Maurice Merleau-Ponty: The World of Perception - Timothy R. Quigley
Maurice Merleau-Ponty: The World of Perception - Timothy R. Quigley
Maurice Merleau-Ponty: The World of Perception - Timothy R. Quigley
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touch. 2 To say that honey is viscous is another way <strong>of</strong> sayingthat it is sugary: it is to describe a particular relationshipbetween us and the object or to indicate that we are moved orcompelled to treat it in a certain way, or that it has a particularway <strong>of</strong> seducing, attracting or fascinating the free subjectwho stands before us. Honey is a particular way the world has<strong>of</strong> acting on me and my body. And this is why its variousattributes do not simply stand side by side but are identicalins<strong>of</strong>ar as they all reveal the same way <strong>of</strong> being or behaving onthe part <strong>of</strong> the honey. <strong>The</strong> unity <strong>of</strong> the object does not liebehind its qualities, but is reaffirmed by each one <strong>of</strong> them:each <strong>of</strong> its qualities is the whole. Cézanne said that youshould be able to paint the smell <strong>of</strong> trees. 3 In a similar vein,Sartre writes in Being and Nothingness that each attribute ‘revealsthe being’ <strong>of</strong> the object:<strong>The</strong> lemon is extended throughout its qualities, andeach <strong>of</strong> its qualities is extended throughout each <strong>of</strong>the others. It is the sourness <strong>of</strong> the lemon which isyellow, it is the yellow <strong>of</strong> the lemon which is sour. Weeat the color <strong>of</strong> a cake, and the taste <strong>of</strong> this cake, andthe taste <strong>of</strong> this cake is the instrument which reveals itsshape and its color to what may be called the alimentaryintuition . . . . <strong>The</strong> fluidity, the tepidity, the bluishsensory objects