Maurice Merleau-Ponty

This also means that philosophy itself must not take itself as established in the truths it has managed to utter, that philosophy is an ever-renewed experiment of its own beginning, and finally, that radical reflection is conscious of its own dependence on an unreflected life that is its initial, constant, and final situation.

Speech is not a means in the service of an external end. It contains its own rule of usage, ethics, and view of the world, as a gesture sometimes bears the whole truth about a man.

The destruction of sight, wherever the injuries be sustained, followsthe same law: all colors are aected in the _st place,and lose theirsaturation. Then the spectrum is simpli_d, being reduced to four andsoon to two colors; _ally a grey monochrome stage is reached,although the pathological color is never identi_ble with any normalone. Thus in central as in peripheral lesions __he loss of nervous substance results not only in a de_iency of certain qualities, but in thechange to a less dierentiated and more primitive structure_.

The destruction of sight, wherever the injuries be sustained, follows the same law: all colours are aected in the _st place, and lose their saturation. Then the spectrum is simpli_d, being reduced to four andsoon to two colours; _ally a grey monochrome stage is reached, although the pathological colour is never identi_ble with any normal one. Thus in central as in peripheral lesions __he loss of nervous substance results not only in a de_iency of certain qualities, but in the change to a less dierentiated and more primitive structure_.

If I walk along a shore towards a ship which has run aground, and the funnel or masts merge into the forest bordering on the sand dune, there will be a moment when these details suddenly become part of the ship, and indissolubly fused with it. As I approached, I did not perceive resemblances or proximities which _ally came together to form a continuous picture of the upper part of the ship. I merely felt that the look of the object was on the point of altering, that something was imminent in this tension, as a storm is imminent in storm clouds.Suddenly the sight before me was recast in a manner satisfying to my vague expectation. Only afterwards did I recognize, as justi_ations for the change, the resemblance and contiguity of what I call __timuli__ namely the most determinate phenomena, seen at close quarters and with which I compose the __rue_ world. __ow could I have failed to see that these pieces of wood were an integral part of the ship? For they were of the same colour as the ship, and _ted well enough into its superstructure._ But these reasons for correct perception were not given as reasons beforehand. The unity of the object is based on the foreshadowing of an imminent order which is about to spring upon us a reply to questions merely latent in the landscape. It solves a problem set only in the form of a vague feeling of uneasiness, it organizes elements which up to that moment did not belong to the same universe and which, for that reason, as Kant said with profound insight, could not be associated. By placing them on the same footing, that of the unique object, synopsis makes continuity and resemblance between them possible. An impression can never by itself be associated with another impression.

The body is our general medium for having a world.