Each sense is a 'field'—a pre-personal, limited opening onto a system of beings—so to say that 'I have senses' is not a confusion but an accurate expression of the fact that, through a connatural relationship, I can find sense in aspects of being that I have not constituted by any prior intellectual operation.

By Maurice Merleau-Ponty, from Phenomenology of Perception

Key Arguments

  • He sums up the previous points: '– We can summarize these two ideas by saying that every sensation belongs to a certain field.'
  • To say 'I have a visual field' means 'that I have an access and an opening to a system of visible beings through my position, and that they are available to my gaze in virtue of a kind of primordial contract and by a gift of nature, without any effort required on my part. In other words, it means that vision is pre-personal.'
  • At the same time, 'it means simultaneously that vision is always limited, or that there is always an horizon of unseen or even invisible things around my present vision.'
  • He concludes: 'Vision is a thought subjugated to a certain field and this is what is called a sense.' Thus a 'sense' is precisely this field-bound, pre-personal thought.
  • Therefore, when I say 'that I have senses and that they give me access to the world, I am not the victim of a confusion, nor do I mix up causal thought and reflection. I merely express the truth that forces itself upon a complete reflection, namely, that I am capable (through connatural-ity) of finding a sense in certain aspects of being, without myself having given them this sense through a constitutive operation.'

Source Quotes

And it is precisely at this price that the gaze and the hand are capable of guessing the movement that will make the perception precise and that can demonstrate this prescience that gives them the appearance of an automatic reflex. [e. The senses are “fields.”] * – We can summarize these two ideas by saying that every sensation belongs to a certain field. To say that I have a visual field means that I have an access and an opening to a system of visible beings through my position, and that they are available to my gaze in virtue of a kind of primordial contract and by a gift of nature, without any effort required on my part.
The senses are “fields.”] * – We can summarize these two ideas by saying that every sensation belongs to a certain field. To say that I have a visual field means that I have an access and an opening to a system of visible beings through my position, and that they are available to my gaze in virtue of a kind of primordial contract and by a gift of nature, without any effort required on my part. In other words, it means that vision is pre-personal.
To say that I have a visual field means that I have an access and an opening to a system of visible beings through my position, and that they are available to my gaze in virtue of a kind of primordial contract and by a gift of nature, without any effort required on my part. In other words, it means that vision is pre-personal. Moreover, it means simultaneously that vision is always limited, or that there is always an horizon of unseen or even invisible things around my present vision.
In other words, it means that vision is pre-personal. Moreover, it means simultaneously that vision is always limited, or that there is always an horizon of unseen or even invisible things around my present vision. Vision is a thought subjugated to a certain field and this is what is called a sense.
Moreover, it means simultaneously that vision is always limited, or that there is always an horizon of unseen or even invisible things around my present vision. Vision is a thought subjugated to a certain field and this is what is called a sense. When I say that I have senses and that they give me access to the world, I am not the victim of a confusion, nor do I mix up causal thought and reflection.
When I say that I have senses and that they give me access to the world, I am not the victim of a confusion, nor do I mix up causal thought and reflection. I merely express the truth that forces itself upon a complete reflection, namely, that I am capable (through connatural-ity) of finding a sense in certain aspects of being, without myself having given them this sense through a constitutive operation. [f. The plurality of the senses.

Key Concepts

  • We can summarize these two ideas by saying that every sensation belongs to a certain field.
  • To say that I have a visual field means that I have an access and an opening to a system of visible beings through my position, and that they are available to my gaze in virtue of a kind of primordial contract and by a gift of nature, without any effort required on my part.
  • In other words, it means that vision is pre-personal.
  • vision is always limited, or that there is always an horizon of unseen or even invisible things around my present vision.
  • Vision is a thought subjugated to a certain field and this is what is called a sense.
  • I am capable (through connatural-ity) of finding a sense in certain aspects of being, without myself having given them this sense through a constitutive operation.

Context

Subsection '[e. The senses are “fields.”]' at the end of the excerpt, where Merleau-Ponty formalizes his preceding analysis by defining senses as pre-personal, horizon-laden fields of access to being and defends ordinary talk of 'having senses' as expressing a deep phenomenological truth rather than a naïve confusion.