Key Arguments

• He describes the shift: 'Obsessed with being, and forgetting the perspectivism of my experience, I henceforth treat my experience as an object and I deduce it from a relation among objects.'
• The body, originally 'my point of view upon the world,' is now 'consider[ed] … as one of the objects of that world,' and the 'consciousness that I had of my gaze as a means of knowing' is repressed while he treats 'my eyes as fragments of matter.'
• From this standpoint, 'my eyes are placed within the same objective space where I attempt to situate the exterior object and I believe that the projection of the objects upon my retina brings about the perceived perspective,' i.e., vision is reconstructed as a causal interaction of objects.
• Analogously, 'My present, which is my point of view upon time, becomes one moment of time among all others, my duration becomes a reflection or an abstract appearance of universal time, and my body becomes a mode of objective space,' so the lived standpoint is absorbed into an external time–space framework.
• The positing of a single full object 'requires the composition [or co-positing] of all of these experiences in a single, polythetic act' and 'therein it exceeds perceptual experience and the synthesis of horizons,' just as 'the notion of a universe (a completed and explicit totality where relations would be reciprocally determined) exceeds the notion of a world (an open and indefinite multiplicity where relations are reciprocally implicated).'
• He summarizes the move as 'I take flight from my experience and I pass over to the idea,' where, 'Like the object, the idea claims to be the same for everyone, valid for all times and for all places,' and individuation appears as 'the expression of a universal positing power.'
• In this process, 'I no longer pay attention to my body, to time, or to the world such as I live them in pre-predicative knowledge, that is, in the inner communication that I have with them. I only speak of my body as an idea, of the universe as an idea, and of the idea of space and of time.'
• He identifies this as the formation of '“objective” thought (in Kierkegaard’s sense) – the objective thought of common sense and of science – which in the end makes us lose contact with the perceptual experience of which it is nevertheless the result and the natural continuation.'

Source Quotes

The ecstasy [extase]3 of this experience makes it such that every perception is perception of something. [b. The problem of the body.] Obsessed with being, and forgetting the perspectivism of my experience, I henceforth treat my experience as an object and I deduce it from a relation among objects. I consider my body, which is my point of view upon the world, as one of the objects of that world.

The problem of the body.] Obsessed with being, and forgetting the perspectivism of my experience, I henceforth treat my experience as an object and I deduce it from a relation among objects. I consider my body, which is my point of view upon the world, as one of the objects of that world. I repress the consciousness that I had of my gaze as a means of knowing and I treat my eyes as fragments of matter.

I consider my body, which is my point of view upon the world, as one of the objects of that world. I repress the consciousness that I had of my gaze as a means of knowing and I treat my eyes as fragments of matter. From then on my eyes are placed within the same objective space where I attempt to situate the exterior object and I believe that the projection of the objects upon my retina brings about the perceived perspective.

Likewise, I treat my own perceptual history as a result of my relations with the objective world. My present, which is my point of view upon time, becomes one moment of time among all others, my duration becomes a reflection or an abstract appearance of universal time, and my body becomes a mode of objective space. And finally, if the objects that surround the house or inhabit it remained what they are in perceptual experience, that is, gazes limited to a specific perspective, then the house would not be posited as an autonomous being.

And finally, if the objects that surround the house or inhabit it remained what they are in perceptual experience, that is, gazes limited to a specific perspective, then the house would not be posited as an autonomous being. Thus, the positing [position] of a single object in the full sense of the word requires the composition [or co-positing] of all of these experiences in a single, polythetic act. Therein it exceeds perceptual experience and the synthesis of horizons – just as the notion of a universe (a completed and explicit totality where relations would be reciprocally determined) exceeds the notion of a world (an open and indefinite multiplicity where relations are reciprocally implicated).4 I take flight from my experience and I pass over to the idea.

Thus, the positing [position] of a single object in the full sense of the word requires the composition [or co-positing] of all of these experiences in a single, polythetic act. Therein it exceeds perceptual experience and the synthesis of horizons – just as the notion of a universe (a completed and explicit totality where relations would be reciprocally determined) exceeds the notion of a world (an open and indefinite multiplicity where relations are reciprocally implicated).4 I take flight from my experience and I pass over to the idea. Like the object, the idea claims to be the same for everyone, valid for all times and for all places, and the individuation of the object at an objective point of time and space appears, in the end, as the expression of a universal positing power.5 I no longer pay attention to my body, to time, or to the world such as I live them in pre-predicative knowledge, that is, in the inner communication that I have with them.

Like the object, the idea claims to be the same for everyone, valid for all times and for all places, and the individuation of the object at an objective point of time and space appears, in the end, as the expression of a universal positing power.5 I no longer pay attention to my body, to time, or to the world such as I live them in pre-predicative knowledge, that is, in the inner communication that I have with them. I only speak of my body as an idea, of the universe as an idea, and of the idea of space and of time. Thus is formed “objective” thought (in Kierkegaard’s sense) – the objective thought of common sense and of science – which in the end makes us lose contact with the perceptual experience of which it is nevertheless the result and the natural continuation.

I only speak of my body as an idea, of the universe as an idea, and of the idea of space and of time. Thus is formed “objective” thought (in Kierkegaard’s sense) – the objective thought of common sense and of science – which in the end makes us lose contact with the perceptual experience of which it is nevertheless the result and the natural continuation. The whole life of consciousness tends to posit objects, since it is only consciousness (or self-knowledge) insofar as it takes itself up and gathers itself together in an identifiable object.

Key Concepts

• Obsessed with being, and forgetting the perspectivism of my experience, I henceforth treat my experience as an object and I deduce it from a relation among objects.
• I consider my body, which is my point of view upon the world, as one of the objects of that world.
• I repress the consciousness that I had of my gaze as a means of knowing and I treat my eyes as fragments of matter.
• my present, which is my point of view upon time, becomes one moment of time among all others, my duration becomes a reflection or an abstract appearance of universal time, and my body becomes a mode of objective space.
• the positing [position] of a single object in the full sense of the word requires the composition [or co-positing] of all of these experiences in a single, polythetic act.
• I take flight from my experience and I pass over to the idea.
• I only speak of my body as an idea, of the universe as an idea, and of the idea of space and of time.
• Thus is formed “objective” thought (in Kierkegaard’s sense) – the objective thought of common sense and of science – which in the end makes us lose contact with the perceptual experience of which it is nevertheless the result and the natural continuation.

Context

Beginning of subsection [b. The problem of the body.], where Merleau-Ponty explains how the positing of absolute objects leads to a reification of the body and temporal standpoint, giving rise to 'objective thought' that obscures its own origin in lived, perspectival perception.