Merleau-Ponty, Eye and Mind, parts 1 and 2
1. Summarize key points:
Ponty bashes on science because science tries to reduce the world to small parts and to reconstruct it with the tools and models we have built from our perception of the world, which is inherently non-objective.
Our perception of the world is non-objective because we see the physical world around us. We also can see ourselves, and see ourselves seeing, and this makes us a) exist inside of the world, and b) exist inside of ourselves. Our vision gives us the ability to distinguish between inside and outside.
From this meeting of inside and out, we get perception, and from perception we have life. But there's a duality about this whole process. Think of a mirror seeing and reflecting the world around it, and from that we can see and reflect on a reflection...our minds produce a similar phenomenon, we interpret our vision so that the individual parts of a visual collective make a whole, like shadows and lines and lighting make a mountain on the horizon.
Painters, when they paint, are immersed in a world of vision, of taking the reception of reality down to perception, and building perception into a painting, which is then seen by others who receive the painter's reality. And it resonates within us because vision rises beyond the actual, existing world, and tugs at a part of us that makes emotional associations with visual perceptions.
And finally, we can tie this altogether into the thought that beyond (or fundamentally holding together) everything we see, is some Being, some existence that is inside of us and outside, all around, each of us embedded inside of it.
"Further, associated bodies must be brought forward along with my body - the 'others,' not merely as my congeners, as the zoologist says, but the others who haunt me and whom I haunt; the 'others' along with whom I haunt a single, present, and actual Being as no animal ever haunted those beings of his own species, locale, or habitat."
2. Develop an argument about compelling points:
Part 1
1st, he bashes on science. Not for the scientists purpose in life which is fundamentally curious, but for the embedded process by which we take apart the world, and reconstruct meaning in it using the tools we built from it. His argument against science is that it, "admits only the most 'worked-out' phenomena, more likely produced by the apparatus than recorded by it. From this state of affairs arises all sorts of vagabond endeavors." I like that he calls science a bunch of vagabond endeavors. I'm a little offended, even though he's mostly right and I've struggled with such thoughts myself... He thinks that "science's agile and improvisatory thought will learn to ground itself," that it will come to understand "the 'others,' not merely as my congeners, as the zoologist says, but the others who haunt me and whom I haunt; the others along with whom I haunt a single, present, and actual Being as no animal ever haunted those beings of his own species, locale, or habitat." This line opens up new doors, in my eyes, to view the window of the world in which everything is one, comes from one thing, and the process of perspective is as important to individuality and becoming as is its actual being or agency.
Part 2
Here are quotes about painters and painting that had a particular resonance or understanding with me...
This illuminates how paintings can often be so weird, and feel so blank to me. Almost soulless. They aren't often statements, they're a singular way of viewing the world, and from that viewing can come any interpretation. There is no right and wrong, no command buried inherently. Just visual interpretation and appreciation.
How we see things ("our motor projects") is unique and is also embedded in how we exist. We have vision, so we view the world. We are a part of the physical world, so we only see what is physically around us. We view the world with our eyeballs and interpret the image in our minds, so what we see and how we see it is a part of the actual world, but is not all of the world. And since we view the world and are a part of it, the world also views us. He does say that, "the see-er does not appropriate what he sees; he merely approaches it by looking," but I think that in our subconscious mind are enough filters that we can say this isn't true - we filter what we see before we even realize we've seen it, which is why the mind takes on its own agency in the process of our viewing.
Not so much an enigma as it explains why we think as we do. We are in the world, we see the world, and we see ourselves seeing. So we become the center of the world, we sense the world and we sense the ability to sense inside our self, so we become the center of the physical world. Because we have a continuous moment of sensing/seeing, and realizing that we sense and see, we have a past and a future, and an elusive present that's forever slipping away into past or future time. It also ties back together why Merleau-Ponty thinks science has it wrong - it isolates these things when really, there is a continuation between the sensed and the sensing, and "vision happens among, or is caught in things." It also hints at why we go about analyzing the world as we do. Everything is separate from us, because we see it, but also everything is a part of us because we are embedded in it. And so we have an unflappable curious desire to know what it is, to know what we are, but must break what we see into pieces so we can isolate one rule or phenomenon from each other, and build back up into a coherent part with a model of the world...
What is life? It's the process of seeing and being seen, when recognition of these things comes together as perspective inside our minds. We are alive because there is a meeting of the outer and the inner, of seeing and being seen. Life is being part of the whole and separate from it, all at once.
From the awareness of our own existence, we can create an abstraction of the world. First we see (and unaware of it, our mind processes what we see) and then that image is granted to our mind for analyzation, for appreciation, for intake and rumination. And from that rumination comes our image of the image, and icon of what we view. And we have associations, which cause us to have emotional responses to images, and to ideas. And that in turn becomes its own thing, has its own moment of becoming something, once it is painted, photographed, or otherwise seen (internally or externally). It is the imaginary, and this imaginary is real in its own way. It's a real map for my mind and body to use as a representation of something in the actual world, but it's also just an actual trace of lines, colors, etc, in which an exchange between the outside (the painting) and the inside (my associations which inform my reading of the painting).
The eye is like a computer, it learns from seeing and sees from what it learns. And it takes the world and puts some part of it to painting, it makes something that can be possessed only at a distance, just like vision takes the world and makes it something that can be possessed, but only thru vision.
A painting is created from vision, and from the vision of the painter passing thru the objects, holding them in his mind as some sort of icon, and interpreting that icon into texture, color, and shapes that make up the painters playground. He takes the outer world with his vision, his vision sees it in the private world, and as a painter he makes it into a shared world.
3. Words that I learned:
congeners: a member of the same kind, class, or group
transubstantiations: conversion of one substance into another
antinomies: a paradox, two truths or principles that seem opposing but equally necessary.
obverse: counterpart or complement, the more conspicuous of two alternatives
idios kosmos: latin for private world
koinos kosmos: latin for shared world
profane: contempt for what is sacred, or secular
oneiric: of, relating to, or suggestive of dreams
1. Summarize key points:
Ponty bashes on science because science tries to reduce the world to small parts and to reconstruct it with the tools and models we have built from our perception of the world, which is inherently non-objective.
Our perception of the world is non-objective because we see the physical world around us. We also can see ourselves, and see ourselves seeing, and this makes us a) exist inside of the world, and b) exist inside of ourselves. Our vision gives us the ability to distinguish between inside and outside.
From this meeting of inside and out, we get perception, and from perception we have life. But there's a duality about this whole process. Think of a mirror seeing and reflecting the world around it, and from that we can see and reflect on a reflection...our minds produce a similar phenomenon, we interpret our vision so that the individual parts of a visual collective make a whole, like shadows and lines and lighting make a mountain on the horizon.
Painters, when they paint, are immersed in a world of vision, of taking the reception of reality down to perception, and building perception into a painting, which is then seen by others who receive the painter's reality. And it resonates within us because vision rises beyond the actual, existing world, and tugs at a part of us that makes emotional associations with visual perceptions.
And finally, we can tie this altogether into the thought that beyond (or fundamentally holding together) everything we see, is some Being, some existence that is inside of us and outside, all around, each of us embedded inside of it.
"Further, associated bodies must be brought forward along with my body - the 'others,' not merely as my congeners, as the zoologist says, but the others who haunt me and whom I haunt; the 'others' along with whom I haunt a single, present, and actual Being as no animal ever haunted those beings of his own species, locale, or habitat."
2. Develop an argument about compelling points:
Part 1
1st, he bashes on science. Not for the scientists purpose in life which is fundamentally curious, but for the embedded process by which we take apart the world, and reconstruct meaning in it using the tools we built from it. His argument against science is that it, "admits only the most 'worked-out' phenomena, more likely produced by the apparatus than recorded by it. From this state of affairs arises all sorts of vagabond endeavors." I like that he calls science a bunch of vagabond endeavors. I'm a little offended, even though he's mostly right and I've struggled with such thoughts myself... He thinks that "science's agile and improvisatory thought will learn to ground itself," that it will come to understand "the 'others,' not merely as my congeners, as the zoologist says, but the others who haunt me and whom I haunt; the others along with whom I haunt a single, present, and actual Being as no animal ever haunted those beings of his own species, locale, or habitat." This line opens up new doors, in my eyes, to view the window of the world in which everything is one, comes from one thing, and the process of perspective is as important to individuality and becoming as is its actual being or agency.
Part 2
Here are quotes about painters and painting that had a particular resonance or understanding with me...
...
To tie it all together - the painter takes the elements of the visible world, such as lines, shadow and depth, and tries to pull them altogether in a way that still allows us to see the thing it makes up, such as a mountain. He doesn't know what all the elements of vision are, or how they react together to make a painting, but he's always painting in order to take that vision and translate it, with those elements present, into a whole thing.
The painter looks at the world and the world looks at him, and thus his act of painting is an act of continuous birth, because according to Ponty a birth, a new existence occurs when something is simultaneously looked at and looks back, simultaneously becomes "visible for itself and us." Though personally, this reminds me of Schroedinger's cat, which I always understood to be anthro-centric, and kinda ridiculous. I think Ponty would have been more on target if he'd stuck to life being a process of visualization that allows for a perception of internal and external, though I think he was trying to extend that to include the external also looking back at you....which seems very cool and eastern.
And as the world looks back at you, painters begin to see a big circular vision, with one vision encompassing another vision endlessly, such that you have to question if there is a "total or absolute vision, outside of which there is nothing and which closes itself over them." It goes back to his original enigma - that the body simultaneously sees and is seen. The painter sees, is seen, and creates a new seeing on his canvas, and the rest of the world can see that seeing in the canvas, and each person then sees and is seen. In a way, it makes us alive, and brings the painter back to life, because we are seeing the painter see. As the painter sees he paints, and as we see his painting we are seeing him seeing, and in a ghostly way, we see him see as well.
3. Words that I learned:
congeners: a member of the same kind, class, or group
transubstantiations: conversion of one substance into another
antinomies: a paradox, two truths or principles that seem opposing but equally necessary.
obverse: counterpart or complement, the more conspicuous of two alternatives
idios kosmos: latin for private world
koinos kosmos: latin for shared world
profane: contempt for what is sacred, or secular
oneiric: of, relating to, or suggestive of dreams
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