But humanity is not produced as the effect of our articulations or by the way our eyes are implanted in us (still less by the existence of mirrors, though they alone can make our entire bodies visible to us). These contingencies and others like them, without which mankind would not exist, do not by simple summation bring it about that there is a single man. The body's animation is not the assemblage or juxtaposition of its parts. Nor is it a question of a mind or spirit coming down from somewhere else into an automation—
which would still imply that the body itself is without an inside and without a "self." A human body is present when, between the see-er and the visible, between touching and touched, between one eye and the other, between hand and hand a kind of crossover occurs, when the spark of the sensing/sensible is lit, when the fire starts to burn that will not cease until some accident befalls the body, undoing what no accident would have sufficed to do… Once this strange system of exchanges is given, we find before us all the problems of painting. These problems illustrate the enigma of the body, which enigma in turn legitimates them. Since things and my body are made of the same stuff, vision must somehow come about in them; or yet again, their manifest visibility must be repeated in the body by a secret visibility. "Nature is on the inside," says Cézanne. Quality, light, color, depth, which are there before us, are there only because they awaken an echo in our bodies and because the body welcomes them. Things have an internal equivalent in me; they arouse in me a carnal formula of their presence. Why shouldn't these correspondences in turn give rise to some tracing rendered visible again, in which the eyes of others could find an underlying motif to sustain their inspection of the world?5 Thus there appears a "visible" to the second power, a carnal essence or icon of the first. It is not a faded copy, a trompe l'oeil, or another thing. The animals painted on the walls of Lascaux are not there in the same way as are the fissures and limestone formations. Nor are they elsewhere. Pushed forward here, held back there, supported by the wall's mass they use so adroitly, they radiate about the wall without ever breaking their elusive moorings. I would be hard pressed to say where the painting is I am looking at. For I do not look at it as one looks at a thing, fixing it in its place. My gaze wanders within it as in the halos of Being. Rather than seeing it, I see according to, or with it.
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But humanity is not produced as the effect of our articulations or by the way our eyes are
implanted in us (still less by the existence of mirrors, though they alone can make our
entire bodies visible to us). These contingencies and others like them, without which
mankind would not exist, do not by simple summation bring it about that there is a single
man. The body's animation is not the assemblage or juxtaposition of its parts. Nor is it a
question of a mind or spirit coming down from somewhere else into an automation—
which would still imply that the body itself is without an inside and without a "self." A
human body is present when, between the see-er and the visible, between touching and
touched, between one eye and the other, between hand and hand a kind of crossover
occurs, when the spark of the sensing/sensible is lit, when the fire starts to burn that will
not cease until some accident befalls the body, undoing what no accident would have
sufficed to do…
Once this strange system of exchanges is given, we find before us all the problems of
painting. These problems illustrate the enigma of the body, which enigma in turn
legitimates them. Since things and my body are made of the same stuff, vision must
somehow come about in them; or yet again, their manifest visibility must be repeated in
the body by a secret visibility. "Nature is on the inside," says Cézanne. Quality, light,
color, depth, which are there before us, are there only because they awaken an echo in
our bodies and because the body welcomes them.
Things have an internal equivalent in me; they arouse in me a carnal formula of their
presence. Why shouldn't these correspondences in turn give rise to some tracing
rendered visible again, in which the eyes of others could find an underlying motif to
sustain their inspection of the world?5 Thus there appears a "visible" to the second power,
a carnal essence or icon of the first. It is not a faded copy, a trompe l'oeil, or another
thing. The animals painted on the walls of Lascaux are not there in the same way as are
the fissures and limestone formations. Nor are they elsewhere. Pushed forward here,
held back there, supported by the wall's mass they use so adroitly, they radiate about the
wall without ever breaking their elusive moorings. I would be hard pressed to say where
the painting is I am looking at. For I do not look at it as one looks at a thing, fixing it in its
place. My gaze wanders within it as in the halos of Being. Rather than seeing it, I see
according to, or with it.
Merleau-Ponty, eye and mind
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