All thought of something is at the same time self-consciousness […] At the root of all our experiences and all our reflections, we find […] a being which immediately recognises itself, […] and which knows its own existence, not by observation and as a given fact, nor by inference from any idea of itself, but through direct contact with that existence. Self-consciousness is the very being of mind in action.
maurice Merleau-pontyquotes
1908 - 1961
Maurice Merleau-Ponty (1908-1961), French philosopher and professor, described his life as having two distinct phases. The first phase was his effort to restore the world of perception, so that the body was no longer viewed as merely an object or material entity. He illustrated his point in Phenomenology of Perception, which is considered one of his greatest contributions to technical philosophy. Perception, Merleau-Ponty claims, is not passive but a “creative receptivity.”
The second phase, as Merleau-Ponty stated, was an attempt to show that communication with others goes far beyond the realm of perception. He found empiricism and rationalism unsatisfactory philosophical traditions to describe his views on perception though, so he turned, for a time, toward social and political topics. He published numerous Marxists essays (Humanism and Terror) in defense of soviet communism.
After the Korean War however, his strong stance faltered and he viewed Marxism no longer as the final word, but simply as a model for understanding oneself and history. His disillusionment with Marxism led to a falling out with long-time friend, Jean-Paul Sartre.
As Merleau-Ponty was heavily influenced by both Edmund Husserl and Martin Heidegger, he is often associated with the Existentialist movement, even though his later philosophies seem to take a turn from that theory. While not one of the most acclaimed philosophers of his day, Merleau-Ponty is considered a relevant and valuable resource to European philosophy, and his arguments are being given more attention now, especially within the cognitive sciences and medical ethics spheres of study.
Our view of man will remain superficial so long as we fail to go back to that origin [of silence], so long as we fail to find, beneath the chatter of words, the primordial silence, and as long as we do not describe the action which breaks this silence. the spoken word is a gesture, and its meaning, a world.
It is the essence of certainty to be established only with reservations.
Nothing determines me from outside, not because nothing acts upon me, but, on the contrary, because I am from the start outside myself and open to the world.
Visible and mobile, my body is a thing among things; it’s caught in the fabric of the world, and its cohesion is that of a thing. But, because it moves itself and sees, it holds things in a circle around itself.
Because we are in the world, we are condemned to meaning, and we cannot do or say anything without its acquiring a name in history.
We must therefore rediscover, after the natural world, the social world, not as an object or sum of objects, but as a permanent field or dimension of existence.
The world is… the natural setting of, and field for, all my thoughts and all my explicit perceptions. Truth does not inhabit only the inner man, or more accurately, there is no inner man, man is in the world, and only in the world does he know himself.
The body is our general medium for having a world.
We know not through our intellect but through our experience.
experience / intellect / know