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

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