Key Arguments

• He begins the analysis of the 'inter-sensory thing' by rejecting both naive realism and intellectualism: 'The visual thing (the bluish disc of the moon) or the tactile thing (my head such as I sense it by palpating it), which remains for us the same throughout a series of experiences, is neither a quale that actually subsists nor the notion of the consciousness of such an objective property, but rather that which is met with or taken up by our gaze or by our movement, a question to which they respond precisely.'
• He describes the object as awakening a motor intention directed at it: 'The object that is presented to the gaze or to the palpation awakens a certain motor intention that is not directed at the movements of one’s own body, but at the thing itself upon which it somehow hangs.'
• He characterizes sensory 'constants' (hardness, softness, moonlight, etc.) as modes of symbiosis with the world rather than as contents: 'Hardness and softness, coarseness and smoothness, and moonlight and sunlight in our memory are presented before all else, not as sensory contents, but as a certain type of symbiosis, a certain manner that the outside has of invading us, a certain manner that we have of receiving it.'
• Because each sense’s constants are styles of bodily-sensory coupling, the inter-sensory thing cannot be defined as a mere collection of stable attributes or the notion of that collection: 'If the constants of each sense are thus understood, it will not be a question of defining the inter-sensory thing in which they unite by a collection of stable attributes or by the notion of this collection.'
• Instead, 'The sensory “properties” of a thing together constitute a single thing just as my gaze, my touch, and all of my other senses are, together, the powers of a single body integrated into a single action.'
• Perception of an object is guided by the field’s organization and by the body’s tendency toward an optimal, 'true' appearance: 'When I simply glance at the surface that I am about to recognize as the surface of the table, it already invites me to a particular focus and calls forth the focusing movement that will give it the surface’s “true” appearance.'
• He generalizes the field-based account from vision to existence: 'I see a surface color because I have a visual field and because the arrangement of the field guides my gaze toward it – I perceive a thing because I have a field of existence and because each phenomenon that appears polarizes my entire body, as a system of perceptual powers, toward it.'
• He defines 'real color or form' as what is reached when experience attains its maximum clarity and richness: 'I go through appearances and I reach the real color or form when my experience is at its highest degree of clarity,' and although Berkeley can object with alternative perspectives, 'These different appearances are, for me, appearances of a certain true spectacle, namely, the one where the perceived configuration, for a sufficient clarity, reaches its maximum richness.'
• He explains that visual objects presuppose a field in which richness and clarity trade off and jointly determine a 'point of maturity and a maximum': 'I have visual objects because I have a visual field where richness and clarity are inversely related to each other and because these two demands, of which each one taken separately goes on to infinity, once reunited, determine within the perceptual process a certain point of maturity and a maximum.'
• By analogy, 'I call the experience of the thing or of reality – no longer merely of a reality-for-vision or for-touch, but of an absolute reality – my full coexistence with the phenomenon at the moment when it would be in all relations at its maximum articulation, and the “givens of the different senses” are oriented toward this unique pole just as my sightings when looking through the microscope oscillate around a privileged sighting.'
• He excludes from the category of 'visible thing' phenomena that never attain such a maximum of visibility (e.g., vague sky at zenith), and calls purely one-sense phenomena 'phantoms', which only approach reality when they speak to other senses: 'If a phenomenon – such as a reflection or a light breeze – only presents itself to one of my senses, then it is a phantom,52 and it will only approach real existence if, by luck, it becomes capable of speaking to my other senses...'.

Source Quotes

The Thing or the Real.] [i. The thing as norm of perception.] We are now in a position to approach the analysis of the inter-sensory thing. The visual thing (the bluish disc of the moon) or the tactile thing (my head such as I sense it by palpating it), which remains for us the same throughout a series of experiences, is neither a quale that actually subsists nor the notion of the consciousness of such an objective property, but rather that which is met with or taken up by our gaze or by our movement, a question to which they respond precisely. The object that is presented to the gaze or to the palpation awakens a certain motor intention that is not directed at the movements of one’s own body, but at the thing itself upon which it somehow hangs.

The visual thing (the bluish disc of the moon) or the tactile thing (my head such as I sense it by palpating it), which remains for us the same throughout a series of experiences, is neither a quale that actually subsists nor the notion of the consciousness of such an objective property, but rather that which is met with or taken up by our gaze or by our movement, a question to which they respond precisely. The object that is presented to the gaze or to the palpation awakens a certain motor intention that is not directed at the movements of one’s own body, but at the thing itself upon which it somehow hangs. And if my hand knows hardness and softness, if my gaze knows moonlight, then it is as a certain manner of connecting with the phenomenon and of communicating with it.

And if my hand knows hardness and softness, if my gaze knows moonlight, then it is as a certain manner of connecting with the phenomenon and of communicating with it. Hardness and softness, coarseness and smoothness, and moonlight and sunlight in our memory are presented before all else, not as sensory contents, but as a certain type of symbiosis, a certain manner that the outside has of invading us, a certain manner that we have of receiving it, and the memory does nothing here but bring out the framework of perception from which it was born. If the constants of each sense are thus understood, it will not be a question of defining the inter-sensory thing in which they unite by a collection of stable attributes or by the notion of this collection.

Hardness and softness, coarseness and smoothness, and moonlight and sunlight in our memory are presented before all else, not as sensory contents, but as a certain type of symbiosis, a certain manner that the outside has of invading us, a certain manner that we have of receiving it, and the memory does nothing here but bring out the framework of perception from which it was born. If the constants of each sense are thus understood, it will not be a question of defining the inter-sensory thing in which they unite by a collection of stable attributes or by the notion of this collection. The sensory “properties” of a thing together constitute a single thing just as my gaze, my touch, and all of my other senses are, together, the powers of a single body integrated into a single action.

If the constants of each sense are thus understood, it will not be a question of defining the inter-sensory thing in which they unite by a collection of stable attributes or by the notion of this collection. The sensory “properties” of a thing together constitute a single thing just as my gaze, my touch, and all of my other senses are, together, the powers of a single body integrated into a single action. When I simply glance at the surface that I am about to recognize as the surface of the table, it already invites me to a particular focus and calls forth the focusing movement that will give it the surface’s “true” appearance.

The sensory “properties” of a thing together constitute a single thing just as my gaze, my touch, and all of my other senses are, together, the powers of a single body integrated into a single action. When I simply glance at the surface that I am about to recognize as the surface of the table, it already invites me to a particular focus and calls forth the focusing movement that will give it the surface’s “true” appearance. Likewise, every object given to one sense calls forth the corresponding operation of all the others.

Likewise, every object given to one sense calls forth the corresponding operation of all the others. I see a surface color because I have a visual field and because the arrangement of the field guides my gaze toward it – I perceive a thing because I have a field of existence and because each phenomenon that appears polarizes my entire body, as a system of perceptual powers, toward it. I go through appearances and I reach the real color or form when my experience is at its highest degree of clarity, and Berkeley can certainly counter that a fly would see the same object differently, or that a stronger microscope would transform it.

I see a surface color because I have a visual field and because the arrangement of the field guides my gaze toward it – I perceive a thing because I have a field of existence and because each phenomenon that appears polarizes my entire body, as a system of perceptual powers, toward it. I go through appearances and I reach the real color or form when my experience is at its highest degree of clarity, and Berkeley can certainly counter that a fly would see the same object differently, or that a stronger microscope would transform it. These different appearances are, for me, appearances of a certain true spectacle, namely, the one where the perceived configuration, for a sufficient clarity, reaches its maximum richness.51 I have visual objects because I have a visual field where richness and clarity are inversely related to each other and because these two demands, of which each one taken separately goes on to infinity, once reunited, determine within the perceptual process a certain point of maturity and a maximum. Likewise, I call the experience of the thing or of reality – no longer merely of a reality-for-vision or for-touch, but of an absolute reality – my full coexistence with the phenomenon at the moment when it would be in all relations at its maximum articulation, and the “givens of the different senses” are oriented toward this unique pole just as my sightings when looking through the microscope oscillate around a privileged sighting.

I go through appearances and I reach the real color or form when my experience is at its highest degree of clarity, and Berkeley can certainly counter that a fly would see the same object differently, or that a stronger microscope would transform it. These different appearances are, for me, appearances of a certain true spectacle, namely, the one where the perceived configuration, for a sufficient clarity, reaches its maximum richness.51 I have visual objects because I have a visual field where richness and clarity are inversely related to each other and because these two demands, of which each one taken separately goes on to infinity, once reunited, determine within the perceptual process a certain point of maturity and a maximum. Likewise, I call the experience of the thing or of reality – no longer merely of a reality-for-vision or for-touch, but of an absolute reality – my full coexistence with the phenomenon at the moment when it would be in all relations at its maximum articulation, and the “givens of the different senses” are oriented toward this unique pole just as my sightings when looking through the microscope oscillate around a privileged sighting.

These different appearances are, for me, appearances of a certain true spectacle, namely, the one where the perceived configuration, for a sufficient clarity, reaches its maximum richness.51 I have visual objects because I have a visual field where richness and clarity are inversely related to each other and because these two demands, of which each one taken separately goes on to infinity, once reunited, determine within the perceptual process a certain point of maturity and a maximum. Likewise, I call the experience of the thing or of reality – no longer merely of a reality-for-vision or for-touch, but of an absolute reality – my full coexistence with the phenomenon at the moment when it would be in all relations at its maximum articulation, and the “givens of the different senses” are oriented toward this unique pole just as my sightings when looking through the microscope oscillate around a privileged sighting. I will not name a phenomenon a “visible thing” if it fails to offer some maximum of visibility across the various experiences that I have of it (such as colored areas), nor something that is far off and tiny on the horizon, that is vaguely located and diffuse at the zenith, that allows itself to be contaminated by the structures nearest to it and that does not oppose to them any configuration of its own (such as the sky).

I will not name a phenomenon a “visible thing” if it fails to offer some maximum of visibility across the various experiences that I have of it (such as colored areas), nor something that is far off and tiny on the horizon, that is vaguely located and diffuse at the zenith, that allows itself to be contaminated by the structures nearest to it and that does not oppose to them any configuration of its own (such as the sky). If a phenomenon – such as a reflection or a light breeze – only presents itself to one of my senses, then it is a phantom,52 and it will only approach real existence if, by luck, it becomes capable of speaking to my other senses, as when the wind, for example, is violent and makes itself visible in the disturbances of the landscape. Cézanne said that a painting contained, in itself, even the odor of the landscape.53 He meant that the arrangement of the color upon the thing (and in the work of art if it fully captures the thing) by itself signifies all of the responses that it would give to the interrogation of my other senses, that a thing would not have that color if it did not have this form, these tactile properties, that sonority, or that odor; and that the thing is the absolute plenitude that projects my undivided existence in front of itself. [ii.

Key Concepts

• We are now in a position to approach the analysis of the inter-sensory thing. The visual thing (the bluish disc of the moon) or the tactile thing (my head such as I sense it by palpating it), which remains for us the same throughout a series of experiences, is neither a quale that actually subsists nor the notion of the consciousness of such an objective property, but rather that which is met with or taken up by our gaze or by our movement, a question to which they respond precisely.
• The object that is presented to the gaze or to the palpation awakens a certain motor intention that is not directed at the movements of one’s own body, but at the thing itself upon which it somehow hangs.
• Hardness and softness, coarseness and smoothness, and moonlight and sunlight in our memory are presented before all else, not as sensory contents, but as a certain type of symbiosis, a certain manner that the outside has of invading us, a certain manner that we have of receiving it,
• If the constants of each sense are thus understood, it will not be a question of defining the inter-sensory thing in which they unite by a collection of stable attributes or by the notion of this collection.
• The sensory “properties” of a thing together constitute a single thing just as my gaze, my touch, and all of my other senses are, together, the powers of a single body integrated into a single action.
• When I simply glance at the surface that I am about to recognize as the surface of the table, it already invites me to a particular focus and calls forth the focusing movement that will give it the surface’s “true” appearance.
• I see a surface color because I have a visual field and because the arrangement of the field guides my gaze toward it – I perceive a thing because I have a field of existence and because each phenomenon that appears polarizes my entire body, as a system of perceptual powers, toward it.
• I go through appearances and I reach the real color or form when my experience is at its highest degree of clarity, and Berkeley can certainly counter that a fly would see the same object differently, or that a stronger microscope would transform it. These different appearances are, for me, appearances of a certain true spectacle, namely, the one where the perceived configuration, for a sufficient clarity, reaches its maximum richness.51
• I have visual objects because I have a visual field where richness and clarity are inversely related to each other and because these two demands, of which each one taken separately goes on to infinity, once reunited, determine within the perceptual process a certain point of maturity and a maximum.
• I call the experience of the thing or of reality – no longer merely of a reality-for-vision or for-touch, but of an absolute reality – my full coexistence with the phenomenon at the moment when it would be in all relations at its maximum articulation, and the “givens of the different senses” are oriented toward this unique pole just as my sightings when looking through the microscope oscillate around a privileged sighting.
• If a phenomenon – such as a reflection or a light breeze – only presents itself to one of my senses, then it is a phantom,52 and it will only approach real existence if, by luck, it becomes capable of speaking to my other senses, as when the wind, for example, is violent and makes itself visible in the disturbances of the landscape.

Context

III - THE THING AND THE NATURAL WORLD, subsection '[B. The Thing or the Real.] [i. The thing as norm of perception.]', where Merleau-Ponty generalizes his account of constancy and optimal 'grip' into a conception of the thing as an inter-sensory norm or pole of maximum articulation toward which the body’s perceptual powers converge.