Our body is not in space like things; it inhabits or haunts space. It applies itself to space like a hand to an instrument. And when we wish to move about, we do not move the body as we move an object. Maurice Merleau-Ponty More Quotes by Maurice Merleau-Ponty More Quotes From Maurice Merleau-Ponty We know not through our intellect but through our experience. Maurice Merleau-Ponty intellect knows To understand is to experience harmony between what we aim at and what is given, between the intention and the performance - and the body is our anchorage in the world. Maurice Merleau-Ponty understanding body world The body is to be compared, not to a physical object, but rather to a work of art. Maurice Merleau-Ponty medicine philosophy art I will never know how you see red and you will never know how I see it. But this separation of consciousness is recognized only after a failure of communication, and our first movement is to believe in an undivided being between us. Maurice Merleau-Ponty movement communication believe We should be sensitive to the thread of silence from which the tissue of speech is woven. Maurice Merleau-Ponty tissues woven silence The body is our general medium for having a world. Maurice Merleau-Ponty phenomenology body world Our own body is in the world as the heart is in the organism: it keeps the visible spectacle constantly alive, it breathes life into it and sustains it inwardly, and with it forms a system. Maurice Merleau-Ponty alive heart world Everyone is alone and yet nobody can do without other people, not just because they are useful... but also when it comes to happiness. Maurice Merleau-Ponty can-do people We must therefore rediscover, after the natural world, the social world, not as an object or sum of objects, but as a permanent field or dimension of existence. Maurice Merleau-Ponty phenomenology fields world I am not in front of my body, I am in it or rather I am it... If we can still speak of interpretation in relation to the perception of one's own body, we shall have to say that it interprets itself. Maurice Merleau-Ponty body perception speak Because we are in the world, we are condemned to meaning, and we cannot do or say anything without its acquiring a name in history. Maurice Merleau-Ponty phenomenology names say-anything I live in the facial expressions of the other, as I feel him living in mine. Maurice Merleau-Ponty empathy expression feels The phenomenological world is not the bringing to explicit expression of a pre-existing being, but the laying down of being. Philosophy is not the reflection of a pre-existing truth, but, like art, the act of bringing truth into being. Maurice Merleau-Ponty reflection philosophy art Visible and mobile, my body is a thing among things; it's caught in the fabric of the world, and its cohesion is that of a thing. But, because it moves itself and sees, it holds things in a circle around itself. Maurice Merleau-Ponty fabric circles moving I may speak many languages, but there remains one in which I live. Maurice Merleau-Ponty language speak may The photograph keeps open the instants which the onrush of time closes up forthwith; it destroys the overtaking, the overlapping, the metamorphosis of time. Maurice Merleau-Ponty overtaking metamorphosis photograph Like the weaver, the writer works on the wrong side of his material. He has only to do with the language, and it is thus that he suddenly finds himself surrounded by sense. Maurice Merleau-Ponty phenomenology language sides Socrates reminds us that it is not the same thing, but almost the opposite, to understand religion and to accept it. Maurice Merleau-Ponty accepting opposites The flesh is at the heart of the world. Maurice Merleau-Ponty flesh heart world The child lives in a world which he unhesitatingly believes accessible to all around him. Maurice Merleau-Ponty phenomenology believe children
