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

More documents

Recommendations

Info

ack to the real experience of anger, which was the spur to myreflections, I am forced to acknowledge that this anger doesnot lie beyond my body, directing it from without, but ratherthat in some inexplicable sense it is bound up with my body.There is something of everything in Descartes, as in thework of all great philosophers. And so it is that he who drawsan absolute distinction between mind and body also managesto say that the soul is not simply like the pilot of a ship, thecommander-in-chief of the body, but rather that it is veryclosely united to the body, so much so that it suffers with it, asis clear to me when I say that I have toothache. 1Yet this union of mind and body can barely be spoken of,according to Descartes; it can only be experienced in everydaylife. As far as Descartes is concerned, whatever the facts of thematter may be – and even if we live what he himself calls atrue mélange of mind and body – this does not take away myright to distinguish absolutely between parts that are united inmy experience. I can still posit, by rights, an absolute distinctionbetween mind and body which is denied by the fact oftheir union. I can still define man without reference to theimmediate structure of his being and as he appears to himselfin reflection: as thought which is somehow strangely joined toa bodily apparatus without either the mechanics of the bodyor the transparency of thought being compromised by their85
eing mixed together in this way. It could be said that evenDescartes’ most faithful disciples have always asked themselvesexactly how it is that our reflection, which concerns the humanbeing as given, can free itself from the conditions to which itappears to have been subject at the outset.When they address this issue, today’s psychologists emphasisethe fact that we do not start out in life immersed in ourown self-consciousness (or even in that of things) but ratherfrom the experience of other people. I never become aware ofmy own existence until I have already made contact with others;my reflection always brings me back to myself, yet for all thatit owes much to my contacts with other people. An infant of afew months is already very good at differentiating betweengoodwill, anger and fear on the face of another person, at astage when he could not have learned the physical signs ofthese emotions by examining his own body. This is because thebody of the other and its various movements appear to theinfant to have been invested from the outset with an emotionalsignificance; this is because the infant learns to knowmind as visible behaviour just as much as in familiarity with itsown mind. The adult himself will discover in his own lifewhat his culture, education, books and tradition have taughthim to find there. The contact I make with myself is alwaysmediated by a particular culture, or at least by a language thatman seen from the outside
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 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 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 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
show all

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

You also want an ePaper? Increase the reach of your titles

Delete template?

Save as template?