Key Arguments

• Common experience distinguishes sensing from knowing in a way that is not captured by the opposition between quality and concept, indicating that sensing already involves a kind of sense or significance.
• Romantic and Herderian usage preserves a 'rich notion of sensing' that 'points to an experience in which we are not given “dead” qualities, but rather active properties.'
• Perceptual examples show that the same physical configuration appears differently depending on the sensed forces and values: 'A wooden wheel lying on the ground is not, for vision, the same as a wheel bearing a weight' and 'A body at rest because no force is being exerted upon it is not, for vision, the same as a body in which opposing forces are being held in equilibrium.'
• The child’s experience of the candle illustrates that qualities change as lived values: 'The light of a candle changes appearance for the child when, after having burned him, it ceases to attract the child’s hand and becomes literally repulsive.'
• He argues that 'Vision is already inhabited by a sense that gives it a function in the spectacle of the world and in our existence,' so perception is from the outset oriented by meaning and practical involvement.
• The 'pure quale' would only appear in a counterfactual situation where the world is a mere spectacle and the body a mere mechanism inspected by an impartial mind, a situation Merleau-Ponty treats as unreal and derivative.
• He concludes that 'Sensing, however, invests the quality with a living value, grasps it first in its signification for us, for this weighty mass that is our body, and as a result sensing always includes a reference to the body.'
• Sensing 'is this living communication with the world that makes it present to us as the familiar place of our life,' and 'The perceived object and the perceiving subject owe their thickness to sensing,' showing that subject and object are co‑constituted in this communicative relation.
• Knowledge will later 'seek to decompose' this 'intentional fabric,' indicating that sensing is an original, pre‑theoretical layer upon which explanatory knowledge works.

Source Quotes

“Sensing” has again become a question for us. Empiricism had emptied sensing of all mystery by reducing it to the possession of a quality, which it could only do by moving away from its normal meaning. Common experience establishes a difference between sensing and knowing that is not the difference between the quality and the concept.

Common experience establishes a difference between sensing and knowing that is not the difference between the quality and the concept. This rich notion of sensing is also found in Romantic usage and, for example, in Herder. It points to an experience in which we are not given “dead” qualities, but rather active properties. A wooden wheel lying on the ground is not, for vision, the same as a wheel bearing a weight.

It points to an experience in which we are not given “dead” qualities, but rather active properties. A wooden wheel lying on the ground is not, for vision, the same as a wheel bearing a weight. A body at rest because no force is being exerted upon it is not, for vision, the same as a body in which opposing forces are being held in equilibrium.1 The light of a candle changes appearance for the child when, after having burned him, it ceases to attract the child’s hand and becomes literally repulsive.2 Vision is already inhabited by a sense that gives it a function in the spectacle of the world and in our existence.

A wooden wheel lying on the ground is not, for vision, the same as a wheel bearing a weight. A body at rest because no force is being exerted upon it is not, for vision, the same as a body in which opposing forces are being held in equilibrium.1 The light of a candle changes appearance for the child when, after having burned him, it ceases to attract the child’s hand and becomes literally repulsive.2 Vision is already inhabited by a sense that gives it a function in the spectacle of the world and in our existence. The pure quale would only be given to us if the world were a spectacle and one’s own body a mechanism with which an impartial mind could become acquainted.3 Sensing, however, invests the quality with a living value, grasps it first in its signification for us, for this weighty mass that is our body, and as a result sensing always includes a reference to the body.

A body at rest because no force is being exerted upon it is not, for vision, the same as a body in which opposing forces are being held in equilibrium.1 The light of a candle changes appearance for the child when, after having burned him, it ceases to attract the child’s hand and becomes literally repulsive.2 Vision is already inhabited by a sense that gives it a function in the spectacle of the world and in our existence. The pure quale would only be given to us if the world were a spectacle and one’s own body a mechanism with which an impartial mind could become acquainted.3 Sensing, however, invests the quality with a living value, grasps it first in its signification for us, for this weighty mass that is our body, and as a result sensing always includes a reference to the body. The problem is to understand these strange relations woven between the parts of the landscape, or from the landscape to me as an embodied subject, relations by which a perceived object can condense within itself an entire scene or become the imago of an entire segment of life.

The problem is to understand these strange relations woven between the parts of the landscape, or from the landscape to me as an embodied subject, relations by which a perceived object can condense within itself an entire scene or become the imago of an entire segment of life. Sensing is this living communication with the world that makes it present to us as the familiar place of our life. The perceived object and the perceiving subject owe their thickness to sensing.

Sensing is this living communication with the world that makes it present to us as the familiar place of our life. The perceived object and the perceiving subject owe their thickness to sensing. It is the intentional fabric that the work of knowledge will seek to decompose. – With the problem of sensing, we rediscover the problems of association and of passivity.

The perceived object and the perceiving subject owe their thickness to sensing. It is the intentional fabric that the work of knowledge will seek to decompose. – With the problem of sensing, we rediscover the problems of association and of passivity. They had ceased causing difficulties because classical philosophers placed themselves either below or above them, granting all or nothing to them: sometimes “association” was understood as a mere actual coexistence, and sometimes it was derived from an intellectual construction; sometimes “passivity” was imported from the things into the mind, and sometimes reflective analysis discovered in passivity an activity of understanding.

Key Concepts

• Empiricism had emptied sensing of all mystery by reducing it to the possession of a quality, which it could only do by moving away from its normal meaning.
• This rich notion of sensing is also found in Romantic usage and, for example, in Herder. It points to an experience in which we are not given “dead” qualities, but rather active properties.
• A wooden wheel lying on the ground is not, for vision, the same as a wheel bearing a weight.
• The light of a candle changes appearance for the child when, after having burned him, it ceases to attract the child’s hand and becomes literally repulsive.
• Vision is already inhabited by a sense that gives it a function in the spectacle of the world and in our existence.
• Sensing, however, invests the quality with a living value, grasps it first in its signification for us, for this weighty mass that is our body, and as a result sensing always includes a reference to the body.
• Sensing is this living communication with the world that makes it present to us as the familiar place of our life.
• The perceived object and the perceiving subject owe their thickness to sensing.
• It is the intentional fabric that the work of knowledge will seek to decompose.

Context

Opening of chapter IV, 'THE PHENOMENAL FIELD,' where Merleau-Ponty reopens the problem of sensing after his critique of empiricism and intellectualism, and positively characterizes sensing as an embodied, value‑laden relation to the world.