esprit’ in order to capture the connotations of the Frenchword as it occurs in different contexts in Merleau-Ponty’stext). As Merleau-Ponty explains later, he thinks that there issomething importantly right about Descartes’ conception ofourselves. But first he explains why it is unsatisfactory as itstands.He begins by discussing our experience of others. TheCartesian position notoriously alienates us from others, sinceit implies that we can know them only indirectly via theirbehaviour, which is only a detached, contingent, expression oftheir thoughts and feelings, and one whose interpretation wecan never validate since we have no other way of finding outabout the other’s thoughts and feelings. As against this alienationfrom others, which rests on the detachment of theirmind from their behaviour, Merleau-Ponty, whose discussionat this point exemplifies the phenomenological appeal to ‘livedexperience’, brings forward our experience of another’s anger.In this case, he suggests, we have no temptation to detach theother’s anger from their behaviour; their anger is ‘here, in thisroom’. The Cartesian separation of emotion from behaviourintroduction