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

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Let us turn now from our examination of space to theobjects which fill that space. If we consult a classicalpsychology textbook, it will tell us that an object is a systemof properties which present themselves to our various sensesand which are united by an act of intellectual synthesis. Forexample, this lemon is a bulging oval shape with two ends plusthis yellow colour plus this fresh feel plus this acidictaste . . . This analysis, however, is far from satisfactory: it isnot clear how each of these qualities or properties is boundto the others and yet it seems to us that the lemon is a unifiedentity of which all these various qualities are merelydifferent manifestations.The unity of the object will remain a mystery for as long aswe think of its various qualities (its colour and taste, for example)as just so many data belonging to the entirely distinct59
worlds of sight, smell, touch and so on. Yet modern psychology,following Goethe’s lead, has observed that, ratherthan being absolutely separate, each of these qualities has anaffective meaning which establishes a correspondencebetween it and the qualities associated with the other senses.For example, anyone who has had to choose carpets for a flatwill know that a particular mood emanates from each colour,making it sad or happy, depressing or fortifying. Becausethe same is true of sounds and tactile data, it may be saidthat each colour is the equivalent of a particular sound ortemperature. This is why some blind people manage to picturea colour when it is described, by way of an analogywith, for example, a sound. Provided that we restore a particularquality to its place in human experience, the placewhich gives it a certain emotional meaning, we can begin tounderstand its relationship to other qualities which havenothing in common with it. Indeed our experience containsnumerous qualities that would be almost devoid of meaningif considered separately from the reactions they provoke inour bodies. This is the case with the quality of being honeyed.Honey is a slow-moving liquid; while it undoubtedlyhas a certain consistency and allows itself to be grasped, itsoon creeps slyly from the fingers and returns to where itstarted from. It comes apart as soon as it has been given asensory objects
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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
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 and 42: Merleau-Ponty now extends this aest
Page 43 and 44: etter conception of reason (e.g. di
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 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
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Proust himself who raises them. As
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works of intellectuals, then to see
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with a feeling of completion or per
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NotesFOREWORD1 Merleau-Ponty’s te
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20 Although Merleau-Ponty usually t
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6 Sartre, ‘L’Homme et les Chose
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5 Paul Valéry, passim. See, for ex
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freedom 27-8Freud 76Galileo 21geome
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Maurice Merleau-Ponty: The World of Perception - Timothy R. Quigley

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