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

Thus far we have tried to look at space and the thingswhich inhabit it, both animate and inanimate, throughthe eyes of perception and to forget what we find ‘entirely natural’about them simply because they have been familiar to usfor too long; we have endeavoured to consider them as they areexperienced naïvely. We must now try to do the same withrespect to human beings themselves. Over the last thirty ormore centuries, many things have undoubtedly been said abouthuman beings. Yet these were often the products of reflection.What I mean by this is that Descartes, when he wanted toknow what man is, set about subjecting the ideas whichoccurred to him to critical examination. One example wouldbe the idea of mind and body. He purified these ideas; he ridthem of all trace of obscurity and confusion. Whereas mostpeople understand spirit to be something like very subtle81