Key Arguments

• Classical psychology tried to define the body as what gives us 'double sensations', since 'When I touch my right hand with my left hand, the object “right hand” also has this strange property, itself, of sensing.'
• Merleau-Ponty notes, however, that 'the two hands are never simultaneously both touched and touching', so we cannot treat this as two co-present sensations in the way we perceive 'two objects juxtaposed.'
• Instead, 'when I press my two hands together, it is not a question of two sensations that I could feel together … but rather of an ambiguous organization where the two hands can alternate between the functions of “touching” and “touched.”'
• In this alternation, I recognize identity across functions: 'in the passage from one function to the other, I can recognize the touched hand as the same hand that is about to be touching; in this package of bones and muscles that is my right hand for my left hand, I glimpse momentarily the shell or the incarnation of this other right hand, agile and living, that I send out toward objects in order to explore them.'
• He interprets this as the body 'catch[ing] itself from the outside in the process of exercising a knowledge function; it attempts to touch itself touching, it begins “a sort of reflection,” and this would be enough to distinguish it from objects.'
• External things may be said to 'touch' my body, but 'merely when it is inert, and thus without every catching it in its exploratory function', so they never exhibit this reflexive, alternating structure that characterizes the lived body.

Source Quotes

“Double sensations.”] The other “characteristics” by which classical psychology defined one’s own body are no less interesting, and for the same reasons. My body, it was said, is recognized as what gives me “double sensations.” When I touch my right hand with my left hand, the object “right hand” also has this strange property, itself, of sensing. As we have just seen, the two hands are never simultaneously both touched and touching.

When I touch my right hand with my left hand, the object “right hand” also has this strange property, itself, of sensing. As we have just seen, the two hands are never simultaneously both touched and touching. So when I press my two hands together, it is not a question of two sensations that I could feel together, as when we perceive two objects juxtaposed, but rather of an ambiguous organization where the two hands can alternate between the functions of “touching” and “touched.”

As we have just seen, the two hands are never simultaneously both touched and touching. So when I press my two hands together, it is not a question of two sensations that I could feel together, as when we perceive two objects juxtaposed, but rather of an ambiguous organization where the two hands can alternate between the functions of “touching” and “touched.” In speaking of “double sensations,” psychologists mean that, in the passage from one function to the other, I can recognize the touched hand as the same hand that is about to be touching; in this package of bones and muscles that is my right hand for my left hand, I glimpse momentarily the shell or the incarnation of this other right hand, agile and living, that I send out toward objects in order to explore them.

So when I press my two hands together, it is not a question of two sensations that I could feel together, as when we perceive two objects juxtaposed, but rather of an ambiguous organization where the two hands can alternate between the functions of “touching” and “touched.” In speaking of “double sensations,” psychologists mean that, in the passage from one function to the other, I can recognize the touched hand as the same hand that is about to be touching; in this package of bones and muscles that is my right hand for my left hand, I glimpse momentarily the shell or the incarnation of this other right hand, agile and living, that I send out toward objects in order to explore them. The body catches itself from the outside in the process of exercising a knowledge function; it attempts to touch itself touching, it begins “a sort of reflection,”2 and this would be enough to distinguish it from objects.

In speaking of “double sensations,” psychologists mean that, in the passage from one function to the other, I can recognize the touched hand as the same hand that is about to be touching; in this package of bones and muscles that is my right hand for my left hand, I glimpse momentarily the shell or the incarnation of this other right hand, agile and living, that I send out toward objects in order to explore them. The body catches itself from the outside in the process of exercising a knowledge function; it attempts to touch itself touching, it begins “a sort of reflection,”2 and this would be enough to distinguish it from objects. I can certainly say that these latter “touch” my body, but merely when it is inert, and thus without every catching it in its exploratory function. [c.

The body catches itself from the outside in the process of exercising a knowledge function; it attempts to touch itself touching, it begins “a sort of reflection,”2 and this would be enough to distinguish it from objects. I can certainly say that these latter “touch” my body, but merely when it is inert, and thus without every catching it in its exploratory function. [c. The body as an affective object.] Or again, it was said that the body is an affective object, whereas external things are merely represented.

Key Concepts

• My body, it was said, is recognized as what gives me “double sensations.” When I touch my right hand with my left hand, the object “right hand” also has this strange property, itself, of sensing.
• As we have just seen, the two hands are never simultaneously both touched and touching.
• when I press my two hands together, it is not a question of two sensations that I could feel together, as when we perceive two objects juxtaposed, but rather of an ambiguous organization where the two hands can alternate between the functions of “touching” and “touched.”
• in this package of bones and muscles that is my right hand for my left hand, I glimpse momentarily the shell or the incarnation of this other right hand, agile and living, that I send out toward objects in order to explore them.
• The body catches itself from the outside in the process of exercising a knowledge function; it attempts to touch itself touching, it begins “a sort of reflection,”2 and this would be enough to distinguish it from objects.
• I can certainly say that these latter “touch” my body, but merely when it is inert, and thus without every catching it in its exploratory function.

Context

Subsection [b. “Double sensations.”], where Merleau-Ponty analyses classical psychology’s second 'characteristic' of one’s own body and reinterprets it as a pre-reflective bodily self-relation rather than a mere sum of two sensations.