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out in “Eye and Mind.” So, let us now turn to “Eye and Mind,” in particular to PartThree, which discusses Descartes’s Optics.Descartes’s Classical Ontology 19According to Merleau-Ponty, in the Optics Descartes wants to conceive vision as thought,and, at the same time, Descartes wants to conceive vision as touch. (OE 37/131) Thoughtand touch are not just two models of vision for Descartes, as some Merleau-Pontycommentators have claimed. 20 Vision in Descartes, according to Merleau-Ponty, is arelation between touch and thought. We can see the systematic relation between thoughtand touch in the following passage. This is Merleau-Ponty speaking: “Painting for[Descartes] is … a mode or a variant of thinking, where thinking is canonically definedas intellectual possession and self-evidence.” (OE 42/132, my emphasis) Intellectualpossession relates the immanence of consciousness, the cogito, or even the concept -- andthis is how Merleau-Ponty always uses the word “immanence” -- to refer to the cogito --again intellectual possession relates the cogito to grasping by the hand. 21 (NC 1959-61,180nA, 190) For Merleau-Ponty, Descartes’s conception of vision, or, more generally,sentir, as a relation between immanence and grasping involves two complementarymistakes. (VI 168/127) These complementary mistakes are “fusion and survey.” 22 (VI169/127) If one conceives sensibility as fusion -- the immediate grasping with the hand -- one coincides with and touches pure facts; in this case, “sentir” takes place in anabsolute proximity somewhere. If one conceives sensibility as survey (survol) -- the viewfrom nowhere -- one intuits and sees pure essences; in this case, “sentir” takes place atan infinite distance everywhere. (VI 169/127) In other words, according to Merleau-Ponty,Cartesian vision is at once too close to the thing seen and too far away from it. Themistakes reside in both the purity of touch, fusion and absolute proximity, and in thepurity of vision (which in The Visible and the Invisible Merleau-Ponty calls the“kosmotheoros,” VI 32/15), survey and infinite distance.This double mistake orients Merleau-Ponty’s analysis of Descartes’s conception ofvision in the Optics. What Merleau-Ponty is trying to show here is that Descartes’sconception moves from one mistake to the other. And Descartes is able to make this movebecause he conceives light as a mechanical cause. Descartes, according to Merleau-Ponty,considers not the light that we see but the light that makes contact with, the light thattouches and enters into our eyes from the outside. (OE 37/131) In other words, Descartesconsiders light as a cause outside that makes real effects inside of us. Merleau-Ponty says,“In the world there is the thing itself, and outside this thing itself there is that other thingwhich is only reflected light rays and which happens to have an ordered correspondencewith the real thing; there are two individuals, then, connected by causality from the19This discussion should be compared to the one found in the nature lectures (cf. La nature, 169-76;Nature, 125-31).20See again Silverman, “Cézanne’s Mirror Stage,” 262-277, especially 265; also Fóti, “TheDimension of Color,” 293-308, especially 296-97; also Cavallier, Premières leçons sur L’Œil et l’espritde M. Merleau-Ponty, 38-46. Some commentators recognize that for Merleau-Ponty vision in Descartesis conceived as thought (Silverman), while others stress the model of touch (Fóti). Cavallier notes thatMerleau-Ponty discusses Descartes’s different “models” for vision (touch and thought), but does not seethe different models as being related (38).21See also Mauro Carbone, The Thinking of the Sensible (Evanston, Ill.: Northwestern UniversityPress, 2004), especially 45-47; here Carbone stresses the literal sense of concept as ‘to grasp.’22In Le Visible et l’invisible, Merleau-Ponty says, “on se tromperait,” “one would be mistaken.”130