“The world is not what I think, but what I live; I am open to the world, I undeniably communicate with it, but I do not possess it, it is inexhaustible.
There are not, on the one side, things, and on the other, a consciousness that perceives them; there is a kind of common fabric in which both objects and subject are caught.
Perception is not a science of the world, it is not even an act, a deliberate taking of a position; it is the ground upon which all acts stand out, and it is presupposed by them.
The world is not an object whose law of constitution I hold within myself; it is the natural milieu and the field of all my thoughts and all my explicit perceptions.
Truth does not ‘inhabit’ only the ‘inner man’, or rather there is no inner man: man is in the world, and it is in the world that he knows himself.
When I return to myself from the dogmatism of common sense or from the dogmatism of science, I find not a source of intrinsic truth, but a subject devoted to the world.”
There are not, on the one side, things, and on the other, a consciousness that perceives them; there is a kind of common fabric in which both objects and subject are caught.
Perception is not a science of the world, it is not even an act, a deliberate taking of a position; it is the ground upon which all acts stand out, and it is presupposed by them.
The world is not an object whose law of constitution I hold within myself; it is the natural milieu and the field of all my thoughts and all my explicit perceptions.
Truth does not ‘inhabit’ only the ‘inner man’, or rather there is no inner man: man is in the world, and it is in the world that he knows himself.
When I return to myself from the dogmatism of common sense or from the dogmatism of science, I find not a source of intrinsic truth, but a subject devoted to the world.”
Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Phenomenology of Perception
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Notebook of Nounours
Now, here is something a bit more subtle. When one begins to pay attention to those invisible glasses I was speaking about earlier…
— We do not see…
— That’s exactly it… a way of seeing the world… with invisible glasses… well… one begins to notice that one could wear others.
— How so?
— For example, instead of saying “there is a thing,” one could say: “something is happening.” Do you see the difference?
— No…
— In the first case, the world is made of objects. In the second, it is made of events. And suddenly, it is no longer quite the same world. So, an implicit ontology would be this:
— That’s exactly it… a way of seeing the world… with invisible glasses… well… one begins to notice that one could wear others.
— How so?
— For example, instead of saying “there is a thing,” one could say: “something is happening.” Do you see the difference?
— No…
— In the first case, the world is made of objects. In the second, it is made of events. And suddenly, it is no longer quite the same world. So, an implicit ontology would be this:
a way of seeing what exists, which we use without thinking, but which influences everything we say and understand. And perhaps becoming attentive is not only about learning new things. It is also about beginning to see the invisible glasses we have always been wearing.
— But… more concretely… what would be the difference between saying “there are things” and “something is happening”?
— Saying “there are things”… is to suppose a world already cut up, already laid out before you. Saying “something is happening” is already to bring back movement, appearing, a kind of emergence… and the gesture goes even further: there is no longer, on one side, what is, and on the other, the one who sees. There is a common field, a kind of fabric… made of interwoven threads.
— Saying “there are things”… is to suppose a world already cut up, already laid out before you. Saying “something is happening” is already to bring back movement, appearing, a kind of emergence… and the gesture goes even further: there is no longer, on one side, what is, and on the other, the one who sees. There is a common field, a kind of fabric… made of interwoven threads.
In other words, even the “invisible glasses” are not simply placed on the eyes of an observer: they belong to the world itself.
— So one would have to… change glasses!?
— Becoming attentive is not only about changing glasses. It is about beginning to feel that seeing is never neutral, that to see is already to be caught within a certain way in which the world comes into being.
— Becoming attentive is not only about changing glasses. It is about beginning to feel that seeing is never neutral, that to see is already to be caught within a certain way in which the world comes into being.
