[Andrzej_Wiercinski_(ed ... - WordPress.com

outside.” (OE 38/131, my emphasis) For Merleau-Ponty, the proximity of cause has twointer-related consequences.First, and this is most important, causal contact eliminates resemblance; even theresemblance of the mirror image becomes a projection of the mind onto things. For theCartesian, according to Merleau-Ponty, the image in the mirror is an effect of themechanics of things. For Merleau-Ponty, because Descartes wants to conceive light on thebasis of causality, a conception that requires no resemblance between a cause and aneffect, we do not in fact have an image in vision, but rather a representation. A representation,such as an etching, works as signs do; signs in no way resemble the things theysignify. Here, in the signs that do not resemble, we see the origin of the indices withwhich, according to Merleau-Ponty, today’s science works. (OE 9/121) Merleau-Pontysays, “The magic of intentional species—the old idea of efficacious resemblance sostrongly suggested to us by mirrors and paintings—loses its final argument if the entirepower of the picture is that of a text to be read, a text totally free of promiscuity betweenthe seeing and the visible.” 23 (OE 40/132)This citation brings us to the second consequence of Descartes’s conception of lightas causal contact: vision in Descartes is the decipherment of signs. This move, whichstarts with the conception of light through causality, to vision as decipherment, leads tosurveying thought (la pensée en survol). Since vision is the decipherment of signs, itthinks in terms of a flat surface; signs on the page for instance (like writing) are flat. Butalso, according to Merleau-Ponty, the representation, which is the effect of the mechanicallight, immobilizes the figure so that it can be abstracted from the background. In thecourse from 1960-61 (“Cartesian Ontology and Contemporary Ontology”), Merleau-Pontysays: “This presence of the figure is all that [Descartes] retains from vision. The rest ofthe field is composed of such figures that are not present. The visible world is for me [thatis, for a Cartesian] a world in itself upon which the light of the gaze is projected and fromwhich the gaze cuts out [découpe] present figures. That eliminates the relation to thebackground which is a different kind of relation.” (NC 1959-61, 229) And it seems thatthis “different kind of relation,” for Merleau-Ponty, would have to be one of resemblance.In any case, Descartes takes only the external envelope of things and this abstraction ofthe figure from the field is why for Descartes, according to Merleau-Ponty, drawing iswhat defines pictures. (OE 42/132) Because the flat representation presents only theoutlined figure, for Descartes, depth is a false mystery. (OE 45/133) Cartesian space is initself, one thing outside of another, partes extra partes, and thus depth is really width. Ifwe think we see depth, this is because we have bodies (which are the source ofdeceptions); therefore depth is nothing. Or, if there is depth, it is my participation in God;the being of space is beyond every particular point of view. (OE 46/134) God then, whois everywhere and has no perspective, sees all things, without one hiding another; thus23It is well known that Descartes tried consciously to break with the Scholastic tradition and usedthe Summa Philosophica Quadripartita of Eustache de Sancto Paulo as his guide to Scholastic philosophy.An intentional species (for the Scholastics), according to Eustache, is a mental image, but not a copy ofan individual thing; it is an exemplar or species, an eidos, the Greek equivalent of species. Apparently,the discussion of ideas throughout the Scholastic period always referred to painters, or more generallyartists. The model would be the exemplar or idea or intentional species, while the painting would be theimage, the particular. Referring back to the Timaeus, this discussion conceived God as an artificer. SeeRoger Ariew, Descartes and the Last Scholastics (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1999), 64-69.What is important for our purposes is that the concept of intentional species implies some sort ofresemblance relation.131