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

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we have received from without and which guides us in ourself-knowledge. So while ultimately the notion of a pure self,the mind, devoid of instruments and history, may well beuseful as a critical ideal to set in opposition to the notion of amere influx of ideas from the surrounding environment, sucha self only develops into a free agent by way of the instrumentof language and by taking part in the life of the world.This leaves us with a very different view of the humanbeing and humanity from the one with which we began.Humanity is not an aggregate of individuals, a community ofthinkers, each of whom is guaranteed from the outset to beable to reach agreement with the others because all participatein the same thinking essence. Nor, of course, is it a singleBeing in which the multiplicity of individuals are dissolvedand into which these individuals are destined to be reabsorbed.As a matter of principle, humanity is precarious: each personcan only believe what he recognises to be true internally and,at the same time, nobody thinks or makes up his mind withoutalready being caught up in certain relationships withothers, which leads him to opt for a particular set of opinions.Everyone is alone and yet nobody can do without otherpeople, not just because they are useful (which is not in disputehere) but also when it comes to happiness. There is noway of living with others which takes away the burden of87
eing myself, which allows me to not have an opinion; there isno ‘inner’ life that is not a first attempt to relate to anotherperson. In this ambiguous position, which has been forced onus because we have a body and a history (both personally andcollectively), we can never know complete rest. We are continuallyobliged to work on our differences, to explain things wehave said that have not been properly understood, to revealwhat is hidden within us and to perceive other people. Reasondoes not lie behind us, nor is that where the meeting of mindstakes place: rather, both stand before us waiting to be inherited.Yet we are no more able to reach them definitively thanwe are to give up on them.It is understandable that our species, charged as it is with atask that will never and can never be completed, and at which ithas not necessarily been called to succeed, even in relative terms,should find this situation both cause for anxiety and a spur tocourage. In fact, these are one and the same thing. For anxiety isvigilance, it is the will to judge, to know what one is doing andwhat there is on offer. If there is no such thing as benign fate,then neither is there such a thing as its malign opposite.Courage consists in being reliant on oneself and others to theextent that, irrespective of differences in physical and socialcircumstance, all manifest in their behaviour and their relationshipsthat very same spark which makes us recognise them,man seen from the outside
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First published in French as Causer
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ForewordThe seven lectures collecte
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are preceded by a number. We have e
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draws and the anxieties which he ar
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shortly before the war. This second
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After his death Merleau-Ponty’s r
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empiricism is not of this kind. Thi
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The central theme of Merleau-Ponty
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acknowledgement of its special stat
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world of perception can be dismisse
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When Merleau-Ponty says that scienc
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Florentine Renaissance, or, in a Fr
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photograph in which the feet look a
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intrinsic properties which explain
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which our own life has been disturb
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only contingently connected to a ph
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imagining that our dependence upon
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Merleau-Ponty now extends this aest
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etter conception of reason (e.g. di
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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 96 and 97: ack to the real experience of anger
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
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Maurice Merleau-Ponty: The World of Perception - Timothy R. Quigley

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