The suggestion that perception takes place in a field implies that it originates neither in the world nor in the perceiving subject, but somewhere in between (PP, 4). More specifically, perception consists of the endless reflection of body and world in one another. Merleau-Ponty (VI, 139) illustrates this with the image generated by two opposing mirrors, which form an image whose origin cannot be traced. How must we understand this reciprocal determination of body and world? As I already mentioned, the world must already make some sense in order for us to perceive it, but it cannot already be entirely determined, as that would imply that there is no longer a need to perceive it. Baeyens writes: “Perception is a process wherein percipiens and perceptum wait for one another, are tuned to one another and become what they are thanks to one another. There is no perceptum as long as it does not receive form, dimension and structure from a percipiens, and there is no percipiens as long as it does not experience the structure and style of the perceptum” (2004, 53; translation mine). Perception can thus be described as an activity in which we adapt to what we perceive. It is not so much an activity in which we try to access what is posited in front of us, but an activity in which we try to make our inclusion in the world more explicit, more determinate (PP, 30). Body and world—but also the elements of the field “world” and of the field “body” taken separately—partake of a circular play of lending and borrowing.
What this means, first of all, is that body and world are not extrinsically related, as empiricism and intellectualism would have it: they refer to one another intrinsically. A second contrast with empiricism and intellectualism is that the world cannot be seen as being definite, or ready-made. The perceiving body has an active role in what the world is to us. It brings the world into existence for us, at which point we can explore it in perception and thought. Merleau-Ponty (PP, 213) translates this as follows: actual perception needs to be preceded by a kind of familiarity between body and world. He illustrates this with reference to the disoriented feeling we have when actual perception contradicts this preperception or familiarity. For example, when we wake up in the middle of the night, thirsty for a glass of water, and we drowsily open the fridge and take the bottle of white wine instead, we do not immediately recognize the taste of wine because the body was expecting water. It is only by going through our memories of what beverages were in the fridge and by examining meticulously the consistency and the taste in our mouth that we are able to identify the liquid in our mouth as wine. The body has to configure itself to what will be perceived in order for perception to actually occur (PP, 214). And in order for the body to configure itself rightly, it needs to already have an inkling of what will be perceived. However, the body’s active role in bringing the world to existence does not imply that the world is constituted by the body. If we want to touch something, it is precisely because we want to be confronted with something we cannot give to ourselves. Merleau-Ponty writes: “The perceiving subject must, without relinquishing his place and his point of view, and in the opacity of sensation, reach out towards things to which he has, in advance, no key, and for which he nevertheless carries within himself the project, and open himself to an absolute Other which he is making ready in the depths of his being” (PP, 325–26). Because it is impossible to decide the share of the body and of the world in perception, Merleau-Ponty prefers to describe the subject of perception as an impersonal “One” (PP, 240), and to complement “seeing” and “being seen” with a “Visibility” and a “Sensible in itself” (VI, 139). Just like the Kantian thing-in-itself, the Sensible in itself is not reducible to what a person can or cannot see. But contrary to Kant, Merleau-Ponty situates this Sensible in itself not beyond the phenomenal world, but at its very heart. The Sensible in itself is the condition of perception that is situated inside the phenomenal world. We will return to this idea in the second chapter.
Summing up what we have said so far, Merleau-Ponty’s analysis shows that perception is generated neither by a thinking subject nor by a recording body. Nor can perception be reduced to an unconscious judgment or to the passive reception of insignificant stimuli that are assembled by memory and association. Perception does not consist of constructing an image that mediates our access to the world. On the contrary, perception directly interferes with the world in the sense that it is the hold the lived body has upon the world. This hold presupposes anticipation: prior to actual perception, the body has an inkling of what will be perceived. The perceiving body is prethetically familiar with the world without, however, constituting the world. This familiarity is grounded in an original intertwinement of body and world: the body is openness to or participation in the world and the world is a world to be perceived. In this way, Merleau-Ponty replaces an atomistic and mechanistic (extrinsic) explanatory model with a holistic account based on reciprocal determination (intrinsic). Body and world form a unity or style, which is always already given with perception. This style is the field from which a specific perception receives its meaning. The actual perception can then be understood as the activity of making explicit, of shaping, this implicit, given familiarity with the world.
Merleau-Ponty’s Account of Thought
I have already mentioned that Merleau-Ponty believes that thought “must be brought to appear directly in the infrastructure of vision” (VI, 145). Therefore, and in dialogue with the foregoing observations about perception, I will examine whether thought also needs to be understood as a direct hold upon the world, rather than as the construction of representations that mediate our access to the world; and also whether it needs to be situated somewhere in between the thinking subject and the thought world, rather than in the thinking subject itself. In order to answer these questions, I will refer to Merleau-Ponty’s discussion of Descartes. Strangely enough, Merleau-Ponty adopts a crucial idea of the godfather of cognitivism, whom he otherwise so much contests, namely, the idea that the relation between the thinker and the world cannot be external: in order to think, thought first needs to be present to itself. Needless to say, Merleau-Ponty draws a different conclusion from this idea.
The Truth and the Falsity of the Cogito. As a phenomenologist and an opponent of empiricism, Merleau-Ponty cannot agree with the idea that thought would have access to reality itself, that is, to reality as it is, independently of how it appears to us. The reason is that a reality whose possibility we cannot presuppose will remain unnoticed, even if it is situated within our visual field. It is as in Meno’s objection to Socrates: if we have no inkling of the idea we are looking for, we will not be able to know whether we have found it. Hence, reality first needs to exist for us in order for it to be actually perceived and spoken about. Seeing a tree requires a “thought about the tree” (pensée de l’arbre) and a “thought about seeing” (pensée de voir) (PP, 370). This primordial knowledge of the things is actually a knowledge of ourselves; or, more specifically, it is thought’s awareness of itself, thought’s contact with itself. Why? If thought already needs to sketch the object it is eventually to “discover” in perception (and speech), the object cannot be considered external to thought. At this stage, which precedes perception and language, the relation between thought and the world is actually a relation between thought and itself. Since this relation between thought and itself is what we call self-awareness or self-consciousness, we have to say that perception and language, as well as positing or thetic thought, require a thought that is conscious of itself: “At the root of all our experiences and all our reflections, we find, then, a being which immediately recognizes itself, because it is its knowledge both of itself and of all things, 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” (PP, 371).
The philosopher who is known to have demonstrated the primacy of thought and the direct contact thought has with itself is, of course, Descartes. In order to gain a better understanding of Merleau-Ponty’s position on this matter, we will compare it to the position of Descartes.
Descartes’s discovery of the certainty of the cogito is usually explained as follows: While I can doubt the idea that I saw my mother yesterday, I cannot doubt the fact that I think I saw her yesterday. I cannot give a decisive answer to the question of whether my mental content corresponds with external reality. There is no doubt, however, regarding my having these mental contents. In other words: