Görünür ile Görünmez

by Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Hanife Güven (Translator)

Görünür ile Görünmez Merleau-Ponty’nin çalışma notlarıyla birlikte yarım kalmış son yapıtıdır ancak mevcut haliyle bile derin felsefi projesini mükemmelen yansıtır. Merleau-Ponty burada yeni bir ontoloji teklif eder bize. Bunu felsefenin özcü kategorileri ve geleneksel düşüncenin buyurgan grameri ile yapmaz. İnsanın algısını, görme kabiliyetini, duyumsama gücünü ve varlığın ışıltısını son derece naif bir tutumla fenomenolojik bir zemine taşır. Bir sanat yapıtının ortaya koyduğu gibi kişinin algı ve deneyimlerindeki tamamen kendine özgü sese, mantık, uyum ve hayal gücüne ulaşmaya çalışır.

Filozofun düşünceleri bir sistem inşa etmekten çok varlığın benzersizliğini duyurmaya yönelik bir çabadır. Onun felsefesi öznelliğin, içselliğin felsefesi değildir. Algılama ya da algısal inanç dediği şey görünürün ötesinde belleği ve hayal gücünü harekete geçiren, insanın kendisinden önce var olan dünya ile, öteki ile, doğa ile görünmeyen muazzam ilişkisidir. Merleau-Ponty’yi okurken düz bir felsefe metninin sınırlarında gezinmeyiz. Bedeni keşfetmek, dünyanın tenine dokunmak, görünür olandaki görünmezi fark etmek var olmanın gerçek amacını duyurur gibidir. Doğa algılandığı andan itibaren ufuk bakışımızı çevreler; müziğin, edebiyatın ve resmin betimlediği doğa bizi kendisine çağırır. Seyredilen, işitilen ve algılanan saf bir manzaranın parçası oluruz. Aynı düzlemdeki varlıklar birbirleriyle kaynaşır, öyle ki biz değil onlar bize konuşur. Sadece ses değil sözü sarmalayan sessizlik de dile gelir.

Görünür ile Görünmez geleneksel felsefeye yönelik getirdiği itirazlarla, özellikle Descartes, Hegel ve Sartre eleştirileriyle birlikte modern düşünce ve sanat dünyası için yepyeni bir sayfa açmaktadır.

Genres: Philosophy, Nonfiction, Theory, Psychology, Research, France, Art

383 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1964

About the author

French phenomenological philosopher, strongly influenced by Edmund Husserl and Martin Heidegger in addition to being closely associated with Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir. At the core of Merleau-Ponty's philosophy is a sustained argument for the foundational role that perception plays in understanding the world as well as engaging with the world. Like the other major phenomenologists Merleau-Ponty expressed his philosophical insights in writings on art, literature, and politics; however Merleau-Ponty was the only major phenomenologist of the first half of the Twentieth Century to engage extensively with the sciences, and especially with descriptive psychology. Because of this engagement, his writings have become influential with the recent project of naturalizing phenomenology in which phenomenologists utilize the results of psychology and cognitive science.

Merleau-Ponty was born in Rochefort-sur-Mer, Charente-Maritime. His father was killed in World War 1 when Merleau-Ponty was 3. After secondary schooling at the lycée Louis-le-Grand in Paris, Maurice Merleau-Ponty became a student at the École Normale Supérieure, where he studied alongside Sartre, Simone de Beauvoir, and Simone Weil. He passed the agrégation in philosophy in 1930.

Merleau-Ponty first taught at Chartres, then became a tutor at the École Normale Supérieure, where he was awarded his doctorate on the basis of two important books: La structure du comportement (1942) and Phénoménologie de la Perception (1945).

After teaching at the University of Lyon from 1945 to 1948, Merleau-Ponty lectured on child psychology and education at the Sorbonne from 1949 to 1952. He was awarded the Chair of Philosophy at the Collège de France from 1952 until his death in 1961, making him the youngest person to have been elected to a Chair.

Besides his teaching, Merleau-Ponty was also political editor for Les Temps Modernes from the founding of the journal in October 1945 until December 1952.

Aged 53, he died suddenly of a stroke in 1961, apparently while preparing for a class on Descartes. He was buried in Le Père Lachaise Cemetery in Paris.

Reviews

[Kamakana · Rating 5 out of 5]

if you like this review i now have website: www.michaelkamakana.com

210318 second reading, two years later, review: reading again, there is actually more or at least 'different' difficulty. at least for me reading a philosophy text must now go through all the other thoughts read, of this author and other thinkers, fully understood or simply as mentioned, such that clarity, pace, rhythm of reading is often paused, gone back and read again and again. when for example i have to think- did i understand a passage this way or that way and do i now understand it better...? there is the call for reflection on 'reflection' of the usual philosophy that tends to 'intellectualism'. there is coming across more definitions of the 'visible' and the 'invisible', more quotations of proust examined (no, i am not likely to read him again...), there is some argument against ever 'bracketing' the perception of the world, that perception of all sorts are 'perceptual faith' and not misplaced. there is examination of sartre's 'nothingness'. there is some reference to bergson not going far enough. there is some clearer distinction of phenomenological 'how' rather than positivistic 'that'. but again, especially in 'chiasm' essay/chapter and assertion of 'flesh' and 'reversibility', this book is definitely a five...

this is a much later addition (one year): reading 'm-p aesthetics reader' at the moment, has a brief four-part outline by m-p about what is the 'invisible': 1) what is not actually visible, but could be (hidden, elsewhere) 2) what, relative to the visible, could nevertheless not be seen (existentials, dimensions, non-figurative framework) 3) what exists only as tactile, or kinesthetically 4) the 'leka', the Cogito. there, from m-p himself, not much clearer and not reduction...

this is a later addition: just reading some of the 'working notes' and i can see how frustrating, how much must be argued, from these notes that are yes in chronological order, but are notes to himself, notes that focus on where he is going often repeating titles, often approaching it over and over, but it is also inspiring to follow some of his ideas in formation. his notes are over years of thought. he has several sections titled as the final vision in but this does not help fully explain, i primarily feel my mistake in trying to identify those terms: he is talking more about the sensible, visible, being that which i can see and sense, and invisible is somehow implicit but not 'ground' as that too is the vis... well he did write an entire book on these concepts so i should not be surprised it is so difficult to understand...

020416 first review: great work if you like merleau-ponty, if you can read also his disagreements with sartre, his extension and critiques of bergson, husserl, heidegger, if you are interested in where he is going with phenomenology, if you are intrigued by the thoughts in process, particularly in 'working notes', if you do not mind speculative intro, elaboration of thoughts maybe more coherent even incomplete, if you mourn his early death, if you wonder where he was going, if you like merleau-ponty...

now, what is 'the visible' and what is 'the invisible'? well this was the last title and no guarantee m-p would not change it again, with a concluding chapter/essay in which he works the concept of 'flesh', something other than 'empiricism', where he argues against the limiting of what is reflected on, or 'idealism', which tends to 'intellectualism'... but vis/in first sort of shows up as what is truly worthy of 'hyper-reflection' after m-p describes how what is thought, what is investigated, how this is different from sartre, especially his 'nothingness', which m-p evades, doubts, denies, thinks too encompassing, totalizing, when he prefers how thought is 'invisible' as a 'fold'....

in a way, he does remind me of sartre, does use the language that might precede s but that is where i first heard of the 'in-itself' and the 'for-itself', and how this struggle animates, describes, forms so much thought and human life... that the 'invisible' seems to inhabit the 'visible' in the same way, whereas for hd the 'nothing noths' and so there is no 'thing' of 'nothingness', for m-p it seems the 'invisible' in something similar 'invisibles', and most of this work, the central text which is only about 40 000 words or 160 pages, is devoted to describing, affirming, conceiving exactly what is this 'visible' and thus not much on the 'invisible'...

but there are ideas i have read of m-p before, that he uses here again, or i read in some previous essays, such as the grid or lines of a swimming pool are not perceived as independent of the intervening water, as 'really' grid or lines, and yet also not in this water but... seen according to this water, according to this 'style', and how we 'seer' must necessarily be in the world and of the same being to perceive the world... m-p did call his big book phenomenology of 'perception', after all, and to be embodied, to be 'visible' seems to be needed to see or sense the rest of the world 'visible'...

so maybe i do not understand m-p, but i certainly enjoy not understanding, and can see how inspiring his thought is of what i think i understand... he dismisses atomistic empirical theories of 'quale' (how exactly do we sense music the same as colour?) and this makes me think of 'multiplicity' of bergson, he decides that the key to perception is to be embodied and not separate into 'consciousness' let alone 'ego', he refuses any gap to 'representation' and any defining 'lack' or 'nothing' ready to be filled by 'the sensible', which he derides in its nature as being an equivalence between 'nothing' and 'being', in this way launching on, as chapters list 'reflection and interrogation' then 'interrogation and dialectic' then 'interrogation and intuition'... leading to that 'chiasm'...

i look at this review, i give it a five, not because it explains this dyad of 'visible' and 'invisible', but because it stimulates me to think more on m-p, stimulates me to reread other work on m-p, and brings an awareness to me of what sort of philosophy texts i most enjoy reading. the interpretation could be i am an amateur but i willingly confess my ignorance and try to understand what i read. and what i read tends in these latter works, in collections of essays, in other authors explaining/using thoughts of big names in continental philosophy, is not intendng to follow all arguments and logic and terminology, but to start with some ideas already accepited and seeing where their thoughts go...

i like to read philosophy. i have not always read big texts- i have read Being and Nothingness but not Being and Time, but i have read enough to know who is fluid, engaging, interesting eg. bergson Time and Free Will: An Essay on the Immediate Data of Consciousness, Matter and Memory, Creative Evolution, The Two Sources of Morality and Religion and who is not eg. husserl (except his last work Crisis of European Sciences and Transcendental Phenomenology).... though i will struggle through both, hoping to understand, so i have read Matter and Memory and also Cartesian Meditations: An Introduction to Phenomenology but not 'ideas 1'... i have read some philosophy and of that some phenomenology- not knowing enough to claim Socratic ignorance and wisdom- so i know what i prefer, how i prefer, to read and think, and that even after this work 'invisible' escapes my full comprehension, it is becoming another root of the 'rhizomatic' eg. grass, way of exploring its cousins and descendants in thought... i think i think with a useful idea of what m-p is on about it this work, but maybe i need to read more... there are so many books to read and so little time...

more
Maurice Merleau-Ponty: Basic Writings
Phenomenology of Perception
The Visible and the Invisible
Merleau-Ponty's Last Vision: A Proposal for the Completion of "The Visible and the Invisible"
The Retrieval of the Beautiful: Thinking Through Merleau-Ponty’s Aesthetics
Ark of the Possible: The Animal World in Merleau-Ponty
The Merleau-Ponty Aesthetics Reader: Philosophy and Painting
Merleau-Ponty's Ontology
The Being of the Phenomenon: Merleau-Ponty's Ontology
Merleau-Ponty's Philosophy
Merleau-Ponty: Critical Assessments of Leading Philosophers
Merleau-Ponty's Phenomenology: The Problem of Ideal Objects
Merleau-Ponty and Buddhism
Merleau-Ponty's Last Vision: A Proposal for the Completion of "The Visible and the Invisible"
Deleuze, Bergson, Merleau-Ponty: The Logic and Pragmatics of Creation, Affective Life, and Perception

[Chris · Rating 5 out of 5]

Reading Merleau-Ponty is like waking up from a terrible dream about an objective, out-of-body experience. Now you're flexing your legs and arms, happy to be back in your own body.

[Elena · Rating 5 out of 5]

In this, his final work cut short by his untimely death, Merleau-Ponty returns once again to the beginning, as all the great works of phenomenology try to do. Here, he pushes language, concepts and theoretical reflection to their utmost limits in an effort to describe the dimension of experience that is the ultimate source of meaning. Reading his work is like witnessing the great serpent of consciousness coiling in upon itself to try and devour itself in an ultimate act of philosophical reflection that ultimately falls short of revealing the sense of it all, an act that is nonetheless ever renewed.

Themes that preoccupied Merleau-Ponty since his earliest works are approached from a new angle, themes such as: the birth of meaning in the pre-conceptual, pre-propositional bodily experience of moving in the world; the "establishment" of rationality in perceptual contact with the milieu through action; the primacy of temporality (or of the awareness of time) to all meaning-making; the nature of reflection, and particularly of philosophical reflection; the limits of science and the place of scientific reasoning within the intersubjective field of human experience.

Also, this work shows a preoccupation with reviving and transforming the old-school philosophical project of searching for ultimate foundations for our efforts to make sense of things (while thinking about what such a foundation might be). In this work, as in his others, Merleau-Ponty has really interesting and important things to say about the in-principle limits of scientific sense-making and about how scientific rationality is grounded in an experiential rationality (what he calls a "Wild Logos") that science presupposes without being able to take as an object or to directly explain.

A real highlight of the work, for me, is Merleau-Ponty's sustained rethinking of traditional dualities at the heart of the Western philosophical tradition that have long shaped the space of possible dialectical moves, dualities such as mind/body, universal/particular, essence/fact, ideality/sensoriality, a priori/empirical, and lastly, reason/perception, active/passive, where the former correspond to what he refers to as "the invisible" and the latter refer to "the visible." His preoccupation in this work is to bring to fruition his lifelong effort to formulate a philosophical vocabulary that would allow us to describe and articulate that as-yet unexplored region that lies in between these dichotomous extremes. For instance, he builds on his argument from the Phenomenology of Perception that we should go beyond the abstract ways science represents objects in order to re-learn how to see things with our own eyes, freshly and anew, unhampered by these inherited dichotomous categories. The path to wisdom for the phenomenologist lies in seeing the world as the beginner does.

In this work, Merleau-Ponty builds on his prior phenomenological works by sketching out an ontology of the natural world that is presupposed by his prior phenomenological descriptions of perception and of bodily sensorimotor intentionality as sources of meaning for all concepts we could develop (including the abstractions and idealizations we rely on in theoretical reflection or scientific reasoning). In this ontology, nature is inherently processual: it appears as a dynamic interplay of presence and absence, in which all presence is an active "presencing": i.e. a bringing of something into relief within the dynamically fluctuating fabric of the world as a whole. In his vivid descriptions, every subject and every object, every person and every thing, each appear to transiently coalesce and manifest themselves in relief against an unfathomable ground of silent being that is poised to engulf them again at any moment.

He develops this processual ontology of nature by first taking up and further developing his old argument (from his Phenomenology of Perception) that we should rethink the unity of the perceptual thing not as an abstract, ideal essence (e.g. one that we can reduce to a quantifying mathematical representation or model) that is instantiated in a concrete material spatio-temporal object, but rather that we should think of its unity in terms of the notion of "style". For Merleau-Ponty, the perceived object is defined by a style of movement in the way that your body is defined by its individual style in all its various gestures and its myriad ways of walking and otherwise moving across space. According to him, the perceived object - like the glass of water on your table quietly soaking up sunlight and transforming it into meandering, quivering lines - is a dynamic unity. It sustains itself across time as a unity-in-difference by sustaining a particular “style” of occupying space and time. Moreover, you know the glass not by means of a mediating, propositional content in your head, but by taking up the “style” of movement that brings you into optimal contact with it as a modulation of the dynamic field that is the world.

Thus, Merleau-Ponty further works out the radical implications that follow from making an aesthetic category, style, the key to epistemology and ontology of the natural world insofar as it appears in experience. If he's right, art turns out to have better epistemic resources than science does when it comes to helping us articulate the meaning of so-called physical things (at least insofar as they appear within experience) since art is the best way we have of cognizing the style of perceptual presence.

Merleau-Ponty's argument proceeds by showing how previous philosophers (most notably Descartes, Leibniz, Hume and the founding figures of scientific psychology who adopted the basic logic of Humean associationism, Kant, Hegel, Bergson, Husserl, and Sartre) were at their most profound when they gave inklings of this fundamental dimension of experience which is the source and ground of meaning, rationality, and reflection (both in its everyday and philosophical varieties). He also showed how some of their most serious errors and inconsistencies were the result of misdescribing and misinterpreting the dimension of experience aspects of which they had uncovered. This is how he ultimately motivates the need for his own phenomenological redescription of some of the ground they had uncovered cursorily but passed by (e.g. in Descartes' account of the way self-consciousness is bound up with any possible object-consciousness). This is how he also argues for the ontology of nature that is presupposed by that phenomenology.

It is hard to try to review a book that is so intricately interwoven and so bristling with insight on every page. It is not an easy read, in part because it tries an almost impossible task: to turn into an object that we can explicitly describe and conceptualize those aspects of experience that invariably form part of the periphery and background of focal experience and that are thus only meaningful insofar as they remain latent and implicit, rather than focal and explicitly defined. We know these dimensions of experience by living through rather than reflecting on them. Yet, Merleau-Ponty proposes a style of philosophical reflection that will bring them to focal reflection. Seeing him struggle with this and to reflect on the inherent limits of the effort to articulate the ultimate experiential grounds of our sense-making (even and especially as these are meant to remain in the background) is a big part of the pleasure of reading his work.

[Carrie · Rating 5 out of 5]

Nothingness *is* sexy.

[akemi]

✧･ﾟ: *✧･ﾟ​:​* Once again, the flesh we are speaking of is not matter. 😧 It is the coiling over of the visible upon the seeing body, of the tangible upon the touching body, 😳 which is attested in particular when the body sees itself, touches itself seeing and touching the things, 🥺 such that, simultaneously, as tangible it descends among them, as touching it dominates them all 🥵 and draws this relation­ship and even this double relationship from itself, by dehiscence or fission of its own mass. 😫 *​:​･ﾟ✧​*​:​･ﾟ✧

[Nathan · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is an incredible final text of Merleau-Ponty. In this obscure and haunting work, Merleau-Ponty attempts to establish a new Ontology of the flesh. In doing so he arrives at a powerful refutation of subject/object dichotomies and dualistic thinking. There is a radical revision and new understanding of the human being as world. The human being and its world are unified. They can never be seperated. Scientific methodology attempts to posit itself as an absolute viewer - an all seeing, birds eye view which can reach the object as it is in itself. However, this is problematic, because what it witnessed is always witnessed by someone. There is always a hermeneutical dimension to all experience - we cannot divorce ourselves from any entity. We can only view it and reflect on it according to a new mode of relationality. Merleau-Ponty also makes a strong case in the famous essay "The Chiasm" where the object is always inextricably tied up with the subject through a touching and being touched, a seeing and being seen. The end notes of the text are also insightful, despite the fact they are short and sometimes only one line, such as "The History of Meaning." Highly recommended to any serious student of philosophy. It is strongly rooted in Heidegger, Hegel, and Husserl - even though MP attempts to move away from the models of these thinkers. A background in phenomenology and dialectics is essential to grasping this text. I read this work very quickly, and so missed quite a bit. I will definitely return and go through it slowly and more carefully.

[Helmi Chikaoui]

إن كتاب المرئي واللامرئي، من البداية إلى النهاية هو محاولة لإبقاء التساؤل مفتوحا. إنه ليس ممارسة الشك منهجي ومقصود تستمد منه الذات وهم الانفصال عن كل الأشياء، وتهيئ إحياء فكر واثق من حقوقه، وإنما هو كشف متواصل لحياتنا الإدراكية ولحياتنا المعرفية ؛ إنه ليس سلبا لليقينيات المشتركة وتحطيما لإيماننا بوجود الأشياء والآخرين، وإنما هو إذعان لتلك اليقينيات ولذلك الإيمان إلى درجة أن الإصرار على الاقتران بها يكشف أنها يقين وريبة، إيمان وعدم إيمان لا ينفصلان؛ إنه بشكل ما عبور إلى الجانب الآخر من الرأي للالتقاء بما يحتويه من التباسات ؛ إنه ليس تفنيدا لنظريات الفلاسفة وإنما هو عودة إلى ما كان في أصولها، ليكتشف أنها تقود إلى ما وراء الإجابات التي تقدمها؛ وأخيرا هو تساؤل لا يتوقف عن العودة إلى ذاته، لا يغفل الظرف الذي يوجد فيه من يسأل، ويعرف أنه واقع في شرك الكينونة بينما هو يكرس ذاته للتعبير عنها.

إذا وجدت الفلسفة في هذه اللغة وسيلة «تضاهي بها ما تصر على قوله» فلأن سر زمنيتنا تعلنه زمنية الأثر، ولأن هذا الأخير يعلمنا التعرف على استمرارية وعلى شیوع تجربة كل لحظة فيها عالقة بكل الأخريات في نفس اندفاعة الزمن، وبالتزامن يعلمنا التعرف على الحركة التي تمنع من تثبیت معنى الشيء مرئيا كان أو لامرئيا، والتي تجعل المضمون الكامن للعالم ينبثق أبديا في ما وراء المعطي الحاضر. توسيع خارطة الفنومينولوجيا من المعرفي إلى السياسي ومن الأنطولوجي إلى التاريخي ومن الحسي إلى الهرمينوطيقي، هو استراتيجية فلسفية لهذا العائد دوما في فرقه : فعل التفلسف، فعلا یکسر التنميط ويواجه ضجيج الذين يجعلون من الفلسفة حانوتا للأثريات التي لا يزورها إلا الاتجاريون أو من انقطعت بهم السبل. هذه الفلسفة التي تجد مغرسها في أجساد العالم والتاريخ والإنسان - لتصبح هي ذاتها جسد من فرط ترحالها بين الأجساد - هي الفلسفة التي تتوغل بعيدا في تمفصلات اللحم والرؤية والزمنية، وهي التي يغامر خطابها باقتحام مواقع السلطة والرغبة، وبمحاورة الحدثي والمعيش، وبالتسلل داخل النصوص تقرأ فيها تقاطع الوقائع والمجازات. إن الفلسفة هي لسان حال الكيان، تسکنه موطنا ويأتيها معناه من أغوار الممكن، يتجسد سؤالها في الأفعال التي لم تكتمل أبدا، وفي المعاني التي تحيل إلى مجازاتها، وفي اللغة أسلوب کیان منتقش في أديم الكينونة مفصحا عن مداخل العالم المتعددة، وفي التحير المترحل خارج طوفان الجاهز والمسكوك. إن الفلسفة تقول الالتباس. والالتباس ليس نقيصة في الذات أو في الوجود، وليس حالة معرفية لم تبلغ تمامها، ونتجاوز تشوشها بتمكن الوعي يقينيا من موضوعاته، وليس الالتباس هربا أو خلطا أو ريبة أو فكرة مرتبكة أو انتقالا اعتباطيا من النقيض إلى النقيض، وإنما هو من صميم الوضع الإنساني، وهو معشش في نسيج الكينونة وعلينا التعرف عليه والاعتراف به لأنه صنو الفرق الذي يفجر التطابق ويستبعد التلفیق ويحتقر المهادنة ويربك الأزواج الميتافيزيقية المتقابلة. وبالتالي فإن الالتباس هو العملية البدنية المنبثقة من كثافة الوجود الحسي والفاتحة إياه كأفق وكحد متباعد. إن الالتباس كاللون الرمادي الذي هو جنس الحالة الوسيطة بين لونين، وهو ما عبرت عنه لغة مرلو - بونتي بالتلاف والتصالب والانشباك والتقاطع وهي مفاهیم تفسد سلم الحدود ومزاعم الأزمنة السعيدة. إنه يفسد القسمة بين المثالية والمادية ، وبين داخلية الوعي وبرانية الموضوع، وبين ملاء الوجود وخواء العدم، وبين عرضية الموقف ومطلقية الحرية.


فلسفة مرلو - بونتي فلسفة استشكال وعرج وتهكم. إنها رغبة في التحرر من ضروب التيبس من حيث هي اضطلاع بدوامات التكون والتلاشي، وبمادية التفاصيل وبكثرة التعاريق وبالحريات وبالمعاني التي تنبتها الحياة ويقطعها الموت. إن علاقتها بنا وبتاريخ الفلسفة كعلاقة المسافر الذي يأكل من زاده ويأوي - ��ير آمن - إلى ما يجده في طريقه من خانات ، فلا هي تزعم تجاوز الميتافيزيقا ولا هي تحلم بمستقبل جنائني، بل حسبها عدم الذهول عن تحير التاريخ وعن عينية الوقائع وعن معکوسية الفعل والانفعال ، وعن الإضاءات المتبادلة بين النظر والممارسة وعما يتهدد الكائن من تماثل وامتثال. في كلمة، إنها فلسفة عينية والفلسفة العينية ليست فلسفة سعيدة». وما عدم سعادتها حزن أو ضيق أو تبرم بل هو رغبة أكالة لا تركن للسائد ولا ينهكها ضيق السبل، ولا يحرجها توليد أسئلتها في صلب التناهي والموت وفي طاحونة الاستبداد والقهر والعنف.

إن الذات المجسدة والمدركة منخرطة في العالم وملازمة الأشيائه ، فنحن لسنا فكرة وجسدا، لسنا وعيا قبالة العالم بل نحن فكر متجسد، کيان في العالم». نحن حصيلة خلاسية للفكر والجسد. والجسد ذاته ليس كتلة فيزيائية - كيميائية أو مجموعة من القوى أو آلة منتظمة وفق مبدإ هو النفس، بل هو کیان قادر على الفعل، وهو وحدة تتم في كل لحظة من خلال الرسيمة الجسدية (le schema corporel)، التي هي وحدة القدرة التي تحرك مختلف أجزاء الفضاء العضوي، أو هي المفصل أو الوسيط اللامرئي بين أعضاء الجسد وأشياء العالم، أو هي ما يمكن الجسد من أن يرى نفسه رائيا ويلمس نفسه لامسا».. وبالتالي فإن الذات المجسدة حزمة علاقات، وبما أن الأمر لا يعود في علاقة الذات بالآخر إلى «رابطة منطقية وإنما إلى رابطة وجود، فإن الأنا بإمكانه الالتقاء بالآخر من خلال تعميق الرابطة المعيشة ». إذا ليست الذات وحدة صماء أو وعية شفافة أو يقينا أوليا، فمثل هذه الذات هي ذات إبستيمولوجية، أما الذات الحية والعلائقية فبيذاتية عينية في الكلام والفعل، في الرغبة والرهبة، في التاريخ والسياسة ، وعلى الجملة، في الحياة والموت.


إن علاقة الأنا بالآخر علاقة ندية ، فلا هو يجردني من حريتی ولا أنا أختزله في هويتي. وحتى في حالة الصراع الممیت تظل علاقتي بالآخر قائمة ما لم أقتله، لذلك، لم يتردد مرلو - بونتي في نقد وتعرية الرياء الليبرالي الذي يرفع المبادئ عاليا ويمارس بأسمها ما تأباه فكرتها، ففي الليبرالية قاع دغمائي وعقیدة عدوانية حمالة لأيديولوجيا الحرب فضلا عن انحباسها في «الحلم الحقوقي» مغمضة عينيها إزاء ما يتم خارج صورية القانون. بل الكذبة الأساسية الأخطر في الليبرالية هي تقنيعها للعنف بشكل ماكر، حتى يصبح مؤسسيا إذ هي تتستر عن لطافة العنف الذي تديره الدولة بحذق. ومن هنا الانخرام الليبرالي المتعمد بين إعلان المبادئ والممارسة العينية الذين يحكمان رأس المال والاغتراب وكل توابع الموكب المقيت للاستعمار.

الانفتاح المعارض للاختزال والتسييج، إنه إطلالة إنشائية تلتقي بحركة التعاكس وبالمواقع المتحركة وبعينية التجربة وبحيوية الصيرورة و بالمواقع الاستهلالية التي منها يكون التصير والتخلق والتفريد.

وبالفعل، لقد تنبه مرلو - بونتي في المرئي واللامرئي إلى هذا الموطن البكر الذي يسبق كل قسمة، كما إلى ضرورة إعادة النظر في نتائج فنومينولوجيا الإدراك الحسي، والعمل على تعميقها والوصول بها إلى بلورة أنطولوجية تتخلى عن الثنائيات، وعن بقايا فلسفة الوعي. هذا الموطن البكر هو اللحم المعبر عن تعاظل المرئي واللامرئي، في «اللحم ليس مادة وليس روحا وليس جوهرا. إن تعيينه يستوجب لفظا قديما هو لفظ «الأسطقس» بالمعنى الذي نستخدمه فيه للحديث عن الماء والهواء والتراب والنار». هذا التحديد ليس مجرد تعبير عن رجوع ساذج إلى الماقبل سقراطيين وليس تجاهلا لما أنجز بعدهم، ولكنه وعي حاد بما أغفلته الفلسفات التأملية خاصة ، وهو البدئي الذي بمقتضاه تكون الشروط الأنطولوجية لوجودنا ولوجود العالم هي ذاتها. إنه الوسط الرحمي الذي يغمر الجسد والعالم، إنه ولادة متأنية يتلاف فيها المرئي واللامرئي والذات والعالم والنفس والجسد واللغة والفكر والضياء والظلمة والعقل والجنون والنهائي واللانهائي، فاللحم أشبه ما يكون ب «إيروس» الذي ينسج العلاقات ويحبك الأواصر. إنه الوسط المشترك المكون لمرئية الشيء كما لجسدية الذات الرائية، ذلك أن العلاقة بين الرائي والمرئي علاقة تأخذ، حيث يمر كل منهما في الآخر لكن دون تماه أو انصهار، ففي هذه العلاقة تطليق لفكر التطابق كما افكر التحليق تعبيرا عن التفضية أو عن مفارقة القرب / البعد أوالتداني ....

المعنى لامرئي، لكن اللامرئي ليس هو نقيض المرئي: المرئي ذاته له بطانة من اللامرئي، واللامرئي هو المقابل الخفي للمرئي، إنه لا يظهر إلا فيه، إنه ما لا يقبل المثول أصلا (Nichturprisentierbar) الذي يقدم لي بصفته تلك في العالم - لا يمكننا أن نراه في العالم، وكل جهد لرؤيته فيه يجعله يختفي، لكنه قائم في خط المرئي وهو مقره الافتراضي، إنه يرتسم فيه بين السطور ۔ و المقارنات بين اللامرئي والمرئی (مجال ووجهة الفكر ...) لیست مقارنات (هيدغر)، إنها تعني أن المرئي مفعم باللامرئي، وأنه لنفهم العلاقات المرئية (البيت) بشكل تام يجب أن نذهب حد علاقة المرئي باللامرئي ... فمرئي الآخر هو لا مرئيي؛ ومرئيي هو لا مرئي الاخر؛ هذه العبارة (عبارة سارتر) ليس لنا أن نحتفظ بها. علينا أن تقول : الكينونة هي هذا التعدي الغريب الذي يجعل مرئيي يفتح على مرئي الآخر حتى وإن لم يكن متراكبا عليه ، وإنهما يفتحان مع على نفس العالم الحسي - وإنه نفس التعدي ونفس الاتصال عن بعد هو الذي يجعل رسائل أعضائي (الصور الأحادية)، تتجمع في وجود شاقولي واحد وفي عالم واحد.


لقد أضعنا العالم أو انتزعوه منا كما كان يقول جيل دولوز. ولذلك فإن إيماننا بالعالم هو بلورته وتعلم رؤيته وتكثيف «خطوط الإفلات » الناسفة لكل ضروب التطويق، لأنه فيه يتشكل المسار والمصير، وفيه نتحمل مسؤولية التحرر والاغتراب ومسؤولية إقبال المعنى أو خسرانه.

في ذات اللحظة التي أعتقد فيها أنني أقاسم الآخر حياته، فإني لا ألتقيها إلا في غاياتها وفي أقطابها الخارجية. إننا نتواصل في العالم بواسطة ما في حياتنا من متمفصل.


يجب إعادة النظر في تعريف الجسد کموضوع محض لكي نفهم کیف يمكنه أن يكون هو صلتنا الحية بالطبيعة، ونحن لا نتخذ لنا مقام في عالم من الماهيات، بل إننا على العكس من ذلك نطالب بإعادة النظر في التمييز بين الهذا والماذا، بين الماهية وشروط الوجود.


مثلما كان يقول هيغل، إن العودة إلى الذات هي كذلك خروج منها.


كل ما نمنحه للكينونة تنتزعه من التجربة، وكل ما نمنحه للتجربة ننتزعه من الكينونة.


الفلسفة هي دراسة الامتلاك المسبق للكينونة، امتلاك مسبقا من المؤكد أنه ليس معرفة، إنه مخالف للمعرفة وللإجراء، لكنه يضمهما كما تضم الكينونة الكائنات.

[Sajid · Rating 4 out of 5]

Not Satre,but Merleau-Ponty is the successor of Husserl and Heidegger in the truest sense. In Sartre,we start with hollow and we finish with nothingness. Consciousness in its perpetual passion to negate. Being and nothingness always hang in the imbalance realm. Nothingness sucks. But in Merleau-Ponty we get a beautiful explication on the Heideggerian notion of “opeing” or “disclosement”. With Visible we find the invisible. The invisible isn't negation. But the constituent part of the same Being of the visible. The world,my body—one extended flesh—but the vision, the touch are screen between us. Me and the world. Screen doesn’t suck,it opens. The world isn’t me,i am of this world. I see because i am seen by the other. I am seen because i can see. This seemingly opposite poles of the same world creates for me a distance, a gap. The chiasm of the thing touched and the hand touching. The distance is constituted because i have a body or i am a body. I am neither negation nor position, the world doesn’t sink through my nothingness nor i fill myself up through the world. I am and the world is. Because we are flesh. Not in material sense. The flesh is the elementary existence of Being. So the silence, the invisible, the emptiness aren't negativities,but the very condition of positivity.

“Life becomes ideas and the ideas return to life, each is caught up in the vortex in which he first committed
only measured stakes, each is led on by what he said and the response he received, led on by his own thought of which he is no longer the sole thinker. No one thinks any more, everyone speaks, all live and gesticulate within Being, as I stir within my landscape, guided by gradients of differences to be observed or to be reduced if I wish to remain here or to go yonder. Whether in discussion or in monologue, the essence in the living and active
state is always a certain vanishing point indicated by the arrangement of the words, their "other side," inaccessible, save for him who accepts to live first and always in them.”

[David M]

A fascinating book, but Phenomenology of Perception is definitely still Merleau-Ponty's masterpiece. Unfinished at the time of his untimely death (only 53!), this work was also arguably unfinishable. Merleau-Ponty may have set for himself an impossible task. Increasingly dissatisfied with the philosophy of reflection (to which phenomenology can be considered an heir), he had no real idea what could follow it, and he was too intellectually honest to impose a facile solution.

Note the desperation in the passage below:

"If therefore the reflection is not to presume upon what it finds and condemn itself to putting into the things what it will then pretend to find in them , it must suspend the faith in the world only so as to see it, only so as to read in it the route it has followed in becoming a world for us; it must seek in the world itself the secret of our perceptual bond with it. It must use words not according to their pre-established signification, but in order to state this pre-logical bond. It must plunge into the world instead of surveying it, it must descend towards it such as it is instead of working its back way up toward a prior possibility of thinking it - which would impose on the world in advance the conditions for our control over it. It must question the world, it must enter into the forest of references that our interrogation arouses in it, it must make it say, finally, what in its silence it means to say... We know neither what exactly is this order and this concordance to the world to which we must entrust ourselves, nor therefore what the enterprise will result in, nor even if it is really possible."

[Tijmen Lansdaal · Rating 3 out of 5]

After reading Phenomenology of Perception, this book can deepen much of the investigations taken up there. In my opinion it's largely consistent with it, yet contextualizes the same train of thought with that 'state of non-philosophy' we are in ('never has the crisis been so radical'). It thus comes out highly polemical; though the main scapegoat is Sartre, Husserl is also an important figure Merleau-Ponty disputes. Especially in the working notes one can see that his main inspiration is Heidegger (though I bet those extensive parts on 'nothingness' could result in some minor differences between them too).

Though that could prove to be a fruitful study for anyone embedded in the history of these ideas, it's hard to distinguish a profound 'positive' statement in those discussions. Especially crucial notions like 'depth' or 'dimensionality' simply do not really flesh out in all the discussion in the working notes, and they're hardly present in the finished chapters. 'The invisible', that enigmatic part of the title, suffers from it, though this book hints and points in the right direction. Some of his thoughts in the working notes are so brilliant that they immediately promise a new outlook for philosophy - yet it is hard to articulate what would make up its merits. Regardless of that, they often feel like a drag to plow through, unearthing what Merleau-Ponty is exactly rushing through when writing up these personal reminders.

All considered I guess this is one for the fans, like me.

[Miloš · Rating 5 out of 5]

ne znam, tekst je puž, i ponti je puž, i ja sam puž, i čitao sam 40 strana na (u) 8 sati (i nije zbog beleženja beleški),
"Stvari su produženje moga tela, a moje telo je produženje sveta, putem njega me svet okružuje. Ako ne mogu da dodirnem svoje kretanje, to je zato što je ovo kretanje sasvim satkano od kontakata sa mnom. Dodirivati se i dodirivati moraju da budu shvaćeni kao naličja jedno drugoga. Negativnost koja prebiva u dodirivanju ( i koju ne smem da minimalizujem - to je zato što to telo nije empirijska činjenica, što ima ontološki značaj), nedodirljivo dodirivanje, nevidljivo viđenja, nesvesno svesti (njegovo centralno punctum caecum, slepilo koje ga čini svesnim, tj. indirektnim i obrnutim dosegom svih stvari) jeste druga strana ili naličje (ili druga dimenzionalnost) čulno opažljivog Bića; ne može se reći da ono jeste tamo, iako zasigurno ima mesta na kojima ono nije - ono postoji prisustvom putem ulaganja u drugu dimenzionalnost, prisustvom "dvostrukog temelja". (263 str.)

[Eugen]

His unfinished masterpiece. The chapter on "The Intertwining" might just be an analysis at the farthest limit phenomenology permits. Beyond lies the Scylla and Charybdis of metaphysical speculation and the vortex of limitless deconstruction.

[Bouke Van Balen · Rating 5 out of 5]

Duurde even, maar het was het uiteindelijk waard. Prachtig geschreven en een genot (maar ook onbegrijpelijk) om te lezen. Dit is zijn ontologische (en tevens laatste) project, hij stierf voordat hij het manuscript af had, terwijl hij een college over Descartes aan het voorbereiden was.

Het argument is dat we het ontologische concept vlees (het weefsel) nodig hebben om zijn fenomenologie van belichaming de staven. Dat wil zeggen: dat wij als mens de wereld zien vanuit ons lichaam, en dat ons lichaam tegelijkertijd onderdeel is van die wereld, toont dat we duaal in de wereld zijn. Maar het toont ook dat lichaam en geest fenomenologisch niet gescheiden zijn, maar juist verweven. De vraag is nu: waar is die mens --> wereld relatie van gemaakt dat de wereld aan ons verschijnt zoals die doet? We zijn afgestemd op de wereld, voelen ons er bekend, en de wereld is afgestemd aan ons:

"a relation of pre-established harmony with them, as though it knew them before knowing them, it moves in its own way with its abrupt and imperious style, and yet the views taken are not desultory - I do not look at a chaos, but at things - so that finally one cannot say if it is the look or if it is the things that command." (p. 133).

Merleau-Ponty probeert een ontologie de introduceren die het dualisme tussen mens en wereld verwerpt, maar tegelijkertijd de ambiguïteit van het geleefde lichaam en het lichaam als object te behouden. Hiervoor wil hij een concept dat de verstrengeling van subject en object uitdrukt: vlees.

"we mean that carnal being, as a being of depths, of several leaves or several faces, a being in latency, and a presentation of a certain absence, is a prototype of Being, of which our body, the sensible sentient, is a very remarkable variant, but whose constitutive paradox already lies in every visible. (...) our body commands the visible for us, but it does not explain it, does not clarify it, it only concentrates the mystery of its scattered visibility; and it is indeed a paradox of Being, not a paradox of man, that we are dealing with here." (p. 136).

Vlees/weefsel drukt de continuïteit tussen mens en wereld uit, overbrugt de twee, verwerpt een strakke tegenstelling. We zijn in de wereld, van de wereld, tot de wereld, en daarmee ook in/van/tot anderen. "Where are we to put the limit between the body and the world, since the world is flesh?" (p. 138).

"The flesh is not matter, is not mind, is not substance. To designate it, we should need the old term 'element,' in the sense that it was used to speak of water, air, earth, and fire, that is, in the sense of a general thing, midway between spatio-temporal individual and the idea, a sort of incarnate principle that brings a style of being wherever there is a fragment of being. The flesh is in this sense an 'element' of Being. Not a fact of or a sum of facts, and yet adherent to location and to the now." (p. 139).

Het weefsel is het medium van het object en subject, de magische relatie tussen de twee, die we niet zien maar er wel moet zijn, als ontologisch beginpunt van de belichaamde ervaring. Van daaruit schrijft hij nog over solipsisme/'the problem of other minds' (oplossing: gedeeld vlees, aka intercorporeity), de lichaam-geest dualisme/'the hard problem of consciousness' (oplossing: geen ontologisch dualisme, vlees als overbrugger subject/object).

Veel van het boek blijft onbegrijpelijk. Dat komt ten eerste omdat het niet af is en we niet weten hoe de structuur eruit had gezien. Maar het komt ook omdat Merleau-Ponty probeert te filosoferen zonder reflectie, of zijn onderzoeksobject is in ieder geval de ontologie van ambigue pre-reflectieve ervaring. Om dat in taal en argumenten te vatten is bijna automatisch gedoemd te mislukken. Het wordt zo ook een project met Platoonse en Christelijke trekken:

"they could not be given to us as ideas except in a carnal experience. It is not only that we would find in that carnal experience the occasion to think them; it is that they owe their authority, their fascinating, indestructible power, precisely to the fact that they are in transparency behind the sensible, or in its heart. Each time we want to get at it immediately, or lay hands on it, or circumscribe it, or see it unveiled, we do in fact feel that the attempt is misconceived, that it retreats in the measure that we approach. The explication does not give us the idea itself; it is but a second version of it, a more manageable derivative of it." (p. 150).

[Bouillialcool · Rating 5 out of 5]

Depuis une certaine période, je pense que je ne peux qu’être sauvée par une MODE DE PENSÉE philosophique(les mots des fous ) au lieu de par les idées. Que je détestais de l’avouer, car c’est-à-dire,de toute évidence, je ne peux pas me libérer de mon statut ´homme ´pour aller au delà de langage. Comme Ponty pense qu’ une pensée dépourvu de support langagière n’est pas plus pur, elle est juste une image dans la tête. Je croyais que le jour où l’on pouvait s’en libérer, ce serait le jour où l’on ne se tenait plus au geste de réfléchir pour confirmer notre existence, et je tenais à croire que cela appartiendrait à une autre évolution de l’homme future.

Mais comme c’est limité!

Les images ne peuvent-elles pas se dialoguer entre elles?
Mais SI SI SI
La logique et l’inconscience d’une chose vaut-elle vraiment être mises en exergue?
MAIS Non non

Il n’y a bien pas toujours une nécessité.

S’il y a une nécessité de philosophie, c’est qu’elle peut nous amener à aller au delà de philosophie en soi.


Je le note 5 étoile car l’inspiration durant cette lecture de Ponty me fait confirmer la réponse de ces questions: SI, NON. Tandis que tout effort qui vise à creuser la langue jusqu’au fond pour mettre en claire la logique de l’homme vaut toujours une admiration. Un tel effort en tous les cas représente un vrai respect pour l’intelligence de l’homme.

Or, laisser la philosophie rester dans le monde spirituel. Il ne faut pas avoir peur, encore moins honte d’aller croire que le monde ne se pense pas, mais se perçoit. Pareil pour tout autre domaine.

[Kai · Rating 4 out of 5]

"the idea of chiasm, that is: every relation with being is simultaneously a taking and a being held, the hold is held, it is inscribed and inscribed in the same being that it takes hold of. Starting from there, elaborate an idea of philosophy… . It is the simultaneous experience of the holding and the held in all orders."

Feel your right hand with your left hand -- which one is object and which one is subject? Now swap it in your head. Apply to all senses. Expand concept to ultimate epistemological layer: philosophy itself.

[Dan · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is... not an easy book to read. I probably only got about 35-40% of it, to be perfectly honest. Having a grounding in the work of the philosophers to whom Merleau-Ponty is largely responding would have helped immensely; as it was, I have only a moderate familiarity with Descartes and a surface understanding of Kant. I had had no experience with Husserl. If you're interested in reading this book, I strongly recommend shoring up your background in these other thinkers first.

That said, the moments in which the text became clear to me were breathtaking. Merleau-Ponty's view of the world and the ways in which affect it and are affected by it are mind-boggling in both their complexity and their simplicity. I won't say much more, because I'm sure that I'm not doing it justice, but if you contemplate the act of living in the world (or in the universe, or in reality), this book should open some new pathways for you.

[нєνєℓ ¢ανα · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great!

[Andrea · Rating 5 out of 5]

Il mondo è ciò che io percepisco, ma la sua prossimità assoluta, dacché la si esamina e la si esprime, diviene anche, inspiegabilmente, distanza irrimediabile. L'uomo "naturale" tiene le due estremità della catena, pensa ad un tempo che la sua percezione entra nelle cose e che si effettua al di qua del suo corpo. Ma come nell'uso della vita le due convinzioni coesistono senza sforzo, così, ridotte in tesi e in enunciati, esse si distruggono a vicenda, ci lasciano nella confusione. (Il visibile e la natura - Riflessione e interrogazione, La fede percettiva e la sua oscurità, p.36).

L'incredibile testo incompiuto di Merleau-Ponty è un'opera di levatura filosofica sorprendente, avvolta in quell'aura di "misticismo" - e, sotto sotto, di disperazione - che ne rende la lettura stimolante nella sua complessità di fondo: quella che viene delineata tra le righe delle varie note di lavoro, in fondo, non è altro che la richiesta da parte dell'uomo di accedere alla verità ultima, di dispiegare le intricate pieghe del "Velo di Maya", di trovare una sicurezza che lo aiuti ad orientarsi nel mondo e a dare significato alla vita che gli viene concessa.

Merleau-Ponty spinge la Fenomenologia oltre i limiti husserliani nel tentativo di mettere in discussione quel solido e rigoroso edificio filosofico che era la Fenomenologia della percezione per ricostruirlo nuovamente su fondamenta più resistenti, ovvero su una nuova ontologia che faccia dell'Essere un sistema a più entrate e aiuti l'uomo a liberarsi dall'illusione solipsistica, ovvero dalla convinzione che il mondo sia un prodotto della propria coscienza interiore, una realtà tangibile a tratti e impossibile da vivere a pieno. Tuttavia Merleau-Ponty si oppone fermamente a questa visione, egli rifiuta quella "nullificazione" delle cose di matrice sartriana che conduce l'uomo a guardare gli altri con diffidenza, ed ecco che la dialettica Essere-Nulla deve essere riletta sotto una nuova ottica, quella del visibile e dell'invisibile, dove con quest'ultimo termine si vuole intendere qualcosa di più di una semplice negazione di ciò che generalmente percepiamo: "in-visibile", come chiarito in una delle tante note di lavoro dedicate all'argomento, diventa qualcosa che è insito nel mistero della percezione, assimilabile solo mediante la nozione di carne che esprime continuità tra soggetto e oggetto, elidendo quell'apparente distanza che ci separa dalle cose e che in realtà ce le rende solo più vicine.

Non appena vediamo altri vedenti, noi non abbiamo più solamente davanti a noi lo sguardo senza pupilla, il cristallo trasparente delle cose, quel debole riflesso, quel fantasma di noi stessi che le cose evocano disegnando un posto fra di esse dal quale noi le vediamo: ormai, grazie ad altri occhi, siamo pienamente visibili a noi stessi; quella lacuna in cui si trovano i nostri occhi e la nostra schiena è colmata, colmata da qualcosa, ancora, di visibile, ma di cui noi non siamo titolari: certamente, per credervi, per far entrare in linea di conto una visione che non è la nostra, è sempre e inevitabilmente al tesoro unico della nostra visione che attingiamo, e quindi l'esperienza non può insegnarci niente che non sia abbozzato in essa. (Il visibile e la natura - L'intreccio - Il chiasma, p.159)

Ed ecco come il visibile diventa superficie di profondità inesauribile: in mezzo alle nostre esperienze c'è sempre qualcosa di comune, un rapporto certo che si conserva sempre, nascosto dalla linea con cui proiettiamo noi stessi nel mondo e nelle cose (in questi termini si parla di paradosso dell'espressione). Percepire, pertanto, diventa uno specchiarsi nell'altro, nell'ambigua condizione di vedere ed essere visto, di toccare e al contempo di essere toccato, un paradosso che si dipana nel chiasma, ovvero nell'intrecciarsi delle cose nell'abbraccio avvolgente del tempo, misura imprescindibile dell'Essere.

Tante altre cose si potrebbero dire a riguardo di quest'opera, preferisco tuttavia farlo più avanti dopo un attenta lettura delle note dei suoi corsi sulla Natura e di ulteriori approfondimenti: il testo è un tesoro filosofico di non poco conto, nonché testimonianza di grande acume e profondità. A conclusione di questo "spaccato" circa il contenuto del libro, posso solo ringraziare Merleau-Ponty per la potenza dei suoi concetti e per come questi siano stati in grado di incidere notevolmente sulla mia vita. Tuttavia, la ricerca deve continuare, e, come direbbe Mauro Carbone, c'è ancora là fuori una "filosofia ancora da farsi": a noi il compito di esplorare l'orizzonte che Merleau-Ponty stesso ha voluto delinearci, di scegliere la strada da imboccare per tentare di andare al cuore delle cose e di risolvere il dualismo soggetto-oggetto.

[Dávid Pieš · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.5/5*

First, a heads up, this is not an ideal book to get to know the author, there are plenty of other better opportunities! Maurice Merleau-Ponty died while writing this book, so I'm guessing that may be one of the reasons why it may seem unedited at times.

And now to the book. Along with the 50 pages of editor's notes and prefaces, one gets to the first chapter, which is already fairly hard to read, but at least there are no new things to be discovered. Or rather, if there are, all it takes is a little inattention and one misses it immediately. After the first chapter, the book takes on, for me, an even worse dimension. The second and third chapters literally left me with nothing to do but rush through. I couldn't get into it at all, I didn't know much of what he was up to, and even the structure was painful to the point of redundant repetitiveness. And we were also pretty keen on Sartre.

However, chapter four is great! “The Intertwining – The Chiasm” It's still very heavy and a little opaque at times, but the reader can at least have an idea of what it's about. So I'll try to get closer to it:


In this chapter, Merleau-Ponty approaches the relationship between the touching and the touched by means of a concept he calls flesh. It is an attempt to respond to a perpetually complicated dichotomy in phenomenology - of the subject and object. There was always a strong urge to overcome this dichotomy for it seems now that surmounting it answers some of the fundamental questions of our perception. Traditionally, Merleau-Ponty tries to clarify this collision by digging deep into the concept of "body".

Very basically, Merleau-Ponty believes that the seen 'world' is neither in our bodies, nor are our bodies in totality visible in the 'world'. They are indeed visible in a full spectacle, but as a mere thing that can be seen, and thus as an object. Merleau-Ponty argues, that this is not how we observe the bodies of others. My body is not just a visible thing, it is also a seeing thing. (meant in the sense of being able to perceive, rather than being some sort of ableist remark.) This is where Merleau-Ponty tries to clarify this oddness with the concept of flash, which answers and fills the gap between the idea that our bodies are neither surrounded by the 'world' nor do surround it. Rather, there is some weird ongoing dialogue between the inner and the outer. And that is the flesh.

What does that mean?

When I hold an object in my right hand and touch my right hand with my left hand. What is going on?
The left hand is not touching the right hand as an object. The right hand touches something, and thus has a property of 'the one that touches'. In order for it to be 'touched' it'd need to pass over to the rank of 'touched'. Phenomenologically. However, if the right hand retains its property of the one that touches, the left hand is not really touching 'the right hand', it touches only its outer surface. Which of these properties our hand will have, depends solely on our state of realisation. Either way, in neither case can this perception be described as a dichotomy of subject and object. There is always present a kind of invisible subjectivity in an inseparable relationship with visible things. This fundamental relation overcomes the bifurcation of our perception into object and subject. According to Merleau-Ponty, this relation is simply irreducible, and by this relation he means flesh.

Or something along those lines, anyway...

It is a hard one and I'm looking forward to delving into some of his other stuff.

[Eric Phetteplace · Rating 5 out of 5]

The core text is fairly short, 160 pages, and mostly critiques preceding theories that influenced MMP (Descartes, Kant, Husserl, Heidegger, a lot of time spent on Sartre, Bergson) before finally building to something constructive. I found the writing fairly hard to follow, long & dense sentences inside long paragraphs, but generally thought the argumentation stellar. There's an additional fifty pages filled by two introductions and a hundred pages of unstructured notes afterwards, all of dubious value. The notes reiterate arguments from the text or show where the book was headed but they're so scattered and the shape of the work changed so much that they're not very helpful to understanding. If you're a scholar studying MMP all the extra material is probably great, if not then it's not worth reading.

[Bruitsparoles · Rating 4 out of 5]

C'est grâce à sa pensée que j'en tire une consubstantialité de l'être avec son plein, le néant - qui n'est pas et qui se pense puisqu'il faut, pour bien regarder devant soi, imaginer un derrière soi et pour se rassurer du vide, imaginer un derrière plus reculé encore - et le monde. Voilà un enseignement de sa part : ne jamais figer son esprit de choses inflexibles aux volontés qui s'exercent et se frôlent à notre chair, puisqu'elles sont toutes entières elles-mêmes, et que leur esprit navigue en leurs propres eaux, et que pour boire dans l'autre - sa richesse, la vie - faut-il mesurer toute l'étendue impossibles à traverser en eux ; rester humble, puissant dans la découverte et la résonance aux "en-soi-pour-soi" autres.

[Giacomo Mantani · Rating 5 out of 5]

Molto di più che un libro, un'opera, una rappresentazione. Sembra come il
riflesso o il chiasma della stessa vita di Maurice Merleau-Ponty, per quel
poco che posso conoscere.

Non poteva essere migliore o diversa, almeno quella parte che concerne il visibile. La possibilità dell'invisibile presente viene scorta all'orizzonte proprio dall'incompiutezza dell'opera stessa e della vita, oramai in-tangibile, dell'autore.

Traccia rappresentativa.

Come una cometa, avvistata all'improvviso, scia visibile temporanea, seguita con l'occhio e che improvvisamente scompare.

Ringrazio ciò che ha portato da pensare.

[Chris · Rating 5 out of 5]

Read this is only just for Ch. 4 "The Intertwining - The Chiasm".

It is a beautiful essay that lays out the heart of MPs philosophy, that we are both seer and seen, touched and touched, and in this Intertwining we see ourselves become others and become the world. We are forever entangled in each other's existence.

" If my left hand can touch my right hand while it palpitates the tangibles, can touch it touching, can turn its palpitation back upon it, why, when touching the hand of another would I not to uh in it the same power to expose the things that have touched in my own"

[Juan Pablo Ortiz · Rating 4 out of 5]

¿Qué es lo contrario al lenguaje? Parece ser el silencio, una constelación de silencios, a veces más largos, a veces más anchos, otras veces esféricos.

Carne del mundo que es lo contrario de esta escisión: la percepción, que es ver siendo visto, acontece en el cuerpo. Si el lenguaje es esta carne entonces el silencio es aire encarnado.

Conclusión: muy bonito, sinceramente lo digo, como escribe Merleau Ponty y, en general, algunos filósofos franceses del siglo pasado, pero que imitables que son, unos derviches, unos malabaristas, escribir como ellos es absolutamente coreográfico.

[Shivanti · Rating 5 out of 5]

1. Our body is in a reciprocal relationship with the world
2. Flesh of the world: the flesh is a medium through which the world is known and articulated to us & through which we are perceptible to the world
3. Our perception is a reversible process & it underscores that our sensory experiences are interrelated
4. Meanings and memories are visible and invisible
5. Embodiment and perception : body and mind

[Douglas · Rating 4 out of 5]

Deep meanderings that ebb and flow in and out of this fleeting felt sense. Read this as a 'supplement' to David Abram's Spell of the Sensuous chapter "The Flesh of Language", though Merleau-Ponty's work deserves attention on its own. This unfinished work now has me exploring phenomenology in greater depth.

[Purepazaak · Rating 2 out of 5]

this is one of the "apparent" issues with phenomenology, is its incessant rehashing and recasting of the same hypotheticals that undergird philosophical thought. here, the thinking is quite disorganized and simply charged with this recasting to a point where it its alleged novelties are reduced to this very chosen aspect.

[Simone Kerrigan · Rating 5 out of 5]

Merleau-Ponty breaks forth, again and again, into beautiful poetic prose as he interrogates the meaning of Being. Full of stunning accounts of science, language, and bodily experience. A wonderful sequel to Phenomenology of Perception.

[Tim Snow · Rating 4 out of 5]

Chapter 4 (The Intertwining — The Chiasm) is definitely 5 stars and there are other gems scattered throughout, but the rest is at best 3 stars. Not for the faint of heart and definitely read Phenomenology of Perception first.

[Marco Svevo · Rating 1 out of 5]

che due maroni.
orrendo.
era testo d'esame al corso di storia della filosofia contemporanea tenuto da pievaldo vovatti.