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

haunts a body and we seem to see a whole host of possibilitiescontained within this body when it appears before us; thebody is the very presence of these possibilities. So the processof looking at human beings from the outside – that is, atother people – leads us to reassess a number of distinctionswhich once seemed to hold good such as that between mindand body.Let us see what becomes of this distinction by examining aparticular case. Imagine that I am in the presence of someonewho, for one reason or another, is extremely annoyed with me.My interlocutor gets angry and I notice that he is expressinghis anger by speaking aggressively, by gesticulating and shouting.But where is this anger? People will say that it is in themind of my interlocutor. What this means is not entirelyclear. For I could not imagine the malice and cruelty which Idiscern in my opponent’s looks separated from his gestures,speech and body. None of this takes place in some otherworldlyrealm, in some shrine located beyond the body of theangry man. It really is here, in this room and in this part of theroom, that the anger breaks forth. It is in the space betweenhim and me that it unfolds. I would accept that the sense inwhich the place of my opponent’s anger is on his face is notthe same as that in which, in a moment, tears may comestreaming from his eyes or a grimace may harden on his83