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

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is tenable; but the issue is clearly more complicated thanMerleau-Ponty’s discussion here allows for. 26Lecture 7: Classical World, Modern WorldIn this final lecture Merleau-Ponty looks back over the contrasthe has been drawing between the classical and modernworlds; while acknowledging that it can be seen as a tale ofdecline that would justify only pessimism, he suggests thatthe fact that the modern consciousness is more truthful to theambiguities of the human condition makes it possible to beoptimistic, to look forward without illusion to the creation ofsomething whose value is ‘solid and lasting’ even if it lacks therational clarity of the classical ideal.The contrast is drawn in familiar terms: where the classicalworld believed in the possibility of a rational final understandingof the world that will obtain for all time, and createdworks of art whose meaning is unequivocal, the modern theoristaccepts that we are inescapably fallible, and that weshould not hope for final solutions in physics any more thanin politics. We must learn to live with contestable theories andprinciples that are inherently provisional; and, equally, be contentwith works of art that leave open the possibility for avariety of interpretations. It is no good looking for some31
etter conception of reason (e.g. discursive reason) that willdefinitively show us how to live. We must learn to live not onlyafter the death of God, but also without the dream of reason(these are perhaps the same thing).Merleau-Ponty does not, however, prescribe a conservativereaction to the failure of the classical ideal of reason, in themanner of, say, Hume and Burke. Instead he affirms the existentialambiguity (‘tension’ might be a better word) of humanlife, whereby there is no escape from the requirement to justifyour actions, but, equally, no escape from the fact that as welocate our justifications in a space of reasons whose dimensionsare set by others, we have to accept that they are boundto be found wanting in some ways. This very affirmation,however, he proclaims to be not just a ‘modern truth’, but ‘atruth of all time’, a truth which captures the human conditionas it is. As such, he suggests, it should be possible for us to dothings which are genuinely worth doing even if they are notinformed by the classical ideal; by internalising the ambiguityof human life we should be able to create something as ‘solidand lasting’ as the paintings of Cézanne.It is an attractive conclusion. But one cannot help thinking,in a post-modern way, that Merleau-Ponty betrays himselfhere. If he had really internalised the fallibilism and provisionalityof modern thought from which he starts, he shouldintroduction
Page 5 and 6: First published in French as Causer
Page 8 and 9: ForewordThe seven lectures collecte
Page 10: are preceded by a number. We have e
Page 13 and 14: draws and the anxieties which he ar
Page 15 and 16: shortly before the war. This second
Page 17 and 18: After his death Merleau-Ponty’s r
Page 19 and 20: empiricism is not of this kind. Thi
Page 21 and 22: The central theme of Merleau-Ponty
Page 23 and 24: acknowledgement of its special stat
Page 25 and 26: world of perception can be dismisse
Page 27 and 28: When Merleau-Ponty says that scienc
Page 29 and 30: Florentine Renaissance, or, in a Fr
Page 31 and 32: photograph in which the feet look a
Page 33 and 34: intrinsic properties which explain
Page 35 and 36: which our own life has been disturb
Page 37 and 38: only contingently connected to a ph
Page 39 and 40: imagining that our dependence upon
Page 41: Merleau-Ponty now extends this aest
Page 46: The World of Perception
Page 50 and 51: The world of perception, or in othe
Page 52 and 53: explain the illusions of long- and
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 105 and 106:
world once more, as if in an exchan
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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